RSS Feed MenuBret Stephens offers an idea in the online edition of Foreign Affairs: “The United States pledges that it will not permit Iran to go nuclear, period. And Israel pledges it will dismantle settlements, period. (Jerusalem would have to be dealt with separately, but the deal at least offers Palestinians the contiguity they have long claimed to seek).”
This idea of linking the presence of Jews on the West Bank to action on Iran’s nuclear arsenal has been gaining momentum over the past few weeks among those who write regularly about the Middle East. About a month ago on his CNN television show, GPS, Fareed Zakaria suggested that if Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu were serious about stopping Iran, the Israeli government would not be angering the Obama Administration by announcing that it was planning to build houses in East Jerusalem.
A few days later, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen wrote, “Nothing will happen in the Middle East, unless the United States is seen as an honest broker able to criticize both sides when needed. Obama’s anger [at the announcement that new houses would be built] sped a needed clarification and freed debate”.
Cohen’s colleague at the Times, Thomas Friedman, chimed in a few days later: “Jerusalem, peace, Iran – they are all connected and pretending you can treat some as a hobby and one as a necessity is an illusion.”
The concept is flawed. The grand bargain accepts the logic of the hostage-taker: the lives of the civilian population of Israel – the most likely targets of Iranian nukes – are put at risk in order to extract political concessions from the Israeli government on the Palestinian front.
In fairness, nobody in the Obama Administration has ever suggested that Iran and settlement issues be linked. But last weekend the New York Times published reports of a secret memo to the White House in which Defense Secretary Robert Gates argued that the administration lacks a strategy to neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat. On Monday, the White House tried to downplay the significance of the memo. But as the Wall Street Journal claimed in a Monday editorial, the memo “merely says what has been obvious to the world for months.”
As the Journal editorial points out, news of the memo emerged just as senior U.S. military officials have testified to Congress that Iran may be just one year away from producing enough fissile material for one bomb.
What can Netanyahu, or any other Israeli prime minister for that matter, expect in return for acquiescence to the Obama Administration? For any Israeli prime minister, and indeed for every other legitimate national leader, the physical protection of the country’s civilian population must always be the most important national security priority. Yet Obama is expecting Israel to subordinate that concern to other – and possibly unachievable – U.S. interests.
sinz54 // Apr 25, 2010 at 3:31 pm
My advice to Israel:
Remember Czechoslovakia in 1938.
Don’t depend on Great Powers to pull your chestnuts out of the fire.
If you think Iran is an existential threat, deal with it.
And tell the world to pound sand.
ottovbvs // Apr 25, 2010 at 4:06 pm
…..So Mr Brett now thinks there IS a connection between Iranian nuclear ambitions and the Israeli Palestinian conflict……I’ve been reading opeds from him for years when he (along with many other neocons) have insisted there was no connection whatever…..of course his “idea” is nonsense…..Israel pledges to dismantle some illegal settlements if the US pledges to start a major pre-emptive war in the middle east if Iran acquires nuclear weapons…..it’s hard to make up these people up sometimes.
sinz54 // Apr 25, 2010 at 3:31 pm
“Remember Czechoslovakia in 1938…….If you think Iran is an existential threat, deal with it.
And tell the world to pound sand.”
…….So the sensible thing for Czecho to have done in 1938 would have been to have launched a pre-emptive war against Germany without great p0wer support……as it happens the populations of Czecho/Germany and Israel/Iran are not dissimilar 6 million/75million…..Czecho/Israel even shared trojan horse minorities of similar size in the Sudetan Germans and Arabs…..of course Israel has nuclear weapons and implicit in Sinz’s usual suicidal prognostications is that they should use them against Iran although of course the consequence would be the deaths of millions of Iranians and the certain end of Israel ’s existence(and huge other collateral damage)……but such is the typical acuity of extreme right wing thought patterns.
TerryF98 // Apr 25, 2010 at 4:10 pm
Martin,
I have asked this question of every person making these dumb criticisms of the Obama stance towards Iran. You are the fifth one to offer not one jot of a policy you feel that might work.
So I ask you what would you do to make Iran give up on obtaining a bomb? Please lay out a succinct workable plan that would not cause problems with China and Russia, and would not cause a major conflagration in the middle east and the oil chaos that ensues?
Sinz did suggest a total blockade of Iran. Not sure how serious that was!
I eagerly await your answer!
ottovbvs // Apr 25, 2010 at 4:24 pm
TerryF98 // Apr 25, 2010 at 4:10 pm
…….You know you’re not going to get an answer……….the Bush admin didn’t have one and neither does the Obama admin……..and the reason is because there isn’t one…….. short of starting a major war with Iran a sophisticated country of 75 million people which would have calamitous results for US interests and whose outcome no one can predict……ergo Iran will acquire nuclear weapons and Israel/Iran will move into a MAD stance towards each other……it’s a measure of how screwy the far right in this country have become in that they would contemplate starting a war with Iran over this (and any demonstrably aggressive act like a blockade would constitute a casus belli)……fortunately no administration, even far right ones like the Bush’s, are never going to anything so remotely stupid.
TerryF98 // Apr 25, 2010 at 5:00 pm
Otto..
…….You know you’re not going to get an answer……
I know I am never going to get an answer Otto. Thats exactly why I keep on asking the question of these fools. They come here and post neocon BS and never lay out any alternative workable or not.
I just like to call them on their BS because If no one does they think we take them seriously.
ottovbvs // Apr 25, 2010 at 5:23 pm
TerryF98 // Apr 25, 2010 at 5:00 pm
“I just like to call them on their BS because If no one does they think we take them seriously.”
………these people are basically nuts whether they go public with their nuttiness like Stephens and Krossel or hide behind the anonymity of the internet
Oskar // Apr 25, 2010 at 6:45 pm
More neocon trouble making.
Quinterius // Apr 25, 2010 at 9:37 pm
This article is very ambiguous. It is not clear where the author stands. The main point is that all this talk about linking the phony and non-existent Iran nuclear weapons problem to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is just an attempt by Israel to distract poor little Obama to thinking that he needs to get tough with Iran before Netanyahu budges. The fact is that Netanyahu will not give in one inch regardless of what happens with Iran. Obama has zero power over Israel since Congress it almost 100% in the pocket of Israel and its supporters.
As far as Iran is concerned, even Obama and Gates no longer claim that it is building a bomb. They only claim that it is developing knowhow. It is almost as bad as Bush’s demand that Iran cannot have “knowledge” of enrichment. There is no chance for stopping Iran from developing knowledge, knowhow or capacity, but it is also a fact that Iran has no interest in building a bomb. So, the whole issue is a mirage. The US and Israel merely want to maintain their hegemony in the Middle East.
msmilack // Apr 25, 2010 at 9:40 pm
I do not believe the Israeli government is at all interested in peace. On the other hand, I know many Israelis who do long for peace, who protest against their government and wish they could replace their leaders. I think Netayahu either has to get rid of the right wing fringe he gives into, or all of them have to go and be replaced by government officials who follow through on their promises (like not building when they pledge to stop). We are always quite worried about their safety but they seem not the least interested in ours. It’s very frustrating whether Iran is in the equation or not and one is not even free to criticize Israel without being called names.
S.L. Toddard // Apr 26, 2010 at 1:33 pm
“Nothing is more essential, than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular Nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded.”
- President George Washington
“Not seldom it has seemed as if some eminent Neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States.”
- Russell Kirk
Mladen // Apr 28, 2010 at 3:23 pm
Bret Stephens writes as if the US is doing only Israel a favor in getting rid of the Iranian threat when in fact in addition to helping Israel the US would be defending its own interests since a nuclear war between Israel and the US would be disastrous not only to Israel but to the US as well. The high probability of a nuclear war between Iran and Israel is the consequence of the ineffectiveness of MAD, from which I would conclude, since Stephens does not mention it, that he himself has not fully comprehended the high likelihood of it happening.
Let us remind ourselves what Bernard Lewis wrote about the mindset of the Iranian regime: “In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead–hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement.”
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008768
Now, one may disagree with what Bernard Lewis says and come up with counter arguments. But the fact that his quote is almost unknown and that the world media have not found it important enough to devote more space to is beyond belief. For if Bernard Lewis is right, the only thing that would prevent a nuclear war and the death of millions of Israeli and Iranian citizens would be an Israeli preemptive strike that would take out the Iranian nuclear sites.
I do hope that the coming debate on Friday between Bret Stephens and Roger Cohen of the NYT will not ignore this Bernard Lewis quote and Shi’a eschatology. Failure to do so would demonstrate that our civilization is quite insane.
Quinterius // Apr 29, 2010 at 3:53 pm
To Mladen: The reason that the Bernard Lewis quotation is not very well known is that he is basing his argument on a statement in an “11th-grade Iranian schoolbook,” taken out of context. All religions, have totally idiotic statements in their writings. Read the Bible. The Iranian leadership is extremely sane and values its self-preservation very much. The “mad Mullah” theory is totally false.
Anyone who thinks that Iran will start a nuclear war with one or two nuclear bombs against the US or Israel which have, respectively, thousands and hundreds of nuclear bombs, is either insane or totally uniformed. Beyond religion, one needs to look at the history of Iran. It has not attacked another country for at least 300 years. How many countries have the US and Israel attacked?
Mladen // May 1, 2010 at 2:37 am
To Quinterius: Well, there have been 149 Muslim Palestinian suicide bombers and zero Christian Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel since 2000 although as you put it “All religions, have totally idiotic statements in their writings.”
Likewise, not all heads of states address the UN General Assembly with these words:
http://www.un.org/ga/64/generaldebate/pdf/IR_en.pdf
“The world is in continuous change and evolution. The promised destiny for the mankind is the establishment of the humane pure life. Will come a time when justice will prevail across the globe and every single human being will enjoy respect and dignity. That will be the time when the Mankind’s path to moral and spiritual perfectness will be opened and his journey to God and the manifestation of the God’s Divine Names will come true. The mankind should excel to represent the God’s “knowledge and wisdom”, His “compassion and benevolence”, His “justice and fairness”, His “power and art”, and His “kindness and forgiveness”. These will all come true under the rule of the Perfect Man, the last Divine Source on earth, Hazrat Mahdi (Peace be upon him); an offspring of the Prophet of Islam, who will re-emerge, and Jesus Christ (Peace be upon him) and other noble men will accompany him in the accomplishment of this, grand universal mission. And this is the belief in Entezar (Awaiting patiently for the Imam to return). Waiting with patience for the rule of goodness and the governance of the Best which is a universal human notion and which is a source of nations’ hope for the betterment of the world.
They will come, and with the help of righteous people and true believers will materialize the man’s long-standing desires for freedom, perfectness, maturity, security and tranquility, peace and beauty. They will come to put an end to war and aggression and present the entire knowledge as well as spirituality and friendship to the whole world.
Yes; Indeed, the bright future for the mankind will come.”
Your ‘11th-grade Iranian schoolbook’ dismissal argument of Bernard Lewis’s quote is not shared by all:
http://www.aijac.org.au/?id=editionarticle&articleID=6804&_action=showArticleDetails
“The other side of the coin is the crazy talk. They believe what they say. I know they do. I know Khamenei has private prayers with the Mahdi. It’s all crazy talk, but they take it seriously. Thirty years ago they were told the Mahdi wants them to proceed with the nuclear project, and that’s why they’re not bending. They think they’re untouchable and that the Mahdi wants it.”