Obama, the Jewish lobby and the
bomb By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
PALO ALTO, California - With the Iran war
hysteria getting louder, United States President
Barack Obama, due to address the Jewish lobby on
Sunday ahead of his meeting with the Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next week, is facing
one of the toughest choices of his presidency:
whether to appease the pro-Israeli warmongers or,
instead, to use his authority to put a break on
the omnibus of another war in the Middle East?
So far, Obama has served Israel well by
putting into place harsh sanctions against Iran
that fulfill Israel's demand of "crippling
sanctions", although the lack of compliance by
Iran's Asian energy partners has lessened their
impact, and by providing Israel with the necessary
military assistance that in turn equips Tel Aviv
to launch an aerial attack on Iran's nuclear
facilities in the future (as per Western media
reports).
Simultaneously, Obama has let
Israel off the hook on the
Palestinian issue, in
light of his failure to even emulate his
predecessors' obligatory, and yet vacuous,
references to the "Middle East peace process" in
his recent State of Union speech. This strategy,
replicated in other Western capitals, has allowed
Washington and Tel Aviv to portray Israel as a
potential victim state, ie, of a coming
Iranian-led Holocaust if not checked immediately,
instead of as an oppressive state that has defied
several UN Security Council resolutions and has
refused to withdraw from the Arab territories it
has conquered by force with impunity.
In
an election year marked with hawkish pro-Israel
Republican Party candidates, save Ron Paul, vying
with each other in their overzealous Iran-bashing,
Obama has paddled along the war currents that
steer clear of any diplomatic resolution of the
Iran nuclear standoff, despite the US rhetoric of
"all options" being on the table and US's
preference for a "diplomatic solution".
In
reality, however, the diplomatic path is
increasingly blocked by a combination of factors,
including the US and Israel's vested interest to
fish in the muddy waters of the Iran crisis, for
example, rationalizing Israel's callous disregard
for a viable peace with the Palestinians, and
perpetuating the oil Arab states' Western security
dependency, albeit under benign rhetoric that
refer to "international norms" and legitimate
counter-proliferation concerns.
The
problem with the latter is that even US officials
have admitted that they have no evidence that Iran
is building nuclear bombs. Case in point, Kenneth
C Brill, a former US envoy at the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who also served as
director of the intelligence community's National
Counterproliferation Center from 2005 until 2009,
has stated, "I think the Iranians want the
capability, but not a stockpile."
Similarly, the US intelligence community
has yet to officially revise its December 2007
conclusion that Iran's nuclear program has been
peaceful since 2003. This is in sharp contrast to
the Israeli claims that Iran is on the verge of
acquiring the bombs and that Tehran's latest
announcement regarding its installation of new
generation of centrifuges at the new facility
known as Fordo "confirms" Israel's fears, to
paraphrase Netanyahu.
Not so. The Fordo
facility is covered by the IAEA, as clearly
confirmed by IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano
last week, which in essence means that any Iranian
attempt at military diversion will be detected by
the atomic agency, which relies on the multiple
methods of regular and short-notice inspections,
as well as surveillance cameras, to monitor Iran's
controversial enrichment activities.
Iran goes on record again against the
bomb Meanwhile, Iran's leaders have
increased their effort to reassure the outside
world that Iran is not seeking to build and
stockpile nuclear weapons. Thus, in a speech last
week, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatolloh Ali Khamenei
once again labeled as "sin" any nuclear
proliferation activity, denouncing nuclear bombs
as "harmful and dangerous" and reiterating Iran's
commitment to fight for a world without nuclear
weapons.
As a follow-up to his previous
fatwar (religious edict) banning the
manufacturing and stockpiling of nuclear weapons,
Khamenei's speech resonates with Iran's "other
nuclear ambition" that has so far evaded the radar
of Western politicians and their complaint
experts, who never cease to accuse Iran of
harboring nuclear weapon "ambitions."
An
example of the latter belongs to Ray Takeyh, who
in his opinion columns and magazine articles
busily rekindles the fear of an Iranian bomb
requiring "containment" by recycling the familiar
arguments about Iran's "regional hegemony."
A problem with such analyses is that they
overlook Iran's post-revolutionary self-image as
an international actor seeking to revise the
global status quo along equitable (Third Worldist)
lines, including by challenging the nuclear
monopoly not in the form of trying to join it by
becoming another nuclear-have nation, but rather
by a deft politics of "nuclear latency" that
allows Iran and its supporters in the Non-Aligned
Movement to play a pivotal role in the global
disarmament movement (see Iran
takes up the nuclear cudgel, June 17, 2011).
Poised to assume the presidency of the
Non-Aligned Movement later this year, Tehran is
now uniquely positioned to enhance its
international prestige by refusing to take the
bait, tantamount to self-fulfilling prophecy, and
go for the bombs under increasing military
threats. Complementing those threats are a slew of
Western and Israeli discourses on Iran's "national
security" warranting a nuclear "shield."
Empirically, however, there is solid
evidence that refutes such suggestive discourses
that are based on a poor understanding of Iran's
post-revolutionary orientation, and the purpose of
Iranian power, aptly summarized by the late French
philosopher Michel Foucault, who observed the
revolution first-hand and wrote about the
revolution's mission of a "revolt against the
entire world order". Three decades later,
Foucault's premonitions seem completely
exonerated. The contrary evidence that runs
against the Iran proliferation assumptions.
If Iran had a weapons program, it would
never agree to suspend its enrichment program and
to implement the intrusive Additional Protocol,
per the Paris Agreement of 2004. This is not to
mention Iran's six-point proposal to extend the
suspensions for another two year, when president
Ahmadinejad came to power (see Sideshow
to Iran's frogmarch to UN, Asia Times Online,
Feb 7, 2006).
Nor would Iran consent to
the installation of surveillance cameras that per
the IAEA's own admission can detect any illicit
attempt to divert to non-peaceful purposes; nor
would Iran consent to ship out the bulk of its
low-enriched uranium in line with the 2010 Tehran
Declaration with Turkey and Brazil, or agree to
suspend 20% enrichment in return for an outside
supply of nuclear fuel, as proposed by Ahmadinejad
in his September 2011 visit to New York.
In a nutshell, the steps Iran has taken
simply militate against the suspected
proliferation portfolio of any nation. Together
with the categorical anti-nuke statements by the
Iranian leaders, the reality is different to one
painted by US and Israeli officials and experts.
Consequently, much like the Iraq war by
false pretexts, the Iranian nuclear crisis is now
being exploited - by Obama and his presidential
challengers for election purposes and by Israel to
continue with its expansionist settlement
policies.
For sure, no one should expect
Obama to mention the latter as he addresses the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
next week - that would be a self-inflicted wound,
easily turned into a kiss of death if, all of a
sudden, Obama made the occasion into a "reality
moment" by advising his Jewish listeners to stop
their Iranophobia game and think of justice for
the oppressed Palestinians.
Courage to
speak the truth is definitely in short supply in
the White House these days.
Kaveh L
Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After
Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy
(Westview Press). For his Wikipedia entry,
click
here. He is author of Reading In Iran
Foreign Policy After September 11 (BookSurge
Publishing, October 23, 2008) and Looking for
Rights at Harvard. His latest book is UN
Management Reform: Selected Articles and
Interviews on United Nations CreateSpace
(November 12, 2011).
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