WHAT’S NETANYAHU REALLY AFRAID OF?
by Muhammad Sahimi
AntiWar.com
himi/2009/05/19/whats-netanyahu-really-afraid-of/
May 20 2009
Although the Obama administration has made it clear that it wants
to pursue diplomacy with Iran and the president himself has made
overtures toward Iran, Israel continues to threaten Iran with
military attacks. Its lobby in the United States, led by AIPAC and
its supporters in the War Party, continues to issue dire warnings
about Iran’s nuclear program and the danger that it allegedly
poses to not just Israel and the Middle East, but the entire "free
world." Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has
reaffirmed time and again that all of Iran’s known nuclear facilities
and nuclear materials, including its stockpile of low-enriched uranium,
are safeguarded and monitored by the agency; there is no evidence for
a secret parallel nuclear program, or one that is aimed at developing
nuclear weapons; and all the issues regarding Iran’s six cases of
noncompliance with its obligations under its Safeguards Agreement
with the IAEA have been resolved to the agency’s satisfaction.
Over the past several months, the chief mouthpiece for Israel,
particularly Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, has been Elliott
Abrams, a convicted criminal (later pardoned) in the Iran-Contra
scandal, son-in-law of Norman Podhoretz (former editor of Commentary
and the man who prayed that George W. Bush would order military attacks
on Iran), and deputy national security adviser for the Middle East
in the Bush White House. Abrams is now at the Council on Foreign
Relations.
Acting as Netanyahu’s alter ego and trying to deflect attention from
what Israel did to the Gaza Strip in December and January, in March
Abrams propagated the absurd notion that Iran was sending weapons to
Hamas by a route through Sudan and Egypt. The story first appeared in
January on a Web site that has close ties with Israel’s intelligence
services. Then the Times of London, the Rupert Murdoch-owned bastion
of truthfulness, ran a story about it. Abrams suggested that Iran
ships arms to Sudan, which are then transported through Egypt and
the Sinai Desert to reach Hamas in Gaza. How the weapons smugglers
could evade the intelligence services of Egypt, a nation that has
been ruled by president-for-life Hosni Mubarak with emergency laws
since 1981, is beyond the comprehension of the author and, indeed,
most objective analysts.
When the allegations regarding Iran sending weapons to Hamas did not
catch fire, Abrams created a new twist in the propaganda campaign
against Iran. In an article in the Weekly Standard on March 2, Abrams,
declaring his opposition to the withdrawal of Israel’s forces from
the occupied territories, opined, "he Israeli-Palestinian conflict is
now part of a broader struggle in the region over Iranian extremism
and power. Israeli withdrawals now risk opening the door not only to
Palestinian terrorists but to Iranian proxies."
In other words, Abrams suggested that not only must the Palestinians
wait decades to get their independent state, if ever, but also that
they will not get it unless Iran is contained first. By then, of
course, the facts on the ground, i.e., Israel’s settlements in the
West Bank, will have dramatically changed.
Since then it has become an article of faith among Israel’s supporters
and the War Party that, in order to achieve a lasting peace in the
Middle East, Iran’s nuclear program must first be halted. Never mind
that the Israel-Palestinian conflict existed long before the Islamic
Republic of Iran was established in 1979 and that Israel maintained
secret relations with Iran, selling it weapons and spare parts for the
its American-made armament, until the Iran-Contra scandal, in which
Abrams himself played a leading role, put an end to the engagement.
Tying the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the
containment of Iran’s nuclear program is part of the absurd argument
that Iran’s nonexistent nuclear weapons program poses an "existential
threat" to the Jewish state. This false notion has been repeated so
often that any opposition to it is treated as tantamount to treason
or supporting Iran’s "mad mullahs." Never mind that, Tzipi Livni,
Israel’s former prime minister, stated last year that, even if Iran did
develop a nuclear arsenal, it would pose little threat to Israel. She
even criticized Ehud Olmert, her predecessor, for exaggerating the
Iranian nuclear issue for political gain.
Despite Livni’s admission, the myth of Iran’s "existential threat"
to Israel is very much alive. In the latest twist, Jeffrey Goldberg
of The Atlantic, while conceding that Netanyahu has a reputation for
"conspicuous insincerity," claimed that his preoccupation with the
Iranian nuclear program seems sincere and deeply felt. Writing in the
New York Times on May 17, Goldberg stated, "I recently asked one of his
[Netanyahu’s] advisers to gauge for me the depth of Mr. Netanyahu’s
anxiety about Iran. His answer: ‘Think Amalek.’" According to
the Old Testament, the Amalekites were great enemies of the Jews,
attacking them on their escape from Egypt. Thus, metaphorically, Iran’s
nonexistent nuclear weapons program is our era’s Amalek’s arsenal. In
the past Netanyahu has also repeatedly claimed that it is 1938 all over
again, Iran is the new Nazi Germany, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
is the new Hitler, an absurd and baseless notion I have refuted before.
Another notion propagated by Israel’s supporters is that Iran is
ruled by a messianic, apocalyptic group so bent on destroying Israel
that it does not care about retaliatory strikes. This is sheer
nonsense. Iran’s leaders, despite their rhetoric, are rational and
pragmatic politicians, at least when it comes to foreign policy. What
better evidence for their pragmatism than the fact that they bought
weapons from Israel in the 1980s; that in the conflict between
Christian Armenia and Shi’ite Azerbaijan, Iran sided with the former;
that Iran played a crucial role in the overthrow of the Taliban in
2001, when its ally, the Northern Alliance, took Kabul? Moreover,
Iran’s leaders are also fully aware that any attack on Israel will
provoke a massive counterattack by both Israel and the U.S. that will
destroy Iran and kill millions of Iranians.
So what is the crux of the issue? Goldberg quotes Netanyahu as saying
that "Iran’s militant proxies would be able to fire rockets and engage
in other terror activities while enjoying a nuclear umbrella." This
statement provides some insight into Netanyahu’s thinking.
Netanyahu, the Likud, and Israel’s far Right, including quasi-fascist
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, would like to be able to do
to their occupied territories whatever they please without any
hindrance. They do not recognize the internationally recognized right
of the Palestinians to have their own independent, viable state,
and they want to continue building settlements in the West Bank.
At the same time, about half of the water used in Israel is captured
and diverted from its neighbors, including the occupied territories
of the West Bank and the Golan Heights. Many of these water sources
are running out. Thus, Israel needs new sources. One such source is
the Litani River in southern Lebanon, which, at its closest point,
is about two miles from the border with Israel. Even before Israel’s
establishment, its leaders have had their eyes on the Litani. David
Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan both advocated Israeli occupation
of southern Lebanon and the Litani. As early as 1941, Ben-Gurion
thought that the Litani should be Israel’s northern border. Israel’s
invasions of southern Lebanon in 1978 and 1982 were partly motivated
by its desire to control the Litani. In fact, there was a big row
in 1994 when Israel was accused of diverting water from the Litani,
just as it steals the water resources of the Golan Heights. All that
ended when Hezbollah forced Israel to leave southern Lebanon after
an 18-year occupation.
So the crux of the issue is not that Iran is ruled by a messianic,
apocalyptic group, or that it has a secret nuclear weapon program,
or that if it gets its hands on nuclear warheads, it will attack
Israel. None of these are true.
The crux of the issue is not that, emboldened by Iran’s nonexistent
nuclear weapons, Hezbollah and Hamas will keep firing rockets into
Israel. Both are supported by Iran, but neither is its proxy. Hamas’
ambition is limited to recovering the occupied territories. It has
never carried out any military or terrorist operation outside of
historical Palestine, and it has offered to go into a decades-long
cease-fire with Israel in exchange for Israel’s complete evacuation
of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Iran is also not the only Muslim
state that supports Hamas.
Hezbollah is a powerful sociopolitical movement in Lebanon that
would continue to thrive without any help from Iran. It is part of
Lebanon’s government and has a significant presence in the Lebanese
parliament. It is expected to increase its votes in the parliamentary
elections on June 7. It is regarded by many Lebanese people as the
guardian of southern Lebanon and the Litani.
The crux of the issue is also not what Netanyahu told Goldberg, namely,
that a nuclear Iran "would embolden Islamic militants far and wide,
on many continents." Those Islamic militants, including both the
Taliban and al-Qaeda, are almost exclusively Salafi Sunnis who hate
Shi’ite Iran.
The crux of the issue is that, Netanyahu, Israel’s military, and
the War Party in the U.S. all believe that an Iran equipped with the
technological capability for enriching uranium would have a credible
nuclear deterrent and, therefore, would be unattackable. That scenario,
as Thomas P.M. Barnett, the author of The Pentagon’s New Map: War
and Peace in the Twenty-First Century, has put it, "would level the
playing field by finally allowing the Muslim Middle East to sit one
player at the negotiating table as Israel’s nuclear equal." Thus,
Israel would no longer be able to force its will on its neighbors,
a prospect that is not acceptable to the Israeli establishment and
the American War Party.
Such a scenario would also have another consequence. A situation
in which Israel’s government maintains a permanent state of war
with its neighbors, but in which Israel and the Muslims are in
equilibrium militarily, would halt immigration to Israel, even reverse
it. That would be the ultimate existential threat to Israel. The
only realistic way to prevent this from happening is for Israel to
reach a just peace with the Palestinians and Syria and give up the
dream of controlling the Litani River. But, Netanyahu, the Likud,
and the Israeli establishment are incapable of making these happen,
and the progressive forces that could force such a solution have
practically disappeared from Israel’s political scene.