If Iran is open to U.N. inspections, it's probably not constructing nuclear weapons
Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, reaffirmed Monday that a date would soon be set for the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect the planned nuclear enrichment facility near Qom about which the Iranian government informed the IAEA on Monday a week ago.
If Iran really does permit full, ongoing IAEA inspections of the facility, then it cannot be used for weapons production. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted Sunday that Iran cannot use the Natanz plant for bomb-making because it is being regularly inspected by the UN.
Scott Ritter, an experienced inspector himself, dispels the myths about the new Qom facility and urges against new economic sanctions on Iran as counter-productive. Greater transparency and more inspections should be the demand of the West, he says.
I made the same point on MSNBC on Monday with Nora O’Donnell:
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And no here’s something you won’t read in major American newspapers or see on American television.
The USG Open Source Center translated remarks to Iranian television of General Hoseyn Salami, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Air Force concerning Iran’s Monday missile tests (Islamic Republic of Iran News Network Television (IRINN), Monday, September 28, 2009):
Gen. Salami said, “as long as our enemies act within a political domain, our behavior will be completely political. However, if they want to leave the domain of political action and enter the domain of military threat, then our action will be exactly and completely military.”
Many Western media reports implied that the missile tests were launched along with threats to wipe out Israel. But note that the commanding officer overseeing them explicitly restated Iran’s “no first strike” pledge. To my knowledge, no current high official in the Iranian executive has threatened war against Israel, which in any case would be foolhardy given Israel’s nuclear arsenal (see below). Iranian officials do say they hope the “Zionist regime” will collapse as the Soviet Union did.
The report also said:
Salami said the strategic objective in staging the war game was “to demonstrate the Iranian nation’s resolution in defending revolutionary and national values and ideals as well as to make a new attempt to upgrade the level and quality of the Islamic Republic’s deterrence against any probable threat given the current political and international atmosphere.”
Salami linked the tests strongly to Iran’s defensive needs and pointed out they came before the anniversary of Iraq’s 1980 attack on Iran, which kicked off a highly destructive 8-year war that killed on the order of 250,000 Iranians. (The United States supported Iraq in that war.) The trauma of being invaded by a rapacious enemy at a moment of national weakness after the 1979 revolution has deeply informed Iranian political leaders’ views of the world ever since.
Hezbollah fights for relevance
The Shiite militia defends Iran's mullahs at the expense of the Arab Spring. Its best hope may be war with Israel
Hassan Nasrallah (Credit: AP/Mahmoud Tawil)
Since the heady first days of the Arab Spring, it has become increasingly obvious that things are not quite as they seem. Many of the idealistic, youth driven uprisings have been manipulated by great powers to serve a much bigger regional game.
The age old rivalry between Russia and the West is being played out in the Middle-East, pitting the largely Sunni Muslim Arab states against Russia’s ally in the region- Iran. An important player bridging the gap between Shi’ite Iran and the Arab Sunnis is Lebanon’s Shi’ite resistance movement known as Hezbollah (Party of God.)
Hezbollah has enjoyed enormous popularity across the entire region, perceived by many as the champions of the Arab world, successfully standing up to the bully in the playground, Israel. There was a time when the portrait of Hassan Nasrallah hung on the walls of homes and cafes from Baghdad to Casablanca. Yet, following a relatively cool reception of Nasrallah’s speech on the 16th of February , one got the distinct impression that the Lebanese resistance leader may not enjoy the same popularity he once did with the Arab masses.
A simple explanation might be Hezbollah’s unequivocal support for Bashar el-Assad’s regime in Syria. In a speech broadcast by al-Manar on May 25th 2011, Nasrallah declared his group’s strong support for the Assad regime. He hailed Syria for its support of the Resistance movement in Lebanon and Palestine. Many have been unable to comprehend why the former champions of the resistance would side with the regime against the people, especially considering Hezbollah’s unreserved support for the uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and Bahrain. This has eroded the party’s popularity not only among Sunnis in Syria, who dominate the opposition, but also in the Arab world at large as regional tensions intensify between Shi’ite Iran and the predominantly Sunni Arab states.
Ironically, the very cause which won Hezbollah respect from thousands across the region, also, lost them the support of their own people. Throughout the 1990s, the Lebanese, regardless of sect, were united by Hezbollah’s resistance to the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon and again in 2006 when Israel threatened reinvasion. However, critics point to Hezbollah’s reluctance to disarm as the main source of national instability. Lebanese political leader Samir Geagea asserting that “The ones who are involving Lebanon [in crises] are those wielding power outside the Lebanese state” and demanding that Hezbollah put down its arms and integrate itself with the official Lebanese army and government.
In a similar vein, Hezbollah has alienated many followers by becoming embroiled in a petty tit-for-tat exchange with the March 14 coalition over the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, investigating the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq el-Hariri. Many, regardless of their politics, had respected Nasrallah for his commitment to his cause and ability to avoid entanglement in party politics.
Though not Hezbollah’s fault, as such, the persisting devastation of the socio-economic condition and infrastructure of southern Lebanon has also served as a harsh reminder, to the organisation’s critics, of the consequences of war with Israel
In the Asia Times, Sami Moubayed, points out Hassan Nasrallah’s total withdrawal from public life in Lebanon in recent years; choosing to address his supporters on live television rather than the massive public rallies for which he has been famed. His disappearance has been due to security fears. However, this has made it difficult for followers to connect with him. It is, also, now harder to draw in new supporters from across the Arab and Islamic worlds.
Despite their somewhat dented popularity, Hezbollah is still massively important on a strategic level, with regard to predicting the outcome of unrest in Syria.
In a speech broadcast by al-Manar on the 25th August 2011, Nasrallah named Syria as a very important ally in the region “The Syrian support has been crucial. A great part of the Iranian support comes through Syria. If it had not been for the will of Syria, even the Iranian support would have been blocked”. So, it is reasonable to assume that the fall of the Assad regime would serve a tremendous blow to Hezbollah, but also, act as catalyst to a power struggle within the country. A regime in Syria based on the Sunni Muslim majority would most likely be more friendly to Hezbollah’s local rivals in the March 14 coalition. Such a regime would also have good relations with regional powers that have severe disagreements with the Hezbollah movement over sectarian and political issues.
Prof. Joseph Bahout at Sciences Po in Paris notes that, in such a situation, Hezbollah would be faced with two alternatives, if faced with waning support from Syria “will Hizballah gradually become more flexible in terms of Lebanonization and civilianization? Or, on the contrary, will it increasingly pursue a radical position and bitterly defend its share of the Lebanese system while echoing Tehran’s dictum that Assad’s rule in Syria is a red line?” Judging by Hezbollah’s stern rhetoric over the past few months, the leadership has already decided on the latter and will continue to stand by the Assad regime.
Perhaps, most dangerously, Hezbollah also play an extremely important strategic role in what has been suggested as an imminent conflict between Israel and Iran. Would Israel be capable of conducting an aerial battle with Iran at the same time as defending itself against Hezbollah, closer to home?
Ha’aretz commentator Yoel Marcus thinks not, saying that a strike on Iran would be out of Israel’s league and points to cautions issued by former Mossad chief Meir Dagan against attacking Iran, amidst concerns that such a move would drag Israel into a regional war, which would involve Hezbollah, Hamas and possibly Syria.
Tensions have been escalating between Israel and Iran for some time, recently, heightened following attacks on Israeli embassies in India, Thailand and Georgia. An official for the Israeli counter terrorism bureau, quoted in Ha’aretz warned Israelis of further attacks and noted that Nasrallah’s threats of revenge for the 2008 assassination of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughaniyeh were being taken into account. Nasrallah categorically denied any involvement in the explosions in his speech on February 16th.
But what would such a conflict mean for the Arab world at large? It seems unlikely that Egyptians, Jordanians or, the Palestinians, all not so embroiled in the sectarian debate, would support Israel in any conflict against Muslims whether they be in Lebanon or, in Iran. However, countries in the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) might have more to gain from a weakened Iran.
The GCC have been concerned about Iran’s capabilities, behavior and intentions for a long time, but it takes on an additional importance in light of the Arab Spring. This has certainly been the case in Egypt and Bahrain, in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, possibly in Yemen, and now in Syria.
GCC countries have repeatedly accused Tehran of attempting to destabilise their internal security, and attempting to instigate sectarian strife. Iran has rejected these accusations, and pointed to the GCC’s appalling treatment of Shi’ite citizens. Particularly, concerning the brutal suppression of the largely Shi’ite uprising in Bahrain against the Sunni al-Khalifa monarchy, a struggle which was obviously covered up by Gulf sponsored media such as al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya.
Tensions have also been rising over Iran’s ability to developing nuclear weapons, something that is already of great concern to the GCC. Without a nuclear advantage, the Gulf far outguns Iran in terms of military capability, although, Iran is not reluctant to use its geopolitical position and has threatened to close off the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20% of the world’s oil passes, if pressured.
When placed in the context of a larger regional conflict between Israel and Iran, Hezbollah plays an absolutely crucial part as an ally of Iran, especially in the absence of Syria. Yet, when the financial might of the GCC is also turned against Iran, Hezbollah, which is ultimately a financially dependent arm of Iran, becomes inconsequential.
It is possible that Hezbollah may look to find solutions to its waning popularity, and a possible run in with the GCC, by pre-emptively launching a strike against Israel. In his speech on Feburary 16th, Nasrallah ambiguously claimed that “We have arms and they are increasing [in number]. We have well-known weapons and there are others which are hidden and unknown. We are hiding them because we need to protect our country and prepare surprises for the Israelis.” Whilst this may be an empty threat, a Hezbollah spokesman has said that the organisation would be willing to go to war with Israel, should Syria be attacked. It seems likely that the same logic would apply if an attack were to be staged against Iran.
Prof. Juan Cole has said that, in the case of a conflict with Iran, Hezbollah would almost certainly launch a rocket attack, which would threaten up to a quarter of the Israeli population. The casualties might be even worse if Hezbollah is able to target toxic gas storage in Haifa or nuclear reactors in Dimona and Nahal Sorek. Already Israel has been taking steps to shut down these facilities, in the event of an attack.
This seems to be a departure from Nasrallah’s statement in 2006, shortly after the 34 day war between Hezbollah and Israel, when he told Lebanon’s NTV that had he would not have ordered the capture of two Israeli soldiers, had he known that this would lead to such devastation. However, six years on, the situation between Iran and Israel has escalated, and for Hezbollah this has become a battle for existence. In an earlier speech, February 7th, Nasrallah admitted that the organisation has been completely dependent on Iran for “moral, political and financial support” since 1982.
Hezbollah has found itself in the unenviable position of choosing between its Iranian financial backer and its Arab popular support base. Ironically, Hezbollah’s only hope may be an Israelis attack on Iran, thus gaining it some support, once more, as the champion of resistance against the Zionist aggressor. But should the pressure on Iran be laid on by the Gulf states, Hezbollah will be left with no alternative but to cut its ties with Iran or, face complete irrelevance within the Arab world.
Is the Iran threat an illusion?
The nation's recent moves look increasingly like those of a desperate regime, not a war machine
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Credit: AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian)
As a tit-for-tat war rages in the shadows between Iran and Israel and some are seeing signs of serious duress in Tehran.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some right-leaning voices in the United States, including most of the GOP’s presidential contenders, continue to pound the war drums over Iran’s nuclear program.
But over the past several months, the image of the regime as a snake coiled to strike has lost some of its appeal to Iran observers. The erratic and often amateurish mix of bungled attacks and histrionic threats has prompted a reassessment of Iran and its putative allies.
Its thwarted attempts to assassinate Israeli and Saudi diplomats, stubborn defense of — and covert aid to — the bloodthirsty Syrian regime and its inept economic policy moves and apparently empty bluster about closing the Strait of Hormuz all have contributed to the belief that Iran may not be the fearsome adversary its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, would have us believe.
“Iran’s recent threats to close the Strait of Hormuz are almost certainly just that — empty threats,” wrote Aref Assaf, an Arab-American scholar on Middle Eastern affairs. “But it is the sort of ill-conceived bluster that could have unintended consequences.”
With economic sanctions finally biting hard, Iran’s recent behavior has exacerbated regional trends that, since the Arab Spring began last year, have increasingly isolated the Islamic Republic.
Only recently, it was an article of faith among most Western experts that Iran’s influence and power would inevitably rise in this decade, particularly after the U.S. installed an Iran-friendly Shiite government in Baghdad.
But in the past six months, a combination of greatly improved Western economic sanctions, covert action by Israel and other intelligence agencies aimed at Iran’s nuclear establishment and the continuing instability of the Arab Spring has severely tested the regime’s ability to hold together the domestic constituencies that keep it in power.
There was first the bold challenge to the regime laid down by the country’s Western-oriented urban elites after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s brazenly stolen reelection in 2009, then the recent collapse of the Iranian currency.
The country’s economic crisis has sustained the smoldering resentment of Iran’s elites, whose 2009 protest was crushed by the regime’s security apparatus and its fanatical militia. A barely concealed power struggle between Ahmadinejad and Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, has raged ever since.
Tehran has also proved unable to get out ahead of popular uprisings in the Arab world — even in Shiite-majority Bahrain, where Saudi allegations of Iranian agitation are mostly imaginary.
Just last week, Hamas, the Palestinian political movement regarded as a terrorist group by the U.S. and EU, agreed to a power-sharing agreement with its rivals in the Palestinian Authority, a move that could end Shiite Iran’s role in arming and funding Sunni Hamas — as well as its bid for influence there.
The deal could prove illusory, as several previous ones have, but the reconciliation brokered by Qatar’s relatively liberal Gulf monarchy will certainly have included demands from the PA that Iranian influence be kept at bay.
This Iranian losing streak — coming with the region in flux and both American and Al Qaeda’s influence arguably also in decline — has surprised Western intelligence analysts who have long regarded Iran and its Lebanese protégé, Hezbollah, as possessing formidable disruptive capabilities.
Of course, this can change quickly should Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, the terrorist syndicate that protects the regime’s power base, decide to mount a major terrorist attack somewhere.
Hezbollah, which Iran supplies with arms and funding, also has a history of violent attacks — ranging from its role in the destruction of the U.S. and French military barracks in Lebanon in the early 1980s, to a murderous attack on an Buenos Aires Jewish organization in 1994 that killed 84 people, to the 2006 “missile war” with Israel.
The decision to unleash a wave of suicide bombers targeting Israeli diplomats is real enough. But even here, it has only added further to evidence of disarray in Tehran.
Thai police believe an abortive attempt to bomb Israel’s embassy there Tuesday (the bomber blew his legs off instead) can be traced to an Iranian cell in the country. They held two Iranians, including the luckless, legless bomber, Wednesday.
Some in the Israeli military and intelligence agencies have come to see more desperation than dastardly competence in Tehran’s recent behavior.
Even some notable hawks in the U.S. security establishment have retracted their talons. Patrick Clawson, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, published a paper last week arguing that the latest round of sanctions implemented by the EU and United States have had significant effects on Iran.
Alone, Clawson writes, they probably are not enough to force Iran to stop enriching uranium. But he goes on to say that a military strike will not work — indeed, that it would likely be deeply counterproductive in the long run.
Rather, he says, there are better ways to bring Iran to heel. Ever-tighter sanctions could exacerbate the effects of broader regional changes, including the rising appeal in the region of Turkey’s secular democracy as a model, the discrediting of Iran’s ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria and impatience on the part of Russia and China with Iranian behavior.
“The Iranian nuclear impasse is not an easy problem to solve. But, in fact, the Obama administration is more correct than the pessimists when it sees room for action in 2012 on all these fronts. The Iranian nuclear problem is very unlikely to be resolved any time soon, but progress can be made,” he said.
Israelis prepare for war with Iran
Even ex-Mossad chief who opposes an attack on Iran seems to have given up
Ex-Mossad chief Meir Dagan no longer warns against attacking Iran (Credit: AP/Dan Balilty/Reuters/Baz Ratner)
JERUSALEM — After bombs went off near Israeli embassies in New Delhi and Tbilisi, and a man with an Iranian passport accidentally blew himself up in Bangkok, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu couldn’t let the opportunity pass. Yediot Aharonot, the country’s most widely read newspaper, reported Wednesday:
An updated list of talking points distributed by the national advocacy desk in the Prime Minister’s Office sought to connect the wave of terror with the international community’s efforts at tightening sanctions on Iran, and also to prepare the ground for a military option to stop Iran’s nuclear program.
According to Yediot, the new talking points read: “Iran and Hizbullah are behind these terror attempts. If this is what Iran is doing now, imagine what it will do if its nuclear arms project reaches the goal.” The tabloid’s story was headlined “Iran’s long arm,” and the subhead read, “Israel to the world: ‘Terror acts show nuclear Iran cannot be allowed.’” The story’s ominous tone meshed perfectly with the talking points.
Israel’s whole body politic – politicians, media, influential public figures and public at large – is now leaning into a war with Iran. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s recently reported opinion that Israel would likely strike between April and June is shared, give or take a month or two, by countless others.
The consequences of such an attack range from a bilateral missile war and intensified international terror attacks, to a regional war involving weapons of mass destruction. Israel may not pull the trigger, of course. But at this point, that seems the only realistic working assumption.
Israeli talking points are coming faster and sharper. Iran’s nuclear project is marching toward the “zone of immunity,” says Defense Minister Ehud Barak. “It is our duty to rely on ourselves when we are concerned with a threat to our very existence,” says Netanyahu. Their apparent aim is to create an aura of inevitability around an imminent Israeli strike. Leading the drive, Netanyahu and his one-time army commando unit leader, Barak, want full support at home and no serious opposition from the U.S. if and when they send the jet bombers on their mission. Naturally, they would prefer that the U.S. do the job – inflicting lasting damage on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure could well be beyond Israel’s military capability – but from here, at least, the American military option looks unlikely, certainly within a time frame Israel accepts.
Some skeptics think Netanyahu and Barak may just be engaging in psychological warfare aimed at keeping Western economic pressure on Iran, the goal being to force or scare the Tehran regime into giving up its pursuit of nuclear weapons, which it denies pursuing. But it’s hard to imagine anything short of visibly destroyed hardware on a massive scale that might convince Israel’s leadership that the nuclear threat had been lifted.
Yet while there is skepticism about the leadership team’s true intentions, there is virtually none being expressed here about the wisdom of going to war. The paucity of dissent is remarkable, not to say depressing, in a country that prides itself on being a “vibrant democracy.”
At the end of last week, the media were talking about which towns had good bomb shelters and air raid sirens and which didn’t. The likelihood that Israel would soon be attacking Iran had begun to sink in. An antiwar demonstration was held across the boulevard from the Defense Ministry compound in Tel Aviv. About 25 people showed up. They held signs that read, “Don’t bomb – talk” to the evening rush hour traffic going past. One driver honked.
I asked a sidewalk passerby, a woman in her mid-20s pushing a baby carriage, what she thought of a possible government decision to bomb Iran. “They sit up there, they’re smarter than me, whatever they decide, I’ll support,” she said. A fellow of about 20 on a skateboard said: “I’m not for war, I’m against war. But if somebody is going to attack you, if your enemy is going to attack, don’t you think you have to attack him first, for the sake of survival?” I asked if he thought Iran would attack Israel first. “I don’t know, I’m not privy to all the information. But good luck,” he said, and skated off.
For all the famous outspokenness of Israeli politicians, not one is speaking out against an attack, not from the moderate opposition nor the “peace camp.” Peace Now, a group that has organized huge demonstrations going back 30 years against the Lebanon War and the occupation, has said not a word about the extraordinarily high-risk war of choice that looms in the very near future.
The news media, with the exception of the liberal Ha’aretz newspaper, is fully on board. The mainstream media reflect and reinforce public opinion, which shows weariness with settlement-building and settlers, but automatic support for any decision taken in the name of security, especially in the face of a nuclear threat from a regime like Iran’s.
The tone is set by the red-on-black scare headlines in the tabloids and the grim facial expressions and bracing reports from correspondents on Channel 2, which dominates TV news. On the night of the Bangkok bombing, Ehud Ya’ari, dean of the country’s so-called Arab affairs correspondents, reported that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was expected on Wednesday to inaugurate the uranium enrichment facility in Fordo, a site built deep underground in the side of a mountain. “Thus,” said Ya’ari, “Iran’s nuclear project enters what Defense Minister Ehud Barak calls the ‘zone of immunity.’” Draw your own conclusions, folks.
Except for Gideon Levy at Ha’aretz, no well-known newspaper columnist or TV commentator has come out against a war; nearly all are worried and noncommittal. But one of the most influential columnists, Yediot’s Sever Plocker, a passionate centrist with long-standing contacts around the Israeli establishment, wrote a column Tuesday titled “Israel won’t blink first.” Declaring that “the State of Israel, as the national home of the Jews, has decided to prevent Iran from possessing nuclear weapons,” Plocker maintained that unless Iran freezes its nuclear weapons program and allows international inspectors into the underground sites and even the “secret” ones, “zero hour” will soon arrive. “No begging will stop Israel at that point. There will be a war,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, the literary triumvirate of Amos Oz, David Grossman and A.B. Yehoshua, Israel’s loftiest voices of peace and enlightenment, have remained silent. President Shimon Peres, who has put his days as a peacemaker far behind him, is warning only about the dangers of a nuclear Iran and not at all about those of an Israeli attack.
So what’s going on? What is this lockstep march to war in a country that made peace with Egypt and Jordan; that at times tried to make peace with the Palestinians; that absorbed missile attacks from Saddam Hussein in the first Gulf War yet held its fire at America’s behest; that had “warriors for peace” in the Prime Minister’s Office, “peace governments” and a “peace camp”?
It’s all gone. Since the Palestinian intifada ended the “peace process” in 2000, Israelis blame everything that goes wrong, every political dispute, violent or nonviolent, completely on the other side. No politician, commentator or other public figure who seeks mainstream approval can be thought of as “weak on security” or “naïve about the Arabs.”
Yet the reaction to the Iranian nuclear threat has deeper roots than that. While Netanyahu is known for his Holocaust analogies on this issue, his predecessors going back to Yitzhak Rabin 20 years ago have all lobbied the world to stop Iran from going nuclear, which has been marked “unacceptable.” Since Menachem Begin ordered the 1981 attack on Iraq’s reactor (over the opposition of Peres and war heroes Moshe Dayan and Ezer Weizman), Israel has lived by the doctrine that no enemy in the Middle East will have nuclear weapons. After the 1981 attack, it acted on this doctrine a second time in 2007, under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (and defense minister Barak), with the airstrike on Syria’s embryonic nuclear facility.
So the issue for Israel isn’t just the Iranian regime’s jihadist craziness and Holocaust denial. Israel bombed the Iraqi reactor when Saddam Hussein was the Reagan administration’s man in the Gulf against Iran. It bombed the Syrian installation before Bashar Assad started slaughtering Syrians en masse, when he was offering Israel land-for-peace negotiations.
While it’s true that Iran isn’t just any Middle Eastern enemy, the Israeli doctrine applies to all of them.
Only one person has made a real effort to reverse the country’s course, and lately he’s given up, too. At the start of last year, upon finishing his legendary tenure as Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, then the country’s unchallenged supreme warrior, did the unprecedented. He began speaking out openly against an attack on Iran, calling it “the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard,” and warning that afterward, “the regional challenge that Israel would face would be impossible.” He was going public, he explained, because “there is no one to stop Bibi and Barak” from undertaking such a “dangerous adventure” now that he and the other military and intelligence chiefs, who had the clout to rein in the political leadership, were retiring.
Last week, after months of silence, Dagan resurfaced to announce he’s heading a new NGO to change Israel’s parliamentary system – an old chestnut of the good government movement that seems conspicuously irrelevant now. For nearly a year, Dagan raised a flag, and when he saw hardly anyone behind him, he lowered it. A few high-level ex-warriors, including two former army chiefs of staff, warned against the consequences of attacking Iran. But these were isolated remarks that got very little attention; in the public’s mind, the antiwar movement began and ended with one man.
I asked a retired army general who agrees with Dagan’s views why he and the many others like him didn’t get together and sign a letter in a major newspaper, or hold a press conference, or do something that might start a public debate over this fairly fateful matter; after all, Israelis listen to generals. He replied that he and his fellows didn’t have the information that those around the cabinet table had, they didn’t know if the government really intended to order an attack, and they didn’t want to take the chance that this was all “psychological warfare,” which they would be undercutting if they spoke out.
“You have to understand,” he said, “Israel is a small community, everybody knows everybody else’s opinion, so you have to be responsible. That’s the way I was educated.”
No opposition – that’s what Netanyahu and Barak want, and at home, that’s what they’re getting.
As for opposition from the Obama administration, it has been awfully muted. The Republican presidential candidates (with the exception of Ron Paul) have been gung-ho, which has much to do with the administration’s wariness toward Israel in this election year. But then how strong an argument for restraint can the administration make to the Israelis, after repeating for years that a nuclear Iran is “unacceptable” and that “all options are on the table”?
When Iran and Israel were friendly
As the two countries prepare for war, a forgotten history of collaboration
Israeli diplomat's car damaged in an explosion in India.. (Credit: AP/Mustafa Quraishi)
The explosions in Bangkok on Tuesday that destroyed an Israeli diplomat’s car escalated the already-dangerous situation between Iran and Israel. Israel’s defense minister connected the attacks with others on Israeli embassy personnel in India and Georgia. “Israel will act methodically and take strong yet patient action against the international terrorism that originates in Iran,” warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. For its part, the Iranian regime strongly rejected the charges, angrily claiming the attacks were the work of Israel itself. Each week seems to bring fresh evidence that a full-blown Iranian-Israeli war is growing more likely, a conflict that could engulf the entire Middle East and draw in the United States.
Yet it would be a mistake to believe that Israel and Iran are eternal enemies. In fact, these two countries that despise each other so much — Iran’s Supreme Leader recently called Israel a “cancer” — were once allies. This is not ancient history. Both pre- and post-Revolutionary Iran had extensive military and economic ties with the Jewish state. As recently as two decades ago, each country considered the other a vital friend in a region filled with hostile enemies. Conflict between the two may be bitter, but it is not, and never was, inevitable.
Iran informally recognized Israel in 1950, becoming the first Muslim-majority country after Turkey to do so. With few allies in the region, Israel welcomed Iran’s modest support. That support increased when England and the United States overthrew a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953, installing in its place a more Western-friendly regime. The new regime, headed by the Shah, was so aligned with the United States that a deal was stuck granting the Persian nation a huge nuclear energy program, as well as large quantities of plutonium and enriched uranium — two pathways to a nuclear bomb.
The Israeli-Iranian alliance was a part of the Shah’s pro-Western orientation. “The Shah looked at Israel as a way to establish friendly relations with the U.S.,” says the Rand Corp.’s Dalia Dassa Kaye, co-author of a recent monograph on Iranian-Israeli relations. Israel saw Iran as a way to escape its regional isolation. “They were bound by common enemies: the Soviet Union, and Arab nationalism, especially Iraq,” says Kaye.
The alliance, though never formalized or publicized because of Israel’s unpopularity in the region, consisted of deep intelligence and arms cooperation, as well as oil sharing. In the late 1950s, Israel, Iran and Turkey formed a trilateral intelligence alliance and performed counterterrorism intelligence operations. In the early 1960s, they teamed up to support Iraqi Kurds fighting the central regime. According to Kaye’s research, “Tehran and Tel Aviv developed a close military and intelligence relationship that would continue to expand until the Islamic revolution.”
The extent of this alliance should not be exaggerated. The Shah kept Iran’s relationship with Israel secretive for fear of rousing his own anti-Israeli population as well as those of Iran’s neighbors. Instead, “the alliance was based on the perception of common threats,” says Trita Parsi, author of a prizewinning book on relations between Israel, Iran and the United States. But the threats emanating from the Soviet Union, Iran and the Arab bloc were perceived as so serious that they outlasted the Shah’s overthrow in 1979.
The Islamist government that took power in Iran in 1979 was deeply hostile to all things Western, Zionism not least among them. And yet, the requirements of Iranian national interest trumped ideology to force the Islamic government to cooperate with the hated Jewish state on a number of issues. Once the U.S.-supported Iraqi government invaded Iran, the Persian state turned to Israel for much-needed arms. Phantom fighter planes and weapons for the Iranian army were sent by Israel. One estimate puts Israel’s arms sales to Iran at $500 million annually.
In the mid-1980s Israel was the conduit between Iran and the Reagan administration during the illicit Iran-Contra affair in which the Reagan administration sold weapons to the Iranians and used the proceeds to fund the anti-communist insurgency in Nicaragua. Even as it was relying more on Israel for arms in its war, the Iranian regime increased its poisonous rhetoric attacking the Jewish state, just as the Shah had done. According to the Iranian-born Parsi, such rhetoric was meant to maintain credibility in the wider Muslim world, but wasn’t matched by action. “Israel is Iran’s best friend and we do not intend to change our position,” Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said in 1987.
Two events caused the gradual splitting between the erstwhile allies. First, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, removing the greatest threat outside of the region to both nations’ security. Second, the weakening of Iraq during the Persian Gulf War diluted its menace. Simply put, Iran and Israel needed each other less, as both were more secure in the post-Cold War world. As Parsi wrote in “The Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States,” “the common threats that for decades had prompted the two states to cooperate and find common geo-strategic interests — in spite of Iran’s transformation into an Islamist anti-Zionist state — would no longer exist.”
The Israelis, who had long ignored Iranian rhetoric, decided it needed to be taken seriously, especially in light of the Islamic state’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran worried about Israel’s growing power and wanted to assert power in the region. “Iran once had a more pragmatic leadership and policies,” says Kaye. The marginalization of the reformers that were popular in the 1990s meant that the extremist factions in the leadership became dominant. America’s invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003 removed that country’s threat to Israel, leaving it with Iran as the most menacing nation in the region.
Now, Iran and Israel seem headed for war. One of those countries, or possibly the United States, will take an action that its opponent sees as requiring a military response. Assassinations of scientists and diplomats are bad enough, but a full-scale war could be the greatest disaster of the young 21stcentury, a battle between well-armed bitter enemies who once found it possible to coexist.
Iran’s Greens aim to rise again
A protest march Tuesday is a test of strength for a movement under siege
The now-confined leaders of Iranian opposition, Mahdi Karroubi, right, and Mir Hossein Mousavi, talk in freer days in Tehran. (Credit: AP)
At 80 years of age, Ebrahim Yazdi has the distinction of being Iran’s oldest political prisoner. Yazdi was one of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s closest confidants, accompanied him during his triumphant return to Tehran in February 1979, and briefly served as deputy prime minister and foreign minister. Authorities arrested him three times after the disputed 2009 presidential election for his membership in a political opposition group. Yazdi spent months in jail, then was released for medical treatment.
But on Dec. 28, 2011, a revolutionary court sentenced him to eight years in prison and a five-year ban from civic activities for “acting against the national security” and “publishing lies.” It is often said that “revolutions eat their children.” In the case of Iran, the Islamic Revolution of 1979 swallowed up some of its children whole, chewed and spit out the ones who strayed from the proper path, and mercilessly gnaws on those it cannot disown.
On Feb. 11, Iran’s rulers commemorated the 33rd anniversary of the day in 1979 that demonstrators and armed opposition groups, inspired and guided by Ayatollah Khomeini, seized control and the shah’s imperial regime ended. Back then, the revolution’s children rejoiced, and those who had taken the lead – the clergy, Islamist parties, secular leftists and workers’ groups, and members of the intelligentsia – began working toward establishing a new government. Many hoped it would represent the popular will and respect human rights.
Fast-forward 33 years. Today the Islamic Republic faces a crisis, with punishing economic sanctions and increasing isolation over its nuclear program. But Iran’s real crisis is within. It is a crisis of legitimacy, rooted in its systematic denial of basic human rights and dignity and the steadfast refusal of some of the revolution’s most faithful children to stay silent in the face of injustice.
Beginning in 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini, as supreme leader, initiated a methodical march to consolidate power and eliminate the opposition, especially secularists, leftists and reformers. Along the way, many, including some who had once been the revolution’s most ardent supporters, died in extrajudicial killings and from torture, withered away in prison following unfair trials, or were harassed and threatened out of politics. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei replaced Khomeini in 1989, but the revolution’s methodical march continued to roll back reforms made during the late ’90s and to target reformist politicians like former President Mohammad Khatami.
Since its founding, the Islamic Republic has amassed an appalling human rights record. In the past year alone, prison authorities executed more than 600 people, including children. Security forces killed, beat, arrested and detained thousands of demonstrators demanding government accountability, reform and an end to discrimination against ethnic minorities. As of December, 42 journalists and bloggers were in prisons and detention facilities, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, making Iran the largest prison for reporters in the world.
And that’s just a small sample.
Iranian officials have dismissively rejected criticism from human rights groups and the U.N. Earlier this month, Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani, the head of Iran’s judiciary, said it was a mistake for Iran to have agreed to the principles embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Feb. 14 will be another anniversary, a year since the government put three of the revolution’s most faithful promoters under house arrest: former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi; a former speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mehdi Karroubi; and Zahra Rahnavard, a renowned academic, political advisor and Mousavi’s wife. Authorities initially placed Karroubi’s wife, Fatemeh, under house arrest but later released her. Their families face constant harassment and intimidation.
Their crime? In June 2010, Mousavi issued the Green Charter, a manifesto documenting the guiding ideals and principles of the Green Movement, formed after the June 2009 presidential election, and its bold rejection of the current path of the Islamic Republic. The charter identifies “respect for human dignity and human rights” as a primary demand, along with self-determination in the form of free and fair elections. Then in February 2011, Mousavi and Karroubi called for Iranians to fill the streets in support of the Arab Spring, and demand their basic rights.
Thousands filled the streets of Iran’s major cities. Armed police, intelligence agents and paramilitaries were waiting for them. Clashes left at least three protesters dead, and hundreds were injured or detained.
Yet despite their circumstances, the detained leaders have continued to speak out. On Dec. 26, Fatemeh Karroubi relayed a message from her husband calling the upcoming parliamentary elections, scheduled for March 2, “a sham.” Several days later, the Iranian judiciary announced that any calls for a boycott of the elections constituted “a crime.” Authorities retaliated by preventing Karroubi’s family from visiting him.
Karroubi and Mousavi responded with another call for Iranians to fill the streets on Feb. 14.
On Feb. 4, 2009, less than four months before his first arrest, Yazdi spoke to a host on National Public Radio about the 30th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. He ended his interview by saying that it was “unavoidable” that the “future belongs to democracy in Iran.”
Indeed, the Islamic Republic is facing an existential crisis. But at its very core, the crisis is less about the international power politics than about the irrepressible power of the revolution’s children demanding what they regard as rightfully theirs.
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