In one of our posts last month, we promised a critical look at the Israeli position on a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East (NWFZME). Today, we published an article in ForeignPolicy.com that does this; to link to the article, entitled, “Iran Is No Existential Threat”, click here.
Our article opens by noting that President Obama’s Iran policy is coming more and more to look like the dysfunctional approach pursued by his predecessor, “enshrining [zero] enrichment and sanctions as the keys to resolving the nuclear issue”. In our view,
a more constructive approach would seek to maximize international monitoring of Iran’s nuclear activities by emphasizing country-neutral formulation for curbing nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. This would require international acceptance of enrichment of Iranian soil. Getting Iran to ratify and implement the Additional Protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty would be an important step in this direction, but the most effective country-neutral initiative would be the establishment of a nuclear weapons-free zone (NWFZ) in the region.
But, of course, serious discussion of a NWFZME would run up against Israel’s insistence that it could not join such a scheme until Arab-Israeli peace has been achieved and “existential threats” to Israel—like nuclear enrichment in Iran—have been eliminated. Our article argues that this position does not stand up to critical scrutiny:
It is simply not analytically credible to describe the unresolved Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese tracks of the Middle East peace process as “existential threats” to Israel. The 1978 Egypt-Israel Camp David accords effectively dispelled the prospect of Arab armies uniting to “push the Jews into the sea.” Similarly, there is no amount of additional armed capabilities that would allow Palestinian and Lebanese militants to destroy Israel without also destroying the populations they are ostensibly seeking to liberate.
More recently, the dominant Israeli discourse about Iran has routinely characterized an Islamic Republic with a nuclear “breakout” capability — not to mention actual nuclear weapons — as an “existential threat” to Israel. (Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have reiterated Israel’s position that Iran’s full suspension of uranium enrichment is the only acceptable outcome from nuclear talks with Tehran.) But this position, too, does not stand up to rigorous scrutiny. It is not analytically serious to describe an Iran with mastery of the nuclear fuel cycle as an existential threat to Israel or any other state. Even if Iran were to fabricate a nuclear weapon, it is not credible to describe that as an existential threat to Israel — unless one has such a distorted view of Shiite Islam that one believes the Islamic Republic is so focused on damaging “the Zionist entity” that it is collectively willing to become history’s first “suicide nation.”
So, if neither the unresolved tracks of the Arab-Israeli conflict or Iran’s nuclear program are “existential threats” to Israel, why do Israeli leaders characterize them as such? We argue—as does Ariel Ilan Roth in a new article in Foreign Affairs—that Israeli resistance to a NWFZME and its insistence that Iran be stopped from enriching uranium grow out of Israel’s interest in maintaining a regional balance of power tilted strongly in its favor and preserving its unconstrained freedom of unilateral military action. This analysis has important implications for American foreign policy:
The United States has an abiding commitment to Israel’s survival and security. But that commitment should not be confused with maintaining Israel’s military hegemony over the region in perpetuity, by continuing to allow U.S. assurances of an Israeli “qualitative edge” for defensive purposes to be twisted into assurances of maximum freedom for Israel to conduct offensive military operations at will against any regional target.
And, a commitment to Israel’s survival and security should not be misconstrued in a manner the keeps the United States from pursuing strategically-grounded diplomacy with Iran, aimed at a fundamental realignment of relations between America and the Islamic Republic. We look forward to comments and feedback on the article.
–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
Всем Доброго утра! Вот это меня улыбнуло!!!!
I am quite interesed in this topic, hope you will elaborate more on it in future posts.
Нормально, можно cделать маленький сборник.
Кажется, это подойдет.
The “existential threat” argument has always been a red herring. Over time, “existential threats” have undergone geographic creep. First, they consisted of Arab countries on Israel’s borders. Once those “existential threats” disappeared, Israel found new ones farther afield, like Iran. If those disappear, new ones will be conjured up.
“Existential threats” have always been a critical element of Israeli hasbara. Starting with grains of truth about Israel’s enemies and holocaust paranoia, “existential threats” have since morphed into a multi-purpose tool that serves to rally the folks at home, raise money from the diaspora, justify massive American aid, and distract attention from the brutal Occupation. It works because it plays on people’s emotions and resonates with a lot of people, particularly those having concerns or guilt about the Jewish holocaust.
We’ll all be better off when the whole “existential threat” canard takes its rightful place alongside the story of the boy who cried “wolf.”