Tehran summit echoes to war
chants By Victor Kotsev
Iran took over from Egypt the leadership
of the non-aligned movement at a much-publicized
summit in Tehran shortly after the latest round of
nuclear talks in Vienna ended in a failure last
week. While the publicity stunt in Tehran,
featuring more than 100 different state
delegations, provides a brief reprieve from Iran's
deepening diplomatic isolation - the presence of
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi highlights a
particular achievement for the ayatollahs - it
contributes little to defusing Middle East
tensions.
The leaked offer of the Persian
hosts to take their guests on a tour of nuclear
and military sites - the very same sites to which
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has
been trying in vain to gain access for years -
arguably alienated more diplomats
than it attracted
(before Tehran was forced to deny the whole thing
altogether).
Moreover, shortly before the
summit, reports surfaced that the Islamic Republic
had installed an additional 1,000 advanced uranium
enrichment centrifuges in the heavily fortified
underground facility at Fordo, and that it had
taken fresh steps to cover up its activity at the
suspected nuclear testing site at the Parchin
military base.
In this context, the
exchanges between the Islamic Republic, Israel and
the United States went up another notch in
bitterness. A little over a week ago, Iran's top
leaders (both Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad)
labeled the Jewish State a "cancerous tumor" to be
eradicated, while their Israeli counterparts
repeated their ominous threats to "do something"
about the Iranian nuclear program.
Relations between Jerusalem and Washington
are also tense, with perhaps the greatest recent
bombshell coming from a number of conservative
analysts - including the infamous former George W
Bush adviser Karl Rove - who argued that an
Israeli attack on Iran in the run-up to the US
polls would help rather than hurt (as assumed by
many analysts) Barack Obama's chances for
re-election.
The argument goes that
Americans would rally behind their president if a
sudden war breaks out, and also that this would
shift the debate to areas where Obama enjoys an
edge over his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney,
namely foreign and security affairs.
This
makes a certain amount of sense, since the link
between an Israeli attack and an Obama defeat,
generally hinging on a speculation that gas prices
would suddenly go up, was never completely
straight-forward. The timeframe for an Israeli
attack before the American election is much more
plausible in two other ways: this is the period
when Obama would face the greatest possible
domestic pressure to support Jerusalem in the
likely messy aftermath of the operation, and it is
also roughly coincides with the moment when bad
winter weather sets over most of Iran, making an
air campaign even more difficult.
Alternatively, it could also be that these
remarks amount to a coy message to Obama that he
should not lean so hard on Israel to desist from
striking. With signs of intense bargaining in
secret and increasingly frayed nerves at the top,
such messages have become more and more common.
Last week, for example, a former American
ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, similarly
accused Jerusalem of trying to mislead the US
administration. Indyk claimed that the US "was
convinced that Israel would attack" the Iranian
nuclear installations in the spring, and that
Jerusalem was "crying wolf".
Another basic
assumption that is beginning to come under
question is that Obama is undermined by the
Israeli saber-rattling. According to a recent
report by the DPA, US weapons sales went up over
200% last year, to US$66.3 billion from $21.4
billion in 2010. This amounted to over
three-quarters of the total official weapons sales
worldwide, which stood at $85.3 billion.
In any event, the upcoming IAEA report on
Iran, which is expected to come out in full in
days and to be critical of Tehran's behavior, is
threatening to deepen the apparent gulf between
the Obama administration and that of Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
According to
comments published in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz
and The New York Times, Netanyahu characterized
the information as "further proof that Iran is
galloping toward obtaining nuclear capability and
that it continues to ignore the demands of the
international community" while American officials
insisted that it is "not a game-changer".
As noted elsewhere, the division between
hawks and doves is in fact a lot more complicated
than an argument between Israelis and Americans,
even as Netanyahu and Obama are the most powerful
members of each camp. The Israeli cabinet, for
example, is reportedly split right down the
middle, with the prime minister struggling to
obtain a majority. [1]
A major sign of
this complexity, as well as an important
indication that Israeli war preparations are at a
very advanced stage, was the parade of officials
last week at the door of the influential spiritual
mentor of the Israeli ultra-Orthodox party Shas,
92-year old Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Both proponents
and opponents of an Israeli strike - each camp
boasts top current and former officials - briefed
Rabbi Yosef in detail about the strategic
situation, hoping to gain his approval for their
cause.
Shas' representatives in the
government are thought to be currently opposed to
an attack, meaning that the offensive is perhaps
led by Netanyahu's allies. It bears noting,
moreover, that Rabbi Yosef is an authoritative yet
colorful figure. He has been known both to say
harsh things about Israel's enemies - he wished
death to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas two
years ago - and occasionally to back courses of
action that are seen as dovish, such as the Oslo
Accords. [2]
His potential influence on
the Iran crisis is demonstrated by his behavior
during the 1991 Persian Gulf crisis (Operation
Desert Storm), when former Iraqi dictator Saddam
Hussein fired dozens of Scud missiles at Israel
and the United States similarly pressured Israel
to desist from responding. Rabbi Yosef was
reportedly instrumental in stopping the Israeli
military response, leading some to speculate that
Obama would most likely send his own envoy to him
as well.
Rabbi Yosef ostensibly responded
to the pressure last Saturday by calling on
Israelis to pray for Iran's destruction. It is
unclear whether or not prayer is the only
defensive measure he envisioned.
"When
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef takes the calculation whether a
certain situation is one of a life-threatening
nature, he has a very heavy time-discount rate,"
said Dr Aaron Lerner at the Israel-based
organization Independent Media Review and Analysis
in a telephone conversation, pointing out that
this record explains much of his behavior in the
past. "That is to say that if the danger is to be
measured months from now or years from now, then
that danger is very heavily discounted as compared
to a present danger."
Curiously, a similar
uncertainty over the stance of top religious
authorities on the conflict hangs over Iran. While
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has used
exceptionally aggressive language to characterize
both Israel and the US, a recent report by the
US-based Institute for Science and International
Security found no evidence that Khamenei had
changed his earlier fatwa (religious order)
against nuclear weapons. [3] A leading theologian
who is known for his reformist views, meanwhile,
went a step further, calling on the politicians to
avoid war with Israel altogether. [4]
As
war preparations continue to progress, however, it
is unclear how great of a chance peace has.
According to reports in the Egyptian press, the
Lebanese militant organization Hezbollah, a close
ally of Iran and a key part of its deterrence
strategy, conducted a major military exercise this
month with more than 10,000 operatives involved.
Israel, on the other hand, has been
conducting near constant home front drills and
upgrades for a number of months now, and while
many domestic observers are critical of the degree
of protection of the civilian population, it beats
by far that in any other regional country.
Reports that Netanyahu attempted to change
his personal investment portfolio recently,
coupled with suspicions that the move was related
to his intentions on Iran, also add to the ominous
signs. [5] Even the Palestinian Authority seemed
to acknowledge the growing regional gloom - as
well as the inauspicious timing right before the
American presidential election - in its recently
announced decision not to pursue membership in the
UN next month.
Moreover, a recent Reuters
report confirmed information presented exclusively
by the Asia Times Online several months ago,
claiming that "Any Israeli attacks on Iran's
nuclear facilities are unlikely to cause a
Fukushima-scale disaster unless a Russian-built
reactor is destroyed" (see also "Israel
gauges fallout from Iran strike", Asia Times
Online, March 28, 2012.)
Still, an Israeli
strike in the next 10 weeks is not a given. The
constant raising of stakes and the bitterness that
is evident from the debates between the Obama and
Netanyahu administrations suggests also that the
negotiations between them have reached a very
advanced stage. Israel has hinted in the past few
weeks that it may undertake to desist from
striking if it receives guarantees that, absent a
different solution, the US will launch a military
operation itself by the middle of next year.
Certainly, that would be a preferred
scenario for the Israelis.
"The Americans
would go about an attack, the Israeli experts say,
in an entirely different - and dramatically more
substantive manner - than Israel could," writes
journalist David Horovitz in the Times of Israel.
"The US has made this clear to Israel - another
reason for its frustration at Israel's lack of
faith. And it is clear to Iran too. If the
Americans act, they go after the air defenses, the
missiles, the Revolutionary Guards. They make sure
that Iran can't retaliate." [6]
Also there
have been rumblings about a possible deal between
Washington and Tehran after the election. This
would make a certain amount of sense from the
Iranian point of view: after all, even though
Obama seems to stand a good chance of being
re-elected, there is no certainty, and his
opponent could easily shift course if victorious.
With every new escalation, however, the
difficulty of working out a compromise increases,
and the time remaining seemingly decreases.
Whether this year or next one, war looms ever
bigger on the horizon.
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