Israel and Iran: Reviewing the Bidding
A couple of months ago--before I began blogging here--I considered on my own blog, www.bernardavishai.com, the prospect of an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear installations. More recently, the Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote a remarkable (and for many of us, remarkably irresponsible) op-ed in the New York Times, justifying an attack, even a preemptive nuclear strike. I tried to answer Morris's article right away, but knew a more serious response would be necessary, since so much of what Morris was saying presumed a deep knowledge of the Mullah-regime, and seemed to imply that any Iranian nuclear bomb should be considered a kind of jihadist's exploding belt. So my friend Reza Aslan, the Iranian-American author of No God But God, and I published a fuller rejoinder in the Washington Post. The fraught reactions to that piece have been playing out on my own blog, and are work a look.
By the way, you can also find an archive of nine months of posts on my blog, and I'd be please to hear from you about any of them at b1@bernardavishai.info. In future, I'll be posting simultaneously here and there.
Benny Morris in his earlier (2007) and fuller exposition on the subject in the Jerusalem Post and Aluf Benn in his recent article in Ha'aretz on the meeting of Israeli and American military specialists had much different takes on all the points you raise.
In addition Here's
something for all of you who thinks Israel has done the unthinkable by publicly threatening a nuclear response.
The useless idiots who populate this site will, of course, blame the U.S. because that's all they know how to do or want to do...but others might actually think about it.
August 16, 2008 11:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Israel might get lucky, and get a pleasing response by threatening destruction. It's possible, if unlikely. I don't recall threatening destruction to have achieved much with the Soviet Union, except to encourage them to build faster. Of course, Iran does not yet have weapons, and Israel could follow the US example of making its first use of nuclear weapons be against a non-nuclear state. BTW, how is Israel justified by Russia's actions?
The fact of existing weapons has apparently prevented shooting wars between any two nuclear powers for fifty-some years. But the bellicose talk did make Russia twitchy, and it's just plain loony to mention what is obvious, unless you want to start something.
And who you callin' a useless idiot, and what am I blaming the US for? Planning to install a defense against a nation we were supposedly on friendly terms with? Handing money over to defense contractor friends? Why do we need to piss off Russia? What strategic or economic interest is served?
August 16, 2008 1:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
offensivetoyou,
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
August 17, 2008 9:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Avishai,
The Washington Post article does a yeoman job of discrediting the idea of Iran attacking Iran preemptively with nuclear weapons. But the issue is a fig leaf for the desire to stop Iran from becoming less vulnerable to preemptive attack itself. It is the same sort of fig leaf used to install an East European missile defense on the borders of Russia in order to protect against Iran. Let the winking begin.
I wonder about the absoluteness of the following statement in the article:
It would certainly cause a lot of headaches and bad feeling in Washington if Israel bombed unilaterally without permission but it seems unlikely they would shoot the strike force down.
August 16, 2008 1:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wondered whether Israel have to use planes or could use long range missiles but I concluded that it wouldn't dare use an untried delivery system for a nuclear strike.
Even this Administration wouldn't allow it anyway.
Think about the "day after" with radioactive fall out affecting adjacent country populations including US troops in Iraq.
Israel's dilemna is that its armory for defense against an existential threat includes a component which if used, would create the existential threat it was trying to deter.
Meanwhile , the existence of this component, incents its opponents to try an create what they might initially think was going to be a cold-war-like balance of terror but wirh a geometric increase in the chance of actual use.
Let's see , where is Armeggadon ?
August 17, 2008 3:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
amageddon
August 17, 2008 3:38 AM | Reply | Permalink
armeggadon
August 17, 2008 3:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't mean to suggest that the U.S. would permit a preemptivenuclear strike against Iran but that a conventional unilateral Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities might be possible. After all, Bush hasn't taken the option "off the table" from his own center of unilateral force projection.
Apart from that, I believe your GPS has accurately located armeggadon.
August 17, 2008 7:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent, most masterful and accurate response to Morris in WP article.
And this:
"we should push for new collective-security agreements that would benefit everyone in the region. Israeli threats to attack Iran produce only paranoia and solidarity inside Iran. And after 40 years of Israeli occupation in Palestine, Israel's threats also have the handy effect of changing the subject."
Is absolutely the only sane policy for the region. And what I, a non expert with only practical common sense, have said since day one so I feel less lonely out here.
On this:
"We have greater reason to assume that, in time, the mullahs will bow to internal pressure and open their country to global intellectual capital than to think that they will engage in an ecstasy of suicidal mass murder."
I think that is already occuring if the international press reports can be believed. Prior to this dust up Europeans had growing ties to Iran and it appears they are not willing to give them up entirely to satisfy the US sanction demands. Russia, China and Turkey are inking deals with Iran now.
I have said so much on this subject I don't feel like repeating myself except to say that the 'delusional" designs of Isr'merica on the ME are much more insane and more dangerous I think than Iran's natural desire as a country to regain and establish it's place, security and bono fides in it's own region and have that recognized in a relationship with the US. Iran doesn't have to be a threat or a mence. Iran could be a productive parnter in ME stability.
What we have to expose more of and talk more about is the interest of those who don't want that to happen.
August 16, 2008 3:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Top Israel leaders have stated, in no uncertain terms, that Israel will attack Iran if Iran continues its nuclear program. I just don't think Israel is bluffing. They believe Israel's existence is at stake. They believe their country and the lives of their families are at stake. They may not attack before the present administration exits, but they probably see the next 6 months as their only window of opportunity.
August 18, 2008 10:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Explain why a former head of the Mossad doesn't think that Iran is an "existential" threat to Israel.
Ephraim Halevy is not alone in his assesment.
August 19, 2008 1:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ex-Mossad chief warns of Muslim European cities
Ex-Mossad chief: Take Iran seriously
Ephraim Levy has said many things. So has George Tenet. So did all the guys who said Hitler was no threat in the '30s, and those who said Stalin was a good guy even later.
It's time to grow up.
August 19, 2008 10:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
@ lally
My first response didn't post correctly. I suggest you google "ephraim halevy+iran". Read the first few articles. Someone has sold you a fairy tale by seriously distorting halevy's position.
August 19, 2008 12:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
@lally If you are asking me to explain Ephraim Halevy's opinion, I can't adequately do that anymore than I could explain Benjamin Netanyahu's. Halevy said the Iranian threat was "substantive but not exisential", so he too thinks there is a serious threat. My post was not meant to present a personal opinion. My personal opinion is that Israel absolutely should not attack Iran. However, I have read extensively about the issue, and I think the Israelis will attack Iran. There is a great deal of excellent analysis, including Avishai's, that argues that Israel "should not" attack Iran. The arguments are both moral and practical. I think, though, that those arguments fall short of explaining the reality. The reality is that most Israelis, and the core of their leadership, sincerely believe that the Iranian threat is existential. They believe Iran will soon have nuclear weapons and will use them on Israel. They believe the existence of their country, and their lives and the lives of their families are at stake. Listen to their words, they have been clear. The Israelis intend to stop Iran's nuclear program, regardless of world opinion or risk. They believe, and what they believe is the deciding factor, that they have no choice. Do they consider the next few months their last window of opportunity? How will they use that window? Bush led them to believe that he would not leave office before "taking care of the Iranian threat." That seems to have changed, at least for the moment.
August 19, 2008 10:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
vlad honey.
Why am I not surprised that you are scared into a state of gibbering terror by an Iranian "paper tiger"?
farroff.
It is to the Israeli "leadership'" everlasting shame that they continue to use fearmongering as a weapon against their own citizens (and the international community) years after the facts on the ground have warranted it. Sound familiar?
You are aware that the Israeli government has a co-ordinated worldwide campaign at the consular level to spread disinformation about the Iranian "threat" are you not? The kind of hasbara we see presented as "news" on our teevees and in our print media that is generated from thinktanks and Israel Firsters doesn't need official noodging to promote their agenda(s).
PS. I have spent years and years "listening to their words" as presented in the Israeli media and thinktanks from all ends of the political spectrum. Which is why I know the politicians who hype an "exisential threat" posed by everything from Arab birth rates to Qassams to imaginary nukes are full of it.
August 20, 2008 5:44 PM | Reply | Permalink