Ari Shavit reports on his interview with former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy, one among several former Israeli intelligence and security officials who have infuriated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by making public statements against an Israeli strike on Iran. Halevy tells Shavit that his views about the threat that Iran poses to [...]]]>
Ari Shavit reports on his interview with former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy, one among several former Israeli intelligence and security officials who have infuriated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by making public statements against an Israeli strike on Iran. Halevy tells Shavit that his views about the threat that Iran poses to Israel are “complex”, but compared with Netanyahu’s statements, it’s strikingly apparent that Halevy wants to avoid a lone Israeli military venture with Iran:
…“I do indeed argue that a nuclear Iran does not constitute an existential threat to Israel. If one day we wake up and discover that Iran has nuclear weapons, that does not mean the start of the countdown to the end of Israel’s existence. Israel need not despair. We have deterrent capability and preventive capability. If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, Israel will be able to design a true operational response that will be able to cope with that. We will be able to prevent a Hiroshima in Tel Aviv and we will prevent a Hiroshima in Tel Aviv; so we must not talk about a Hiroshima in Tel Aviv, because prophecies like that are self-fulfilling. Nor must we draw baseless analogies with the 1930s.
“The true Churchillian way is not to talk about the possibility of a second Holocaust, but to ensure that there will be no holocaust here. I was a boy in Britain during the Blitz. I remember vividly Churchill’s speeches blaring from the radio. He did not talk about the possibility that Britain might not survive. On the contrary: even in the direst straits he said that Britain would have the upper hand. He promised that whatever happened, come what may, in the end Britain would win. Anyone who purports to be Churchill needs to talk like Churchill and project self-confidence.
“I am absolutely appalled when I hear our leaders talking as though there were no Israel Defense Forces and as though there were no State of Israel and as though Auschwitz is liable to be repeated. As I see it, the message we should be conveying to the Iranians − and to ourselves − is that we will be here in any event and in any scenario for the next two thousand years.
“But we must not become confused,” Halevy continues. “A nuclear Iran is not an existential threat, but a nuclear Iran is a grave matter. Nuclear weapons in Tehran’s hands upset the regional balance and create a very serious strategic situation. Nor can we completely rule out the possibility that if Iran possesses nuclear weapons it will ultimately use them. When the danger is very great, even if the risk that it will be realized is only 10 percent, we need to treat it as a risk of 100 percent. So I am not one of those who are indifferent to the Iranian danger. Under no circumstances am I ready to accept a nuclear Iran. But I maintain that the way to prevent nuclearization is not necessarily by means of force.
To prevent a “a generations-long war”, Halevy says that Iran can be deterred from building a nuclear weapon through more international pressure aimed at further weakening and isolating it:
]]>“There should have been cooperation with Turkey vis-à-vis Iran. There should have been action against Iran in Syria. The Russians should have been brought into the picture. If Israel had adopted a creative, active policy, and if the international community had held up to the Iranians a far richer package of threats and enticements, I think there would have been a chance to dissuade the Iranians from embarking on the dangerous road they have taken. And I believe it is not too late. The sanctions are very painful. The negotiations have not yet been exhausted. The threat of an American military option can also be more concrete. If instead of focusing on a military solution, Israel were to succeed in mobilizing the international community for complex and sophisticated political-economic action, I believe that the results might be surprising.”
The former chief of Israel’s vaunted Mossad spy agency, Meir Dagan, has already said that he thinks “an attack on Iran before you’re exploring all other approaches is not the right way to do it.” He has spelled out some of his objections clearly, noting that he doesn’t think Israel [...]]]>
The former chief of Israel’s vaunted Mossad spy agency, Meir Dagan, has already said that he thinks “an attack on Iran before you’re exploring all other approaches is not the right way to do it.” He has spelled out some of his objections clearly, noting that he doesn’t think Israel faces any “existential threat,” that an attack would “ignite… a regional war,” and that such a strike would only delay Iran’s nuclear ambitions — not halt them.
But today, during a conference at an Israeli think tank closely associated with the country’s security establishment, Dagan further explained his opposition to a strike. He told the audience there — in line with previous U.S., U.N. and Israeli estimates that Iran has not yet made a decision to produce a weapon — that attacking Iran would spur the Islamic Republic into accelerating its nuclear program and push for a bomb. Dagan said:
A strike could accelerate the procurement of the bomb. An attack isn’t enough to stop the project. …
We would provide them with the legitimacy to achieve nuclear capabilities for military purposes.
In a sign of a consensus emerging among former top Israeli security officials, Dagan shares the newly expressed view — that attacking Iran would give the Islamic Republic every reason to boot out U.N. nuclear inspectors, make a “dash” for a weapon, and rally its population to that goal — with other former security chiefs. Former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) intelligence head Shlomo Gazit and former internal security chief Yuval Diskin have expressed nearly identical sentiments. In addition, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Thomas Pickering has expressed such views as well.
A potential Iranian nuclear weapon is widely considered a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime. The intelligence estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of pressure and diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Questions about the efficacy and consequences of a strike — not least the one raised by Dagan today — have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the crisis. Perhaps Dagan’s latest comments will lead to a broader discussion about the possible consequences of an attack on Iran.
]]>Iran poses a serious threat, but not an existential one.
- Dan Halutz, Former Israeli Defense Force Chief of [...]]]>
Not according to many current and former Israeli and U.S. officials. Following are just a few recent quotes opposing that notion from a thorough and useful compilation by the folks at Just Foreign Policy:
Iran poses a serious threat, but not an existential one.
- Dan Halutz, Former Israeli Defense Force Chief of Staff, YNet, February 2, 2012
I think the Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people.
- Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, Israeli Chief of Staff, Haaretz, April 25, 2012
Any war with Iran would be a messy and extraordinarily violent affair, with significant casualties and consequences.
- Colin H. Kahl, former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2012
The article is a look into the possible reasons that Israel has pushed back the nuclear timeline for Iran. I quote Tony Karon at length (which appears at TB) and list my own thoughts (some via Jim):
That notion — [...]]]>
The article is a look into the possible reasons that Israel has pushed back the nuclear timeline for Iran. I quote Tony Karon at length (which appears at TB) and list my own thoughts (some via Jim):
That notion — that you can’t whip up your own population into a fearful frenzy, then not do anything — tracks with comments made in the past by top Israeli officials casting aside the “existential threat” meme. Along with Barak, former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy sounded a confident note in late 2009: “It is not within the power of Iran to destroy the state of Israel — at best it can cause Israel grievous damage. Israel is indestructible.”
But there are other possibilities to consider, most of them speculative. Perhaps Israel was merely gloating about its covert actions against Iran. Many mainstream commentators suggest Israel is behind the Stuxnet computer worm that damaged Iranian centrifuges as well as a campaign of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. Maybe, as Jim Lobe suggested to me in a conversation, there was some kind of quid pro quo between the U.S. and Israel over the public extension of Israel’s nuclear clock.
There are certainly many pawns on the board to trade between Israel and the U.S. at the moment: an Israeli settlement freeze (whether including East Jerusalem or not), the fate of imprisoned Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, a U.S. offer of an Israeli wish list of military hardware (as discussed in earlier failed talks on a freeze), or maybe even some sort of agreement for Israel to drop mounting preconditions for yet another round of direct talks. All are possibilities, though some quite unlikely.
It’s worth noting, that as a source close to high-ranking Israelis put it to LobeLog, Israel has shifted its focus from the threat of Iran to the threat of “delegitimizers.” The latter is an amorphous and misleading catchall phrase that the Israeli right and their Stateside defenders use to indict the motives of anyone who even comes near the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
I also add that Paul Pillar, writing on the website of the National Interest, has an interesting post listing some possibilities:
One is that they are more or less straightforward reflections of careful, straightforward analysis by Israeli experts of the actual state of the Iranian program. Not every statement by a public official needs to be a disingenuous manipulation of the facts in pursuit of a policy objective. Sometimes we need to resist the tendency to overanalyze someone else’s motives.
Given Israel’s track record, I’m skeptical of this lack of skepticism. But some of Pillar’s other possibilities track with the ones I enumerated, and all are well worth reading.
Matt Duss at The Wonk Room, meanwhile, picks up on an interesting Der Spiegel interview with new IAEA chief Yukiya Amano. Duss notes that Amano told the German daily, “Despite all unanswered questions, we cannot say that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.”
You’ll recall, of course, that Amano told U.S. officials that “he was solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision” — including Iran — according to U.S. diplomatic cables. As Duss points out, this aligns perfectly with the view Amano espoused in his Der Spiegel interview — because the “U.S. court” on this particular “key strategic issue” corresponds with a public acknowledgment by the CIA (PDF) that the U.S. does “not know whether Tehran will eventually decide to produce nuclear weapons.”
On the other hand, the Wall Street Journal‘s neoconservative editorial board recently declared (falsely) that Iran had already “announced its intention to build a nuclear bomb.”
As I wrote on Tehran Bureau, none of the recent developments seem to have had much impact on U.S.-based Iran hawks, who are perfectly content to keep beating the war drums. No matter what Iran does or how its nuclear program advances (if at all), the hawks want to attack it. No matter how effective sanctions are, they will never be enough.
]]>Bulliet was in Israel evaluating the country’s Middle [...]]]>
Bulliet was in Israel evaluating the country’s Middle East programs. He seemed disconcerted by what he found: There was very little study of this so-called “existential threat.” The designation was not backed by any rigorous academic examination of the country on the receiving end of the accusation.
“To my recollection,” he said, “there were five professors in Israel who were… specialists on Iran.”
Five is an awfully low number for a country with a robust university system that churns out research and, more importantly, whose work informs its (as well as, occasionally, the U.S.’s) policy structures, something Bulliet acknowledged.
“I have a very low regard for the quality of inputs that go into [policy thinking in Israel],” he said.
One of the five professors is Haggai Ram of Ben Gurion University. Ram published a book last year called Iranophobia: The Logic of and Israeli Obsession, which looked at Israeli assumptions about Iran (and vice versa) and how they were both products of and reflected in society.
While he didn’t name any others, he did note that not one of the five mirrored the prevailing national Israeli dialogue about the Islamic Republic: “Not a single one of them was a hawk on Iran.”
I’m not one to usually quote spiritual leaders, but given this situation — amid speculation that Israel is leaning toward attacking Iran — this tidbit from the Dalai Lama seems particularly apt: “Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.”
]]>Matlock, who titles his blog post, “Bomb Iran? Craziest Idea of the Century (So Far),” makes the case that a bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities would choke off a significant portion of the world’s oil supply, fail to ensure that Iran will not develop a nuclear weapon, turn the Muslim world against the United States to an even greater degree, and help hard-line Iranian leaders.
Matlock, along with most realists who have entered into the debate, appears to share a consensus mindset that an Israeli or U.S. attack on Iran would fail to achieve any definable objective and hurt U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East.
Matlock writes:
]]>Those of us spending our August out in the boonies may have missed the blog frenzy emanating from Washington the past few weeks predicting that Israel is insisting on bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities to remove an “existential threat.” If the U.S. is not willing to do so, the story line goes, Israel will have to do the job itself. The blog hysteria took wings when the Atlantic magazine published an article by Jeffrey Goldberg in its September issue which portrayed the Netanyahu government as irrationally bent on bombing the Iranian nuclear sites.
Such an action would border on insanity, as, apparently, American military leaders understand. Both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, it is reported, strongly oppose any U.S. support for an attack on Iran. The results, in fact, would be disastrous since Iran has the capability to close the Straits of Hormuz to shipping, thus choking off a major portion of oil exported to world markets.
It also would not ensure that Iran will not acquire a nuclear weapons capability. An attack on Iran would be viewed in most Islamic countries as an attack on Islam. Under such conditions, the security of Pakistan’s weapons could not be assured.
Therefore, an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities not only would fail to achieve any rational objective, but would actually produce a greater threat than the one it was supposed to eliminate.
Most likely, hard-line Iranian leaders like Ahmadinejad would actually welcome an Israeli attack. It would strengthen their hand against the democratic elements who believe (rightly) that the last election was stolen. It would allow Ahmadinejad to rally much of the Islamic world against the U.S. and Israel and greatly increase the threat of terrorist attacks within the U.S.
The resolution now making its way in Congress to encourage an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities is sheer idiocy. Truly, its sponsors know not what they do! It may seem a cheap bone to throw to ill-informed constituents, but it is truly dangerous. It just gives more apparent justification in Iran for the necessity of getting hold of the bomb, lest it be invaded like Iraq was (to the delight of the Iranian hard-liners!).
Iran, even with nuclear weapons, does not pose an existential threat to Israel, as fanatics claim. Iran’s leaders, though unprincipled hoodlums, are not suicidal and Israel’s reported hundred or so nuclear weapons are sufficient to pose an existential threat to Iran.
I do not believe that Bibi Netanyahu is as deranged on this issue as Jeffrey Goldberg pictures him. He is a master manipulator, and I believe that he and his Likud-minded colleagues are using the issue to distract attention from Israeli policies that are making the peace process impossible: the continuation of settlement activity in the West Bank and the illegal isolation of the Gaza strip. These are policies that make a true settlement with the Palestinians impossible. They are policies that empower Iranian diplomacy in the area, even in Arab countries which traditionally fear Iranian influence.
The most serious existential threat to a Jewish state in Palestine comes from the policies of the existing Israeli government. All the bru-ha-ha about an alleged “existential threat” from Iran is most likely designed to deflect U.S. and world attention from that fundamental fact.
Among the many comments on this issue, I would recommend in particular those by Gary Milhollin, by Robert Wright in the New York Times Blog, and by Arnaud de Borchgrave.