Those unnamed officials “from a country critical of Iran’s nuclear program” are at it again. This week they leaked an illustration to to the Associated Press which supposedly demonstrates that “Iranian scientists have run computer simulations for a nuclear weapon that would produce more than triple the explosive [...]]]>
Those unnamed officials “from a country critical of Iran’s nuclear program” are at it again. This week they leaked an illustration to to the Associated Press which supposedly demonstrates that “Iranian scientists have run computer simulations for a nuclear weapon that would produce more than triple the explosive force of the World War II bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.” The AP headline is sure to bring in hits, but is it accurate reporting?
“The diagram leaked to the Associated Press this week is nothing more than either shoddy sources or shoddy science,” write physicists Yousaf Butt and Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. “In either case, the world can keep calm and carry on,” say the experts, whose article should be read in full.
Butt and Dalnoki-Veress use the word “shoddy”, but that may be an understatement when evaluating the central point of George Jahn’s “exclusive” report:
The graphic has not yet been authenticated; however, even if authentic, it would not qualify as proof of a nuclear weapons program. Besides the issue of authenticity, the diagram features quite a massive error, which is unlikely to have been made by research scientists working at a national level.
The image released to the Associated Press shows two curves: one that plots the energy versus time, and another that plots the power output versus time, presumably from a fission device. But these two curves do not correspond: If the energy curve is correct, then the peak power should be much lower — around 300 million ( 3×108) kt per second, instead of the currently stated 17 trillion (1.7 x1013) kt per second. As is, the diagram features a nearly million-fold error.
This diagram does nothing more than indicate either slipshod analysis or an amateurish hoax.
…this graph – which is only slightly less hilariously primitive than the one Benjamin Netanyahu infamously touted with a straight face at the UN – has Farsi written under it to imbue it with that menacing Iranian-ish feel, but also helpfully uses English to ensure that US audiences can easily drink up its scariness. As The Atlantic’s Robert Wright noted: “How considerate of the Iranians to label their secret nefarious nuke graph in English!”. It’s certainly possible that Iranian scientists use English as a universal language of science, but the convenient mixing of Farsi and English should at least trigger some skepticism.
…the Associated Press story does not change the U.S. Government’s assessment that Iran would require, not a few weeks, but many months to build a deliverable nuclear weapon, if it decided to do so. Secretary of Defense Panetta recently estimated that it would take two to three years, similar to the estimate made by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. In order to implement such a crash program, Iran would need to expel IAEA inspectors, use existing facilities and stockpiles to produce weapons grade uranium, and probably test a nuclear device, all of which would raise the alarm to the international community.
And Greenwald reminds us why journalists need to be especially accurate and skeptical when reporting on Iran’s nuclear program:
The case for the attack on Iraq was driven, of course, by a mountain of fabricated documents and deliberately manipulated intelligence which western media outlets uncritically amplified. Yet again, any doubts that they are willing and eager to do exactly the same with regard to the equally fictitious Iranian Threat should be forever dispelled by behavior like this.
As always, the two key facts to note on Iran are these: 1) the desperation to prevent Iran from possessing a nuclear weapon has nothing to do with fear that they would commit national suicide by using it offensively, but rather has everything to do with the deterrent capability it would provide - i.e., nukes would prevent the US or Israel from attacking Iran at will or bullying it with threats of such an attack; and 2) the US-led sanctions regime now in place based on this fear-mongering continues to impose mass suffering and death on innocent Iranians. But as long as media outlets like AP continue to blindly trumpet whatever is shoveled to them by the shielded, unnamed “country critical of Iran’s atomic program”, these facts will be suppressed and fear levels kept sky-high, thus enabling the continuation and escalation of the hideous sanctions regime, if not an outright attack.
Robert Wright points out why a first-term President Mitt Romney would be more susceptible to hardline pressure on Iran than a second-term President Barack Obama:
Second-term presidents think legacy, and nothing says legacy like peacefully and enduringly solving a problem that’s been depicted as apocalyptic. So expect Obama to pursue serious negotiations [...]]]>
Robert Wright points out why a first-term President Mitt Romney would be more susceptible to hardline pressure on Iran than a second-term President Barack Obama:
]]>Second-term presidents think legacy, and nothing says legacy like peacefully and enduringly solving a problem that’s been depicted as apocalyptic. So expect Obama to pursue serious negotiations with Iran (which he hasn’t really done yet) if he wins the election. And he’ll be able to pursue them liberated from concerns about re-election, which means he can largely ignore blowback from Bibi Netanyahu, AIPAC, and other elements of the Israel lobby. That sort of freedom is important if he wants to bargain seriously with Iran.
…
Any first-term president who hopes for re-election (that is, any first-term president) is mindful of lobbies, whether the sugar lobby, the Cuba lobby, or the Israel lobby. So any new president would likely have a harder time peacefully solving the Iran problem than a second-term President Obama. But for Romney this disadvantage is compounded by two factors.
In case you missed it, Robert Wright penned a sharp analysis of what can only be called Bibi Netanyahu’s Iran speech at the United Nations last week. Say what you will about the Israeli Prime Minister’s cartoon-like graphic-aid, but in the end Netanyahu publicly altered his own timeline for taking military [...]]]>
In case you missed it, Robert Wright penned a sharp analysis of what can only be called Bibi Netanyahu’s Iran speech at the United Nations last week. Say what you will about the Israeli Prime Minister’s cartoon-like graphic-aid, but in the end Netanyahu publicly altered his own timeline for taking military action against Iran:
]]>Still, none of this should obscure the upshot of Netanyahu’s talk: Without quite saying so, he has now backed off of the limb he had gotten himself out on. Whereas only weeks ago he was suggesting that Israel might bomb Iran before he finished his next sentence, the upshot of today’s speech was that Israel won’t bomb Iran before spring.
At least, that’s the only plausible interpretation of the speech that I can find. But reaching this conclusion requires disambiguating what was in some ways a confusing presentation
Robert Wright has an excellent piece at the Atlantic exploring the “hidden causes” of the protests against the United States across the Muslim world. The violence, which it’s important to emphasize is never excusable, is receiving little serious analysis in the mainstream media.
Robert Wright has an excellent piece at the Atlantic exploring the “hidden causes” of the protests against the United States across the Muslim world. The violence, which it’s important to emphasize is never excusable, is receiving little serious analysis in the mainstream media.
The American Enterprise Institute’s Ayaan Hirsi Ali – who sympathized with Norwegian anti-Muslim terrorist Anders Breivik back in May – published a cover story in this week’s Newsweek titled, “Muslim Rage & The Last Gasp of Islamic Hate.” She wrote:
The Muslim men and women (and yes, there are plenty of women) who support — whether actively or passively — the idea that blasphemers deserve to suffer punishment are not a fringe group. On the contrary, they represent the mainstream of contemporary Islam.
That type of simplistic analysis, says Wright, fails to ask or answer the real questions about why parts of the Muslim world hold deep-seated resentment towards the US. Wright blogs:
[W]hen a single offensive remark from someone you’ve long disliked can make you go ballistic, the explanation for this explosion goes deeper than the precipitating event. What are the sources of simmering hostility toward America that helped fuel these protests? Here is where you get to answers that neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney wants to talk about and that, therefore, hardly anybody else talks about.
Wright goes on to list drone strikes, the US’s unconditional support of Israel (sometimes at the expense of progress in the peace process), and American troops in Muslim countries as some of the explanations for the eruption of anger. “…[W]hen American policies have bad side effects, Americans need to talk about them,” he writes.
Indeed, reflecting on US policies in the Middle East is a verboten topic during the presidential election. Mitt Romney, in comments surreptitiously recorded at a fundraiser and released this morning, quipped:
I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say, “There’s just no way.” And so what you do is you say, “You move things along the best way you can.” You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem… All right, we have a potentially volatile situation but we sort of live with it, and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it. We don’t go to war to try and resolve it imminently.
But the media and Obama and Romney’s unwillingness to publicly acknowledge the geopolitical dangers for the US in the Middle East does come at a a very human cost. Back in March 2010, Gen. David Petraeus set off a firestorm when his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee linked the lack of progress in the peace process with security risks for the US. Petraeus said:
Insufficient progress toward a comprehensive Middle East peace. The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR. Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas.
Petraeus’ comments, later echoed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CENTCOM commander Gen. James Matthis, were met with denunciations by Israel hawks. The Anti-Defamation League event went so far as to label Petraeus’ views as “dangerous and counterproductive.”
With anger in the Muslim world towards the US erupting over the past week, observers are left with two options: Accept an Islamophobic, if not outright racist, narrative of irrational Arab and Muslim anger towards the US or start asking tough questions about US policy, as well as US strategic interests, in the Middle East.
Some of the US’s most prominent strategic thinkers have already warned about the geopolitical and security dangers facing the US as a result of failed policies in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the TV news cycle and the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney appear to have little bandwidth to openly discuss the strategic challenges facing Americans in the Middle East, even while US diplomats are finding themselves in harms way.
]]>During this 1-hour discussion on bloggingheads.tv, author Robert Wright goes through many of the most controversial issues about Iran with the best-selling Iranian-American author, Hooman Majd.
]]>During this 1-hour discussion on bloggingheads.tv, author Robert Wright goes through many of the most controversial issues about Iran with the best-selling Iranian-American author, Hooman Majd.
]]>Michael Ledeen, Foreign Affairs: The neoconservative pundit has been arguing for years that the US should foment regime change [...]]]>
Michael Ledeen, Foreign Affairs: The neoconservative pundit has been arguing for years that the US should foment regime change in Iran byway of direct or indirect US support to Iranian dissident groups. This month he reiterates that argument while evaluating the Green Movement as a potential carrier for his proposal. The following are some of Ledeen’s key points (notice how he begins by stating that sanctions have been ineffective and will likely remain so and ends by arguing that the US’s “sanction regime” should continue anyway):
- Yet history suggests, and even many sanctions advocates agree, that sanctions will not compel Iran’s leaders to scrap their nuclear program.
- And, although war might bring down the regime, it is neither necessary nor desirable. Supporting a domestic revolution is a wiser strategy.
- Given the potential for a successful democratic revolution in Iran — and the potential for a democratic government to end Iran’s war against us — the question is how the United States and its allies can best support the Green Movement.
- …the time has come for the United States and other Western nations to actively support Iran’s democratic dissidents.
- Meanwhile, the West should continue nuclear negotiations and stick to the sanctions regime, which shows the Iranian people resistance to their oppressive leaders.
- Iran’s democratic revolutionaries themselves must decide what kind of Western help they most need, and how to use it. But they will be greatly encouraged to see the United States and its allies behind them. There are many good reasons to believe that this strategy can succeed. Not least, the Iranian people have already demonstrated their willingness to confront the regime; the regime’s behavior shows its fear of the people. The missing link is a Western decision to embrace and support democratic revolution in Iran — the country that, after all, initiated the challenge to the region’s tyrants three summers ago.
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal: For months the Journal’s editorial board published hawkish articles about Iran on a weekly basis. We highlighted some of them here, here and here. Then they stopped, perhaps due to the heating up of the presidential campaign and the crisis in Syria. But in July the board returned to reminding readers about its hawkish position on Iran, first by arguing that current sanctions are not strong enough and filled with “loopholes” while advocating for more “pain”, and then by claiming that Congress should propose the “toughest” sanctions bill possible to the President, considering how he may be a “pretender on sanctioning the mullahs”. (The “Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act” was passed this week and is expected to be signed into law by Obama shortly. As noted by the Jewish Telegraph Association, “for the first time in actionable legislation, the measure defines the capability of building a nuclear weapon as posing a threat to the United States”, which of course brings the US closer to the Israeli “red line” on Iran):
The Administration will resist these stiffer penalties, as it has consistently resisted previous Congressional attempts to impose the harshest possible sanctions. But that’s all the more reason for the conferees to present the President with the toughest bill possible, and see where he really stands.
If Mr. Obama is a pretender on sanctioning the mullahs, then you can be sure he isn’t inclined to stop their nuclear program by other means. The Israelis will draw their own conclusions, if they haven’t already.
Foundation for Defense of Democracies: The neoconservative-dominated Washington think tank that has been working hard to shape the Obama administration’s Iran sanctions policy (through executive director Mark Dubowitz) congratulates Congress for passing the “compromise bill” mentioned above because it brings the US closer to implementing Dubowitz’s recipe for ”economic warfare” against the Iranian regime:
“But Iranian nuclear physics is beating Western economic pressure and diplomacy, as the centrifuges keep spinning, and the Iranian regime continues its campaign of murder abroad and at home. While this bill is an important step towards economic warfare against the Iranian regime, much more needs to be done. Iran’s leaders need to be persuaded that the U.S. is committed to using every instrument of state power to counter the Iranian threat.”
Dan Senor, New York Times: The former Iraq war hawk turned Mitt Romney foreign policy adviser (see two recent profiles here and here) drew media attention last week for alleging that Romney respected Israel’s right to pre-emptively strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. According to the NYT’s politics blog:
“If Israel has to take action on its own, in order to stop Iran from developing that capability, the governor would respect that decision,” Mr. Senor said.
Previewing Mr. Romney’s remarks, Mr. Senor explained: “It is not enough just to stop Iran from developing a nuclear program. The capability, even if that capability is short of weaponization, is a pathway to weaponization, and the capability gives Iran the power it needs to wreak havoc in the region and around the world.”
As the Times notes, the Romney campaign tried to walk back those comments somewhat, but Robert Wright at the Atlantic didn’t buy the damage control effort.
]]>Author and senior editor at the Atlantic Robert Wright has a knack for highlighting important Iran policy-related statements made by leading U.S. politicians. Here he is clearing up any confusion about Mitt Romney’s “red line” on Iran when compared to that of President Obama after Peter Baker of the [...]]]>
Author and senior editor at the Atlantic Robert Wright has a knack for highlighting important Iran policy-related statements made by leading U.S. politicians. Here he is clearing up any confusion about Mitt Romney’s “red line” on Iran when compared to that of President Obama after Peter Baker of the New York Times wrote that they aren’t that different. (Of course, as Paul Pillar has noted, the President’s red line isn’t exactly something to gloat about since it practically commits the U.S. to a disastrous war that would be far worse than living with a nuclear-armed Iran if the Islamic Republic did indeed make the decision to take the plunge):
]]>Some people are trying to find signs of moderation in Romney’s reference to his “fervent hope” that “diplomatic and economic measures” will succeed. But the fact is that by making the mushy-to-the-point-of-useless term “capability” the red line (or red blur), he has empowered Israel to say at any point, “Sorry, but diplomatic and economic measures have failed; the bombs were dropped this morning.”
I agree with Peter Baker that there aren’t many clear differences between Obama and Romney on foreign policy. But now we do have at least one: Romney says Israel can bomb Iran any time it wants and America will be happy to inherit the blowback. Obama doesn’t say that. I’d call that a difference of doctrinal proportions.
During their meeting, timed to coincide with the AIPAC confab, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu presented President Obama with a copy of the Book of Esther. As Nathan Guttman noted in The Forward:
Benjamin Netanyahu’s gift to Barack Obama summed up his message at their White House meeting Monday. The Israeli Prime Minister gave the President a copy of he Book of Esther, which tells the story of the Jews fighting back against a genocidal plot by the ancient Persians. Netanyahu sees the nuclear threat posed by modern-day Iran as no less existential to Israel…
As the biblical novella recounts the tale, a Jewish young woman by the name of Esther is taken into the harem of the Persian King Ahasuerus during a roundup of pretty young virgins, after the uppity Queen Vashti is deposed for defying her husband. Esther keeps her Jewish identity secret for five years until Haman, now the king’s vizier, becomes enraged when Mordecai, Esther’s uncle/cousin (depending on the translator), won’t bow to him. Haman persuades the king to allow him to organize the mass extermination of the Jews of Persia on grounds that they refuse to observe the king’s law. Ahasuerus gives Haman his signet ring, to use as he wishes in promulgating edicts.
Urged by Mordecai to intervene, Esther risks her life by going before the king without having been summoned and inviting him and Haman to two sequential banquets. At the second banquet, Esther reveals Haman’s dastardly plot, and Haman and his ten sons are hanged. Mordecai becomes the king’s vizier in his stead, and all live happily ever after–except for the 75,800 people in Persian empire who are massacred when Esther convinces the king to allow the Jews to avenge the plot against them.
“For as long as I can remember, I never liked the holiday of Purim, with its story of the massacre of the gentiles and its message of revenge and rejoicing at the downfall of others,” writes author Ruth Meisels in Haaretz. “And so every year all that’s left for me to do is to grit my teeth during the synagogue reading of the Megillah, taking comfort in the fact that historically, at least, the veracity of this story is very much in doubt.”
Although many apologists for the Book of Esther have claimed its author was familiar with the intimate details of life at the Persian court, such claims don’t hold up in light of what we now know of Persian history (559-331 BC), apart from the copious Greek propaganda produced during the Greco-Persian Wars (492-449 BC).
A Persian king sleeping with a virgin every night? This sounds remarkably like premise of the tale of Sharazad in Hezar Afsaneh, a collection of ancient Persian folk tales. According to Elias Bickerman, a highly respected scholar on Jewish literature of the Achaemenid Persian period, “We have here a typical tale of palace intrigue that could as well find a place in the Persian histories of Herodotus and Ctesias, or in the Arabian Nights. The only Jewish element of the tale is that, according to the author, Mordecai is a Jew.” “Mordecai” was not a Jewish name in ancient times (it is now); nor was “Esther.” In fact, it has been noted numerous times that the two names bear a remarkably close resemblance to those of the Babylonian deities Marduk and Ishtar.
A Persian king marrying a mysterious Jewess who kept her origins secret for five years (especially with her known to be Jewish cousin/uncle lurking around outside, exchanging messages with her through courtiers)? No way! A Persian king’s marriages, as Maria Brosius explains, were alliances with the daughters of foreign potentates and the leading families of the Persian empire for reasons of statecraft. The Achaemenid Persian tradition seems to have been postponing the designation of any of the king’s wives as what might best be translated as “queen” until after she had given birth to his designated heir. Neither Esther nor Vashti is mentioned as having been the mother of Ahasuerus’ children. Furthermore, a Persian monarch’s mother and his wife were entitled to see him whenever they wished.
Finally, there is no historical record of any King Ahasuerus or a Queen Vashti, and, most significantly, no record of a plot to ethnically cleanse the Achaemenid Persian Empire of its Jews. Nor is there any account by any ancient historian of vengeful Jewish mobs slaughtering nearly 76,000 residents of the Persian Empire.
As for Jews living according to their own rules, Darius the Great (ruled 522-486 BC) had institutionalized hagiarchy (rule by priests) over the various and distinct peoples of his empire, not only allowing, but requiring that each of the ethnic groups in his domain live according to its own religious code, promulgated and enforced as da’t–“The King’s Law.” The Second Temple in Jerusalem, for which Jews mourn in their liturgy and for whose restoration observant Jews today pray three times daily was built by returning Jewish exiles with the full support of Darius. The Temple was a center not only for sacrificial worship, but for bureaucratic administration, including the the collection of taxes. Darius and subsequent Achaemenid Persian emperors institutionalized the various religious codes by which his subjects lived. The enactments of Ezra, which became the core of Jewish ritual observances (halakha) still practiced by orthodox Jews to this day, were enforced as though they had been decreed by the emperor himself.
During the Hasmonean revolt against the Seleucid Empire (165-162 BC, commemorated by the Jewish festival of Chanukah), Judeans battled the Greek overlords who had seized control of Judea with Alexander the Great’s defeat of the Achaemenids (331 BC), demanding the right to live according to the Jewish “law of the ancestors,” codified as d’at hundreds of years earlier while Judea under Persian rule. The Parthians, the successors of the Achaemenids in Persia after an interlude of a century or so after Alexander, aided the Maccabees–heroes of the Jewish Chanukah story–in their resistance against Greece, and their Hasmonean descendants in their revolt against Rome.
The closest that most scholars can come to identifying the historical setting of the Book of Esther is the reign of Xerxes, who ruled from 486-465 BC. A staunch and uncompromising monotheist, Xerxes eliminated all government subsidies that non-Zoroastrian religious cults in the Persian empire had been receiving from his father. According to scholar Robert Littman, writing in the Jewish Quarterly Review, it was actually Babylonians, not Jews, who were the original victims in an incident that would be recast as the tale of Esther and Mordecai in the Megillah.
Xerxes took the 18-foot solid gold statue of Bel Marduk, the chief idol of the god, whose hands monarchs seized to gain title as King of Babylon, and whose hands the pretenders had seized to gain legitimacy for their rule and revolt, and carried it off to be melted down for bullion. When the priest of Esagila protested, he was killed. Without the idol of Marduk, no pretender could so easily legitimize and claim divine sanction for his position.
None of this historical background would matter very much, if at all, were Purim were just a fun-focused festival of eating, drinking, whirling noisemakers (groggers) at the sound of Haman’s name, and pretending to really like the triangular-shape pastries, filled with prune jam or poppy seed puree, that grandma baked, the way that the overwhelming majority of Jews who have heard even of Purim recall the festival from their childhood.
But Purim has a darker side, unencumbered by historical facts, that has impacted the relations between Jews and their neighbors, as Elliot Horowitz, a professor at Bar Ilan University, chronicles in his book Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence. In recent years, Purim has taken on an increasingly ominous aspect, with Israeli settlers belligerently sparking confrontations with Palestinians in whose midst they have entrenched themselves. The most deadly of these took place in 1994, when the holiday of Purim coincided with the first Friday of the holy month of Ramadan. Muslim worshipers packed the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, a shrine sacred to Muslim as well as to Jews. An American-born Israeli settler, Dr. Baruch Goldstein, opened fire on them with a semi-automatic rifle, killing 29 and wounding more than 100 others. “Since then, for me and for many others, Purim has never been the same,” Horowitz writes.
Goldstein’s mentor, Dov Lior, the government-salaried rabbi of the Kiryat Arba settlement near the site of the Hebron massacre, has been frequently accused of incitement of, and involvement in, terroristic acts of violence directed against Arabs, including a plot to blow up six buses, loaded with explosives, with the objective of killing the hundreds of passengers on them. Israel’s Shin Bet security service foiled the plot at the last minute. Lior endorsed a book, Torat HaMelech (Law of the King) which countenanced the slaying non-Jews, and not surprisingly drawing upon the Book of Esther for justification. His arrest incited outrage among his followers. At the beginning of February of this year, Israeli Army Radio reported that Lior had derisively referred to the US president as a kushi (a biblical term denoting a person of African descent, the modern Israeli equivalent of “nigger”) and compared him to Haman.
Since his election as Iran’s president in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been depicted both in the U.S. and Israeli media as a modern-day Haman, who will stop at nothing to achieve his genocidal objective. In 2006, Sarah Posner of American Prospect pointed out that Texas televangelist John Hagee, founder of CUFI (Christians United for Israel, an AIPAC for evangelicals) had “a huge following, the ear of the White House, and a theory that an invasion of Iran was foretold in the Book of Esther.” Hagee’s 2005 book Jerusalem Countdown, is described by its publisher as “an incendiary new book purporting to show that the Bible predicts a military confrontation with Iran.” In the Purim apocalypse envisioned by Hagee, Posner noted, “he glossed over the obstacles faced by Tehran in creating a viable nuclear weapon, arguing that ‘once you have enriched uranium, the genie is out of the bottle,’” a view adopted not only by Israeli hardliners but also recently by the US Congress.
Last year, revelers waving groggers with Ahmadinejad’s picture on them created a ruckus at a Megillah reading outside the Iranian Mission to the UN. Now Netanyahu has given Obama a Book of Esther as a gift and a guide, which Netanyahu’s aides have stated is intended to be “a form of ‘background reading’ on Iran.” “Then too, they wanted to wipe us out,” Netanyahu told Obama, according to an Israeli official quoted by the Jerusalem Post. “…’And the Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, and with slaughter and destruction, and did what they would unto them that hated them.’”
As Ami Eden points out, “there’s the uncomfortable wrinkle that in Megillat Esther the Jews can’t/don’t launch their successful preemptive strike against their enemies until they secure the king’s permission — not quite the ‘Israel has the right, the sovereign right to make its own decisions’ message that Netanyahu has been hammering home during his trip this week to Washington.”
Beyond that wrinkle, there’s a much larger question. Is it really a good idea for a US President to look to a biblical novella (especially one whose “happy ending” is the death of tens of thousands of people), or to any religious text, as his guidebook on foreign affairs? Robert Wright doesn’t think so, and proposes an intriguing “thought experiment” to answer this question:
Suppose that an Arab or Iranian leader of Muslim faith met with President Obama and told him about some part of the Koran that alludes to conflict between Muhammad and Jewish tribes. For example, according to Muslim tradition, the Jewish tribe known as the Qurayzah, though living in Muhammad’s town of Medina, secretly sided with Muhammad’s enemies in Mecca. Suppose this Muslim said to Obama, “Then, too, the Jews were bent on destroying Muslims.” What would our reaction be?
The Book of Esther is bad history. Bad history–especially when it masquerades as a relevant guide to foreign affairs–makes for bad policy.
And bad policy is what you end up with when you can no longer tell Mordecai from Haman.
]]>The fact that the letter lays out positions — among them, zero uranium enrichment on Iranian territory under the current regime, ever — that would be dead on arrival in Tehran tells me that the not-so-subtle implication of Wright’s title is correct: AIPAC’s leadership wants war with Iran and opposes any negotiated outcome that falls short of Tehran’s complete abandonment of its nuclear and missile programmes. This observation probably comes as no great surprise to readers of this blog. But I think the letter is useful insofar as it exposes precisely what AIPAC, which is understandably sensitive about being tagged as a warmonger, really wants. How strongly that message is communicated in AIPAC’s upcoming annual convention will be particularly interesting.
There’s an important point that I’ve been wanting to write about for some time and still hope to at some greater length: while the Iraq invasion was an adventure championed by neo-conservatives, as well as aggressive nationalists and the Christian Right, the conventional Israel lobby, led by AIPAC, did not play a leading role in the drive to that war (although Netanyahu, who is very close to neo-conservatives, was quite enthusiastic and even testified before Congress in its favor). What I think happened was that then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who had long asserted that Iran was far more dangerous to Israel that Iraq, was quite skeptical of the idea. But, after becoming convinced that Bush was bound and determined to invade, he got on the bandwagon and told AIPAC to do the same in order to preserve his close ties with and influence on Bush. But AIPAC and other major lobby actors never fought for the war with the nearly same conviction and enthusiasm as the neo-cons.
With respect to Iran, I think we see a different dynamic, one in which the main impetus for war is coming from the political leadership of Israel and the lobby here, with the neo-cons acting for now as the most visible point of the spear. And because the lobby enjoys much more influence with Democrats than the neo-cons ever have, it’s a significantly more formidable force, as recent votes in Congress make clear.
While neo-conservatives and the lobby overlap and often share common goals, they do not always agree. Neo-cons typically think they know better than the Israeli government (and the U.S. government, of course) what is in its interests, while organizations like AIPAC tend to defer more (however reluctantly, given the increasingly right-wing sympathies of its leadership) to Jerusalem’s judgment. You can see this in the contrasting attitudes of the two groups to the situation in Syria: the neo-cons are united, as they have been for years, in wanting to see Assad deposed by any means necessary. (Remember that the 1996 “Clean Break” was aimed ultimately at Syria, not Iraq. AIPAC, while it clearly prefers such an outcome, seems much less committed to it, no doubt reflecting the ambivalence on the issue that exists in Jerusalem.
]]>Washington Times: In an editorial, the über-hawkish DC daily echoes John Bolton (referenced in our last entry here) and calls for a strike against Iran’s Bushehr reactor before fuel rods are inserted in the plant. Their revised timeline gives the United [...]]]>
Washington Times: In an editorial, the über-hawkish DC daily echoes John Bolton (referenced in our last entry here) and calls for a strike against Iran’s Bushehr reactor before fuel rods are inserted in the plant. Their revised timeline gives the United States or Israel just two days to act — though they state that it might not be so bad to wait because the radiation-fallout that Bolton seeks to avoid would be a way for a potential strike to “hinder Iranian attempts to get it back up and running.” The editors opine that “action is needed,” but admit that it’s unlikely.
NY Times.com: At the Opinionator blog, Robert Wright offers a nuanced reading of Jeffery Goldberg‘s recent Atlantic story on the likelihood of an Israeli military strike on Iran in the coming year (50-50, Goldberg says). Wright says that while there is a “bit of channeling” Bibi Netanyahu, “the piece is no simple propaganda exercise.” Wright concludes that while the piece is, if anything, a poor piece of war propaganda, it is instructive because it answers questions about the weak Israeli public (and private) reasons for bombing, and also offers the United States a map for constructing a plan to avoid that scenario, especially given that the piece offers “no sound rationale for bombing Iran.”
Arms Control Wonk: Joshua Pollack, an occasional U.S. government consultant, laments that the arms control community — “nuke nerds” — are not playing a big enough role in discussions over what to do about Iran’s nuclear program, often only speaking amongst themselves in acronym-heavy jargon. So he offers, in plain English, a little parsing about the different views of Iran’s nuclear goals: What, for instance, does “going nuclear” even mean? “If Iran is going to achieve breakout capability at a hidden facility somewhere — call it Son of Qom — then bombing Natanz won’t address that problem,” write Pollack. “The name of the game today isn’t bombing, it’s intelligence.” (Hat Tip to Laicie Olson)
Washington Post: On the anniversary of the 1953 coup d’etat that unseated the democratically elected and secular Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh (and re-installed the dictatorial Shah), Council on Foreign Relations fellow Ray Takeyh examines the events and offers an unusual account that places the blame for the failure of democracy fifty-seven years ago squarely on the same societal forces responsible for last summer’s squashing of democratic expression: Iran’s clerics.
]]>