SPEAKING
FREELY Do
the Iran shuffle By Ben
Schreiner
Iran is the new Nazi Germany,
Mahmud Ahmadinejad the new Hitler. And as the
world wavers and blinks in the face of such evil,
the tyrannical menace grows increasingly
emboldened.
Or so goes the prevailing
narrative of the "Iranian threat." Of course, the
main champion of this line is none other than
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who
personally fancies casting Iran as no less than an
"existential threat" to the state of Israel. In
fact, in addressing the US Congress last May,
Netanyahu thundered to rousing applause (one of 29
such standing ovations) that a nuclear Iran was
the "greatest danger facing humanity."
Of
little surprise then, that as the tensions between
the West and Iran reach crisis level, scarcely a
story in the corporate media on
the Iranian nuclear
program appears without referencing the
"existential threat" to Israel. For per the
"existential threat" refrain, if Iran's nuclear
program cannot soon be stopped - or "taken out" -
Iran will proceed to develop the bomb and place
Israel firmly within its crosshairs. Indeed, a
rather ominous scenario seemingly necessitating a
swift response, perhaps even military
confrontation.
Yet, despite the
predominance of Western politicians and pundits
couching their lusting for war in notions of a
noble defense of Israel, many prominent Israelis
dispute the now popularized conception of the
so-called "Iranian threat."
For instance,
the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that
current Mossad chief Tamir Pardo told an audience
of Israeli ambassadors in late December that even
if Iran where to acquire a nuclear bomb, it
"wouldn't necessarily constitute a threat to
Israel's continued existence." Pardo went on to
lament, "The term existential threat is used too
freely."
Speaking back in 2007,
then-Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni was
likewise reported by Haaretz to have said,
"Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an
existential threat to Israel."
And former
Mossad chief Efraim Halevy and former Israeli
military chief of staff Dan Halutz have also both
shared similar sentiments. With Halutz arguing, "I
don't think there's room for any doomsday
scenarios or comparisons with the Holocaust."
All the aforementioned, it should be
noted, are hardly what one would consider doves.
Still, such statements should elicit
little surprise. For in the end, Iran indeed poses
no such threat - even if it were to develop
nuclear weapons, which both US and Israeli
intelligence agencies maintain Iran is not
currently pursuing. After all, the seemingly
unspeakable truth regularly omitted from Western
discussions of the "Iranian threat" is that Israel
is itself a nuclear power. And as such, Israel
possesses a formidable nuclear deterrent, with an
estimated arsenal of some 200 nuclear warheads.
(Israel neither confirms nor denies the existence
of its nuclear program, and refuses international
inspections.)
Given this, a nuclear attack
on Israel by Iran would be nothing less than
suicidal. And no indication exists that the
Iranian government is in anyway indifferent to its
own survival. As Israeli Defense Minister Ehud
Barak even admitted back 2010: "I don't think the
Iranians, even if they got the bomb, (would) drop
it in the neighborhood. They fully understand what
might follow. They are radical but not totally
crazy. They have a quite sophisticated
decision-making process, and they understand
reality."
So, if Iran isn't suicidal, and
the threat then not existential, what is the
nature of the so-called threat?
Speaking
back in December, Danielle Pletka of the
neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute
revealed the true nature of the "Iranian threat."
As Pletka explained:
The biggest problem
for the United States is not Iran getting a bomb
and testing it. It's Iran getting a nuclear weapon
and not using it. Because the second that they
have one and they don't do anything bad, all of
the naysayers are going to come back and say ‘see,
we told you Iran was a responsible power. We told
you Iran wasn't getting nuclear weapons in order
to use them immediately. We told you Iran wasn't
seeking regional influence or regional hegemony
through its acquisition of nuclear weapons,' and
they will eventually define Iran with nuclear
weapons as not a problem. [1]
In other
words, it is not the survival of Israel that is
feared, but rather US-Israeli military supremacy
in the greater Middle East. It is the potential
challenge to Israel's monopoly on nuclear arms in
the region, along with the exertion of Iranian
national sovereignty, which constitute the real
threat from Iran.
The "existential threat"
card is thus merely posited to shroud the joint
US-Israeli imperial project. Needless to say, it
also serves the additional benefit of browbeating
any anti-imperialist critic, least one be tarred
anti-Semitic. No doubt a rather shameful, albeit
stale, ploy.
Of course, the great irony is
that any Israeli attempt to quash the perceived,
or concocted, existential threat from Iran
promises to only expose Israel to great peril. For
responding militarily to the purely illusory
threat from Iran will only subject Israel to
retaliatory attacks on multiple fronts. And it is
really such inevitable blowback that presents the
ultimate danger.
The true threat to
Israel, then, lies not in Tehran, but in the
leadership empowered in Jerusalem.
Ben Schreiner is an American
freelance writer who writes about international
affairs. He may be reached at
bnschreiner@gmail.com.
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