Romney, Israel, and Iran: Why Peace in Palestine Matters More Than Ever

Details: Written by Gilbert Schramm Gilbert Schramm; Published: 22 August 2012 22 August 2012; Hits: 4435 4435

The common wisdom is that domestic economic issues will be the deciding factor in the approaching US Presidential election. In light of Mitt Romney’s revealing comments on his recent trip to Israel, American voters should start to consider the serious dangers posed by his emerging foreign policy. First, Romney’s focus on becoming “Businessman in Chief” reveals a dangerously misguided notion of what being the president is all about. This danger is compounded by the fact that his advisors include the old neo-con Bush crowd: Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and Joshua Bolton. Don Rumsfeld may have to attend meetings via the backdoor, but he’ll surely have a voice too. Even at lower staff levels, the Romney foreign policy clique is dominated by former Bush advisors who have almost always been wrong, but who have never been apologetic. Romney’s recent trip to Israel highlights these looming dangers.

There is nothing in Romney’s stated policies to date that suggests that he has any real notion of how to revitalize the US economy, but even if he did, he is apparently blind to how a misguided foreign war could completely destroy our fragile economic recovery. The expanding European debt crisis is one obvious threat, but an Israeli military strike on Iran poses even greater dangers. In the last year, the possibility of such an attack has been floated regularly by the current Israeli administration of PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Time and again Romney has signaled a willingness to follow Israel down Netanyahu’s dead-end road. In Israel recently a Romney advisor stated that Romney would “respect” an Israeli attack on Iran. That is a very dangerous “green light” for an Israeli attack that stands to seriously damage the interests of everyone involved—Israel not excluded.

The catastrophic consequences of an Israeli strike on Iran have been noted by our better foreign policy experts, by US military and intelligence officials, and by the more responsible members of the media. Unfortunately, they get little attention compared to the hysterical stream of anti-Iranian rhetoric that emanates from Israel’s PM and his rightwing US allies like FOX news, and which tend to dominate most US coverage of the Middle East. To fully understand what a truly bad idea an Israeli strike on Iran is, you must first separate certain tactical assessments from broader strategic realities. There are four important points here.

1. Few experts believe that Israel can destroy the Iranian program outright.

2. There is very serious doubt that Israel can even effectively delay the program.

3. US involvement does not guarantee any higher level of success.

4. Since Israel is distant and well defended, Iranian retaliation will focus on US interests.

The Iranian response will be based on the reasonable belief that the US supports the attack. Therefore, they will feel justified in striking at US interests. But this point reveals the fallacy that Iran is really a serious threat to Israel. Iran will retaliate against the US targets and its Arab allies in the region because it simply cannot reliably threaten Israeli targets in any significant way. In other words, Israel is not currently facing a real Iranian threat. So if Israel attacks Iran, US personnel and interests and the interests of our numerous allies in the Middle East and Europe will bear the brunt of Iran’s legitimate response to Israeli aggression.

Why do I say “legitimate” response?

Because in fact, Iran’s pursuit of nuclear power for peaceful purposes does not violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Like the idea that Saddam Hussein might actually NOT have WMD’s, all of the overheated Israeli and rightwing US rhetoric glosses over this simple fact. All the rest is unproven supposition and assumption. In these circumstances, any country has a legitimate right to self defense.

Israel’s repeated accusations and threats aimed at Iran, amplified by a gullible US media are just the same kind of fear-mongering we lived through in the run up to the Iraq debacle. In key assessments US and Israeli intelligence sources have repeatedly reported that they have no evidence that Iran made the decision to weaponize its peaceful nuclear program. That being the case, any attack by Israel (and /or the US) would be in total violation of international law.

Israel plays this dangerous game for several reasons. As just noted, in an Israeli strike against Iran, the US would pay the price (in lost jobs, higher oil prices and all the economic damage they would entail) while Israel would basically risk nothing. Israel is in no position to help the US keep the straits of Hormuz open—the US navy would be on its own there. And though Iran can’t really close the straits, that is not really the point. The Persian Gulf would be a war-zone and oil prices would skyrocket. This a losing scenario for the American people (and for almost everyone except Russia and China).

But what about the bigger strategic picture? What if Iran really did manage to go nuclear? Would such a development truly ‘transform the regional security environment’ of the Middle East as so many fear-mongering pundits claim? Would it really be the ‘end of the world as we know it as so much rhetoric suggests?

Not really. First, we’ll get plenty of warning before Iran gets a viable nuke. Even if they do get the uranium needed for a warhead (that still seems years away) they still need to test that technology. Then they need to miniaturize the warhead. Then they need a truly reliable delivery system. By most assessments, this combination of achievements is still years away—if the Iranians even decide to go in that direction. So far, US and Israeli intelligence sources largely agree that Iran hasn’t yet made that decision.

But imagine Iran finally does obtain 3 or 4 warheads. Given the struggle they will have gone through to obtain them, they will certainly not hand them out to terrorists: that is just comic book fantasy of the kind that helped mislead us into attacking Iraq. Even then Iran will still have no way to get those warheads to the US. Would they risk them on a first strike against Israel? Not very likely. Iran could be sure that they would get 200-300 reliably and accurately targeted Israeli nuclear warheads heading their way within minutes. So even if it obtained ten or more nuclear warheads, an Iranian strike on Israel, using substandard missiles and facing an impressive Israeli anti-missile and air defense system, would amount to Iranian national suicide. Israel aside, they know a US response would soon follow.

There is a final, and perhaps more telling point. Israel has “human shields.” Any Iranian attack that actually came close to “destroying” Israel would also probably kill about a million Palestinian Arabs, mostly Sunni Muslims. Since Iran’s main interest in Palestine is to win support in the Sunni world, this would be the worst possible move they could make.

And this brings us to the key point: Iranian motives. For the Iranian threat to Israel (or the US) to be credible, you have to believe that Iranians are suicidal or crazy. That is why so much overblown rhetoric is focused on trying to convince us that they really are crazy and suicidal. They are not: and over time, assessments by both US and Israeli intelligence experts make clear that at the highest levels, neither US or Israel truly believes that they are. In US intelligence estimates, the current Iranian regime is considered a ‘rational decision-maker.’ So all of Israel’s dire warnings about Iran are just posturing.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t make Israel’s current course any less dangerous. Once created, hysterical fear creates its own dynamics. In “Six Days,” Jeremy Bowen describes how the fear peddled to its own people by Israeli leaders prior to the Six Day War in 1967 actually contributed to the decision by those same leaders to launch a first strike against Egypt, even though they knew full well that Egypt’s Nasser had no real plans to attack them.

A rational analysis of Iranian behavior leads to the conclusion that an Iranian bomb wouldn’t change the Middle East security equation very much. If Iran really wants a nuclear weapon, it wants it for purely defensive purposes. A primitive Iranian nuke would be enough to guarantee some local security for Iran, but not enough power for them to truly threaten their neighbors. As such, an Iranian nuke might actually be good for regional stability in the Middle East. And after all, they are neighbors of unstable and/or mostly hostile countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, various former Soviet republics, nuclear armed China, the Sunni Gulf Arab states, and a volatile, unstable, and nuclear armed Pakistan. In other words, they actually have legitimate reasons to try to obtain a bomb if they should choose to. Realistically, it is what almost any set of policy makers would do to protect their people. Still, there is no hard evidence they have made that decision.

So why all the Israeli fuss about Iran? The main reason is simple and fairly well documented. When President Obama was elected in 2008, the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby made a strategic decision to avoid any talk of Middle East peace in Palestine by talking incessantly about the alleged nuclear danger from Iran. It has been a remarkably successful strategy—if you mark success by avoiding peace. And here we finally get to the main point.

Iran has no real or lasting interest in Israel or Palestine. Iran doesn’t share a border or a body of water with Israel. They are separated at every point by at least two other countries. They are over a 1,000 miles apart. Palestinians are Christians and Sunni Muslims. Iranians are Shiite Muslims. Palestinians are Arabs, Iranians are Persians. In short, Iranians don’t share a language, ethnicity or even religious sect with Palestinians. If tomorrow the Palestinians were given the state that was promised to them in 1948, Iranian influence in Palestine would rapidly evaporate. It is only the absence of a fair peace settlement for the Palestinians that allows Iran to make noise about the current situation in Palestine. In the absence of a peace and a Palestinian state, Iran can make the Sunni Arab countries who have failed to help Palestine win their state (i.e. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, etc, etc,) look bad. This gives Iran a leg up in the broader Shia-Sunni competition for leadership in the Muslim world. A viable Palestinian state would be the end of significant Iranian influence on Israel’s borders.

But using Iran as an excuse not to make peace with Palestine, is very convenient for hardcore Zionists like Benjamin Netanyahu . Evading a just and comprehensive peace settlement and the creation of a Palestinian state is what Netanyahu and his allies are really all about. Those are his main objectives, and as far as he is concerned, if his political strategy drags the US into a disastrous war, well, that’s alright with him. After all, Israeli right-wingers had no misgivings about encouraging the US to attack Iraq over their alleged possession of WMD’s… they even gave us some of the bogus “intelligence” that provided the pretext for that attack.

This is why Romney’s stated policy of “no daylight” between the US and Israel is so dangerous. That statement, together with his advisor’s recent statement that he would “respect” an Israeli attack on Iran, suggest that Romney is quite willing to commit the US to another disastrous war at Israel’s behest. Among other things, this attitude shows Romney’s remarkable ignorance and dangerously bad judgment.

Romney has tried to make much of Obama’s supposedly “bad relationship” with Netanyahu, but Obama’s record of strong support for Israel is pretty clear. In fact, Israel’s defense secretary Ehud Barak said this week that he considers security cooperation between the US and Israel under President Obama to be the best in history. The real problem is that Romney has confused his “close personal relationship” with Netanyahu for a policy that is truly supportive of Israel’s real long-term interests. As most Israeli’s could probably explain, Israel and Netanyahu are not at all the same thing. Obama’s call for an Israeli settlement freeze in the occupied territories actually served Israel’s real security needs better than all of Netanyahu’s hysterical ranting about Iran. Too bad Netanyahu stonewalled the effort. It’s not really Obama’s fault; almost the entire US congress applauded Netanyahu when he spoke in the US and basically reneged on all his country’s previous commitments to real peace. That just shows how much work we have left to do.

Part of the problem of course is that Americans don’t really know much about PM Netanyahu. A poignant reminder can be found in Baruch Kimmerling’s book “Politicide.” Kimmerling is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Toronto. His book takes us back to the collapse of the Oslo Peace process, which spiraled out of control with the assassination of PM Yitzhak Rabin by a religious, nationalist, Israeli terrorist in 1995. Kimmerling notes that the murder “was the culmination of months of unprecedented incitement and violent demonstrations” of Jews against both the Oslo accords in general, and of Rabin personally. He goes on to say that “the new political star Benjamin Netanyahu played a major role in these incitements by using an unrestrained rhetoric of blood, land and treason” and that “at this point the settlers and rightwingers regained their political vitality. They invested all their efforts in electing Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister” (p.124-125).

In other words, Benjamin Netanyahu is no stranger to using the politics of hatred and fear. He doesn’t care if his rhetoric ends in tragedy and war as long as he can further his personal career. Netanyahu caters to a few tens of thousands of hardcore, rightwing Zionist settlers who steal land in the occupied territories by evading real negotiations with the Palestinians and trying to brew up a war with Iran instead.

This is one reason the current GOP rhetoric that we should have “no daylight” between us and Netanyahu is so misguided. When we see Mitt Romney embracing Netanyahu, and see that Mitt Romney and his advisors will defer to Israel to the point of letting them drag our nation into a war, we must react as strongly as possible. Such a war can only hurt us, our allies (including Israel), and a lot of innocent Iranian civilians.

If he wants to excel at foreign policy, Romney might reconsider the wisdom of the founding fathers in counseling against the dangers of ‘entangling foreign alliances.’ What is good for the US should never come second to personal allegiances to questionable foreign leaders. The highly personalized and misguided Romney notion that what is good for Netanyahu is also good for Israel is like the fabled golden calf. It is a false idol that would best be done away with. Last year while speaking to the US congress, Netanyahu basically backed out of every previous commitment to peace Israel had ever made. His performance made a mockery of years of US support for Israel, but sadly, few Americans really seemed to notice. Let’s be real. It is well known that Israel has a nuclear stockpile of 200-300 warheads. They never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. They don’t allow international inspectors into their country. They show no respect for the UN or international law. They have a policy of assassinating people they unilaterally decide are enemies. All this raving about Iran’s behavior is sheer hypocrisy. They are the chief rogue nation in the region. And all this has never made them safe.

What we need in a president is someone who will stand up to Netanyahu and his kind, not embrace them as Romney is clearly inclined to do. Strong backing for Israel’s previous commitments to peace—the old covenants they made with the world in UN resolutions 194 and 242 and the renewal of those pacts at Camp David in 1978—would be a far wiser path for Romney to urge on Israel, and for Netanyahu to follow, than the course towards war that they both currently seem to favor. Given their mutual tendencies to pander to their bases, there is almost no chance that Romney or Netanyahu will do the right thing in the Middle East.

We cannot afford a Romney presidency—it would almost guarantee a pointless and immoral war against Iran…all to appease that small minority of Zionist fanatics who can’t give up on the dream of taking all of Palestine from its rightful owners. Although he is weakened by his own party’s timidity in taking on Israel, President Obama is still a much better bet than Mitt Romney to get America through the next four years without another major—and pointless—Middle East war. In the next few months, we should all focus our efforts on exposing the Netanyahu strategy, educating Americans about the dangers and ineffectiveness of a war against Iran, and re-electing the president. A Romney victory portends no good for Americans, Palestinians, Israelis, or anyone else in the world.