Source: https://www.renegadetribune.com/israel-iran-and-nuclear-weapons/
by Karl Radl
Back in 2008 quite a few significant days for Israel Lobby watchers occurred with the AIPAC conference speeches of Bibi and Obama to listen to and watch as well as looking at the relevant opinion pieces. The central theme of that conference was to present Obama as the ‘Candidate for Israel’ (and who says there isn’t an Israel Lobby in the US): in much the same way as in the 1950s Eisenhower branded himself the anti-communist candidate. However the distinction between the two positions – deliberately confused by most pro-Israel authors – is that being say anti-communist is simply a position of ideology: saying you are the best candidate to help a foreign government is something very different. It is effectively an overt form of the Manchurian Candidate: where an enemy agent has been elected the President of the USA.
Now it should be understood that I am not suggesting that Obama was an espionage agent in the pay of the Mossad, but rather that the influence of the Israel Lobby on successive administrations – be they Republican or Democrat – has been effectively the same thing as having an enemy agent in power making all the wrong decisions for your country. The irony is that it isn’t an espionage network that is doing the damage – although we know Israel does have a substantial network of this kind – but rather it is a propaganda and influence network which operates in almost direct parallel to how the Comintern and the GRU operated their innocents committees, secret organisations, intelligence networks and espionage agents during the early twentieth century.
The essential difference between Israel’s position at the start of the twenty first century and the USSR in the early twentieth century is that Israel has been able to somewhat successfully cast itself as the victim and as a non-aggressive entity. While the USSR in comparison was successful in doing this in its first few years, but was always held – particularly after several failed (jewish-led) European revolutions – to be a subversive threat. So in effect the difference is that Western intelligence and politicians regarded the USSR as a threat, while they don’t really regard Israel as one or didn’t until relatively recently: by which time Israel’s friends are in strong enough positions to clamp down on political dissent away from Israeli and towards actual American interests in terms of domestic and foreign policy.
This is more or less the thesis that has been extensively argued by the anti-Israel Lobby position but particularly by Paul Findley, (1) Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. (2) The whole debate has for some years seemed relatively distant as the only real consequence of the battles between the Israel Lobby and its critics was over the US funding and turning a blind eye to Israeli activities as well as – to a lesser extent – the convergence of pro-Israeli interests with promoting George W. Bush’s ‘revenge war’ in Iraq for which numerous brave men and women have died or been scarred for life.
However as any seasoned Israel observer well knows over the last two to three decades we have heard the steady propagandistic drumbeat from Tel Aviv and its proxies in the United States and Europe about the ‘Iranian Nuclear Threat’. It hasn’t exactly been intense, but for the last two decades for example the Jerusalem Post has even had its own special section on the front page devoted to the ‘Iranian Threat’. However in spite of this lack of intensity it has begun to take hold as a form of ‘Chinese Whispers’ by way of the media consumer being consistently – although not constantly (unless you watch Fox News) – told about the ‘Iranian Threat’ and how Iran is an ‘Islamist state’ seeking nuclear weapons.
The logic behind the propaganda is beautiful in its simplicity as well as its stupidity in that: it suggests that because Iran is an Islamic state which is strongly engaged in promoting its interests in the region: it will launch an invasion or an attack on all those around it as part of an expansionist Islamic program. Thus should Iran gain nuclear weapon capability it would therefore be a threat to American interests in the Middle East, because Iran could play brinkmanship with the US as the Iranian leadership believe they would all receive their houris if it came to nuclear war.
The problem with this position is that is essentially ignores several key issues all at once:
A) The Iranian leadership might be Islamist, but even the most devout Islamist cleric still fundamentally wishes to live. If they did not wish to live or wished to die as Islamic martyrs then it would be rather simple for them to achieve that wish by for example joining Hezbollah in Lebanon or fighting with Shia anti-American militants against the US in Iraq. The fact they do not do so suggests that their motivation is more real politik than religious with the latter being used as a crutch to justify the former. Thus why would they create a Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) scenario if they weren’t attacked first? Iran isn’t strong enough to take on Israel let alone the US in a direct fight precisely because their arms and armour is heavily out-of-date and they are utterly out-gunned in terms of fire power.
B) Iran isn’t expansionist in any obvious sense. To suggest it is Israel Lobby propagandists often cite the role Iran plays as Hezbollah’s ‘sugar daddy’: however this is only regional power politics and nothing different from Israel’s own support of the Lebanese Christian Falangists in the same country. Also pro-Israel propagandists conveniently forget that Iran is heavily en hoc to its Russian neighbour to the north who effectively pull the strings and will not allow Iran to do anything unapproved let alone ignite World War III in an Islamic jihad against the West.
C) Numerous ‘rogue’ states have nuclear weapons such as North Korea and they are yet to use them in spite of actually being expansionist political regimes. There is no evidence to suggest that just because a state wants to expand its geographic borders and/or sphere of influence that it is thus prone to firing off nuclear devices.
D) Israel itself is the only state currently extant that has actually threatened nuclear holocaust on the world as a serious policy option for its own failure in wars that it itself created in the first place. Israel – if Avner Cohen’s estimates are to be believed – (3) holds circa 200 nuclear devices and has at least two ranged forms of delivery: land-based missiles and submarine-based missiles. (4) Iran by contrast has neither nuclear weapons at present nor the ability to send them even as far as Israel let alone beat Israel’s US-built air defence system.
Thus Israel – unlike Iran – actually has nuclear weapons, the ability to deliver them as nuclear strikes on a large portion of the known world and – most importantly – the track record of threatening their use as a viable policy option. None of these Iran has and nor does Iran have the same sense of entitlement and victim hood that have been bred into Israelis both from their jewish heritage (which focuses heavily on this) but also from Israeli Sabra culture which separates them from the Palestinians and thus tends to dehumanize them in jewish eyes leading very quickly to the strong nationalist slant in all Israeli politics apart from in the Arab bloc and the Israeli Communist Party in the Knesset. (5)
So if we then understand this it becomes clear that it isn’t Iran we need be concerned about so much: it is Israel’s attitude to Iran. As if Israel does decide – as seems increasingly likely given its rising paranoia about the ousting of numerous Israeli client kings in the region – to launch a ‘pre-emptive’ strike on Iran then it will provoke Iran – and quite possibly other states – to retaliate against Israel in substantial form. It would not surprise me if Iran began – in retaliation – to massively encourage and underwrite suicide bombings in Israel much as Saddam Hussein did before he was toppled from power or launched anti-Israel missile strikes using Hezbollah as a proxy. Or as another example: Iran could provide Hezbollah with chemical and/or biological weapons to use in strikes against Israel; thus upping the ante even further.
This might not be enough to provoke outright war, but it certainly isn’t going to do the region any favours. In fact if Israel did attack Iran then I tend to think that – although it would certainly get away with it – there would be an increasing polarisation on the right and left against Israel. After all how can you justify attacking countries over nuclear weapons over imagined scenarios when the country doing the attacking is utterly irresponsible at the best of times and outright criminal at worst, but yet has a large nuclear arsenal of its own?
The fact is very simply this: Israel is the threat to peace and stability in the Middle East not Iran. If you remove Israel then a lot of the tension goes away and if you include it – and its very aggressive outlook – then it becomes very clear that it is the proverbial bull in the Middle Eastern china shop.
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References
(1) Paul Findley, 1985, ‘They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby’, 1st Edition, Lawrence Hill: Westport
(2) Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer, 2007, ‘The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy’, 1st Edition, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux: New York
(3) Avner Cohen, 1999, ‘Israel and the Bomb’, 2nd Edition, Columbia University Press: New York; Avner Cohen, 2011, ‘The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb’, 1st Edition, Columbia University Press: New York
(4) Ironically Israel’s ability to launch these missiles from submarines has been created because they demanded that the occupation – sorry ‘German’ – government give them to them free in tribute for not mentioning the ‘Holocaust’ again. Of course within a matter of mere weeks it was being brought up again by the Israeli government and its proxies in North America and Europe.
(5) Summarised excellently in Israel Shahak, Norton Mezvinsky, 1999, ‘Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel’, 1st Edition, Pluto Press: London.
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