by Marsha B. Cohen
Last week marked the 68th anniversary of the WWII destruction of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (Aug. 6) and Nagasaki (Aug. 9) — the first and only deployment of nuclear weapons in human history. Within moments of the nuclear explosions that destroyed these cities, at least 200,000 people [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
Last week marked the 68th anniversary of the WWII destruction of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (Aug. 6) and Nagasaki (Aug. 9) — the first and only deployment of nuclear weapons in human history. Within moments of the nuclear explosions that destroyed these cities, at least 200,000 people lost their lives. Tens of thousands subsequently died from radiation poisoning within the next two weeks. The effects linger to this day.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has implied that this would the be fate of Israel if Iran was allowed to obtain nuclear weapon-making capabilities, including the ability to enrich high-grade uranium. To prevent this from happening, the economy of Iran must be crippled by sanctions and the fourth largest oil reserves in the world must be barred from global markets, as the oil fields in which they are situated deteriorate. Israel — the only state in the region that actually possesses nuclear weapons and has blocked all efforts to create a Middle East Nuclear Weapon Free Zone – should thus be armed with cutting-edge American weaponry. Finally, the US must not only stand behind its sole reliable Middle East ally, which could strike Iran at will, it should ideally also lead — not merely condone — a military assault against Iranian nuclear facilities.
Netanyahu invariably frames the threat posed by Iranian nuclear capability (a term that blurs distinctions between civilian and potential military applications of nuclear technology) as “Auschwitz” rather than “Hiroshima and Nagasaki”, even though the latter might be a more apt analogy. The potential for another Auschwitz is predicated on the image of an Israel that is unable — or unwilling to — defend itself, resulting in six million Jews going “like sheep to the slaughter.” But if Israel and/or the US were to attack Iran instead of the other way around, “Hiroshima and Nagasaki” would be the analogy to apply to Iran.
A country dropping bombs on any country that has not attacked first is an act of war, as the US was quick to point out when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor — and this includes so-called “surgical strikes”. In a July 19 letter about US options in Syria, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reminded the Senate Armed Services Committee that “…the decision to use force is not one that any of us takes lightly. It is no less than an act of war” [emphasis added].
If the use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during wartime remains morally and militarily questionable, one might think that there would be even less justification for a military strike on Iran, with whom neither Israel nor the US is at war. Of course, there are those who disagree: the US is engaged in a war on terror, Iran has been designated by the US as the chief state sponsor of terrorism since 1984 and so on. Therefore, the US is, or should be, at war with Iran.
“All options are on the table” is the operative mantra with regard to the US halting Iran’s acquirement of a nuclear weapon. But if bombs start dropping on Iran, what kind will they be? In fact, the 30,000 lb. Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs) that could be employed against Iranian nuclear facilities are nuclear weapons, since they derive their capability of penetrating 200 feet of concrete in the earth from depleted uranium. Furthermore, some Israelis have darkly hinted that, were Israel to confront Iran alone, it would be more likely to reach into its unacknowledged nuclear armoury if that meant the difference between victory and defeat.
Given all this, comparing the damage that would be done by bombing Iran with the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not farfetched. It also reveals some troubling parallels. In the years prior to the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in response to what the US regarded as Japanese expansionism, imposed economic sanctions on Japan in 1937. Just before the US entered the war, an embargo was placed on US exports of oil to Japan, upon which Japan was utterly dependent.
In 1945, it was already clear that Japan was preparing to surrender and that the outstanding issue at hand was the status of its emperor. There was neither a military nor political need to use atomic weapons to bring an end to the war. Numerous justifications for dropping atomic bombs on Japan were invoked, but nearly all of them were challenged or discredited within a few years after the war ended. Three are particularly noteworthy today, as we continue to face the prospect of war with Iran.
Saving lives: US Secretary of War Henry Stimson justified the decision to use atomic weapons as “the least abhorrent choice” since it would not only would save the lives of up to a million American soldiers who might perish in a ground assault on Japan, it would also spare the lives of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians who were being killed in fire bombings. President Harry Truman also claimed that “thousands of lives would be saved” and “a quarter of a million of the flower of our young manhood was worth a couple of Japanese cities.” But as Andrew Dilks points out, “None of these statements were based on any evidence.”
Speaking in Warsaw, Poland on June 12 — two days before the Iranian election that he declared would “change nothing” with regard to Iran’s alleged quest to develop nuclear weaponry — Netanyahu used the opening of an Auschwitz memorial to make his case. “This is a regime that is building nuclear weapons with the expressed purpose to annihilate Israel’s six million Jews,” he said. “We will not allow this to happen. We will never allow another Holocaust.” About the Iranians who would perish after an Israeli attack, Netanyahu said nothing.
Justifying expenditures: The total estimated cost of the Manhattan Project, which developed the bombs dropped on Japan, was nearly $2 billion in 1945, the equivalent of slightly more than $30 billion today. Secretary of State James Byrnes pointed out to President Harry Truman, who was up for re-election in 1948, that he could expect to be berated by Republicans for spending such a large amount on weapons that were never used, according to MIT’s John Dower.
A recent report by the Congressional Research Service shows that Israel is the single largest recipient of US aid, receiving a cumulative $118 billion, most of it military aid. The Bush administration and the Israeli government had agreed to a 10-year, $30 billion military aid package in 2007, which assured Israel of funding through 2018. During his March 2013 visit to Israel, President Barack Obama, who had been criticized by the US pro-Israel lobby for being less concerned than previous American presidents about Israel’s well being and survival, pledged that the United States would continue to provide Israel with multi-year commitments of military aid subject to the approval of Congress. Not to be outdone, the otherwise tightfisted Congress not only approved the added assistance Obama had promised, it also increased it. An Iran that is not depicted as dangerous would jeopardize the generous military assistance Israel receives. What better way to demonstrate how badly needed those US taxpayer dollars are than to show them in action?
Technological research and development: One of the most puzzling questions about the decision to use nuclear weaponry against Japan is why, three days after the utter devastation wreaked on Hiroshima, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. It was unnecessary from a militarily perspective. Perhaps the answer exists in the fact that the Manhattan Project had produced different types of atomic bombs: the destructive power of the “Little Boy”, which fell on Hiroshima, came from uranium; the power of “Fat Man”, which exploded over Nagasaki, came from plutonium. What better way to “scientifically” compare their effectiveness at annihilation than by using both?
The award winning Israeli documentary, The Lab, which opens in the US this month, reveals that Israel has used Lebanon and Gaza as a testing ground for advances in weaponry. Jonathan Cook writes, “Attacks such as Operation Cast Lead of winter 2008-09 or last year’s Operation Pillar of Defence, the film argues, serve as little more than laboratory-style experiments to evaluate and refine the effectiveness of new military approaches, both strategies and weaponry.” Israeli military leaders have strongly hinted that in conducting air strikes against Syria, the Israeli Air Force is rehearsing for an attack on Iran, including the use of bunker-buster bombs.
The Pentagon, which reportedly has invested $500 million in developing and revamping MOP “bunker busters”, recently spent millions building a replica of Iran’s Fordow nuclear research facility in order to demonstrate to the Israelis that Iranian nuclear facilities can be destroyed when the time is right.
Gen. Dempsey arrived in Israel on Monday to meet with Israel’s Chief of Staff Benny Gantz and Israel’s political leaders. Members of Congress from both political parties are also visiting — Democrats last week, Republicans this week — on an AIPAC-sponsored “fact-finding” mission. No doubt they will hear yet again from Israeli leaders that the world cannot allow another Auschwitz.
The world cannot allow another Hiroshima and Nagasaki either.
I haven’t read the book yet, [...]]]>
I haven’t read the book yet, but got an overview from the authors on Monday at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. What seems to be remarkable about the book is that Allin and Simon — from the U.K. and Washington’s establishment think tanks – wrote it. And their views are eminently reasonable.
Take this statement from Allin: “War with Iran would be a mistake, not just bad or tragic, but a mistake in the sense that it would be worse than not going to war.”
That was just the launching point.
Allin and Simon gave a frank talk — at a Congressionally-funded establishment think tank, no less — about the need to reevaluate the direction of U.S. policy toward Iran. Namely, because war is worse than not going to war, they think that perhaps it’s time to address “containment” as a potential policy.
“The U.S. will have to build and rely on a regime of contaiment aginst Iran, whether or not it succeeds in building a nuclear weapon,” Allin said.
Containment means two things: 1) Living with a potentially nuclear Iran; and 2) making sure the Israeli-Palestinian conflict stops being the gift that keeps on giving for Iran — that is, contra Israeli and neoconservative statements, linkage is very much a concern.
“In thinking about containment, there is an important element of linkage to the Israel-Palestine issue,” said Allin. He quoted Mark Heller, an Israeli researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, who told the New York Times over the weekend that linkage is “a total illusion.” But Allin said Heller’s construction was setting up a “straw man.” Allin responded that if Heller wants to talk about “illusions,” it is also appropriate to speak of “delusions”:
It is a delusion to deny that there are things Israel can do and has been doing that makes the US ‘s challenges in the Middle East more difficult… The building of settlements in the Occupied Territories is near the top of the list.
Containment, as constructed by Allin and Simon, is not some policy of quiescence to all Iranian demands. Rather it’s a multi-pronged strategy of conventional power, nuclear superiority, and political deterrent. As Allin said, their plan is intentionally ambiguous about whether it seeks to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon or using one once it does — because the plan seeks to do both.
However, containment presupposes a rational actor in Iran — something Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with all his blustering about the “tyrants of Tehran” and the “messianic apocalyptic cult” that is the government, might be loathe to accept.
Nonetheless, Simon explicitly does not view Iran this way:
I think I’m speaking for both of us here: We tend to see Iranian foreign policy as essentially cautious and opportunistic… We tend less to see the Iranians as doing something really outrageous. Against this background of caution and opportunism, they can do some nutty things.
Simon went on to say that, obviously, the Israeli calculus is that a nuclear armed Iran will be emboldened to do even more “nutty things.”
“When we talk about an undeterrable, crazy, messianic regime, it is a little scary to acknowledge those elements,” added Allin. “On the other hand, it doesn’t mean that we throw strategic cost benefit out the window.”
And therein lies the rub: Simon and Allin didn’t take on the usual mantra that U.S. and Israeli interests dovetail perfectly — instead, there was a brutally honest discussion of where they diverge, bringing linkage back into the fold.
“The respective issues of Israel and Palestine and what to do about the Iranian nuclear question raise questions about what are the reciprocal obligations of allies,” said Allin. “Jerusalem does not trust Washington when Washington says that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable, particularly because there are now people in this city, like now [Simon] and I, who are writing that the U.S. may have to live with a nuclear Iran.”
“There are differing threat perceptions at work,” acknowledged Simon. “At the end of the day, Iran is simply not as threatening to the U.S. as Israel. This differential threat perception is something that concerns Israelis quite a lot.”
“The second [issue] is a gap between U.S. redlines and Israeli redlines on the Iranian nuclear program. It seems that at the moment, our red line is a breakout capability and their red line is an enrichment capability,” he went on.
Allin added: “We hedge it and we’re mushy in the end, but we do argue that our version of redlines include weaponization” — or taking the actual step of turning a breakout capability into a nuclear weapon.
It’s worth noting the Israeli red line posited here — enrichment — has already been (and continues to be) transgressed by the Iranians. What exactly would drive Israel to act militarily against Iran to enforce an end to enrichment? Or, as Simon put it: “The question is: under what circumstances do they do it?”
“There’s a poster that is ubiquitous in the Israeli Defense Ministry and Air Force (offices) of Israeli warplanes overflying Auschwitz,” he said. ”This is a useful image to have in mind when you think about how Israelis view the stakes.”
The first Israeli consideration, said Simon, would be what the U.S. thought about an attack — it’s not in the interest of any Israelis to “fundamentally alienate the U.S.” That said, Simon acknowledged the possibility that Israel could nonetheless take action that “would disappoint any U.S. administration” — noting that former President George W. Bush opposed an Israeli attack on Iran during his tenure at the White House.
Secondly, said Simon, Israel has its own cost-benefit analysis: “Israelis would have to think that they’re going to get three to five years relief out of a raid. That is to say that they’d push back the Iranian (nuclear) program three to five years before having to go back and mow the lawn.”
But many analysts think an airstrike against Iran’s nuclear facilities would delay the program less than three years, due to the dispersal of Iranian nuclear assets and the difficulty in simultaneously wiping them out. Furthermore, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates noted, an attack on Iran “will make them absolutely committed to obtaining nuclear weapons.” Many analysts think that, absent an attack, the Iranian regime will stop short of a weapon and be satisfied with a breakout capability.
Simon added three further conditions for an Israeli strike: that diplomacy had run its course (in order to protect what’s left of Israel’s international standing); that no one else (i.e., the United States) was going to strike; and that the prospects for regime change in Iran become very dim, meaning so too would prospects for a regime that is less threatening even with bombs.
Simon added, “Historically Israel has acted when it sees its back against the wall. In 1981 (attack on Iraqi reactor) and (a 2007 strike on a Syrian facility) are examples of this. Each of these bold military moves took place when the Israeli cabinet sees their backs as against the wall.” Simon said the U.S. should try to “keep them from feeling this way.”
And how to do this? The aforementioned “containment regime,” for one. But there is also another tack that hasn’t been fully tried — and can’t be tried in ernest amid military threats (despite the latest version of an old canard that Arabs only understand force, as articulated by Netanyahu’s calls for a “credible threat of military action” to back up diplomacy).
“There is an argument you hear made that real game-changing engagement with Iran has not yet been tried,” said Allin. “That might be true. If you wanted real game-changing engagement with Iran you wouldn’t be talking about military options and tightening the noose of economic sanctions.”
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