Informed Comment

Some colleagues on an email list got me thinking about the worst case scenario of an Israeli air strike on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities, so here is what I came up with. I think each of these scenarios is plausible in its own right, and that all could well ensue.

1. Iran is now threatening to strike at any third country in the region that aided Israel in an airstrike on Iran. The aftermath is therefore likely to be further conflict in the region.

2. Oil prices will spike. I imagine you could easily see $150 a barrel or maybe even more. This development could throw the US and Europe back into deep recession.

3. Hizbullah would likely launch rockets, causing at least severe inconvenience to some 1/4 of the Israeli public, which might well have to move house again, and possibly much worse if Hizbullah is able, as they claim, to target toxic gas storage in Haifa or even reactor at Dimona with modified Chinese silkworms. It is not clear that the Israeli public would appreciate all that trouble; they didn’t, in former PM Ehud Olmert’s case (his 2006 Lebanon war was extremely unpopular and his party is no longer in power). A Hizbullah official said on Sunday that Hizbullah would be willing to go to war with Israel if Syria were attacked, so it seems likely the same thing would hold true with regard to Iran.

4. Israel would destroy Lebanon infrastructure in revenge for Hizbullah rocket attacks.

5. The Syria uprising would be over with. It would be impossible for the Syrian National Council to continue to oppose the government and risk being tagged as genuinely Israeli agents. The Baath would be consolidated in Syria.

6. An Iran-Baghdad-Damascus-Beirut axis would be strengthened, allowing for resupply of Hizbullah capabilities. Beirut would be pushed into arms of the new axis. Gulf oil states and Iraq and Iran would quickly rebuild Lebanon.

7. Iraq would be radicalized. PM Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq would have to support Hizbullah and Lebanon or risk losing face inside al-Da’wa and losing backing in parliament of Sadr, al-Hakim and other Shiite religious forces. Al-Maliki has already given, as a reason for supporting al-Assad, the danger that Israel will take advantage of turmoil in the Fertile Crescent. Iraq would likely use its oil wealth to help rebuild Lebanon and al-Maliki’s Islamic Mission Party (al-Da’wa al-Islamiya), which helped create Hizbullah, would strengthen relations with it. You could see cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army supply men and arms to Hizbullah in Lebanon, as well.

8. The European left and liberals would be horrified and unlike in the past could well take action. Remember that the scenario is that Israel, having gone rogue and poisoned Isfahan and maybe other populations with toxic chemicals and radioactivity, went on to destroy Lebanon’s airport, harbor, electricity plants, oil refineries, roads, bridges, etc. Ireland, Norway, and possibly some other European governments, plus large numbers of European civil society organizations and unions might well slap economic boycotts and sanctions on Israel (50% of Israel’s trade is with Europe). Significant negative measures by EU not impossible, including in area of scientific and technological exchange. In my view, the BDS movement in Europe would become a wave and once that happens, it could have a long term impact on the Israeli economy.

9. The region’s diplomatic dynamics could be changed. The possibility exists of a rupture between Israel and Turkey. It is also possible that Egypt will terminate the Camp David peace accords. The Egyptian military won’t care about the strike on Iran, but the Egyptian public would be horrified by that and by the likely third Lebanon war. The Muslim Brotherhood, now dominant in the Egyptian parliament, would have to react strongly or risk losing credibility in the eyes of the Egyptian public.

10. Over succeeding years, significant Israeli out-migration could occur by Israelis with sufficient education and training to find jobs elsewhere, who became convinced that the Middle East will just never settle down and be a pleasant environment for them. This development would strengthen the internal position of the Palestinian-Israelis and possibly of the Haredim (who are probably more committed to staying and toughing it out), and weaken the Ashkenazi secular elite. Ironically, Barak has admitted that some of the impetus for preventing a nuclear Iran is to forestall this out-migration scenario, but he doesn’t seem to realize that a strike on Iran could actually have a similar demographic outcome if the region doesn’t take it lying down.

It seems obvious to me that if all these developments actually occurred,they would be much worse for Israel than if Iran actually did start a weapons program and Iran and Israel replicated on a regional scale the MAD US-Soviet standoff of an earlier era.

Posted in Iran, Israel/ Palestine | 76 Comments

John Robertson writes in a guest column for Informed Comment

CAN OBAMA PREVAIL AGAINST A ROMNEY-NETANYAHU TICKET?

Paul Pillar and Leslie Gelb – both of them well-respected and largely mainstream commentators on US foreign policy – have recently published essays cautioning us all – and Mr. Obama especially – to step back, breathe deeply, ask tough questions, and get sound answers before launching a military strike against Iran.  And as Gelb’s piece (excerpted below) cogently notes, the silly season of presidential campaigning is going to elicit (indeed, already has elicited) a lot of tough-guy, red-blooded American bellicosity from GOP candidates eager to bash Obama and score nationally televised debate points in mega-auditoriums crammed full of lustily cheering Republican worthies:

    It doesn’t take a genius to see what lies ahead in our nation’s election year. Most Republican presidential candidates are saying that Iran will never get close to nukes if they’re in the White House. The candidates are outdoing one another in outrageous commitments to sound tough. Recently, Mitt Romney put it like this: “If we reelect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon … If you’d like me as the next president, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.” And though we all know how careful Obama is, the dynamics of campaigns are bound to push him toward incaution to fend off charges of “weakness.” This is what happens to presidents in most elections.

One might be a bit reassured in all of this by the recent claims by Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak that Israel at this point has no intention of attacking Iran, and by recent indications that Obama’s people (including Sec of Defense Leon Panetta as well as the US intelligence establishment) have been pushing back (especially against Israel), hard, against the push to attack Iran.

But let’s also not forget that Mr. Netanyahu would like nothing better than to see Obama evicted – as ingloriously as possible – from the White House, and knows that when it comes to Israel’s interests, Congress has his back.  It also stands to reason that, assuming that he becomes the GOP candidate, Mitt Romney – as Leslie Gelb notes – will continue to paint Obama as a temporizing coward unwilling to take on the Iranian leadership. (He will, of course, label the ever more stringent US-inspired sanctions against Iran as too weak a response.)

Moreover, Romney, whose social-conservative bona fides have been hammered by his GOP opponents,  will be desperate to find an issue that will energize social and religious conservatives to line up behind him and flock to the polls come November.  The obvious issue? Iran, and the “existential threat”/”second Holocaust” its nuclear program poses for Israel.  Hyping that issue would rally to the side of this Mormon former governor of a northern liberal state (where he was also the architect of a predecessor of the reviled and despised “Obama-care”) millions of Israel-firsters  -   and especially, millions of  white Christian-evangelical, largely southern conservatives who love Israel, have little faith in Barack Hussein Obama’s love for Israel (and, to a significant degree, cannot get their heads around the fact that a black First Family is occupying the White House).

And the “existential threat” issue is, of course,  a dirge that Netanyahu has been wailing on the international stage for years, and that, Bibi knows, is a card that he – as well as AIPAC and other denizens of the Israel lobby – can play very effectively if he wants to influence the American electorate. . . . which he surely would love to do in 2012.  Bibi wants Barack out of the Oval Office.  Watch for him to reach out to Mitt, with both arms.

At that point, Obama may be hard pressed to resist the political expediency of a response that will entail ramping up the US military presence in the Persian Gulf, and the implied, but increasingly overt, threat to Iran.

At which point, Leslie Gelb, Paul Pillar, and millions of the rest of us will have to hope and pray that the Iranian leadership will step back, breathe deeply, ask tough questions, and get sound answers before lashing out with military action against the US, or Israel. 

___________

John Robertson is professor of ancient Near East and Modern Middle East at Central Michigan University and maintains the Chippshots blog

Posted in Israel/ Palestine, Uncategorized | 27 Comments

Yoav Peled and Horit Herman Peled write in a guest column for Informed Comment

The Way Forward in the Middle East

Reversing a bi-partisan US policy in effect for the last two decades, the Republican National Committee recently endorsed the one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, resolving that “peace can be afforded the [Middle east] region only through a united Israel governed under one law for all people.” In all likelihood, this was an unintended consequence of the Republican party’s election-year pro-Israel frenzy. But, intentional or not, the RNC statement is correct. The Israeli-Palestinian “peace process,” that aims at the establishment of two independent states, Israel and Palestine, bounded, more or less, by the 1967 borders, is totally bankrupt. If any evidence is needed, just look at the seventeen futile initiatives meant to revive Oslo process since its demise in 2000.

What makes the two-state solution unachievable is the fact that since 1967 Israel has settled close to three quarters of a million Jews in the territories it captured from Jordan in 1967. About one-third of those are in the area Israel defined as Jerusalem and annexed in 1967, declaring it to be non-negotiable. Of the remaining five hundred thousand, the lowest estimate of the number that would have to be removed in order for a viable, territorially contiguous Palestinian state to be set up in the West Bank is one hundred thousand. This is a task that no Israeli government, committed as it may be to the two-state solution, would be able to carry out, politically. To this day no Israeli government has removed even one of the West Bank “outposts” that are illegal by Israeli law (all Jewish settlements in the occupied territories are illegal by international law), despite promises to the US and several decisions by Israel’s own High Court of Justice.

The declared purpose of the settlement drive in the West Bank (as in the other occupied territories) was to change demographic realities in order to make Israel’s withdrawal from those territories impossible. This purpose has been achieved. Not only are the settlers, their family members and their supporters an electoral power block that cannot be ignored, settlers and their supporters now make up a significant proportion of the command structure of Israel’s security forces, the same forces that would have to carry out a decision to remove the settlers.

To counter this argument, critics may point to the withdrawal of Jewish settlements from Gaza in 2005. That example, however, actually supports our argument. In order to remove 8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza, an easily isolated region of no religious significance to Jews, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a military hero idolized by both the settlers and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had to deploy the entire man and woman power of all of Israel’s security forces. Moreover, the Gaza withdrawal was not done in agreement with the Palestinians, or in order to facilitate peace with them. It was done unilaterally, in order to make Israel’s control of Gaza more efficient. Judging by this example, removing 100,000 settlers from the West Bank, in order to enable the establishment of a Palestinian state, would be an impossible task.

Instead of pursuing the mirage of a two-state solution, would-be peace makers should recognize the fact that Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories in fact constitute one state that has been in existence for nearly forty-five years, the longest lasting political formation in these territories since the Ottoman Empire. (The British Mandate for Palestine lasted thirty years; Israel in its pre-1967 borders lasted only nineteen years). The problem with that state, from a democratic, humanistic perspective, is that forty percent of its residents, the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, are non-citizens deprived of all civil and political rights. The solution to this problem is simple, although deeply controversial: establishing one secular, non-ethnic, democratic state with equal citizenship rights to all in the entire area between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.

Supporters of the two-state solution have always used the prospect of one state as a threat, and still do. If a two-state solution is not implemented, world leaders from President Obama on down have warned, Israel will have to face the reality of being a state that could be either Jewish or democratic, but not both. But instead of a threat this could be seen as an opportunity. The Arab Spring has, for the first time, opened up the possibility of true democratization in several Middle Eastern and North African countries. Instead of viewing this development with alarm, as it has been doing, Israel could join this process and democratize the entire territory under its effective control.

The stability of the future secular, democratic Israeli-Palestinian state would depend not only on it being truly democratic, but also on the strictest constitutional separation between state and religion. This should not mean forced secularization or placing restrictions on the free exercise of religion, but it does mean that the state will neither sanction nor subsidize religious activities and institutions, nor will it tolerate religious practices that are discriminatory towards women. In the present state of affairs this idea sounds utterly utopian, because both Israeli and Palestinian societies are becoming more and more religious and suspicious of each other. But as the young activists of Tahrir Square and elsewhere have shown, powerful liberal, democratic, emancipatory undercurrents exist underneath the placid façade of many Middle Eastern societies. These forces, we are convinced, exist in Israel and Palestine too and, given the opportunity, could transform the political reality and bring an end to the hundred-year old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

________
Yoav Peled (poli1@post.tau.ac.il) teaches political science at Tel Aviv University.
Horit Herman Peled (horithp@gmail.com) teaches art at Oranim College.

Posted in Israel/ Palestine, Uncategorized | 34 Comments

Here are two signs that the Obama administration is attempting to dial down tensions with Iran, sending powerful symbolic signals that Washington does not want to see the crisis with Iran militarized.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will hold talks this week with his Israeli counterparts. He appears to be warning them not to strike out at Iran unilaterally.

I’ve been having this debate with friends on email and am arguing that the Obama administration will not launch strikes against Iran in an election year, and nor would President Obama greenlight an Israeli strike. Hence Gen. Dempsey’s visit.

The reason for this 2012 time out is that a military strike is inherently unpredictable in its outcome. Politicians don’t like uncertainty, especially in the middle of a hard-fought campaign. If the strikes turned into any kind of war, conventional or uncoventional, that outcome could make Obama look foolhardy and cost him the election.

There is lots of historical precedent for my conclusion. Eisenhower was furious at Israel, Britain and France for launching the 1956 war just before the presidential election. Since they hadn’t informed him they would do this, it made him look like he wasn’t strong in the Middle East. Then, the hostage crisis in Iran, along with the failed helicopter rescue mission, Helped make Jimmy Carter a one-term president.

In addition, the planned joint US-Israeli war games, Austere Challenge 2012, have been cancelled or postponed. The reason for this move has not been made clear by the US. Some are saying that Israel’s budget situation made it impossible to hold the maneuvers now, while others say that Washington became alarmed at what such an exercise might look like at a time of high tensions with Iran in the Straits of Hormuz.

Austere Challenge 2012 was meant to reassure the Israelis about US missile shield technology. That capacity, in turn, was intended to reassure the Israelis that their future was not in doubt, and that they did not need to take desperate measures against Iran immediately

My guess is that the Obama administration decided that reassuring the Israelis about the US missile shield via these joint military drills might have been misinterpreted in the region an implied threat of a joint US-Israeli military attack on, say, the Natanz nuclear facilities.

The US Open Source Center paraphrases two Israeli Hebrew-language sources on the cancellation or postponement of the exercises:

Joint US-Israel Drill Put Off Due to ‘Wrong Timing’; Sources Disagree on Reasons
Israel — OSC Summary
Sunday, January 15, 2012

Israeli Defense Sources Disagree on Reasons for Military Drill’s Cancellation

Amir Buhbut reports in leading news website Walla! in Hebrew at 1500 GMT: “Reports saying the joint US-Israeli military exercise may not take place generated numerous theories as to the reason behind the change. ‘We learned last weekend that the air defense exercise was canceled, and we were stunned,’ a senior defense source said in a closed conversation today (Sunday). The source added that ‘budget problems were not the reason for the drill’s cancellation.’

“Various defense sources disagreed on whether the exercise had been postponed or cancelled, as well as for the reasons. For example, contrary to previously reported explanations, a senior defense source said that a joint Israeli-US statement was supposed to be issued this week, announcing the drill’s postponement. The senior source explained that the reasons for the decisions have not been announced as yet, but they apparently revolve around the IDF’s budget problems.”

Another source rejected the theory that it was a US decision made against the backdrop of the rising Israeli-Iranian tension. The Israeli side is yet to react to the reports.”

Drill Not Canceled, Merely Postponed Due to ‘Wrong Timing’

Amir Bar-Shalom reports on state-funded, independent Jerusalem Israel Television Channel 1 in Hebrew at 1900 GMT: “The postponement of the largest-ever joint US-Israeli military exercise seems to be the result of wrong timing. For the Americans, the exercise would have greatly exacerbated the tension in the region at the very time other moves — the sanctions — are starting to bear fruit. Israel too prefers to postpone the drill so as to be able to focus on other things. Thus the postponement suits both sides.

“Moreover, the whole world is watching the Israeli and the US moves in the matter of Iran. An exercise of this nature would undoubtedly give rise to speculation as to its objectives and would possibly cause Iran to misinterpret some facts. Both Israel and the United States are fully aware of this possibility. Therefore, a statement issued by the defense establishment tonight says that the exercise has not been canceled, merely postponed to the second part of 2012.”

Posted in Iran, Israel/ Palestine, Uncategorized | 26 Comments

Mark Perry reveals that Israeli Mossad intelligence operatives pretended to be American field officers when contacting members of the Baluch Jundullah terrorist group, presumably in Pakistan, and funding and encouraging Jundullah to blow up targets in Iran.

Among Jundullah operations was a July, 2010, bombing of a Shiite mosque in Zahedan in July of 2010– which killed 27 innocent civilians and injured 169. It was blamed by Shiite authorities on the United States.

The province of Sistan and Baluchistan in Iran is dominated by members of the Baluch ethnic minority, who are Sunni and speak a distinctive Indo-Iranian language, in addition to Persian. Zahedan, the capital, has a lot of Persian Shiites from elsewhere in Iran.

If the allegations are true, they indict the right wing Israeli government on several counts:

1. Of being involved in terrorist operations against civilians and,

2. Of falsely implicating the US government in those terrorist operations, shifting blame onto the CIA and also encouraging Iranian counter-attacks on Americans.

Just to be clear, it is too soon to absolve US agencies from any involvement in Jundullah. But apparently from what Perry says, that would have been very indirect, through third or fourth parties. Washington is annoyed that Mossad made it look direct, in hopes of provoking Iranian terrorism against the US and ginning up a war.

Israeli right wing governments have often been perfidious “allies.” Their political agent in the United States, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has assiduously spied on America, garnering military, technological and trade secrets. The spying is so normal that when AIPAC fired the longtime head of its Mideast bureau, Steven Rosen, who had been caught passing classified Pentagon documents to the Israeli embassy, he sued AIPAC on the grounds that he was only acting as AIPAC operatives routinely did. That is, it was unfair to fire him for this offense, given the long history of domestic espionage conducted by that organization.

Likewise, the assassination by Mossad operatives in Dubai of alleged Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Mabhouh involved massive identity theft by Israeli agents of names, passports and other information of nationals from countries considered friendly to Israel such as Australia and the UK. 1) Identity theft is wrong. 2) Stealing another person’s identity to commit murder is wrong, both because murder is a crime and because the consequences of the murder would then fall on an innocent. 3) Israel was clearly attempting to deflect a) international blame and b) any Hamas retaliation onto the innocent citizens of countries that supported Israel. That’s about as sleazy as you can get.

In the peculiar American system of legalized bribery, AIPAC has bought most US congressmen by organizing thousands of Jewish and Christian Zionist groups to give money to Congressional campaigns. AIPAC ought to have to register as an agent of a foreign country, but is allowed to so function without any let or hindrance, by the FBI, which really ought to intervene here.

The hypocrisy is so thick you could drown in it. The Israel lobbies have managed to configure the Hizbullah party-militia of Lebanon as a “terrorist” organization, when Hizbullah’s major military operations were defensive, aimed at expelling occupying, aggressive Israeli troops from Lebanese territory on which they had unlawfully squatted.

But when Mossad (pretending to be Americans) buys Baluchi agents to blow up innocent worshippers in mosques in Zahedan, that is defined away as not terrorism. Not only will there be no consequences for Israel for endangering American lives by impersonating CIA field officers, but it won’t even be reported in most American news outlets that Israel may have done so.

[Earlier post mistaken; Jundullah recently designated terrorist organization.]

In fact, Israel will be rewarded for bad behavior be even more taxpayer money in “aid” (Israel’s per capita income is greater than some European countries and it doesn’t need any American taxpayer money as aid). And, far right wing and very pernicious Israeli demands such as the unilateral annexation of Jerusalem and gradual expulsion of its Palestinian inhabitants, have been obsequiously adopted by the Republican presidential candidates.

Posted in Israel/ Palestine, U.S. Foreign Policy, Uncategorized | 29 Comments