The author writes that politics play too large a role in discussions of a nuclear Iran. Hoist by his own petard

Last week, Israeli media speculation about an imminent Israeli attack on Iran went ballistic - again. Informed commentators writing in the Israeli daily, Yedioth Ahronoth, said, “Insofar as it depends on [Prime Minister] Binyamin Netanyahu and [Defense Minister] Ehud Barak, an Israeli military strike on the nuclear facilities in Iran will take place in these coming autumn months, before the U.S. elections in November.”

Oddly, the same article went on to say, “There is not a single senior official in the establishment - neither among the [Israeli Defense Forces] top brass nor in the security branches, or even the president - who supports an Israeli strike at the moment.”


How does this possibly compute?

The real issue here is not Iran’s nuclear program but how the political - as opposed to military/intelligence - hawks in the Israeli government are fanning the flames of a wildly exaggerated nuclear threat to try to influence the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. By forcing Obama to admit to opposing a military strike, these Israeli hawks paint him as weak on defense. In the run-up to the election, it would be politically difficult for Obama to deny his backing of an Israeli strike while Romney has already clearly voiced his support for unilateral military action - whether or not such an attack actually materializes - or even makes any sense.

In a remarkably honest speech in the Israeli Knesset, former defense minister and current Kadima Party leader Shaul Mofaz put it bluntly to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, saying, “Mr. Prime Minister, you want a crude, rude, unprecedented, reckless, and risky intervention in the U.S. elections. Tell us who you serve and for what? Why are you putting your hand deep into the ballot boxes of the American electorate?”

Icy relations between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu are no secret, of course. And Bibi would certainly prefer a President Mitt Romney than four more years of Obama.

Just last week, Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told Israel Radio that the P5+1 nations — the United Nations Security Council’s permanent members plus Germany — should “declare today that the talks have failed.” Such a declaration, he said, will make “clear that all options are on the table,” including a military strike — not only by Israel but also, possibly, by U.S. or NATO.

But there are a number of problems in this view: the P5+1 talks have not failed. Even if they do fail, Iran would not be enriching to weapons grade and its nuclear activities would continue to be under the watchful eye of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Enrichment is not the same as a bomb factory. Of course, the Obama administration has helped dig itself into this political hole. By not emphasizing more strongly from the very start what the U.S. Intelligence Community and the IAEA have known — that Iran has not even decided to build nuclear weapons, and that they are not enriching to weapons grade, and that Iranian nuclear enrichment is being meticulously monitored by the IAEA — the administration has tacitly agreed to the uber-hawks stance that the Iranian nuclear program is an imminent danger when it is clear that it is not.

Even Israeli politicians acknowledge that the Iran nuclear threat is being hugely exaggerated. Kadima Party leader Shaul Mofaz again, in referring to Netanyahu’s “incessant prattle about a nuclear Iran” said, “Mr. Prime Minister, you are playing a dangerous and irresponsible game with the future of an entire nation. … You’re creating panic … And in truth, we are scared: scared by your lack of judgment, scared that you both lead and don’t lead, scared that you are executing a dangerous and irresponsible policy.”

As Paul Pillar, a 28-year veteran of the CIA, observes: “It would enormously improve U.S. debate on [the] subject if American politicians could be this direct. But instead they operate in fear of being seen to stray at all from the established dogma that Iran with its nuclear program is The Greatest Threat in the World.”

Of course, to some extent, the Obama administration was forced to go along with the almost unanimous — but completely incorrect — demonization of Iran’s nuclear program by the Congress: There really was no political way for the administration to directly oppose any of the sanctions’ legislation when the Congress had a veto-proof bipartisan majority. Opposition to Iran is the one thing almost all of Congress seems to be able to agree to — even if the resultant legislation is deeply flawed and has little to do with Iran’s nuclear program.

However, the administration could have been more nuanced and truthful in its characterizations of the Iranian nuclear program. Instead of meekly and tacitly agreeing with Congress, Obama could have more forcefully underlined what the Intelligence Community and Defense Secretary have said. Following the release of the classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in 2011, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper confirmed in a Senate hearing that he has a “high level of confidence” that Iran “has not made a decision as of this point to restart its nuclear weapons program.”

And Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has also weighed in: “Are they [Iranians] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No.”

Mohamed El Baradei, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who spent more than a decade as the director of the IAEA, has said that he had not “seen a shred of evidence” that Iran was pursuing the bomb.

The November 2011 IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program also backs up this assessment, stating that Iran’s fledgling research program into nuclear weapons “was stopped rather abruptly pursuant to a ‘halt order’ instruction issued in late 2003.”

Had the administration emphasized that, to the best of U.S. and IAEA experts’ knowledge, that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, and emphasized that its enrichment program is under inspection by the IAEA, the administration would now have been politically better placed to oppose a military strike.

Besides the fact that a military strike on Iran would be against international law it would also not be very effective. The Congressional Research Service reports that “Israeli officials and analysts generally agree that a strike would not completely destroy the [Iranian nuclear] program.” Besides, it may well be counterproductive — it might help launch an Iranian nuclear weapons program — and also spark a region-wide conflagration.

If the Romney campaign ends up getting decisive traction on the Iran issue, the Obama administration will have itself to blame for making a bigger issue out of it than it ever needed to be.

Yousaf Butt, a nuclear physicist, is professor and scientist-in-residence at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

This article tagged under: Opinion

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