Reflections by Comrade Fidel Th
Reflections by Comrade
Fidel
The Opinion of An Expert
If I were to be asked who best knows about Israeli thinking,
I would answer that without question it is Jeffrey Goldberg. He is an
indefatigable journalist, capable of having dozens of meetings to ascertain how
some Israeli leader or intellectual may think.
He is not neutral, of course; he is pro-Israeli, no ands ifs or buts. When one
of them does not agree with the policy of that country, that too is not done
halfway.
For my aim, it is important to know the thinking that guides the main political
and military leaders of that State.
I feel that I have the authority to have an opinion because I have never been
anti-Semitic and I share with him a profound hatred of Nazi-Fascism and the
genocide perpetrated against children, women and men, young or aged Jews against
whom Hitler, the Gestapo and the Nazis took out their hatred against that
people.
For the same reason, I abhor the crimes committed by the fascist government of
Netanyahu which kills children, women and men, young and old in the Gaza Strip
and on the West Bank.
In his illustrated article âThe Point of No Returnâ that will be printed in The
Atlantic journal in September 2010, now available on the Internet, Jeffrey
Goldberg starts his more than 40-page paper; I am taking the essential ideas
from it in order to enlighten the readers.
âIt is possible that at some point in the next 12 months, the imposition of
devastating economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran will persuade its
leaders to cease their pursuit of nuclear weapons. [âŠ]It is possible, as well,
that âfoiling operationsâ conducted by the intelligence agencies of Israel, the
United States, Great Britain, and other Western powersâ [âŠ]âwill have hindered
Iranâs progress in some significant way. It is also possible that President
Obama, who has said on more than a few occasions that he finds the prospect of a
nuclear Iran âunacceptable,â will order a military strike against the countryâs
main weapons and uranium-enrichment facilities.â
âI am not engaging in a thought exercise, or a one-man war game, when I discuss
the plausibility and potential consequences of an Israeli strike on Iran. Israel
has twice before successfully attacked and destroyed an enemyâs nuclear program.
In 1981, Israeli warplanes bombed the Iraqi reactor at Osirak, haltingâforever,
as it turned outâSaddam Husseinâs nuclear ambitions; and in 2007, Israeli planes
destroyed a North Koreanâbuilt reactor in Syria. An attack on Iran, then, would
be unprecedented only in scope and complexity.â
âI have been exploring the possibility that such a strike will eventually occur
for more than seven years, [âŠ] In the months since then, I have interviewed
roughly 40 current and past Israeli decision makers about a military strike, as
well as many American and Arab officials. In most of these interviews, I have
asked a simple question: what is the percentage chance that Israel will attack
the Iranian nuclear program in the near future? Not everyone would answer this
question, but a consensus emerged that there is a better than 50 percent chance
that Israel will launch a strike by next July. [âŠ] But I tested the consensus by
speaking to multiple sources both in and out of government, and of different
political parties. Citing the extraordinary sensitivity of the subject, most
spoke only reluctantly, and on condition of anonymity. [âŠ]The reasoning offered
by Israeli decision makers was uncomplicated: Iran is, at most, one to three
years away from having a breakout nuclear capability [âŠ]and the most crucial
component of Israeli national-security doctrine, a tenet that dates back to the
1960s [âŠ]is that no regional adversary should be allowed to achieve nuclear
parity with the reborn and still-besieged Jewish state.â
âIn our conversation before his swearing-in, Netanyahu would not frame the issue
in terms of nuclear parityâ [âŠ] Instead, he framed the Iranian program as a
threat not only to Israel but to all of Western civilization.â
âââŠWhen the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons
of mass death, then the world should start worrying, and thatâs what is
happening in Iran.ââ
âIn our conversation, Netanyahu refused to discuss his timetable for action, or
even whether he was considering military preemption of the Iranian nuclear
program. [âŠ]Netanyahuâs belief is that Iran is not Israelâs problem alone; it is
the worldâs problem, and the world, led by the United States, is duty-bound to
grapple with it. But Netanyahu does not place great faith in sanctionsânot the
relatively weak sanctions against Iran recently passed by the United Nations
Security Council, nor the more rigorous ones being put in place by the U.S. and
its European allies.â
âBut, based on my conversations with Israeli decision-makers, this period of
forbearance, in which Netanyahu waits to see if the Westâs nonmilitary methods
can stop Iran, will come to an end this December.â
âThe Netanyahu government is already intensifying its analytic efforts not just
on Iran, but on a subject many Israelis have difficulty understanding: President
Obama. The Israelis are struggling to answer what is for them the most pressing
question: are there any circumstances under which President Obama would deploy
force to stop Iran from going nuclear? Everything depends on the answer. â
âIran demands the urgent attention of the entire international community, and in
particular the United States, with its unparalleled ability to project military
force. This is the position of many moderate Arab leaders as well. A few weeks
ago, in uncommonly direct remarks, the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates to
the United States, Yousef al-Otaiba, told meâ [âŠ]that his country would support
a military strike on Iranâs nuclear facilities. [âŠ] he said. âSmall, rich,
vulnerable countries in the region do not want to be the ones who stick their
finger in the big bullyâs eye, if nobodyâs going to come to their support.â
âSeveral Arab leaders have suggested that Americaâs standing in the Middle East
depends on its willingness to confront Iran. They argue self-interestedly that
an aerial attack on a handful of Iranian facilities would not be as complicated
or as messy as, say, invading Iraq. âThis is not a discussion about the invasion
of Iran,â one Arab foreign minister told me. âWe are hoping for the pinpoint
striking of several dangerous facilities. America could do this very easily.â
âBarack Obama has said any number of times that he would find a nuclear Iran
âunacceptable.â [âŠ]A nuclear Iran would be a game-changing situation, not just
in the Middle East, but around the world. Whatever remains of our nuclear
nonproliferation framework, I think, would begin to disintegrate. You would have
countries in the Middle East who would see the potential need to also obtain
nuclear weapons.â
âBut the Israelis are doubtful that a man who positioned himself as the
antithesis of George W. Bush, author of invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq,
would launch a preemptive attack on a Muslim nation.â
âWe all watched his speech in Cairo,â a senior Israeli official told me,
referring to the June 2009 speech in which Obama attempted to reset relations
with Muslims by stressing American cooperativeness and respect for Islam. âWe
donât believe that he is the sort of person who would launch a daring strike on
Iran. We are afraid he would see a policy of containing a nuclear Iran rather
than attacking it.â
ââBush was two years ago, but the Iranian program was the same and the intent
was the same,â the Israeli official told me. âSo I donât personally expect Obama
to be more Bush than Bush.â
âIf the Israelis reach the firm conclusion that Obama will not, under any
circumstances, launch a strike on Iran, then the countdown will begin for a
unilateral Israeli attack.
âa strike on Iran, Israeli intelligence officials believe, could provoke all-out
retaliation by Iranâs Lebanese subsidiary, Hezbollah, which now possesses, by
most intelligence estimates, as many as 45,000 rocketsâat least three times as
many as it had in the summer of 2006, during the last round of fighting between
the group and Israel.)
ââŠNetanyahu is not unique in his understanding of this challenge; several of the
prime ministers who preceded him cast Iranâs threat in similarly existential
terms. [âŠ]âHe has a deep sense of his role in Jewish history,â Michael Oren,
Israelâs ambassador to the United States, told me.â
Jeffrey Goldberg goes on for several pages to tell the story of Netanyahuâs
father, Ben-Zion, whom he considers to be the most outstanding historian in the
world on the subject of the Spanish Inquisition and other important merits, and
who recently celebrated his 100th birthday.
âBenjamin Netanyahu is not known in most quarters for his pliability on matters
concerning Palestinians, though he has been trying lately to meet at least some
of Barack Obamaâs demands that he move the peace process forward.â
At the end of this part of his article, Goldberg carries on with the analysis of
the complex situation. At times he is rather tough analyzing a 2001commentary by
the former president of Iran, Hashemi-Rafsanjani, in which he is certainly
speaking about a bomb that would destroy Israel; a threat that was criticized
even by the left-wing forces that are Netanyahuâs enemies.
âThe challenges posed by a nuclear Iran are more subtle than a direct attack,
Netanyahu told me. [âŠ] âIranâs militant proxies would be able to fire rockets
and engage in other terror activities while enjoying a nuclear umbrella.
[âŠ]Instead of being a local event, however painful, it becomes a global one.
Second, this development would embolden Islamic militants far and wide, on many
continents, who would believe that this is a providential sign, that this
fanaticism is on the ultimate road to triumph..â
ââYouâd create a great sea change in the balance of power in our area,â he went
on.
âOther Israeli leaders believe that the mere threat of a nuclear attack by
Iranâcombined with the chronic menacing of Israelâs cities by the rocket forces
of Hamas and Hezbollahâwill progressively undermine the countryâs ability to
retain its most creative and productive citizens.. [âŠ] âThe real test for us is
to make Israel such an attractive place, such a cutting-edge place in human
society, education, culture, science, quality of life, that even American Jewish
young people want to come here.â
âPatriotism in Israel runs very high, according to numerous polls, and it seemed
unlikely to me that mere fear of Iran could drive Israelâs Jews to seek shelter
elsewhere. But one leading proponent of an Israeli attack on Iranâs nuclear
facilities, Ephraim Sneh, a former general and former deputy defense minister,
is convinced that if Iran crossed the nuclear threshold, the very idea of Israel
would be endangered. âThese people are good citizens, and brave citizens, but
the dynamics of life are such that if someone has a scholarship for two years at
an American university and the university offers him a third year, the parents
will say, âGo ahead, remain there,ââ Sneh told me when I met with him in his
office outside of Tel Aviv not long ago. âIf someone finishes a Ph.D. and they
are offered a job in America, they might stay there. It will not be that people
are running to the airport, [âŠ]The bottom line is that we would have an
accelerated brain drain. And an Israel that is not based on entrepreneurship,
that is not based on excellence, will not be the Israel of today.â
âOne Monday evening in early summer, I sat in the office of the decidedly non-goyishe
Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, and listened to several National
Security Council officials he had gathered at his conference table explainâin so
many wordsâwhy the Jewish state should trust the non-Jewish president of the
United States to stop Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold. â
âOne of those at the table, Ben Rhodes, a deputy national-security adviser who
served as the lead author of the recent âNational Security Strategy for the
United Statesâ as well as of the presidentâs conciliatory Cairo speech,
suggested that Iranâs nuclear program was a clear threat to American security,
and that the Obama administration responds to national-security threats in the
manner of other administrations. âWe are coordinating a multifaceted strategy to
increase pressure on Iran, but that doesnât mean weâve removed any option from
the table,â Rhodes said. âThis president has shown again and again that when he
believes it is necessary to use force to protect American national-security
interests, he has done so. Weâre not going to address hypotheticals about when
and if we would use military force, but I think weâve made it clear that we
arenât removing the option of force from any situation in which our national
security is affected.â
ââŠEmanuel, whose default state is exasperation [âŠ](A former Bush administration
official told me that his president faced the opposite problem: Bush, bogged
down by two wars and believing that Iran wasnât that close to crossing the
nuclear threshold, opposed the use of force against Iranâs program, and made his
view clear, âbut no one believed him).â
âAt one point, I put forward the idea that for abundantly obvious reasons, few
people would believe Barack Obama would open up a third front in the greater
Middle East. One of the officials responded heatedly, âWhat have we done that
would allow you to reach the conclusion that we think that a nuclear Iran would
represent a tolerable situation?â
âObama administration officials, particularly in the Pentagon, have several
times signaled unhappiness at the possibility of military preemption. In April,
the undersecretary of defense for policy, Michele Flournoy, told reporters that
military force against Iran was âoff the table in the near term.â She later
backtracked, but Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, has also criticized the idea of attacking Iran. [âŠ]âIn an area thatâs so
unstable right now, we just donât need more of that.â
ââŠPresident Obama has by no means ruled out counterproliferation by force..
[âŠ]Gary Samore, the National Security Council official who oversees the
administrationâs counterproliferation agenda, told me that the Israelis agree
with American assessments that Iranâs uranium-enrichment program is plagued with
problems.â
âââŠwe can measure, based on the IAEA reports, that the Iranians are not doing
well,â Samore said. âThe particular centrifuge machines theyâre running are
based on an inferior technology. They are running into some technical
difficulties, partly because of the work weâve done to deny them access to
foreign components. When they make the parts themselves, they are making parts
that donât have quality control.â
âDennis Ross, the former Middle East peace negotiator who is currently a senior
National Security Council official, said during the meeting that he believes the
Israelis now understand that American-instigated measures have slowed Iranâs
progress, and that the administration is working to convince the Israelisâand
other parties in the regionâthat the sanctions strategy âhas a chance of
working.â
âThe president has said he hasnât taken any options off the table, but letâs
take a look at why we think this strategy could work,â [âŠ]Last June, when they
hadnât responded to our bilateral outreach, the president said that we would
take stock by September.â
âRoss [âŠ]the sanctions Iran now faces may affect the regimeâs thinking. âThe
sanctions are going to cut across the board. They are taking place in the
context of Iranian mismanagementâthe Iranians are going to have to cut [food and
fuel] subsidies; they already have public alienation; they have division in the
elites, and between the elites and the rest of the country.â
âOne question no administration official seems eager to answer is this: what
will the United States do if sanctions fail? Several Arab officials complained
to me that the Obama administration has not communicated its intentions to them,
even generally.â
âObamaâs voters like it when the administration shows that it doesnât want to
fight Iran, but this is not a domestic political issue,â the foreign minister
said. âIran will continue on this reckless path, unless the administration
starts to speak unreasonably. The best way to avoid striking Iran is to make
Iran think that the U.S. is about to strike Iran. We have to know the
presidentâs intentions on this matter. We are his allies.â (According to two
administration sources, this issue caused tension between President Obama and
his recently dismissed director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair.
According to these sources, Blair, who was said to put great emphasis on the
Iranian threat, told the president that Americaâs Arab allies needed more
reassurance. Obama reportedly did not appreciate the advice.)â
âIn Israel, of course, officials expend enormous amounts of energy to understand
President Obama, despite the assurances they have received from Emanuel, Ross,
and others.â
âNot long ago, the chief of Israeli military intelligence, Major General Amos
Yadlin, paid a secret visit to Chicago to meet with Lester Crown, the
billionaire whose family owns a significant portion of General Dynamics, the
military contractor. Crown [âŠ] ââI share with the Israelis the feeling that we
certainly have the military capability and that we have to have the will to use
it. The rise of Iran is not in the best interest of the U.S.'â
ââI support the president,â Crown said. âBut I wish [administration officials]
were a little more outgoing in the way they have talked. I would feel more
comfortable if I knew that they had the will to use military force, as a last
resort. You cannot threaten someone as a bluff. There has to be a will to do
it.â
âSeveral officials even asked if I considered Obama to be an anti-Semite. I
answered this question by quoting Abner Mikva, the former congressman, federal
judge, and mentor to Obama, who famously said in 2008, âI think when this is all
over, people are going to say that Barack Obama is the first Jewish president.â
I explained that Obama has been saturated with the work of Jewish writers, legal
scholars, and thinkers, and that a large number of his friends, supporters, and
aides are Jewish. But philo-Semitism does not necessarily equal sympathy for
Netanyahuâs Likud Partyâcertainly not among American Jews, who are, like the
president they voted for in overwhelming numbers, generally supportive of a
two-state solution, and dubious about Jewish settlement of the West Bank.â
âRahm Emanuel suggested that the administration is trying to thread a needle:
providing âunshakeableâ support for Israel; protecting it from the consequences
of an Iranian nuclear bomb; but pushing it toward compromise with the
Palestinians. [âŠ] he past six Israeli prime ministersâincluding Netanyahu, who
during his first term in the late 1990s, to his fatherâs chagrin, compromised
with the Palestiniansâto buttress his case. âRabin, Peres, Netanyahu, Barak,
Sharon, Olmertâevery one of them pursued some form of a negotiated settlement,
which would have been in Israelâs own strategic interest,â he said. âThere have
been plenty of other threats while successive Israeli governments have pursued a
peace process.â
ââŠIsrael should consider carefully whether a military strike would be worth the
trouble it would unleash. âIâm not sure that given the time line, whatever the
time line is, that whatever they did, they wouldnât stopâ the nuclear program,
he said. âThey would be postponing.â
âIt was then that I realized that, on some subjects, the Israelis and Americans
are still talking past each other.â
âIN MY CONVERSATIONS with former Israeli air-force generals and strategists, the
prevalent tone was cautious. Many people I interviewed were ready, on condition
of anonymity, to say why an attack on Iranâs nuclear sites would be difficult
for Israel. And some Israeli generals, like their American colleagues,
questioned the very idea of an attack. âOur time would be better spent lobbying
Barack Obama to do this, rather than trying this ourselves,â one general told
me. âWe are very good at this kind of operation, but it is a big stretch for us.
The Americans can do this with a minimum of difficulty, by comparison. This is
too big for us.â
âThese planes would have to return home quickly, in part because Israeli
intelligence believes that Iran would immediately order Hezbollah to fire
rockets at Israeli cities, and Israeli air-force resources would be needed to
hunt Hezbollah rocket teams.â
ââŠin the event of a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran, his mission would be to
combat Hezbollah rocket forces. [âŠ]to keep Hezbollah in reserve until Iran can
cross the nuclear threshold.
ââŠHezbollah ââlost a lot of his men. [âŠ] That is one reason we have had four
years of quiet. What has changed in four years is that Hezbollah has increased
its missile capability, but we have increased our capabilities as well.â He
concluded by saying, in reference to a potential Israeli strike on Iran, âOur
readiness means that Israel has freedom of action.â
âAmerica, too, would look complicit in an Israeli attack, even if it had not
been forewarned. The assumptionâoften, but not always, correctâthat Israel acts
only with the approval of the United States is a feature of life in the Middle
East, and it is one the Israelis say they are taking into account. I spoke with
several Israeli officials who are grappling with this question, among others:
what if American intelligence learns about Israeli intentions hours before the
scheduled launch of an attack? âIt is a nightmare for us,â one of these
officials told me. âWhat if President Obama calls up Bibi and says, âWe know
what youâre doing. Stop immediately.â Do we stop? We might have to. A decision
has been made that we canât lie to the Americans about our plans. We donât want
to inform them beforehand. This is for their sake and for ours. So what do we
do? These are the hard questions.â
âMany Israelis think the Iranians are building Auschwitz. We have to let them
know that we have destroyed Auschwitz, or we have to let them know that we tried
and failed.â
âThere are, of course, Israeli leaders who believe that attacking Iran is too
risky. [âŠ]âWe donât want politicians to put us in a bad position because of the
word Shoah,â one general said.â
âAfter staring at the photograph of the Israeli air-force flyover of Auschwitz
more than a dozen different times in more than a dozen different offices, I came
to see the contradiction at its core. If the Jewish physicists who created
Israelâs nuclear arsenal could somehow have ripped a hole in the space-time
continuum and sent a squadron of fighters back to 1942,âŠâ
âBenjamin Netanyahu feels, for reasons of national security, that if sanctions
fail, he will be forced to take action. But an Israeli attack on Iranâs nuclear
facilities, successful or not, may cause Iran to redouble its effortsâthis time
with a measure of international sympathyâto create a nuclear arsenal. And it
could cause chaos for America in the Middle East. [âŠ]Peres sees the Iranian
nuclear program as potentially catastrophic, [âŠ]When I asked if he believed in a
military option, he said, âWhy should I declare something like that?â
âBased on months of interviews, I have come to believe that the administration
knows it is a near-certainty that Israel will act against Iran soon if nothing
or no one else stops the nuclear program; [âŠ]Earlier this year, I agreed with
those, including many Israelis, Arabsâand Iraniansâwho believe there is no
chance that Obama would ever resort to force to stop Iran; I still donât believe
there is a great chance he will take military action in the near futureâfor one
thing, the Pentagon is notably unenthusiastic about the idea. But Obama is
clearly seized by the issue. [âŠ]Denis McDonough, the chief of staff of the
National Security Council, told me, âWhat you see in Iran is the intersection of
a number of leading priorities of the president, who sees a serious threat to
the global nonproliferation regime, a threat of cascading nuclear activities in
a volatile region, and a threat to a close friend of the United States, Israel.
I think you see the several streams coming together, which accounts for why it
is so important to us.â
âWhen I asked Peres what he thought of Netanyahuâs effort to make Israelâs case
to the Obama administration, he responded [âŠ]his country should know its place,
and that it was up to the American president, and only the American president,
to decide in the end how best to safeguard the future of the West. The story was
about his mentor, David Ben-Gurion.
ââShortly after John F. Kennedy was elected president, Ben-Gurion met him at the
Waldorf-Astoriaâ in New York, Peres told me. âAfter the meeting, Kennedy
accompanied Ben-Gurion to the elevator and said, âMr. Prime Minister, I want to
tell you, I was elected because of your people, so what can I do for you in
return?â Ben-Gurion was insulted by the question. He said, âWhat you can do is
be a great president of the United States. You must understand that to have a
great president of the United States is a great event.ââ
âPeres went on to explain what he saw as Israelâs true interest. âWe donât want
to win over the president,â he said. âWe want the president to win.â
âJeffrey Goldbergâ
âJeffrey Mark Goldberg is an American-Israeli journalist. He is one of the
writers and staff journalists on The Atlantic journal. Previously he worked for
The New Yorker. Goldberg mainly writes on international subjects, preferring the
Middle East and Africa. Some have called him the most influential
journalist-blogger on matters dealing with Israel.â
Fidel Castro Ruz
August 25, 2010
6:18 p.m.
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