How the White House Flung the Door Wide Open
by Tyler Cullis
It is a trope among foreign policy elites that the Obama administration lacks a coherent strategy for dealing with conflict and chaos in the Middle East and South Asia region. Few meanwhile seem to appreciate the most consequential of the [...]]]>
How the White House Flung the Door Wide Open
by Tyler Cullis
It is a trope among foreign policy elites that the Obama administration lacks a coherent strategy for dealing with conflict and chaos in the Middle East and South Asia region. Few meanwhile seem to appreciate the most consequential of the administration’s policies there — the U.S. targeted killing program and the way it is changing the rules of the game in war.
While the U.S.’s targeting guidelines have been a continuing source of controversy, not least among human rights advocates, the fact that the administration’s use of killer drones in Pakistan and Somalia are changing the rules on when force can be deployed in the first place has largely flown under the radar. However, it is this development that might prove most troubling, as dozens of States stand prepared to acquire killer drones in the coming years.
As reported in The Washington Times, the U.S. intelligence community estimates that 87 countries are in possession of drones, and 26 of those have either purchased or are in the process of developing a drone akin in scope to the Predator. It is expected that a dozen or so of these countries are seeking to weaponize their drones and will succeed in short order. Further proliferation like this is a striking concern, but even more disturbing is the fact that States will be deploying lethal gadgets in a legal order undergoing dramatic flux and change, largely thanks to the novel conceptions of law the White House has employed to justify its drone program in Pakistan.
Unable to rationalize the cross-border use of drones while toeing the line of the law, the Obama administration at first ignored the legal repercussion of its drone policy. When pressed, it took an ad-hoc approach to the legal concerns underlying its targeting killing program, without careful consideration of the costs of upsetting and throwing into turmoil the rules and regulations that have governed the use of inter-State violence for more than six decades.
Last month, the United Nations released two draft reports on drones and drone warfare, which spoke to this problem. Following a recitation of the law governing the use of force and implying, but not finding, that the U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan fell afoul of this law, the Emmerson report noted that the U.S. had taken the position that the law of self-defense provided far greater scope for States to undertake cross-border action against non-State armed groups than commonly believed.
Under the U.S.’s preferred approach, the use of killer drones in Pakistan’s tribal areas would be a legitimate form of self-defense so long as Pakistan proved “unable or unwilling” to combat the non-State armed groups within its own borders. This contrasts with the traditional rule that self-defense can be triggered only after an armed attack by the State itself, and that cross-border incursions of the American kind in Pakistan can only be warranted upon the consent of the Pakistanis. Needless to say, the U.S. position has not proven popular amongst other countries.
However, the U.S. rule is one ripe for adoption, especially as other countries acquire the drone technology to make cross-border attacks relatively cost-free. In arguing for a more permissive legal regime, then, the Obama administration has opened the door wide for other countries to pursue their own “counter-terrorism” policies under the stamp of law. It is entirely unclear whether the administration intended this result, or whether it is simply a by-product of the White House’s race to defend its drone program from legal attack. Regardless, the legal argument is ill-considered.
Nowhere will this prove to be a more of a problem than in the Middle East and South Asian region. With the U.S. set to depart Afghanistan by the end of next year, there will soon be an intensified competition over the country’s future from regional neighbors, including Pakistan, India, China, Russia, Iran, and Tajikistan. More than a few have or are at present developing weapons systems for their drones and will not be hesitant to use Afghanistan as training ground for their new gadgets, much in the same way the U.S. did. This bodes ill for the future stability, if not integrity, of the war-torn country.
Drones could see especial use in a number of low-intensity, inter-State conflicts as well. India, which has a limited set of armed drones at present but is looking to purchase vast fleets of them, might well be inclined to deploy drones on its border with Pakistan in order to target hostile groups in Kashmir. Pakistan’s response to this, which it would almost certainly regard as a provocation, is yet to be seen, but it takes little imagination to see how the appeal of the drone — as a limited, low-intensity weapon — could incite a much larger and much deadlier conflict.
These are just two examples, but they demonstrate the point that, absent a more restrictive legal regime governing the use of force, killer drones will be deployed by more countries, and more often, than at present, with unforeseeable consequences. It is thus unfortunate that the Obama administration has pushed the law to evolve in just the opposite direction.
When asked early in his first term whether the war in Afghanistan was winnable, President Obama replied:
I think about [the Afghan War] not so much [as] do you lose a war…? I think about it more in terms of, do you successfully prosecute a strategy that results in the country being stronger rather than weaker at the end of it?
It is ironic, then, that the linchpin of the administration’s strategy in Afghanistan — the targeted killing program — might well invite a world that is more conflict-ridden and chaotic than the one that preceded it.
– Tyler Cullis is a law graduate specializing in international law and U.S. foreign policy. Follow him on Twitter.
]]>via IPS News
On a purely rational view, it is hard not to be optimistic about the upcoming talks with Iran in Geneva (Nov. 7-8), and about what might follow.
On the Iranian side, the negotiations are now under the direction of a very accomplished diplomat who reports to a President who [...]]]>
via IPS News
On a purely rational view, it is hard not to be optimistic about the upcoming talks with Iran in Geneva (Nov. 7-8), and about what might follow.
On the Iranian side, the negotiations are now under the direction of a very accomplished diplomat who reports to a President who wants to resolve the nuclear dispute once and for all — and the President reports to a Supreme Leader who has authorised a degree of flexibility to secure an agreement. Both President and Leader recognise that Iran has much more to gain by respecting its nuclear non-proliferation obligations than by violating them.
On the Western side, there is a feeling that Iran’s new President has done such a good job of helping Western voters think that he is a decent, moderate and reasonable man, that Western leaders can afford, politically, to be seen to be doing business with him.
The main components of a deal have long been so obvious that negotiators can get down to brass tacks, as people say in the North of England, without much ado.
Iran must allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) access to locations, documents and individual scientists and technicians that goes beyond what is required according to conventional interpretations of Iran’s NPT safeguards agreement with the IAEA.
Iran must volunteer limitations on its stocks of low enriched uranium and its enrichment capacity to signal that it has no interest in producing, undetected or uninterrupted, enough highly enriched uranium for at least one nuclear weapon.
And Iran must propose ways of reducing, if not eliminating, the theoretical risk that a new reactor under construction at Arak could be used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.
In return the West must reassure Iran that, in wanting the IAEA to shine a light on nuclear weapons research done during the years when Iran had reason to fear Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions, the West is not looking for grounds to impose still more hardship on the Iranian people.
The West must also find a way of protecting from assassination any Iranian researchers whom Iran allows the IAEA to interview. The sad fact is that the IAEA secretariat is so penetrated by certain intelligence services that the risk of at least one unscrupulous state using IAEA data to commission the murder of Iranian researchers cannot be dismissed as fanciful.
The West must also come off the fence and leave Iran in no doubt that at the end of an agreed process it will lift all objection to Iran enjoying the same NPT rights as other NPT parties.
Finally, the West must abandon its niggardly approach to the easing of sanctions in reciprocation for the steps wanted of Iran by the West (above).
For too long Western thinking on sanctions has been flawed by the fallacy that without the pressure of sanctions, Iran will fail to implement whatever voluntary commitments it may offer and will not comply with its non-proliferation obligations. This fallacy stems from an assumption that Iran has no interest in demonstrating that its nuclear intentions are peaceful and in complying with its treaty obligations. In reality, the opposite is true: Iran has a strong interest in signalling that its nuclear program is not a threat to other states, in allaying proliferation concerns expressed by the UN Security Council and in being NPT-compliant. So, Iran does not need to be pressured into honouring its commitments.
The West should also recall that it justified the imposition of the unilateral EU sanctions that have done the greatest damage to the Iranian economy by claiming that these were needed to pressure Iran into engaging, and into doing what the Security Council had demanded. Iran is now engaging; if Iran also offers the desired confidence-building, then logically a commensurate suspension of EU sanctions should follow.
A failure to recognise these two points, and an avaricious hoarding of oil and banking-related sanctions to some undefined point in a distant future, will lead inexorably to the collapse of the talks and to the loss of the best opportunity to end this dispute in a long time.
That is not in the West’s strategic, economic, commercial or humanitarian interests.
So there is much at stake as in Western capitals, in the coming weeks, the battle between reason and politics intensifies. Reason must triumph!
Photo Credit: Fars News/Sina Shiri
]]>by Wayne White
Most international attention remains focused on locating, inspecting and destroying Syria’s chemical weapons (CW) arsenal, but the bloody conventional civil war rages on. The process of getting rid of Syria’s CW probably will take at least until mid-2014, giving the international community an implicit stake in the Assad [...]]]>
by Wayne White
Most international attention remains focused on locating, inspecting and destroying Syria’s chemical weapons (CW) arsenal, but the bloody conventional civil war rages on. The process of getting rid of Syria’s CW probably will take at least until mid-2014, giving the international community an implicit stake in the Assad regime’s survival for quite some time despite the latter’s brutal effort to crush his opposition. The issue of getting military aid to the rebels seems partly adrift, and extremist rebels have been sparring with Syria’s Kurds in addition to ongoing efforts against regime forces and moderate opposition combatants. Meanwhile, the humanitarian situation worsens, and the prospects for peace talks in Geneva next month look iffy at best.
The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) announced on Oct. 27 that Syria had met the deadline for submission of an initial declaration covering its entire CW program and a proposed plan for destruction. There was concern that the regime might drag its heels (still a possibility as events play out) to prolong the process of keeping major outside players vested in the regime as long as possible. Syrian ally Russia, which also wants all CW out of Syria to prevent any from falling into jihadist hands, probably warned Damascus to cooperate expeditiously. Still, a process that some hoped could be finished within about six months already has been extended by the OPCW through the end of June 2014.
The CW elimination process has had, of course, little effect on the continuing bloodletting between the Syrian regime and the armed opposition. Just last week, government forces succeeded in cutting off a key rebel-held suburb of Damascus from resupply, placing it under siege. After heavy fighting between extremist rebels and government forces over a Christian town in the north adjacent to the vital north-south highway, the regime prevailed yesterday. Amidst other fighting, the regime claims to have killed dozens of rebels and a major militant combatant leader. Rebel militants also have been fighting along the Turkish border with elements of a Syrian Kurdish militia charged with keeping the civil war out of Kurdish areas.
Regime air strikes and heavy artillery fire remain the leading causes of destruction and civilian casualties, especially in the Damascus suburbs (one of which has held out despite a government siege of nearly a year). And for every report of a human rights violation by one side or the other, there doubtless are many more that go unreported. In fact, despite occasional focus on incidents involving executions, the government’s indiscriminate shelling and bombing of cities and towns results in a continuous stream of such violations (most all of which go unreported in any specificity).
Making the plight of civilians trying to survive amidst this ugly maelstrom worse, neither the government nor many of the rebels have welcomed humanitarian aid. Valerie Amos, UN Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs, told the Security Council on the 25th that the UN appeal to all warring parties to permit the free flow of such aid three weeks ago largely has been rebuffed. The Assad regime wants besieged rebel-held areas to suffer in order to wear down resistance, and many rebel groups (mostly the extremists) mistrust humanitarian workers particularly because they fear such personnel might collect intelligence inside rebel-held areas.
An estimated 2.5 million civilians currently remain in besieged or otherwise largely cut off areas, many already in great distress. The onset of winter will render their situation critical in many cases, resulting in a rise in deaths from exposure, malnutrition, and lack of medical attention. A jarring development reported by the World Health Organization is an outbreak of polio in the eastern province of Deir al-Zor — the first such outbreak in Syria since 1999. This highly contagious disease will be far more difficult to address because of heavy fighting in that area, reduced access to basic hygiene, and crowding.
In terms of munitions, it is unclear how well relatively moderate or extreme rebel factions have been supplied of late. Government troops reportedly uncovered a large cache of rebel arms near Damascus last week, but the reliability of the claim — as well as the question of which rebel groups have such stocks and which do not — is difficult to sort out. One thing does seem clear: on the whole, extremist combatants are far better armed than their moderate counterparts (even attracting secular recruits simply because extremists have the weaponry needed to counter the regime). So, despite reverses at the hands of the regime, their dominance of the rebel combatant movement has been expanding.
Despite promises made to “vetted” moderate fighting groups, US policy remains conflicted by the fear of arms falling into jihadist hands. Still more potential disruption to already sputtering military assistance to such rebels could result from Saudi Arabia’s recent tantrum over American actions across the Middle East (including those concerning Syria), which included a purported Saudi threat to end or reduce Riyadh’s cooperation with Washington on aiding “vetted” rebel groups.
Circumstances prevailing now hold little promise for the US-Russian sponsored peace talks involving the regime and opposition leaders originally set for late November (which may have to be postponed). The opposition’s Syrian National Coalition (SNC) leadership in exile has not yet agreed to attend. Aware of militant opposition, Secretary of State John Kerry has encouraged the SNC’s moderate component “to make up its own mind.” Yet, if the SNC as a whole (or in part) opted to attend, that would damage already strained ties between the coalition and many rebel combatant groups doing the actual fighting inside Syria.
Meanwhile, UN Syria envoy Lakhdar Brahimi (who just arrived in Damascus) has called for Iranian participation, which he deemed “natural and necessary.” The US, however, stipulated in early October that in order to attend Tehran would have to accept the 2012 Geneva conference’s call for a transitional government to rule Syria (at least partially supplanting the Assad regime). Should this condition stand, not only the Iranians, but perhaps also the Syrian government could decide to stay away.
Finally, even if all parties could be badgered into attending, the achievement of the principal objective (a peace deal) remains highly elusive. The regime now holds the military upper hand, and surely would not cede power or agree to push aside key leaders like Bashar al-Assad. And the opposition (although difficult to capture in one word given its deep divisions) is loath to make concessions that would allow the cabal it so despises to maintain any power.
Photo: Civilians near the Syrian village of Ma’arrat al-Numan. Credit: Shelly Kittleson/IPS
]]>by Mitchell Plitnick
The trick to finding an agreement between the P5+1 world powers and Iran has become clear: keep Israel and Saudi Arabia out of the room. (But don’t expect them to be happy about it.)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is touring the globe now with his message of doom [...]]]>
by Mitchell Plitnick
The trick to finding an agreement between the P5+1 world powers and Iran has become clear: keep Israel and Saudi Arabia out of the room. (But don’t expect them to be happy about it.)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is touring the globe now with his message of doom about an impending Iranian nuclear weapon. “It will be tragic if (Iran) succeeds in avoiding the sanctions,” Netanyahu said in Rome on Tuesday.
That statement comes on the heels of his Meet the Press appearance where he said: “I think the pressure has to be maintained on Iran, even increased on Iran, until it actually stops the nuclear program, that is, dismantles it.”
Netanyahu is an accomplished speaker with the media. He is trying to move the United States closer to his own views on Iran’s nuclear program while minimizing the appearance of a difference between U.S. and Israeli positions on the issue. But, despite proclamations from figures like Vice President Joe Biden that “there is no daylight” between U.S. and Israeli positions on security, the inescapable fact is that such daylight is shining rather brightly between the two erstwhile allies.
That light was on display when Secretary of State John Kerry met with Netanyahu in Rome. While speaking as allies who are in agreement on Iran, they said very different things about what they expect. Kerry stated again that the Obama administration would be seeking concrete proof of a peaceful nuclear program in Iran before lifting sanctions. By now, that’s a standard disclaimer, but it’s so self-evident that it really doesn’t need to be stated.
Or it wouldn’t need to be said but for Netanyahu’s endless warnings about nefarious Iranian plots of deception centered around acquiring the nuclear weapon that both U.S. and Israeli intelligence agree Iran stopped any motion toward a decade ago.
Following the aftermath of the Iraq War and Netanyahu’s blatant attempt to influence the US 2012 presidential election, Bibi has been pushing for more sanctions regardless of whether Iran is being defiant or cooperative. He has also been hinting at unilateral Israeli military action while saying he supports a diplomatic resolution. Netanyahu has refined, but not changed, that strategy in the wake of Iran’s new openness to dialogue with the West following the election of President Hassan Rouhani. Now he is more regularly pointing to specific aspects of Iran’s nuclear program, some of which can indeed be put to use in developing a weapon, but none of which are actually forbidden under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Iran — not Israel — is a signatory.
In Rome on Wednesday Netanyahu said:
The foremost security problem that we face, as you said, is Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons. Preventing that is a goal I share with you and President Obama. And you have said, I think wisely, that Iran must not have a nuclear weapons capability, which means that they shouldn’t have centrifuges for enrichment. They shouldn’t have a plutonium heavy water plant which is used only for nuclear weapons. They should get rid of the amassed fissile material. And they shouldn’t have underground nuclear facilities, underground for one reason – for military purposes.
Here Netanyahu is arguing that an acceptable deal over Iran’s nuclear program should forbid Iran from the very same things that other NPT signatories have access to. The Israeli PM is saying this while calling for sustained sanctions on Iran plus more. The underlying hope here is that if Iran does win concessions, much of the existing sanctions regime would still be in place.
All of this is geared not toward preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon but toward keeping Iran’s economy in deep freeze and limiting its ability to expand its influence in the region. And Netanyahu has some powerful assistance in this endeavor.
Saudi Arabia is at least as concerned about Iran as Israel is. Few doubt that their unprecedented refusal of a seat at the UN Security Council, a spot they’d been trying to attain for years, was motivated in large part by their concern about a U.S.-Iran rapprochement. Their strategy may not be entirely clear (or, for that matter, well thought-out), but Reuters reported on Tuesday that the Saudis were planning a “major shift” in their relationship with the U.S. over Iran, the U.S. decision not to bomb Syria, and Obama’s refusal to support stronger Saudi measures to repress Shi’a protests in Bahrain.
The implication that Saudi Arabia would entirely abandon its cozy relationship with the United States, perhaps for one with Russia or China, is probably a bluff. No other power can come close to America’s ability to fund and arm the Saudi monarchy and its Gulf allies. But they certainly can take some measures to diminish, though not eliminate, dependence on the United States with closer dealings with Russia and China. They could shift some of their monetary holdings away from dollars and U.S. Treasury Notes, and they also could do a lot to increase oil prices, which is a serious hammer to hold over what is still a very fragile U.S. economy.
Thus far, however, the United States seems to be standing its ground in the face of these Israeli and Saudi tantrums. At the Rome meeting, Kerry held fast to what has been the Obama administration’s public position since the historic phone call between Presidents Obama and Rouhani.
While we welcome, and we do welcome, the change of rhetoric, the change of tone, the diplomatic opening that the Iranians have offered through President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif, we have made clear and we are adamant that words are no substitute for actions. And … we will need to know that actions are being taken which make it crystal clear… that whatever program is pursued is indeed a peaceful program… President Obama has made it very clear he will pursue a diplomatic initiative, but with eyes wide open, aware that it will be vital for Iran to live up to the standards that other nations that have nuclear programs live up to as they prove that those programs are indeed peaceful.
I have emphasized the part about Iran being held to the same standards as other states that have non-weaponized power because that is a very clear open door that the Iranians can actually reach. With full transparency that confirms what intelligence services have been maintaining for over six years — that Iran stopped pursuing weapons research in 2003 — Iran can be free of sanctions and the threat of war. It is precisely this point that is sending Israel and Saudi Arabia into apoplexy. And we can expect both their rhetoric and lobbying to intensify over the course of the next year, a year which Iran has identified as the length of time that a deal can be reached.
This will not be a simple matter. The politics around peace with Iran will become very intense. There will be real questions raised about whether the gains for the United States will outweigh the potential difficulties with Israel and Saudi Arabia — the US’ staunchest allies in the region for decades. Those won’t be easy questions to answer, but the overriding point will remain: Israel and Saudi Arabia need the United States even more than we need them (far more in Israel’s case). It seems like Obama and Kerry are subtly trying to assert that idea, which deserves popular support here.
Photo: Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Credit: UNmited States Department of State/Flickr
]]>by Robert E. Hunter
The talks between Iran and the “P5+1” countries last week bring to mind Winston Churchill’s 1942 description of World War II: “It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
This characterization is even more profound than it [...]]]>
by Robert E. Hunter
The talks between Iran and the “P5+1” countries last week bring to mind Winston Churchill’s 1942 description of World War II: “It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
This characterization is even more profound than it first appears. Today we are witnessing a roll of the dice throughout the Middle East. The “negotiations” over Iran’s nuclear program betoken a major shift in psychology and perceptions, notably about power, influence, and national interests. They involve the United States and almost all other countries in the region, which for so long have assumed the immutability of the Iranian-Western confrontation. Of course, that confrontation could now begin to crumble, with wide-ranging geopolitical implications in the region and beyond.
Most immediately, the talks appear to be getting down to brass tacks regarding what Iran is doing with its nuclear program; what it will do to reassure the world that it will not acquire a nuclear weapon or even move toward what is called a “breakout capability;” and what the United States and others will do in exchange. “In exchange” involves the sanctions that have been progressively imposed on Iran since the Islamic Republic’s birth in 1979. But it could also include other steps, some tangible, some intangible, whereby Iran would be readmitted as a legitimate state in international society, free from the shackles on its potential as a highly educated and creative nation with the most American-friendly population in the region.
So much of what will happen now involves the technical details of Iran’s nuclear program, which only a handful of people, both in Iran and the West, really understand.
More important, however, is the politics. Will the Iranian government move far enough to embrace a deal acceptable to the US and the other P5+1 members (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany)? Will the P5+1 accept that Iran does have the right to a peaceful nuclear program and some level of uranium enrichment? And, if there is a meeting of the minds, can a potential deal be sold to Iran’s Supreme Leader and the multiple constituencies in the West that claim the right to be heard?
The answer to the first part of this last question may depend on the will of a single individual (and his own complex politics). The answer to the second part will depend not just on President Barack Obama and the other P5+1 leaders — but also on the US Congress and especially Israel. US allies and partners lining the Persian Gulf and outliers like Turkey must also be satisfied.
If a potential deal does take shape, a titanic struggle will take place in this country, pitting President Obama against those who would oppose virtually any deal, however reasonable by objective standards, measured in terms of US national interests. Those parts of Congress responsive to Israel’s perspective will be joined in opposition by the “Friends of Saudi Arabia” and other regional oil countries. Silently in the corner will be the Western companies that pour advanced weaponry into the Arab States of the Persian Gulf — although, if the US does take pressure off Iran, arms sales to still-anxious countries could even increase.
But far more is at stake in the Middle East than Iran’s nuclear program and creating barriers against its ability to build a bomb. We are seeing the first break in the solid containment wall that was erected at the end of the 1970s due to fears that an Islamic revolution would spread its contagion. Except in a few places, that did not happen. Indeed, the greater threat both to Western interests and to regional countries now comes from al-Qaeda and its ilk (which, unlike Shia Iran, are Sunni).
In recent years, concerns have focused on Tehran’s nuclear program. But even before that, there was a policy of containing Iran, in many ways reflecting a general regional contest for power and influence. This contest reflected worries that Tehran and Washington might one day be reconciled. It is perhaps the best explanation for the (opaque) reasoning behind Saudi Arabia’s first campaigning for a seat on the UN Security Council (UNSC) and then, when successful, abruptly declining it. Indeed, with a break in the diplomatic barrier to Iran, Saudi Arabia is less sure that it will continue to stand higher in US regard than an Iran that is “behaving itself” — thus its recent antics. Ironically, the Saudi’s initial pursuit of the UNSC seat had always seemed strange: Security Council members are expected to set and follow standards that are alien to Riyadh.
For its part, Israel is competing for regional influence and to preserve, unchallenged, all the primacy it has in the US. It has effectively used the legitimate fears of an Iranian bomb to oppose any reconciliation between Washington and Tehran while positioning itself as America’s only friend there. This gambit was always risky; should the US and Iran come to terms on the nuclear issue and unfreeze other aspects of their relations, Iran could again become a “player” for influence, at least in the Middle East, with Israel and the oil-producing Arab states.
What happened in Geneva last week, therefore, is only “Act Two” of a lengthy play with elements of a psychological drama (“Act One“ was the Obama-Rouhani phone call). But if Iran plays its part (by no means certain); and if — assuming that a reasonable nuclear deal can be struck — President Obama shows the mettle with domestic naysayers that he showed on debt and default, then major, positive developments may become possible in the Middle East for the first time in years.
]]>by Thomas W. Lippman
Unless the people who run Saudi Arabia know something nobody else does, it’s difficult to see what they hope to achieve by turning down a seat on the United Nations Security Council that the kingdom had worked assiduously to gain. It appears to be the [...]]]>
by Thomas W. Lippman
Unless the people who run Saudi Arabia know something nobody else does, it’s difficult to see what they hope to achieve by turning down a seat on the United Nations Security Council that the kingdom had worked assiduously to gain. It appears to be the kind of theatrical but pointless gesture the Saudis have always avoided — not on a par with shutting down the U.S. government for no gain, perhaps, but absurd in its own way. The world might have expected this from the late, unlamented Muammar Qadhafi, but not from Saudi Arabia.
Do the Saudis actually believe that the Security Council, chastened by Riyadh’s disapproval, will now force Israel to pull out of the West Bank, or unite to drive Bashar al-Assad out of power in Syria, or head off a possible rapprochement between the United States and Iran? Surely they know better. If they harbor such strong resentment against the Security Council, would they not have more influence over the group’s performance from the inside? And why seek the seat in the first place if they thought the elite group they were trying to join was impotent and feckless, as the statement from the Saudi Foreign Ministry announcing the decision said it was? It is hard to dispute the New York Times’s characterization of the decision as “a self-destructive temper tantrum.”
Saudi Arabia has traditionally pursued its international objectives through quiet diplomacy rather than open confrontation or grand gestures. It may well be that the Saudis would have been uncomfortable on the Security Council, where they might have been forced to take public positions on issues outside their relatively narrow range of interests — on territorial disputes in the Pacific, for example, or peacekeeping deployments in Africa. Did no one in Riyadh think that during the two years the kingdom campaigned for the election to one of the prized non-permanent seats? Apparently not, because the kingdom’s diplomats in Riyadh and New York were celebrating the election as a great success until they were sandbagged on Friday by the Foreign Ministry statement.
The Saudis may have signaled their intentions last month when Prince Saud al-Faisal, the veteran foreign minister, decided not to address the annual gathering of the U.N. General Assembly. That was a one-time gesture for which there was no price to be paid. It raised a few eyebrows but nobody really cared because, after all, who needs another speech at the General Assembly? Spurning a seat on the Security Council, on the other hand, could have much greater and longer-term implications because that group may be called upon to make real decisions about sanctions on Iran, dismantling Syria’s poison gas arsenal and possibly even managing a leadership transition in Damascus. The Saudis could have been at the table.
Saudi Arabia was a founding member of the United Nations in 1945. Today it is a member of the G-20 group of rich countries, the World Trade Organization, and several other transnational groups. Membership in the Security Council would have capped the kingdom’s emergence as a country to be taken seriously by the rest of the world. Instead, the Kingdom just looks petulant.
Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi analyst who likes to tell people how close he is to the rulers, wrote recently that the Saudis have decided to go their own way because they have realized that traditional diplomatic forums are irrelevant to contemporary security issues in the region. “The only way the Arab world can make progress,” he wrote, “is through a collective security framework initially consisting of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and the GCC nations.” Good luck with that. If the Saudis truly believe they can organize such a “security framework,” it will be fun to watch them try. Note the omission of Iraq from Obaid’s wish list.
Almost as surprising as the last-minute decision itself was the overheated statement of explanation issued by the Foreign Ministry, which distorts history and omits crucial facts. The most egregious example was an article in its bill of indictment against the Security Council asserting that “the current continuation of the Palestinian cause without a just and lasting solution for 65 years, which resulted in several wars [and] threatened international peace and security is irrefutable evidence and proof of the Security Council’s inability to carry out its duties and assume its responsibilities.”
There was no mention of the fact that the United Nations did in fact create a solution to the Palestine question, however flawed, in 1948, partitioning the former mandate to give half to the Jews and half to the Arabs — an outcome basically the same as the “two-state solution” that Saudi Arabia endorses today. Nor did the statement mention that the Arabs, including Saudi Arabia, rejected that solution and started one of those “several wars” for which the Saudis now blame the Security Council. Nor did it mention that the Saudis acquiesced when King Abdullah of Jordan took advantage of the partition to append the West Bank to his own kingdom — over the opposition of the Palestinians, whose cause the Saudis now claim to espouse.
No individual in the Saudi leadership has publicly associated himself with the decision to spurn the Security Council or the wording of the Foreign Ministry statement. Prince Saud, a shrewd veteran of many diplomatic crises, may have accepted a decision about the Security Council forced on him by King Abdullah, but it is hard to believe he is responsible for the wording of his ministry’s anonymous statement. It only undercuts his country’s credibility.
– Thomas W. Lippman is an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute and author of Saudi Arabia on the Edge.
]]>by Jim Lobe & Daniel Luban
For much of the past few years, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has described the ruling regime in Iran as “messianic” and “apocalyptic”, a talking point he repeated over and over again last week during his latest trip to the United States.
“You don’t [...]]]>
by Jim Lobe & Daniel Luban
For much of the past few years, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has described the ruling regime in Iran as “messianic” and “apocalyptic”, a talking point he repeated over and over again last week during his latest trip to the United States.
“You don’t want to be in a position where this messianic, apocalyptic, radical regime that has these wild ambitions but a nice spokesman gets away with building the weapons of mass death,” he told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Oct 2. The following day, he was at it again, insisting to Stephen Inskeep of NPR that “Iran’s doctrinaire, messianic, apocalyptic regime” was also a “terrorist regime bent on world domination.”
Of course, it was much easier to make such claims when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the public face of the Islamic regime — particularly during his annual appearances at the UN General Assembly, where he craved the spotlight and often made deeply provocative statements in order to gain it. As Netanyahu himself has argued, it’s much more difficult to make that case now that Ahmadinejad has been replaced by Hassan Rouhani, who has explicitly rejected much of the style and substance of his predecessor. So far, Rouhani has been an unqualified hit — Newsweek’s Christopher Dickey suggested that he came across as a kind of “Santa Clause in a turban” during his maiden visit to the UN — and his much-publicized phone call with President Obama at the end of his visit has raised hopes of a rapprochement over the Iranian nuclear issue.
Hopes for some, at least. Politically speaking, such a rapprochement would be Netanyahu’s worst nightmare — both in terms of potentially legitimizing some Iranian nuclear enrichment and, perhaps more importantly, in returning attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which Netanyahu has effectively relegated to the back burner with his repeated threats of war against Iran. It’s therefore hardly surprising that Netanyahu, who has called Rouhani a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” since the beginning of the President’s new term, feels compelled to repeat ad nauseam the “messianic, apocalyptic” nature of the “cult” for which Rouhani serves as a mere “clerk.” (As LobeLog noted several years ago, this is a familiar dance for Iran hawks: when the Iranian president is a radical like Ahmadinejad, they play up his power; when it’s a moderate like Rouhani, they deride him as a mere figurehead.)
We do not doubt that there may be “messianic” and “apocalyptic” currents within the Iranian regime. But even a cursory examination of Netanyahu’s rhetoric indicates that there may be more than a little projection at work here.
A quick look at definitions helps demonstrate what we mean. “Messianic,” according to Merriam-Webster, means “supporting a social, political, or religious cause or set of beliefs with great enthusiasm and energy” — a description that certainly applies to Netanyahu’s Likudist faith. “Messianism,” according to the Free Dictionary, may include a “belief that a particular cause or movement is destined to…save the world.”
Consider in that connection what Netanyahu himself told the UN General Assembly in his speech last week:
I want there to be no confusion on this point. Israel will not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons. If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone. Yet, in standing alone, Israel will know that we will be defending many, many others.
In the Weekly Standard’s lead editorial this week, Bill Kristol and Michael Makovsky argued that Netanyahu was referencing Winston Churchill’s remarks in July 1940 during the Battle of Britain: “And now it has come to us to stand alone in the breach…We are fighting by ourselves alone; but we are not fighting for ourselves alone” as London “enshrines the title deeds of human progress.” Thus we are made to understand that Netanyahu sees himself as Churchill (indeed, the authors tell us that he has a photo of the great man on his office wall behind his desk) standing alone and defiant against the barbarity of Nazism — whose modern-day equivalent, of course, is the Islamic Republic of Iran (or the Biblical Amalek). Who knows if Netanyahu, in his heart of hearts, really sees his conflict with Iran in the same light as Churchill’s conflict with Nazi Germany. In any case, “messianic” would certainly be one way of describing both his rhetoric and its historical allusions.
As for “apocalyptic,” Netanyahu’s descriptions of Iran, particularly an Iran armed with a nuclear weapon, would seem apt. Merriam-Webster defines the word as “of, relating to, or involving terrible violence and destruction” and “of or relating to the end of the world.”
“A nuclear Iran is an existential threat on the State of Israel and also on the rest of the world,” he said at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, last year, arguing that those who dismiss the Iranian threat “have learned nothing from the Holocaust.” He posed a similar question just last week in his UN speech, leaving little doubt that he was paralleling Iran with Nazi Germany:
Now, I know that some in the international community think I’m exaggerating this threat. Sure, they know that Iran’s regime leads these chants, “death to America, death to Israel,” that it pledges to wipe Israel off the map. But they think that this wild rhetoric is just bluster for domestic consumption. Have these people learned nothing from history? The last century has taught us that when a radical regime with global ambitions gets awesome power, sooner or later its appetite for aggression knows no bounds.
That’s the central lesson of the 20th century. And we cannot forget it. The world may have forgotten this lesson. The Jewish people have not.
Elsewhere, Netanyahu has dropped the insinuations and veiled parallels, however obvious they might be, and stated his position baldly: “It is 1938,” he told the Jewish Federations of North America back in 2006 when he was chairman of Likud. “Iran is Germany, and it is about to arm itself with nuclear weapons.” One really can’t get more apocalyptic than that.
Again, it’s difficult to tell whether Netanyahu actually believes any of this or is just trying to rally support for Israel’s hard-line positions and deflect international attention from the Palestinian question. While we are inclined to view his rhetoric as mostly cynical, his recently-espoused claim that Iranians are not permitted to wear jeans or listen to western music suggests that we can’t completely discount sheer ignorance or a Manichaean worldview that can’t reconcile blue jeans with his image of the Islamic Republic. In either case, we can probably expect his rhetoric to become increasingly messianic and apocalyptic if and when the possibility of peace between the US and Iran increases.
]]>by Marsha B. Cohen
Hours before the U.S. federal government shutdown, members of the House and Senate from both parties were with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a reception honoring outgoing Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, and Minority Leader Steny [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
Hours before the U.S. federal government shutdown, members of the House and Senate from both parties were with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a reception honoring outgoing Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, and Minority Leader Steny Hoyer spoke at the event, according to the Times of Israel. Others proudly gushed about their attendance to their constituents via e-mail. The office of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-F), Chair of the House Subcommittee, sent out the following message at 10:34 pm last night:
Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, attended Ambassador Oren’s farewell event with Israel Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro and Miami Beach native, and incoming Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer. Ambassador Oren was honored by Members of Congress for his years of service to Israel and for his advancing of the U.S.-Israel relationship.
Ros-Lehtinen did not mention that she and her Republican colleagues would be shutting down the U.S. government in less than an hour and a half.
Ron Dermer, Israel’s new Ambassador to the U.S., was also introduced to the attending members of Congress at the reception. I discussed the likelihood of Dermer’s new position as far back as December 2012 when I wrote that Oren, who has been Israel’s top envoy to the U.S. since 2009, would be replaced by the American-born neoconservative who helped plan Mitt Romney’s 2012 visit to Israel prior to the U.S. presidential election. Dermer is believed to have convinced Netanyahu that Romney was going to win the election; his appointment is clearly a thumb in Obama’s eye. Not only has Netanyahu appointed another fellow Likudnik as Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S., he has also appointed a strongly partisan Republican to the diplomatic post.
But Netanyahu isn’t worried about offending Obama. Despite the fulmination in his UN General Assembly speech on Monday about Israel standing alone against Iran, Bibi’s Gang remains on his side.
The Senate Foreign Affairs Committee (SFRC) also hosted its own event with Netanyahu on Sept. 30. Members were photographed with Oren and Netanyahu in a “class photo.” Netanyahu thanked them, according to Julian Pecquet of The Hill, “for their support of bills sanctioning Iran for its nuclear program, and urging them to continue to pressure the Islamic Republic.” Senators from both parties basked in Netanyahu’s praise and reciprocated it with their endorsement of what he had to say:
“Diplomacy without pressure is probably a futile exercise,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). “He believes the sanctions are working, and I agree.” Graham said there’s consensus in the Senate to move ahead with a new round of sanctions, which the Senate Banking Committee is expected to take up shortly. The House passed similar legislation by an overwhelming bipartisan majority in July.
“During the meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, senators spoke with a unity of purpose, hopeful for a diplomatic outcome with Iran that leads to a verifiable termination of its pursuit of nuclear weapons program, but resolute that U.S. national security objectives can never be compromised,” Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), the SFRC’s Chair, said in a statement following the meeting. “Our resolve to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear weapons capability remains unchanged and we will not hesitate from proceeding with further sanctions and other options to protect U.S. interests and ensure regional security,” he said.
Graham and Menendez, two of the Senate’s most vociferous advocates of sanctions against Iran, jointly authored an op-ed in the Washington Post last week in which they declared, “In the coming days, we will be outspoken in our support for furthering sanctions against Iran, requiring countries to again reduce their purchases of Iranian petroleum and imposing further prohibitions on strategic sectors of the Iranian economy.”
(If only Graham and Menendez could apply their bipartisan resolve to convincing the hardliners in the House of Representatives to restore the functioning of the U.S. government.)
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) the SFRC’s top Republican, said Netanyahu gave “very detailed” answers about his views at the meeting. “Like all of us, I don’t think he wants the negotiations to go on forever,” Corker said. He continued: “Obviously letting up on the sanctions is not something any us are interested in. And like all of us, he understands that if there is an agreement it needs to be a full agreement.” The senator declined to state whether Netanyahu requested that the Committee pass more sanctions: “I’m not going to answer that,” he said.
On Tuesday, the Senate Banking Committee, of which Corker is also a member, decided to delay the consideration of a new package of Iran sanctions until after the mid-month talks between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany). Reuters reports that the sanctions issue has been slowed by congressional wrangling over the government funding bill that has led to our government’s shutdown. Nonetheless, it occurred to members of the Committee that “deliberately delaying new sanctions” might improve the mood at the talks with Iran in Geneva later this month. Corker is quoted as saying, “There’s been some discussion about whether it’s best right now, while the negotiations are occurring, just to keep the existing ones in place.” Corker also reiterated that Congress remains deeply suspicious of Iran and supportive of tougher sanctions.
Right-wing news sites, and even some elements of the mainstream media, have been echoing the complaints of Tea Party members of the House who are responsible for the current government shutdown, asking why President Obama is so willing to talk to Iran but not to them. As satirist Jon Stewart of the Daily Show pointed out on Monday night, the “why Iran and not us?” talking point doesn’t exactly work in their favor:
You’re not helping yourselves. If it turns out that President Barack Obama can make a deal with the most intransigent, hardline, unreasonable, totalitarian mullahs in the world but not with Republicans, maybe he’s not the problem.
Part of the problem may be the willingness of members of both Houses, and both parties, to spend the hours before a government shutdown hobnobbing with a foreign leader — any foreign leader — and deferentially reveling in his advocacy of a foreign policy prescription that demeans, and seeks to undermine, the diplomatic efforts of their own president.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has his Revolutionary Guards to contend with; Obama’s got Bibi’s Gang in Congress. Which one will prove to be the bigger challenge?
]]>by Peter Jenkins
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement to the UN General Assembly today leaves me feeling frustrated. There are more than 30 points in it that I would dearly love to discuss with him, either because they seem to be of questionable veracity, or because they are assertions [...]]]>
by Peter Jenkins
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement to the UN General Assembly today leaves me feeling frustrated. There are more than 30 points in it that I would dearly love to discuss with him, either because they seem to be of questionable veracity, or because they are assertions that are not backed up by evidence.
But perhaps I should count myself lucky that such an opportunity will never come my way. I suspect Mr. Netanyahu is a politician who finds it hard to concede a point or learn from his mistakes.
If this piece has any readers, let me assure them that I am not going to itemise all 35 of the Israeli Prime Minister’s questionable propositions. Instead I propose to react to a handful of Mr. Netanyahu’s points (paraphrased below) that touch on my experience of the Iranian and North Korean nuclear issues over the last eleven years…
Rouhani was Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator between 2003 and 2005. He masterminded the strategy that enabled Iran to advance its nuclear weapons program behind a smoke screen of diplomatic engagement. Here’s what he said in his 2011 book: “While we were talking to the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in Isfahan.”
The US intelligence assessment is that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Francois Nicoullaud, who was France’s ambassador to Iran at the time, has written that it was Dr. Rouhani who, with the support of Iran’s Supreme Leader, ordered abandonment.
Iran’s completion of a uranium conversion plant at Isfahan in 2004 occurred with the full knowledge of Iran’s European negotiating partners, and indeed of the rest of the world, thanks to International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) inspection visits to the site. In doing so, Iran was not in breach of its 2003 agreement with Europe.
In 2002 Iran was caught red-handed secretly building an underground centrifuge facility in Natanz.
It is unknowable whether Iran intended the Natanz facility to be secret. In 2002, their safeguards agreement with the IAEA obliged them to declare new facilities 180 days before the first introduction of nuclear material. Well before the 180-day mark, an Israeli-supported anti-Iran organisation proclaimed to the world that Tehran was building a “secret” enrichment facility. An Iranian declaration followed in good time. Personally, I doubt the Iranians could have been naïve enough to intend a large facility to be secret.
In 2009 Iran was again caught red-handed secretly building a huge underground nuclear facility for uranium enrichment in a mountain near Qom.
A similar story. The US and its allies allowed their knowledge that this facility was under construction to leak. At much the same time Iran declared the facility to the IAEA. Would Iran have made that declaration had it not been for the leak? Would they have declared it later, 180 days before the introduction of material? These questions are unanswerable until the relevant Iranian archives are opened.
Why would a country with vast natural energy reserves invest billions in developing nuclear energy?
I wonder whether this question was ever put in the 1960s to the USA, Canada and the USSR. I wonder whether now Israel is putting it to the United Arab Emirates.
Iran has also continued work on the heavy water reactor at Arak; that’s in order to have another route to the bomb, a plutonium path.
To extract plutonium from spent reactor fuel a reprocessing facility is necessary. Neither the IAEA nor US intelligence has ever come across evidence of an Iranian reprocessing facility. Iran has assured friend and foe for the last ten years that it has no intention of acquiring a reprocessing capability.
Since Rouhani’s election — and I stress this — this vast and feverish effort has continued unabated… The sanctions policy today is bearing fruit.
These two assertions look to me to be contradictory. In any case, Iran’s “effort” hardly qualifies for the epithet “feverish”: 18,000 centrifuges installed over the course of seven and a half years; 10.000 kg of low enriched uranium produced over the same period (only enough for four or five nuclear devices, if further enriched, or for just over a third of a fresh fuel load for Iran’s sole power reactor).
In 2005, North Korea agreed to a deal that was celebrated the world over by many well-meaning people… A year later, North Korea exploded its first nuclear weapons device.
An alleged Iranian nuclear threat to global survival deserves more rigorous analysis than a vague argument by analogy. And this is an analogy that breaks down when exposed to facts. In 2005, the DPRK, unlike Iran, was not a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and was not subject to IAEA safeguards; it already possessed enough plutonium for at least ten nuclear devices. Its leaders knew that the US and its allies were unable to make a credible threat to end the DPRK nuclear weapons program by force or to retaliate for DPRK bad faith, because the DPRK was capable of killing millions of South Koreans in a matter of hours by conventional means. The DPRK has a record of reneging on deals with the US; Iran does not. The DPRK is a “loner” that has not the remotest chance of ever being elected to preside over the 120-nation Non-Aligned Movement (NAM); Iranians care passionately about the prestige and reputation of Iran, which currently presides over the NAM.
In standing alone, Israel will know that it will be defending many, many others.
I wonder whom Mr. Netanyahu has in mind. India? China? Japan? Indonesia? Malaysia or Thailand? Sub-Saharan Africa? Latin America? Europe? Russia? Iraq? Turkey? Syria? Egypt? Algeria? Oman?
I would like to conclude with a quotation from a political thinker whom I would expect Mr. Netanyahu to admire: Nicolai Machiavelli. “I believe that forced agreements will be kept neither by princes nor by republics.”
Israeli fears will never be dispelled by forcing Iran to give up uranium enrichment, nor by destroying its enrichment facilities. Safety lies in the US negotiating an agreement that Iran will have no interest in breaking but that will nonetheless be subject to stringent verification and and actionable under the NPT.
]]>by Marsha B. Cohen
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as of last week, planned on hitting the “refresh” button on the Iranian threat to Israel and the world, juxtaposing the callow grimace of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s ubiquitous smile.
Israeli media on Sunday — after President [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as of last week, planned on hitting the “refresh” button on the Iranian threat to Israel and the world, juxtaposing the callow grimace of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s ubiquitous smile.
Israeli media on Sunday — after President Barack Obama’s historic 15-minute phone call with Rouhani — reported Netanyahu was furiously rewriting his UN speech, “vowing to expose ‘the truth’ in the wake of Iranian President Hasan Rouhani’s recent overtures to the United States.”
“Like North Korea before it, Iran will try to remove sanctions by offering cosmetic concessions, while preserving its ability to rapidly build a nuclear weapon at a time of its choosing,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement explaining the Israeli delegation’s decision to boycott Rouhani’s address last week to the UN General Assembly (UNGA).
Can Netanyahu successfully revive the Bush administration’s lumping together of Iran with North Korea into a new “axis of evil”? He’s done it before, and, according to numerous reports, he’s certainly going to try again on Tuesday. At least this was the plan prior to the phone conversation between Obama and Rouhani on Friday, about which Netanyahu has not commented on and banned his government’s ministers, staff and Israel’s ambassadors from discussing. Israel’s Channel 2 reported on Saturday night that Israel was advised in advance that the phone call would take place, but “there was no advance coordination of positions” between Israel and the US on the content of the talk, according to the Times of Israel.
Netanyahu’s own UNGA speech on Oct. 1 is expected to chronicle the failure of diplomacy to deter North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons, arguing that North Korea’s case demonstrates the futility of diplomatic engagement with Iran. The Israeli daily Israel Hayom reports:
Netanyahu will try to teach the Americans a history lesson involving a not so distant affair that culminated with another big con job: North Korea. The West held talks with that country as well. Promises were made. Then, one morning, the world woke up to a deafening roar of thunder: the regime had conducted a nuclear test. The North Koreans proved that a radical regime can fool the world. Do not create a new North Korean model, Netanyahu will say.
An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the New York Times last week, “Iran must not be allowed to repeat North Korea’s ploy to get nuclear weapons””
“Just like North Korea before it,” he said, “Iran professes to seemingly peaceful intentions; it talks the talk of nonproliferation while seeking to ease sanctions and buy more time for its nuclear program.”
The official said Netanyahu’s speech would highlight the active period of diplomacy in 2005 when the North Korean government seemingly agreed to abandon its program in return for economic, security and energy benefits.
A year later, North Korea tested its first nuclear device. Israeli officials warn something similar could happen if the United States were to conclude too hasty a deal with Mr. Rouhani. As Iran is doing today, the North Koreans insisted on a right to a peaceful nuclear energy program.
To make his case, Netanyahu’s talking points may well refer to some of the parallels he has drawn in the past between North Korea and Iran. Whether he focuses on the North Korea parallel or not, Netanyahu’s arguments will boil down to: 1) Diplomacy isn’t bad, but it won’t work; 2) we need more sanctions; 3) only a credible threat of force will stop Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons; and 4) the talks will be used by the Iranians to delay and deceive. Let’s dig a little deeper into these points.
Diplomacy won’t work:
Immediately after North Korea’s underground nuclear test on May 25, 2009, and less than a month before Iran’s contentious 2009 presidential election, Netanyahu declared that North Korea was a textbook case of what Obama could expect if he insisted on wasting time engaging in dialogue with Iran. Taking no chances about the outcome of the election, in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rivals included two reformist candidates, Netanyahu said the latest Israeli intelligence estimate showed that Iran was engaged in a “national nuclear project” that was more than a one-man show. In other words, even if Ahmadinejad were to lose, Iran’s nuclear weapons program would continue. Netanyahu expressed no hope that Obama (at that point in office for just over 3 months) would ever succeed in talking Iran out of its pursuit of nuclear weapons. However, he generously agreed to give the U.S. President until the end of the year to try.
Sanctions don’t work — but we need more:
Netanyahu has flip-flopped about the efficacy of sanctions in stopping Iran’s alleged quest for a nuclear weapon. In January 2012 he told The Australian that there were signs that sanctions were finally working: “For the first time, I see Iran wobble under the sanctions that have been adopted and especially under the threat of strong sanctions on their central bank.” A week later, he complained to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that “The sanctions employed thus far are ineffective, they have no impact on the nuclear program. We need tough sanctions against the central bank and oil industry. These things are not happening yet and that is why it has no effect on the nuclear program.”
According to an issue brief on “The Global Nonproliferation Regime” published by the Council on Foreign Relations this past June:
Although three states (India, Israel, and Pakistan) are known or believed to have acquired nuclear weapons during the Cold War, for five decades following the development of nuclear technology, only nine states have developed—and since 1945 none has used—nuclear weapons. However, arguably not a single known or suspected case of proliferation since the early 1990s—Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, or Syria— was deterred or reversed by the multilateral institutions [i.e. sanctions] created for this purpose.
The question then becomes, if sanctions haven’t historically deterred states from seeking nuclear weapons, why invest so much time and energy imposing and demanding more of them on Iran?
The credible military threat:
In February 2013, a week after North Korea carried out its third nuclear test (UN resolutions notwithstanding), Netanyahu warned the Jewish Agency’s International Board of Governors that sanctions, no matter how crippling, could not stop Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. “Have sanctions, tough sanctions, stopped North Korea? No. And the fact that they produced a nuclear explosion reverberates everywhere in the Middle East, and especially in Iran.” Without a “robust, credible military threat,” backing up economic sanctions, Iran could not be deterred from seeking nuclear weapons, he argued.
Yet Netanyahu’s repeated calls for sanctions against Iran to “be coupled with a robust, credible military threat” fail to point out a single example where the threat — or actual use — of military force with or without sanctions has successfully deterred any state, including North Korea, from developing nuclear weapons. That’s because there are none.
“Operation Opera,” in which Israeli planes destroyed an Iraqi nuclear reactor in Osirak, is often cited by hawks as a precedent for a similar attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. Numerous security studies experts and counter-proliferation specialists agree that the operation was not nearly as successful as the Israelis claimed in preventing Saddam Hussein’s access to weapons of mass destruction. In fact, it may have accelerated, rather than stymied, Hussein’s quest for nuclear weaponry. (As a related side note, it’s doubtful Netanyahu will claim credit in his UN speech for Israel’s alleged counter-proliferation efforts in Syria, or invoke them as a model for dealing with Iran, but one never knows.)
Talks a tactic to “delay and deceive”:
Speaking during a visit to Prague in May 2012, Netanyahu stated that he had seen “no evidence whatsoever” that Iran was serious about halting its nuclear weapons program:
“It looks as though they (Iran) see these talks as another opportunity to deceive and delay, just like North Korean did for years,” Netanyahu said. “They may try to go from meeting to meeting with empty promises. They may agree to something in principle but not implement it. They may even agree to implement something that does not materially derail their nuclear weapons program,” he said.
But no credible US or Western intelligence estimate has provided evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, or that it is pursuing a nuclear weapon. According to the US intelligence community’s annual worldwide threat assessment, the US believes Iran has the technical capability to make nuclear weapons, but does not know if Iran will decide to do so. However, the assessment also states that the US would know in time if Iran attempted to break out to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb (implying that Iran has not made the decision yet). It goes on to note that Tehran “has developed technical expertise in a number of areas—including uranium enrichment, nuclear reactors, and ballistic missiles—from which it could draw if it decided to build missile-deliverable nuclear weapons,” making “the central issue its political will to do so.”
Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes was widely quoted last week by numerous media sources including the New York Times in such a way as to imply the U.S. also saw significant similarities between the Iranian and North Korean cases. Only the South Korean News Agency Yonhap quoted enough of Rhodes’ statement to convey his entire message. In fact, Rhodes actually said that the two cases require different strategies: “the international community needs to take different approaches toward North Korea and Iran with regard to their nuclear programs.”
Ultimately though, the bottom line remains: however fervently and persuasively Netanyahu argues that Iranian nuclear weapons capability has been achieved or is imminent, he has yet to offer any solution that will effectively address the problem. Reframing the Iranian nuclear issue in such a way that allows a pragmatist like Rouhani to make substantial and effective nuclear, economic and political reforms in Iran offers the best — and perhaps the only — chance at achieving greater Middle East stability and security. That, unfortunately, will not be among Netanyahu’s recommendations on Tuesday.
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