Ehud Ya'ari, one of Israel's most astute observers of the Middle East, offers an anaylsis of recent events in Iran that challenges some prevailing notions of Iran's power structure.
db
seattle
At the moment, US President Barack Obama is not going to get very far in his dialogue with the Iranians. But I believe that, down the road, there will be the possibility of some understandings between the US, the Europeans and the Iranians. And it is the Arab states, not the Israelis, who are telling Obama to please not cut a deal with Iran behind their backs or at their expense.
Here's the real message behind Iran's disputed election
Ehud Ya'ari July 7, 2009 -
WHAT we have witnessed in Iran in recent weeks is a military coup conducted through the ballot boxes. Policymakers and analysts have been talking for a long time about the possibilities and prospects of a change of regime in Iran. Well, I have news for everybody — change of regime in Iran has taken place.
The re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second term as Iran's President represents the emergence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp as a military dictatorship — pushing aside the clerics and mullahs. It's a new Iran in many ways. It's an Iran in which the Supreme Leader, despite what you will read in most of the Western press, is not the real victor in the election. He manipulated the elections in such a way as to have Ahmadinejad re-elected. Now, however, the Supreme Leader works for Ahmadinejad, rather than the other way around.
It's a new Iran because it's no longer the Islamic Revolution regime as we have known it since Khomeini took over in 1979. Ahmadinejad's Government is already 60 per cent Revolutionary Guard, and the Iranian parliament is 40 to 50 per cent ex-Revolutionary Guard officers. This election sees the takeover by this group and their allies completed.
Everybody has heard Ahmadinejad's statements — his regime's very clear views on eliminating Israel and the very aggressive and confrontational foreign policy.
The three other candidates, each in a different manner, objected to the way Ahmadinejad ran Iran's nuclear program, hinting very strongly that they did not necessarily see an advantage in the short-term acquisition by Iran of nuclear weapons.
One of them suggested they negotiate with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and with Germany, and offer guarantees that the country would not be "going the military way".
This very fierce debate had never been heard in Iran before. But the debate is one point and the declared result of the election is something else — which is that two-thirds of Iranian voters are said to have supported Ahmadinejad. Those other voices — from within the ruling regime — will now be marginalised.
We have a few years in which to deter Iran from acquiring nuclear arms. The reason is Iran will never stage a nuclear "breakout" from the non-proliferation regime for a bomb or two. If Teheran goes for a breakout, it will only do so for an arsenal — it doesn't make sense otherwise.
The efforts are not just focused on uranium enrichment. They are building a heavy-water reactor in Arak for plutonium. But they are not yet at the point where they have enough material for an arsenal — at which time a political decision will be made about whether to build nuclear weapons or not. The Arab states have made it clear that if Iran has a bomb, they will follow.
Egypt has reignited its nuclear program for peaceful purposes, such as medical isotopes. Saudi Arabia will acquire nuclear weapons from the Pakistanis. It has a long-term understanding with Islamabad regarding this.
I think we in the Middle East are sentenced to a long period of ambiguity in which it's quite unclear what Iran's nuclear status is.
I believe that this ambiguity is the preferred policy of the Iranians at this point — playing their own game of ambiguity while moving as fast as they can to develop nuclear technologies in both enriched uranium and plutonium.
They want as soon as possible to be as close to the nuclear threshold as Japan currently is.
In the Middle East, Iran and its regional and nuclear ambitions define the only political and diplomatic game in town — overshadowing all other issues. It's the only game for the Arab states as much as for the Israelis.
At the moment, US President Barack Obama is not going to get very far in his dialogue with the Iranians. But I believe that, down the road, there will be the possibility of some understandings between the US, the Europeans and the Iranians. And it is the Arab states, not the Israelis, who are telling Obama to please not cut a deal with Iran behind their backs or at their expense.
Ehud Ya'ari is the Middle East commentator for Israel's Channel 2 Television and the author of eight books on Middle Eastern affairs.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Ehud Ya'ari: Regime Change in Iran: The Real Message Behind the Disputed Election
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Deafening Silence: Where are all the Israel Critics when it comes to Iran? Two Veteran Israeli Journalists Weigh In
Where is the outcry over the gross injustices, brutality and squashing of freedoms in Iran? Where are the demonstrations? The solidarity with the victims? Ben Caspit and Ben-Dror Yemini draw some inescapable conclusions below
david brumer
seattle
העימותים האלימים באיראן: למה העולם שותק?
All the peace-loving and justice-loving Europeans, British professors in search of freedom and equality, the friends filling the newspapers, magazines and various academic journals with various demands for boycotting Israel, defaming Zionism and blaming us and it for all the ills and woes of the world -- could it be that they have taken a long summer vacation? Now of all times, when the Basij hooligans have begun to slaughter innocent civilians in the city squares of Tehran? Aren't they connected to the Internet? Don't they have YouTube? Has a terrible virus struck down their computers? Have their justice glands been removed in a complicated surgical procedure (to be re-implanted successfully for the next confrontation in Gaza)? How can it be that when a Jew kills a Muslim, the entire world boils, and when extremist Islam slaughters its citizens, whose sole sin is the aspiration to freedom, the world is silent?
This appeared in Hebrew in Ma'ariv. This translation (in full) has been circulating:
From the blog, Solomonia
Tell us, where is everyone? Where did all the people who demonstrated against Israel's brutality in Operation Cast Lead, in the Second Lebanon War, in Operation Defensive Shield, or even in The Hague, when we were dragged there unwillingly after daring to build a separation barrier between us and the suicide bombers, disappear to? We see demonstrations here and there, but these are mainly Iranian exiles. Europe, in principle, is peaceful and calm. So is the United States. Here and there a few dozens, here and there a few hundreds. Have they evaporated because it is Tehran and not here?
All the peace-loving and justice-loving Europeans, British professors in search of freedom and equality, the friends filling the newspapers, magazines and various academic journals with various demands for boycotting Israel, defaming Zionism and blaming us and it for all the ills and woes of the world -- could it be that they have taken a long summer vacation? Now of all times, when the Basij hooligans have begun to slaughter innocent civilians in the city squares of Tehran? Aren't they connected to the Internet? Don't they have YouTube? Has a terrible virus struck down their computers? Have their justice glands been removed in a complicated surgical procedure (to be re-implanted successfully for the next confrontation in Gaza)? How can it be that when a Jew kills a Muslim, the entire world boils, and when extremist Islam slaughters its citizens, whose sole sin is the aspiration to freedom, the world is silent?
Imagine that this were not happening now in Tehran, but rather here. Let's say in Nablus. Spontaneous demonstrations of Palestinians turning into an ongoing bloodbath. Border Policemen armed with knives, on motorcycles, butchering demonstrators. A young woman downed by a sniper in midday, dying before the cameras. Actually, why imagine? We can just recall what happened with the child Mohammed a-Dura. How the affair (which was very harsh, admittedly) swept the world from one end to another. The fact that a later independent investigative report raised tough questions as to the identity of the weapon from which a-Dura was shot, did not make a difference to anyone. The Zionists were to blame, and that was that.
And where are the world's leaders? Where is the wondrous rhetorical ability of Barack Obama? Where has his sublime vocabulary gone? Where is the desire, that is supposed to be built into all American presidents, to defend and act on behalf of freedom seekers around the globe? What is this stammering?
A source who is connected to the Iranian and security situation, said yesterday that if Obama had shown on the Iranian matter a quarter of the determination with which he assaulted the settlements in the territories, everything would have looked different. "The demonstrators in Iran are desperate for help," said the man, who served in very senior positions for many years, "they need to know that they have backing, that there is an entire world that supports them, but instead they see indifference. And this is happening at such a critical stage of this battle for the soul of Iran and the freedom of the Iranian people. It's sad."
Or the European Union, for example. The organization that speaks of justice and peace all year round. Why should its leaders not declare clearly that the world wants to see a democratic and free Iran, and support it unreservedly? Could it be that the tongue of too many Europeans is still connected to dark places? The pathetic excuse that such support would give Khamenei and Ahmadinejad an excuse to call the demonstrators "Western agents," does not hold water. They call them "Western agents" in any case, so what difference does it make?
To think that just six months ago, when Europe was flooded with demonstrations against Israel, leftists and Islamists raised pictures of Nasrallah, the protégé of the ayatollah regime. The fact that this was a benighted regime did not trouble them. This is madness, but it is sinking in and influencing the weary West. If there is a truly free world here, let it appear immediately! And impose sanctions, for example, on those who slaughter the members of their own people. Just as it imposed them on North Korea, or on the military regime in Burma. It is only a question of will, not of ability.
Apparently, something happens to the global adherence to justice and equality, when it comes to Iran. The oppression is overt and known. The Internet era broadcasts everything live, and it is all for the better. Hooligans acting on behalf of the regime shoot and stab masses of demonstrators, who cry out for freedom.
Is anything more needed? Apparently it is. Because it is to no avail. The West remains indifferent. Obama is polite. Why shouldn't he be, after all, he aspires to a dialogue with the ayatollahs. And that is very fine and good, the problem is that at this stage there is no dialogue, but there is death and murder on the streets. At this stage, one must forget the rules of etiquette for a moment. The voices being heard from Obama elicit concern that we are actually dealing with a new version of Chamberlain. Being conciliatory is a positive trait, particularly when it follows the clumsy bellicosity of George Bush, but when conciliation becomes blindness,we have a problem.
The courageous voice of Angela Merkel, who issued yesterday a firm statement of support for the Iranian people and its right to freedom, is in the meantime a lone voice in the Western wilderness. It is only a shame that she has not announced an economic boycott, in light of the fact that this is the European country that is most invested in building infrastructure in Iran. She was joined by British Foreign Secretary Miliband. It is little, it is late, it is not enough. Millions of freedom seekers have taken to the streets in Iran, and the West is straddling the fence, one leg here, the other leg there.
There is a different Islam. This is already clear today. Even in Iran. There are millions of Muslims who support freedom, human rights, equality for women. These millions loathe Khamenei, Chavez and Nasrallah too. But part of the global left wing prefers the ayatollah regime over them. The main thing is for them to raise flags against Israel and America. The question is why the democrats, the liberals, and Obama, Blair and Sarkozy, are continuing to sit on the fence. This is not a fence of separation, it is a fence of shame.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Ari Shavit (and Bibi) get it exactly right: A Demilitarized Palestinian State next to The Jewish State of Israel
Ari Shavit sheds light on the real significance of Bibi's speech. You'd never know it, though, if you listened to NPR this morning: Netanyahu Puts Restrictions On A Palestinian State
Of course, Bibi was speaking to two main constituencies: the Israeli mainstream and President Obama. As Shavit points out, he took a gamble with his own coalition, but it was the courageous, and correct thing to do. Now the ball is back squarely in the Palestinians', and Arab world's court.
david brumer
The Unifier
Ari Shavit
Benjamin Netanyahu placed the spotlight squarely on one irreplaceable phrase: a demilitarized Palestinian state next to a Jewish State of Israel. He put on the table a clear, realistic and precise diplomatic formula that reflects the worldview of the Israeli majority. The root of the conflict is the Palestinians' refusal to recognize Jewish history, Jewish sovereignty and the Jewish people's right to a state in the Land of Israel.
Netanyahu's new move is dangerous. If he loses the right without gaining the left and Barack Obama, it could destroy him. But that is precisely why the Bar-Ilan speech was a courageous one. Netanyahu is well aware of the dangers ahead. Yet at the decisive moment, several days ago, he told his worried aides that he would do the right thing, even if it brought about his downfall. In that moment, he proved that he is not a politician but a statesman. He proved that he has matured. At the end of a long and painful labor, he has given birth to his internal truth.
Friday, June 5, 2009
A Sane, Moderate Voice on Israel's proposed "loyalty legislation": Facing the real challenges ahead
Looking further into the future, we must not be naïve about the magnitude of the challenge: Ideas that deny the legitimacy of the Zionist project and the right of Jews to self-determination have indeed taken hold among many—often among the young intellectual elite—Israeli Arabs, or as they call themselves, the “1948 Palestinians.” The worry about their loyalty is not baseless. The point is, however, that the sledgehammer of legislation is probably the wrong tool here. A much more subtle, nuanced, and complex strategy is needed, one which would include the encouragement of moderate voices (and, following Obama, a clear message that we do not see Islam per se as an enemy, nor do we seek to deny Israeli citizens their rights) side by side with stern measures against those, such as the Hamas sympathizers in the “Northern wing” (the more extremist branch) of the Islamic Movement in Israel, who cross the threshold from expressions of collective identity and memory to active rejection of the authority of the state. --eran lerman
"Loyalty Legislation" and Israel's Arab Minority
Dr. Eran Lerman, Director, AJC's Israel/Middle East Office
Within the last few days, three different members of Knesset put forward proposed bills dealing—in effect—with the interrelated questions of loyalty and legitimacy: Are Israel’s Arab citizens “loyal,” and if not, can their political role be diminished? Two of the movers behind these bills belong to Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu Party, another to the Jewish Home Party, a reconstituted version of the National Religious Party; both parties are members of the governing coalition and their ideas seem to resonate with some within Likud and many outside it. They advocate:
Swearing an oath of loyalty—a pledge of allegiance—as a prerequisite for citizenship, and refusal to do so as reason enough to deny citizenship to those who already hold it. Military service would be another key criterion. Although the latter issue would apply to Israel’s sizable population of ultra-Orthodox Jews who find ways to avoid the draft, the main thrust of the loyalty law is clearly aimed at the Arab minority.
Making acts of disloyalty, such as disparaging national symbols, punishable—a position reminiscent of the U.S. debate over flag burning;
Prohibiting the practice of mourning Israel’s independence (which almost immediately came to be known as the “Nakba Law,” after the word—meaning a catastrophe, in Arabic—used by Palestinians to describe, from their point of view, what befell them in 1948).
Once again, Arabs are not the only ones in Israel for whom the “Zionist” Independence Day is a bitter moment; similar displays are common among radical Haredi groups, such as Neturei Karta. And for most Arabs, the moment of grief is marked on “Nakba Day,” May 15 on the Gregorian calendar, and not by the Hebrew date. It is clear, however, that this is another attempt to disqualify the legitimacy of Israeli Arabs. As it happens, pieces of legislation moved by members of the coalition require prior approval by the Cabinet Committee on Legislation; and there these particular initiatives were brought to a halt, for the time being, amid great public debate. Advocates argued that the U.S. administers a pledge (yes, but only to new citizens); denigrators drew dark parallels with Europe in the twenties. Former Meretz leader Yossi Beilin publicly threatened to challenge the loyalty tests and even go to jail, if need be (a somewhat grandiose posture, since no such sentences are envisioned—“just” the denial of the right to vote). Labor Party activists urged their leader, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, to take a stand, even though in other respects, such as commitment to the Road Map and ultimately to the two-state solution, he has found common ground with Foreign Minister Lieberman.
At the end of the day, the resistance is set to grow; Lieberman will be able to tell his voters that he did his best—but the laws are unlikely to pass. This will not make the dual problems go away, however. They are bound to linger even if the present bout of “loyalty legislation” dissipates. On the one hand, there are real and serious questions that arise as to the basic loyalty of Israeli Arabs—or rather, of their political leaders, who often invest most of their efforts in supporting the cause of Hezbollah or Hamas rather than in obtaining better terms for their fellow citizens. This pattern has done much, in recent years, to undermine the position of Israeli liberal voices. On the other hand, there is an alarming aspect to the very fact that some Israeli political figures are willing to play for popular sentiment and, in the process, seem to lose sight of basic international—and Jewish—norms of civic conduct.
The challenges are real, but the political reactions on both sides are, to a certain extent, designed to exacerbate the conflict. Can useful lessons be learned, over time? Possibly—if Israeli Arab politicians, beyond their shrill response (“fascists!” “racists!”) to the proposed bills, do give a thought to the deeper causes that made such initiatives popular among many Israeli Jews; and if politicians on the Jewish political right, who claim to speak for the Jewish people, stop and ponder that by taking such a stance against a minority, they undercut the very legitimacy of Jews as a minority group elsewhere. Sadly, the growing insularity of Israelis, and their blindness toward the existential condition of the other half of the Jewish people, do play a role in creating the present crisis.
Looking further into the future, we must not be naïve about the magnitude of the challenge: Ideas that deny the legitimacy of the Zionist project and the right of Jews to self-determination have indeed taken hold among many—often among the young intellectual elite—Israeli Arabs, or as they call themselves, the “1948 Palestinians.” The worry about their loyalty is not baseless. The point is, however, that the sledgehammer of legislation is probably the wrong tool here. A much more subtle, nuanced, and complex strategy is needed, one which would include the encouragement of moderate voices (and, following Obama, a clear message that we do not see Islam per se as an enemy, nor do we seek to deny Israeli citizens their rights) side by side with stern measures against those, such as the Hamas sympathizers in the “Northern wing” (the more extremist branch) of the Islamic Movement in Israel, who cross the threshold from expressions of collective identity and memory to active rejection of the authority of the state.
Busy as it is with the burdens of the Iranian threat, a problematic debate with the Obama Administration over the settlements, and the uncertain future of the economy, the Israeli leadership cannot put this issue on the back burner and leave it to wait for better days.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Why the Settlements are a Red Herring: Views from the Left and the Right
The settlements are a red herring, and anyone who knows recent as well as more distant history understands this. Israel, and Israelis, have shown their willingness, even their eagerness, to dismantle settlements--see Yamit, Gaza, northern Samaria--and make even larger land concessions/withdrawals--see all of Sinai, southern Lebanon buffer zone, all of Gaza) in the hopes that this would achieve the long yearned for peace and normalization. If land for peace has proven to be a chimera, what then would freezing existing settlement growth solve?
below, views from the left and right.
david brumer
From my point of view, there are settlements and then there are settlements. I'll get to the differences soon. But the idea of stopping all construction in all settlements means that once again the Israelis will be ceding something in advance and for nothing in return. This is a destructive negotiating tactic and will encourage the same kind of intransigence -you give me, I take- that has marked the Palestinians in all of the talks. After all, the West Bank is one of the prime subjects of the parleying. Telling the Israelis that they can't build another house in this settlement and in that one, too (in all of the settlements, in fact) means that no one can marry and no one can have children and no one can add a room to the house. This is not diplomacy; it is the smothering of ordinary life. Since there is an ongoing demographic race in Jerusalem, which is also one of the subjects at any future conference, why doesn't the administration also demand from the Jews and the Arabs that they cease pro-creating? m peretz
Netanyahu should have unequivocally rejected the false symmetry drawn between settlements and genocidal schemes against the Jewish state. He should have reproved his interlocutors for the grossly unjust moral equivalence they carelessly create. It might have helped to remind opinion-molders abroad that the settlements didn't cause our regional strife and that consequently, visceral enmity for Israel won't disappear, even if every last settlement does. The settlements, Bibi should have emphasized, are red herrings deliberately dragged in - with heaps of malice aforethought - to mislead the uninitiated and thereby undermine Israel.
Arabs regard all of Israel as an illegitimate settlement. Israel was hated, designs for its destruction were blueprinted and terror was rampant before the first settlement was founded on land liberated in the Six Day War of self-defense. Had the Arab world not attempted to destroy Israel in 1967, the territories on which settlements eventually arose wouldn't have come under Israel's control - ergo Arab belligerence predated Israeli settlements.
Israel's head of government might have added that these settlements aren't remote from Israel's heartland. Indeed, they're directly adjacent to its most crowded population centers, besides being the cradle of Jewish history. Jews are hardly foreign interlopers in their homeland. Large Jerusalem neighborhoods - some continuously Jewish from time immemorial - are categorized internationally as objectionable "settlements."
SETTLEMENTS AREN'T the problem and removing them isn't the solution. sarah honig
Martin Peretz
There's a bit of a fracas today just below Michael Crowley's astute Plank, "Obama v. Netanyahu," about whether or not I had ever criticized the settlements. Well, the truth is that I have, actually from early on when they were creations facilitated by peace icons like Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin. Just to test me, take a look at my writings from Hebron during the summer of 2005.
In the exchange of demands between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the Netanyahu government has asked that the P.A. recognize the State of Israel and also that it is the state of the Jewish people. One would think that there would be nothing simpler than this. It was the basic presumption of the League of Nations mandate to the British in Palestine, starting in 1921-1922. And most significantly from the point of view of international history, the United Nations General Assembly sanctioned and provided for a "Jewish state" in Palestine and an "Arab state" in Palestine already in late 1947.
I will make my not-at-all-pedantic little point again: The imagined Arab state was not denoted as Palestinian because no one in their right mind at the U.N. saw a Palestinian people on the horizon. The local Arabs were mostly satraps of the surrounding Arab countries. They defined themselves within tribes and clans, extended families and gangs of ruffians There was no national vision with which to see the lost opportunity. They now apparently do really want a state and they even call themselves Palestinians, which is a promising start. Mazal tov. When the Zionists aspired to statehood they built national institutions, and they were building those national institutions ever since World War I, at least. Not so the Palestinians who have supped for almost 60 years at the penurious gruel fed to them by UNRWA, which is the U.N.'s instrument for keeping them dependent. And their case for a state was made by waves of successive organizations whose identity was tied to distinctive forms of terrorism.
Still, Israel has committed itself to withdrawing from the 92% of the land it captured in 1967, plus compensation in Israeli territory abutting an envisioned Palestinian state. No, no, said the Palestinians. We'll take nothing less than 100% of the very territory Jordan had ruled after annexing it in 1949. It was Yassir Arafat, after all, who walked out of Bill Clinton's Camp David talks in 2000 and not Ehud Barak who actually gave and gave and gave.
Now, the Obama administration is engaged in another try at the peace process, egged on presumably by the preposterous idea that, if Bibi only utters the magic phrase "two-state solution" and halts construction even for natural growth in every single one of the settlements, America's troubles in the world of Islam will not only ease but be transformed. Not surprisingly, Hilary Clinton, our martinet secretary of state, has enthusiastically rushed to formulate these instructions to Israel in the harshest possible terms.
This has been a long detour to coming back to my view of settlements. From my point of view, there are settlements and then there are settlements. I'll get to the differences soon. But the idea of stopping all construction in all settlements means that once again the Israelis will be ceding something in advance and for nothing in return. This is a destructive negotiating tactic and will encourage the same kind of intransigence -you give me, I take- that has marked the Palestinians in all of the talks. After all, the West Bank is one of the prime subjects of the parleying. Telling the Israelis that they can't build another house in this settlement and in that one, too (in all of the settlements, in fact) means that no one can marry and no one can have children and no one can add a room to the house. This is not diplomacy; it is the smothering of ordinary life. Since there is an ongoing demographic race in Jerusalem, which is also one of the subjects at any future conference, why doesn't the administration also demand from the Jews and the Arabs that they cease pro-creating?
In fact, the 2003 "road map" made distinctions among settlements, envisioning that most would be vacated by Israel but that the largest would remain sovereign Israeli territory. The very largest happen to cling to Jerusalem. I wouldn't withdraw from them in a million years. Not even the crankiest peacenik in Israel would pull out from Ma'aleh Adumim, virtually cheek by jowl to Jerusalem and with more than 35,000 inhabitants. There are other smaller towns close to Jerusalem that will not be given up. This is a matter of the security of the city, its breathing room and, yes, its centrality in Jewish history and in contemporary Jewish life.
There is a price to be paid by the Palestinians by their suicidal politics over the decades. In fact, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert withdrew from four West Bank settlements. But that was before the Gaza settlements and the entirety of the Strip which Israel vacated became a war front with missiles and rockets regularly fired into Israel. Jerusalem had prepared for a much wider retreat from Judea and Samaria so that Palestine could emerge as territorially intact. If Netanyahu is reluctant now to utter the "two-state solution" mantra it is because the mistakes of his three predecessors -Ehud Barak, Sharon and Olmert- have taught him that Israel should not give by declaration in advance what is properly the subject of a treaty and of its enumerated and believable guarantees. And if I were Netanyahu, I would expect also to be able to increase defensive settlements in the Jordan Valley rift as a protection against Palestinian terror flowing east to west and west to east between the kingdom and the new Palestine.
The regions populated by Palestinian Arabs would still be coterminous and coherent. And if he has to give a little more of the Negev to the Palestinian state, so be it. As the Israelis have demonstrated, the desert also produces...If you will it is no dream. A peace process should not be an invitation to mayhem. I am afraid that the Obama administration has embarked on a perilous journey. It should stop trying to orchestrate what Israel does in the (vain) hope that the Palestinian Authority will come around and say something realistic.
P.S.: The Yale University Press has recently published a book, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel-Palestine Conflict, by the brave and truthful historian Benny Morris. He is also a frequent contributor to TNR. I've learned from every piece of writing he has done, even when some of the material shocked me. One of the original "new historians" of Zionism, Morris writes in this book about a possible solution to the "problem." It is a federation between Palestine and Jordan. OK with me; not OK, I believe, either with the king or the politicians of Palestine. The National Interest has had this book reviewed in its current issue by Walter Laqueur, certainly the most distinguished living historian of almost every aspect of the subject. A clear headed Zionist, he is not a patsy for anyone. He also thinks that the settlements, if held too indiscriminately and too long, would ruin Israel. But he knows well the intrinsic impediments to the Palestinians actually dealing with real realities on the ground. Here and there, I disagree with Laqueur (as with Morris). But it would be a good deed for someone to slip either Morris' book or Laqueur's review essay, at least, into the president as he starts off on a trip to wherever. And it better be soon, before he flies to Cairo and promises the impossible and gets nothing in return.
Another Tack: What Bibi didn't say
Sarah Honig
In salvaging the image of a beleaguered country like Israel, it's not merely the justice of the case which counts, and not only how convincingly it's made in private. The key is to ensure listenership. Even the most effective of arguments is useless without an audience.
Binyamin Netanyahu had that audience, and with it the opportunity to stress the most elementary facts of our existence, which are, alas, too often overridden by simplistic slogans and shallow conventional wisdom. He could have done more good than Israel's entire diplomatic corps and then some. Whatever he accomplished behind the scenes, Bibi missed the opportunity to sound the voice of sanity in obsessively kitschy and dangerously unrealistic America.
Lots of ears were perked to hear what Israel's newly reelected PM would say when he visited Washington (for the first time after reassuming office) to meet with new US President Barack Obama (whose posture vis-a-vis Israel is more than a little disconcerting). Contention between the two simmered barely below the surface, tension was in the air and the media was on the lookout for good copy. America was listening.
Too bad Bibi failed to seize the opportunity.
Unlike his three predecessors, his heart is in the right place and he was prudent to evade the public semblance of open confrontation with Obama. Yet Obama hardly reciprocated in kind. He preached superciliously from the supposed moral high ground, seeming intent on casting Netanyahu as the obstructionist nay-sayer.
To dodge the baited and primed trap, Netanyahu abstained from trashing the "two-state solution" too stridently, regardless of how deceptive and how much of a survival-threatening proposition it represents for Israel. In our inauspicious circumstances, we should be grateful he didn't obsequiously offer to swallow the poisoned pill, as his three predecessors had with suicidal alacrity.
But Bibi could have challenged other fashionable mantras mouthed unthinkingly everywhere as if they were gospel. Moreover, golden opportunities to set the record straight presented themselves away from the White House turf, where Netanyahu was understandably loath to irk his unfriendly host.
HE COULD, for example, have refuted various facile refrains on Capitol Hill - like the persistent notion that settlements impede peace. This issue of course is intrinsically interconnected with the cliche condemnation of Israeli "occupation" and the sanctimonious clamor for a Palestinian state.
Netanyahu should have unequivocally rejected the false symmetry drawn between settlements and genocidal schemes against the Jewish state. He should have reproved his interlocutors for the grossly unjust moral equivalence they carelessly create. But he seemed resigned to the equation and only demanded reciprocity in its application.
It might have helped to remind opinion-molders abroad that the settlements didn't cause our regional strife and that consequently, visceral enmity for Israel won't disappear, even if every last settlement does. The settlements, Bibi should have emphasized, are red herrings deliberately dragged in - with heaps of malice aforethought - to mislead the uninitiated and thereby undermine Israel.
Arabs regard all of Israel as an illegitimate settlement. Israel was hated, designs for its destruction were blueprinted and terror was rampant before the first settlement was founded on land liberated in the Six Day War of self-defense. Had the Arab world not attempted to destroy Israel in 1967, the territories on which settlements eventually arose wouldn't have come under Israel's control - ergo Arab belligerence predated Israeli settlements.
Israel's head of government might have added that these settlements aren't remote from Israel's heartland. Indeed, they're directly adjacent to its most crowded population centers, besides being the cradle of Jewish history. Jews are hardly foreign interlopers in their homeland. Large Jerusalem neighborhoods - some continuously Jewish from time immemorial - are categorized internationally as objectionable "settlements."
SETTLEMENTS AREN'T the problem and removing them isn't the solution. Israel foolishly dismantled 21 Gaza Strip settlements in 2005. Did peace blossom all over as a result? Precisely the reverse occurred. The razing of Israeli communities was regarded as terror's triumph, expediting the Hamas takeover. Emboldened by seeming success, Hamastan amassed formidable military arsenals and launched rocket attacks on Israeli civilians.
Israel generously left behind costly hothouses and other livelihood-generating facilities - incentives for Gazans to opt for productive pursuits rather than murder and mayhem. Nevertheless, the bequeathed infrastructure was wrecked in violent frenzy and turned into terror bases. So much for addressing Gaza's humanitarian plight.
This pattern should be borne in American minds before Congressional kibitzers admonish Israel. Fatahland stands ready in Judea and Samaria to emulate Hamastan. However, the potential disaster for Israel on its elongated eastern flank makes Gazan aggression in the south appear negligible.
Netanyahu should have spread out maps and pointed to the location of the settlements that so incense the State Department. They adjoin Petah Tikva, Kfar Saba and Netanya - all quite close to Tel Aviv. This is Israel's notorious narrow waistline (nine miles between the Mediterranean and the border near Netanya). The settlements give Israel minimal depth and constitute bulwarks against utter chaos rather than obstacles to utopian harmony. They are precisely the opposite of what latter-day disguised blood-libelers claim.
Maligning the settlements - with such alarming unanimity - is the updated version of blaming Jews for whatever ails the world. Once it was medieval Europe's Black Death. Today it's Islam's insidious inroads into modern Europe. Even responsibility for Iranian nukes can be laid at Israel's door. If only Israeli settlements were sacrificed to appease the savage beast, the rest of the world might enjoy a lulling respite. And when that respite is over, more demands will be made of the Jews - who, as always, upset global equilibrium.
In the plainest language, Netanyahu should have told his listeners that they are going after the wrong side, allowing the real miscreants to gain strength while weakening a true ally and making it more vulnerable to hostile predation. This, Netanyahu should have declared, won't save America, or anyone else. It will only hasten the cataclysm.
Netanyahu should have reminded Americans that during the Six Day War - before any so-called Israeli occupation or settlement activity began - a Jordanian WWII-vintage Long Tom cannon hit an apartment building in central Tel Aviv's Kikar Masaryk, a mere hop from City Hall. That antiquated weapon was fired from a lowly hill outside Kfar Saba. Visible and assailable from that hill are greater Tel Aviv, the extended Dan and Sharon regions and Israel's three power stations (Ashkelon, Reading and Hadera). Were that hill to be ceded, no car could travel safely in metropolitan Tel-Aviv and no plane could land or take off from Ben-Gurion Airport.
Any attempt to hinge "accommodation with Iran" on suffocating the settlements is tantamount to advising Israelis to slit their own throats before Ahmadinejad nukes them. That's what Bibi should have said. Instead he mumbled something about not constructing new settlements.
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Sunday, May 24, 2009
My Review of Daniel Gordis' "Saving Israel" in weekend edition of the Jerusalem Post
The results of two studies in the twin pillars of modern Jewish life, one in Israel, the other in America, reveal how serious matters have gotten. When asked if the destruction (mind you, the destruction, not the gradual withering away) of Israel would be a personal tragedy for them, an astounding 50 percent of Jewish Americans under the age of 35 said it would not. The other alarming study result is that 50% of Israeli schoolchildren apparently do not know who Theodor Herzl was.
Sophisticated works like Alterman's "The Silver Platter" or Bialik's "In the City of Slaughter," while rebukes of the old order, called for the creation of a "new Jew" and reflected their authors' prodigious knowledge of Jewish history. Today, many an Israeli is ambivalent about his or her army service, is hard pressed to explain why he should pay exorbitant taxes and live by the social dictates of what he considers medieval religious fanatics, and wonders aloud about the merits of or need for a Jewish state. Too many of these Israelis, warns Gordis, no longer believe in a Zionist ethos in large part because they have lost the connection to their roots in Jewish life. Gordis is talking about Jewish identity and Jewish history, not necessarily Jewish religious life, an important subject he tackles in other chapters.
Hanukka was originally a military victory celebration. Initial eyewitness accounts spoke of victory celebrations lasting for eight days, without an emphasis on the "miracle" of enduring flames from oil. In more recent times, the poet Aharon Ze'ev wrote a children's song, "We Bear Torches," insisting that a miracle did not happen to us, but rather people, with their courage and their might, wrought the miracle ("we chiseled away the stone until we bled").
Another illustration of our discomfort with the exercise of power comes from a midrash retelling the part of the Passover story where God chastises his angels for reveling in song, while the Egyptian army perished in pursuit of the fleeing Hebrews. (B. Megilla 10b) "The work of My hands is being drowned in the sea, and you would chant hymns?" But there is another midrash that is cited far less frequently. In this one, God reprimands the angels, saying, "My troops are in distress, and you would sing to me?" (Exodus Rabba 23:7). A very different message, suggesting that there are battles that must be fought and won, unavoidably shedding blood.
Clearly, many Jews today, including some Israelis, subscribe to the credo that war and the use of force is "un-Jewish." This is particularly so for Western Jews, especially those who've been raised in the comfort and safety of America. Many have a visceral aversion to war, are committed to the principles of pacifism and find themselves at odds with Israel's military actions.
Gordis concludes that the pacifist option would lead to national suicide of the Jewish people. Nonviolence is a luxury that we can ill afford. Instead, he suggests that we defend ourselves when necessary, "occasionally using massive force, with all the ambivalence that that inevitably arouses." We should embrace the often ignored Jewish tradition's understanding that the use of military might is sometimes a necessity (in fact, Jewish law has an entire category of war, milhemet mitzva, "commanded wars," or wars that must be waged), and in certain circumstances, the only thing that will keep us alive in an increasingly hostile world.
In other chapters, Gordis explores pressing issues facing Israel today, including the rising tensions between Israeli Arabs (who now prefer the moniker Palestinian-Israelis) and Israeli Jews, and those between secular Jewish Israelis (as well as more moderately observant Jews) and the haredim. or ultra-Orthodox. He poses unsettling questions that have been unasked for too long and raises politically incorrect propositions, not as dogma, but as a beginning for constructive dialogues.
Gordis cautions that our greatest strengths can prove to be our greatest weaknesses (and undoing). We are by nature a self-reflective and self-critical people, and this has served us well (note how after the debacle of the IDF's performance in the Second Lebanon War, stock was taken, leaders were dismissed and the army restored its fighting prowess and morale). We must not let that healthy tendency veer into self-flagellation and worse, self-loathing. This can be seductive to some, when peace seems more distant than ever. It must be one party's fault, goes the reasoning, and since the Palestinians are increasingly seen by the world as the victim, then the fault must lie with the Jews.
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Sunday, May 17, 2009
Important Voices on the Left in Israel (Ari Shavit) & America (Jeffrey Goldberg) re: Israel, Iran, Nukes and the Stakes for the World
Iran will surely top Netanyahu's agenda when he meets with President Obama this week. Too many in the West have already resigned themselves to Iran joining the still small circle of nations possessing nuclear weapons. Clearly, Israelis have not accepted this prospect as inevitable and will not sit idly by. The West, led by President Obama, would do well to consider the dire implications of a nuclear Iran, while there is still time to prevent such a disastrous, and irrevocable development.
Below, Ari Shavit's chilling prophecy of what today's inaction could lead to and Jeffrey Goldberg's careful analysis of what the threat of a nuclear Iran looks like to Israel and the Jewish people.
david brumer
The first signs that something was wrong had already appeared at the end of that first year of grace. Nevertheless, Washington was astounded when, in the summer of 2010, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that he was expelling international inspectors and galloping full-tilt toward the production of nuclear weapons. The shock turned to horror on the eve of Christmas 2010, when Iran's spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei, stated that his country had its first three nuclear warheads - aimed at Riyadh, Cairo and Tel Aviv.Spring 2011 was dramatic. First a mutual defense treaty and an agreement to collaborate on oil exports were signed between Tehran and the fragile Baghdad government. Then Kuwait, Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Dubai bowed their heads and signed treaties that made them protectorates of the rising Shi'ite state. Saudi Arabia took the opposite approach: In May 2011, it announced that it had purchased nuclear weapons from Pakistan both for itself and for its ally Egypt.
By Thanksgiving 2011, the situation was clear. Jordan's King Abdullah left for exile in London. Hezbollah took control of Beirut and a bloody war of attrition erupted between Israel and the Palestinians. The unrest in western Asia had repercussions on the rest of the international arena: Afghanistan went up in flames, Pakistan collapsed and Russia raised its head. In view of Washington's helplessness, some European states began to lean increasingly toward China. When the price of oil rose above $200 a barrel, the American economy plunged into another deep recession. Obama had no chance in the snows of Iowa in 2012.
excerpt from Ari Shavit's Obama in 2012, after he fails to deal with Iran
Mr. Netanyahu says he supports Mr. Obama’s plan to engage the Iranians. He also supports the tightening of sanctions on the regime, if engagement doesn’t work. But there should be little doubt that, by the end of this year, if no progress is made, Mr. Netanyahu will seriously consider attacking Iran. His military advisers tell me they believe an attack, even an attack conducted without American help or permission, would have a reasonably high chance of setting back the Iranian program for two to five years. Around the world, this would be an extraordinarily unpopular step, but Mr. Netanyahu knows he would have much of the Israeli public behind him. Even the man who delivered the eulogy at his brother’s funeral, the far more dovish Shimon Peres, has assimilated the lessons Benzion taught his sons. When I visited recently with Mr. Peres, who is now Israel’s president, I asked him if there is a chance that his country has over-learned the lessons of Jewish history. He answered, “If we have to make a mistake of overreaction or underreaction, I think I prefer the overreaction.”
excerpt from Jeffrey Goldberg, Israel’s Fears, Amalek’s Arsenal
Israel’s Fears, Amalek’s Arsenal
By JEFFREY GOLDBERG
WHEN the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, visits the White House on Monday for his first stage-setting visit, he will carry with him an agenda that clashes insistently with that of President Obama. Mr. Obama wants Mr. Netanyahu to endorse the creation of a Palestinian state. Mr. Netanyahu wants something else entirely: the president’s agreement that Iran must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons. Mr. Netanyahu, in his first term as prime minister in the late 1990s, earned a reputation for conspicuous insincerity. It is therefore possible to interpret his fixation on Iran — he told me in a recent conversation that it is ruled by a “messianic apocalyptic cult” — as a way of avoiding the mare’s nest of problems associated with the Middle East peace process, especially the escalating pressure from the Obama administration to curb Jewish settlement on the West Bank.
This reading of Mr. Netanyahu holds that he is, at bottom, a cynic (or, if you agree with him, a pragmatist), who will bluff vigorously but bend whenever he thinks it expedient or unavoidable. In his first term, he betrayed the principles of the Greater Israel movement by relinquishing part of Judaism’s second-holiest city, Hebron, to the control of Yasir Arafat. His pragmatism evinces itself, as well, in his apparent belief that the relationship between Israel and Washington is sacrosanct. In other words, Mr. Netanyahu, despite his rhetoric, would never launch a strike on Iran without the permission of Mr. Obama — permission that in no way appears forthcoming.
But this is to misread both the prime minister and this moment in Jewish history. It is true that Mr. Netanyahu would prefer to avoid hard decisions concerning the Palestinian issue, for reasons both political (he is not, let us say, sympathetic to the cause of Palestinian self-determination) and strategic (he believes the Palestinians, divided and dysfunctional, their extremists firmly in the Iranian camp, are unready for compromise). Nevertheless, the prime minister’s preoccupation with the Iranian nuclear program seems sincere and deeply felt. I recently asked one of his advisers to gauge for me the depth of Mr. Netanyahu’s anxiety about Iran. His answer: “Think Amalek.”
“Amalek,” in essence, is Hebrew for “existential threat.” Tradition holds that the Amalekites are the undying enemy of the Jews. They appear in Deuteronomy, attacking the rear columns of the Israelites on their escape from Egypt. The rabbis teach that successive generations of Jews have been forced to confront the Amalekites: Nebuchadnezzar, the Crusaders, Torquemada, Hitler and Stalin are all manifestations of Amalek’s malevolent spirit.
If Iran’s nuclear program is, metaphorically, Amalek’s arsenal, then an Israeli prime minister is bound by Jewish history to seek its destruction, regardless of what his allies think. In our recent conversation, Mr. Netanyahu avoided metaphysics and biblical exegesis, but said that Iran’s desire for nuclear weapons represented a “hinge of history.”
“Iran has threatened to annihilate a state,” he said. “In historical terms, this is an astounding thing. It’s a monumental outrage that goes effectively unchallenged in the court of public opinion. Sure, there are perfunctory condemnations, but there’s no j’accuse — there’s no shock.” He argued that one lesson of history is that “bad things tend to get worse if they’re not challenged early.” He went on, “Iranian leaders talk about Israel’s destruction or disappearance while simultaneously creating weapons to ensure its disappearance.
”Mr. Netanyahu doesn’t believe that Iran would necessarily launch a nuclear-tipped missile at Tel Aviv. He argues instead that Iran could bring about the eventual end of Israel simply by possessing such weaponry. “Iran’s militant proxies would be able to fire rockets and engage in other terror activities while enjoying a nuclear umbrella,” he said. This could lead to the depopulation of the Negev and the Galilee, both of which have already endured sustained rocket attacks by Hamas and Hezbollah. More broadly, he said, a nuclear Iran “would embolden Islamic militants far and wide, on many continents, who would believe that this is a providential sign, that this fanaticism is on the ultimate road to triumph.”
To understand why Mr. Netanyahu sees Iran as a new Amalek, it is essential to understand two aspects of his intellectual and emotional development: The scholarship of his father, and the martyrdom of his older brother.His father, Benzion Netanyahu, 99, is a pre-eminent historian of Spanish Jewry. “The Origins of the Inquisition in 15th-Century Spain,” his most notable book, toppled previously held understandings of the Inquisition’s birth. Over more than 1,300 pages, Benzion Netanyahu argued that Spanish hatred of Jews was not merely theologically motivated but based in race hatred (the Spanish pursued the principle of limpieza de sangre, or the purity of blood) that reached back to the ancient world. The elder Netanyahu also argued that efforts by the Jews of Spain to accommodate their adversaries were futile, in part because the charges against them were devoid of logic or fact, and, perhaps most important, because the written or spoken expression of Jew hatred (his preferred term for anti-Semitism) inevitably led to physical persecution. “What emerges from our survey,” he wrote, “is that the Spanish Inquisition was by no means the result of a fortuitous concourse of circumstances and events. It was the product of a movement that called for its creation and labored for decades to bring it about.”A close reading of Benzion Netanyahu suggests a belief that anti-Semitism is a sui generis hatred, one that is shape-shifting, impervious to logic and eternal. The only rational response to such sentiment, in the Netanyahu view, is militant Jewish self-defense.
Benjamin Netanyahu and his two brothers were raised in a home darkened by the history of the Inquisition, and they were taught Benzion’s understanding of the consequences of Jewish weakness. In his 1993 book, “A Place Among the Nations,” Benjamin Netanyahu wrote about what he saw as one of the miracles of the Zionist revolution: “The entire world is witnessing the historical transformation of the Jewish people from a condition of powerlessness to power, from a condition of being unable to meet the contingencies of a violent world to one in which the Jewish people is strong enough to pilot its own destiny.”
If his father provided Mr. Netanyahu with his historical framework, his brother Yonatan bequeathed on him the model of a Jew who devoted his spirit to the cause of his people’s survival. Yonatan, who was killed while leading the 1976 raid on the Entebbe airport in Uganda to free Israeli captives of Arab and German hijackers, is perhaps the most venerated figure in the post-Warsaw Ghetto Jewish martyrology, mainly because Entebbe still symbolizes the purest expression of the modern Jewish rejection of passivity.
Friends and advisers say Benjamin Netanyahu took three lessons from his brother’s death: The first is that those who threaten Jews, and have the means to carry out their threats, should be neutralized pre-emptively. The second is that no one will defend the Jews except the Jews themselves. The third is that destiny has chosen the Netanyahus to expose and battle anti-Semitism — before it reaches the point of genocide.
In his eulogy for Yonatan Netanyahu, Shimon Peres, then Israel’s defense minister, said: “There are times when the fate of an entire people rests on a handful of fighters and volunteers. They must secure the uprightness of our world in one short hour. In such moments, they have no one to ask, no one to turn to. The commanders on the spot determine the fate of the battle.”
BENJAMIN Netanyahu faces the daunting task of maintaining Israel’s relationship with the United States, while at the same time forestalling Iran’s nuclear program. If Iran gains nuclear capacity, Israel will have judged him a failure as prime minister; if he does serious damage to his country’s standing in Washington, he will have failed as well. Mr. Netanyahu may be able to convince Mr. Obama that Iran poses an Amalek-sized threat to Israel, but he will have a much more difficult time convincing him that Iran poses an existential threat to America. It is certainly true that a nuclear Iran is not in the best interests of the United States. It would mean, among other things, the probable beginning of a nuclear arms race in the world’s most volatile region, and it would mean that the 30-year-struggle between America and Iran for domination of the Persian Gulf will be over, with Persia the victor. But the short-term costs, in particular, for an American strike — or an American-approved Israeli strike — could be appallingly high.
As the crisis worsens, Mr. Obama will find his options few, and those that exist will require him to bring to bear all his talents of persuasion. In his effort to engage Iran, he will need to promise a complete end to its international isolation in exchange for a halt to its nuclear program. But at the same time, he must be ready to threaten Iran with total estrangement from the West — the limiting of its gas imports, the choking-off of its banking system — if it continues its nuclear program. To do this, he must convince Europe, China and Russia that a nuclear Iran will be catastrophic for Middle East stability as well as for their own economies. If he’s unwilling to take military action against Iran, President Obama might soon enough be forced to design a containment strategy meant to scare a nuclear Iran into something resembling quiescence. Talk of containing Iran after it acquires a nuclear capacity, however, does not make the Israelis (or Iran’s Arab adversaries, for that matter) happy and, in fact, might push them closer to executing a military strike.
The president, who has shown he understands the special dread Israelis feel about their precarious existence, surely knows this. Last year, during his campaign, he told me, “I know that that there are those who would argue that in some ways America has become a safe refuge for the Jewish people, but if you’ve gone through the Holocaust, then that does not offer the same sense of confidence and security as the idea that the Jewish people can take care of themselves no matter what happens.”
Mr. Netanyahu says he supports Mr. Obama’s plan to engage the Iranians. He also supports the tightening of sanctions on the regime, if engagement doesn’t work. But there should be little doubt that, by the end of this year, if no progress is made, Mr. Netanyahu will seriously consider attacking Iran. His military advisers tell me they believe an attack, even an attack conducted without American help or permission, would have a reasonably high chance of setting back the Iranian program for two to five years. Around the world, this would be an extraordinarily unpopular step, but Mr. Netanyahu knows he would have much of the Israeli public behind him.
Even the man who delivered the eulogy at his brother’s funeral, the far more dovish Shimon Peres, has assimilated the lessons Benzion taught his sons. When I visited recently with Mr. Peres, who is now Israel’s president, I asked him if there is a chance that his country has over-learned the lessons of Jewish history. He answered, “If we have to make a mistake of overreaction or underreaction, I think I prefer the overreaction.”
Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, is the author of “Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror.”
Obama in 2012, after he fails to deal with Iran
By Ari Shavit
Even now, in November 2012, it is hard not to think back with elation on Barack Obama's first year as president of the United States. In his first 100 days in the White House, the energetic president took a series of daring steps that extricated the American economy from its worst crisis since the 1930s. Immediately after that he put an end to torture, indicted Dick Cheney, convened a Middle East peace conference and made historic reconciliation visits to Havana, Damascus and Tehran. Obama's economic and foreign policies were both based on a moral worldview that inspired Americans and non-Americans alike. After years of despair and cynicism, the 44th president proposed a new national and international agenda based on dialogue, demilitarization, justice and peace.
The first signs that something was wrong had already appeared at the end of that first year of grace. Nevertheless, Washington was astounded when, in the summer of 2010, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that he was expelling international inspectors and galloping full-tilt toward the production of nuclear weapons. The shock turned to horror on the eve of Christmas 2010, when Iran's spiritual leader, Ali Khamenei, stated that his country had its first three nuclear warheads - aimed at Riyadh, Cairo and Tel Aviv.Spring 2011 was dramatic. First a mutual defense treaty and an agreement to collaborate on oil exports were signed between Tehran and the fragile Baghdad government. Then Kuwait, Qatar, Abu Dhabi and Dubai bowed their heads and signed treaties that made them protectorates of the rising Shi'ite state. Saudi Arabia took the opposite approach: In May 2011, it announced that it had purchased nuclear weapons from Pakistan both for itself and for its ally Egypt. But Egypt's sudden nuclearization failed to appease the Muslim Brotherhood. Mass demonstrations forced President Hosni Mubarak to resign shortly after he suspended the peace agreement with Israel.
By Thanksgiving 2011, the situation was clear. Jordan's King Abdullah left for exile in London. Hezbollah took control of Beirut and a bloody war of attrition erupted between Israel and the Palestinians. The unrest in western Asia had repercussions on the rest of the international arena: Afghanistan went up in flames, Pakistan collapsed and Russia raised its head. In view of Washington's helplessness, some European states began to lean increasingly toward China. When the price of oil rose above $200 a barrel, the American economy plunged into another deep recession. Obama had no chance in the snows of Iowa in 2012.
So with Oprah Winfrey wiping a tear at his side, the most promising president ever announced he would not run for a second term.What went wrong? Where did Obama go astray? In retrospect, the answer is clear and simple. In the summer of 2009, the president had to make the most courageous decision of his life: to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Granted, opting for confrontation would have been incompatible with the DNA of the liberal Democrat from Chicago. Ironically, however, only such a decision could have saved his legacy and advanced the noble values he believed in. Only that decision could have led to a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. If Obama had decided three years ago to impose a political-economic siege on Tehran, he would have changed the course of history. The Roosevelt of the 21st century would have prevented regional chaos, a worldwide nuclear arms race and an American decline.Yesterday, immediately after television networks announced the sweeping Republican victory of November 2012, close friends gathered around the outgoing president. They found him sad but sober. Obama had no doubts: Had he known at the beginning of his term what he knows now, he would have made a different strategic decision about Iran's nuclear program. If only it were possible to go back, the pensive president told his humbled chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. If only he could have made a different decision in the summer of 2009.
