The June 1  issue of Newsweek features an extraordinary article by Fareed Zakaria headlined, "What You Know about Iran is Wrong."  What if all of the hitherto operative assumptions and presumed verities of US foreign policy have been wrong? Maybe the Iranians really don't want nuclear weapons.  Maybe Iran's government isn't quite as repressive as it is generally made out to be:  while Iran may not be a democracy, Zakaria says, it is not a dictatorship:  "The regime jails opponents, closes down magazines and tolerates few challenges to its authority. But neither is it a monolithic dictatorship. It might be best described as an oligarchy, with considerable debate and dissent within the elites. Even the so-called Supreme Leader has a constituency, the Assembly of Experts, who selected him and whom he has to keep happy."

     The holocaust-denying, map-wiping, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Zakaria notes, is not a particularly powerful (or popular!) man. "Ahmadinejad is widely seen as the 'mad mullah' who runs the country, but he is not the unquestioned chief executive and is actually a thorn in the side of the clerical establishment. He is a layman with no family connections to major ayatollahs--which makes him a rare figure in the ruling class. He was not initially the favored candidate of the Supreme Leader in the 2005 election. Even now the mullahs clearly dislike him, and he, in turn, does things deliberately designed to undermine their authority."

     As someone who has written academically about the use of religious language in both Israel and Iran in general, and the Israeli use of the Amalek archetype in particular I myself was particularly taken with this comment by Zakaria: 

"One of Netanyahu's advisers said of Iran, 'Think Amalek.' The Bible says that the Amalekitesman and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.' Now, were the president of Iranreligious text that gave divine sanction for the annihilation of an entire race, they would be called, well, messianic."

       Not messianic, Fareed--genocidal.  Maybe your editor thought that was going a bit too far, but that IS the message of the Amalek analogy.  The odd thing is that the command to obliterate Amalek is always framed in terms of Amalek's genocidal intentions, for which there is no evidence in the biblical text.

Although the Book of Genesis refers to the existence of Amalekites even in the time of the patriarch Abraham (Genesis 14:1-12), the eponymous ancestor of the Amalekites  is Abraham's great-great grandson, according to the genealogy of the Esau tribes in Genesis (Genesis 36:12). Two passages in the Bible deal with the source of eternal enmity between the descendants of Amalek and the Israelites fleeing their enslavement in Egypt.  During an unexplained and apparently unprovoked attack by the Amalekites on the Israelite camp at Rephidim, Moses enables the Israelites to prevail by holding up the rod of God.   God then tells Moses to write out a document as a reminder that He "will utterly blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven, whereupon Moses declares, "The Lord will be at war with Amalek throughout the ages" (Ex. 17:8-13).

   

          Another biblical passage concerning Amalek is found in a retrospective account of the Israelite sojourn in the desert that Moses delivered to the Israelites before he died, as they prepared to enter Canaan and conquer it.  Moses instructs the Israelites:

Remember what Amalek did to you when you left Egypt--how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in the rear.  Therefore, when the Lord your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a heritage, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.  Do not forget! (Deut. 25:17-19). 

Who is wiping whom off the map here?

        
         Israelis have been coming up with the direst predictions about an  Iranian bomb being only a year or two away for the past 15 years (the "Iranian threat" made its debut at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee a/k/a AIPAC Policy Conference, 1994 at which it has become a regular feature), a decade before Ahmadinejad was even elected,  Zakaria points out that Iran's two Supreme leaders since the 1979 Islamic revolution --first Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and the present Supreme leader Ali Khamenei--have repeatedly declared nuclear weapons un-Islamic:

The country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa in 2004 describing the use of nuclear weapons as immoral. In a subsequent sermon, he declared that "developing, producing or stockpiling nuclear weapons is forbidden under Islam." Last year Khamenei reiterated all these points after meeting with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei. Now, of course, they could all be lying. But it seems odd for a regime that derives its legitimacy from its fidelity to Islam to declare constantly that these weapons are un-Islamic if it intends to develop them.

 
      If they don't want bombs, what DO the Iranians want? Well, they might actually want a civilian nuclear program, which is what they say that they do.  Zakaria points out, "Following a civilian nuclear strategy has big benefits. The country would remain within international law, simply asserting its rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a position that has much support across the world."  Of course, there's nothing illegal about that, and no reason for sanctions against Iran.   Or perhaps Iran wants to expand its regional influence.  It's a huge country--the largest in the Middle East--with a long history of being a major player, from ancient times until the 19th century, when, in the humiliating Treaties of Gulistan in  1813 and Turkmenchai in 1828, Iran not only lost the Caucasus to Russia but lost its great power status.    There seems to be something very odd about a view of history that suggests that Israelis are entitled to reclaim the empire of David and Solomon (1000 BCE), but that countries like Iran aren't permitted to "meddle" in the affairs of their neighbors, such as Iraq and the new Muslim states of Central Asia and the Caucasus, which, until 200 years ago, were an integral part of their empire--while everyone else can.  But Zakaria points out that "if Tehran's aim is to expand its regional influence, it doesn't need a bomb to do so.
  
      "Iranians aren't suicidal," Zakara writes. And in the climate of a new US president who might treat Iran with some respect--something that has been sorely lacking in US-Iranian relations for the past thirty years,  Iran might be ready to deal. He concludes, "We can't know if a deal is possible since we've never tried to negotiate one."

      One of my correspondents suggests that "Zakaria wouldn't stick his neck out like this if he didn't have some sort of backing or approval" and or if there was no basis for his analysis. Is a major shift in US policy towards Iran is underway.  While this may seem like a longshot, considering Dennis Ross's designation as keeper of the flame of anti-Iranian rhetoric, and in light of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's boast to the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) that Obama had accepted Netanyahu's position on Iran.

     Still, it is not impossible that a genuine debate is going on within the Obama administration about how to deal with Iran, Netanyahu's boast notwithstanding.  Nor would it be the first time the Israelis have tried to limit the freedom of action of an ally by bragging about their close connections and cooperation.  (The Israelis did it to the Shah of Iran in the early 1970s, in an effort to undermine his outreach to Egypt and other Arab states.)   The declaration by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman that Israel won't take any action against Iran without informing the US is, in reality, a double-edged sword; its objective is less concerned with curbing Israeli freedom of action with restraints imposed on the U.S. than it is a matter of implicating the US in any reckless moves the Israelis choose to make. 

       The real battle ahead  isn't between Iran and Israel; it's between the staunch pro-Israel supporters in Congress and the President's determination to forge a new foreign policy towards Iran.  While the prospects of Iran becoming a staunch ally of the US seem dim, Iranian cooperation is essential in the US extricating itself from its self-dug morass on Iran's eastern and western borders.  The first step toward rapprochement is changing the shrill tone of the press that shapes public opinion.  It seems hard to believe that Zakaria (and Newsweek) would float this sort of analysis in some quixotic quest to alter US public opinion towards a viewpoint with no supporters in the White House.

From the Iranian side, all of Ahmadinejad's challengers in the Iranian presidential election, just a few weeks away, have indicated their willingness to enter into talks with the U.S.  Mohsen Rezaei, Ahmadinejad's conservative challenger, Mohsen Rezaei, has told the AP that "he

seeks a step-by-step "reciprocal change" plan to end the diplomatic estrangement with the United States since shortly after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. He proposed starting with non-confrontational issues such as setting up a committee to protect the Persian Gulf ecosystem or a three-way committee with Pakistan to fight drug trafficking. Later, the two nations could move toward the key impasses such the scope of Iran's nuclear program."  .Reformist Mir-Hossein Mousavi is adamant about Iran's right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes under the NPT, of which it is a signatory, but has said that if elected, "his policy would be to work to provide 'guarantees' that Tehran's nuclear activities would never divert to non-peaceful aims. Another reformist, Mehdi Karrubi, once dubbed "the Al Gore of Iran," has accused Ahmadinejad of mishandling the nuclear issue, isolating Iran, and has declared that reducing tensions with the West is his priority, 

        Will  "Everything You Know About Iran is Wrong"  succeed in undermining the hitherto "received wisdom"  of the mainstream media?  Does it lay out the operative assumptions of a new US policy toward Iran?  If so, this would indeed be a remarkable shift in American foreign policy perceptions.  It won't  happen easily or overnight--there are forces at work (and I am not being conspiratorial here) that have a vested interest in keeping current perceptions what they are.  I fully expect Zakaria to be excoriated and eviscerated--or worse, ignored.  Fortunately (hopefully!) he has the stature and clout to withstand it.