“What About Israel’s Nuclear Bomb?”: The Tangled History Of Israel’s Poorly Kept Secret
After Bibi Netanyahu’s provocative speech to Congress, The New York Times provided helpful clarifications in an article headlined “What Iran Won’t Say About the Bomb.” Written by two superbly expert reporters, William Broad and David Sanger, the piece walked through the technical complexities for non-experts (myself included) and explained key questions Iranians have failed to answer.
But this leads me to ask a different question: What about Israel’s bomb? Why isn’t that also part of the discussion?
In the flood of news stories about Iran’s nuclear intentions, I have yet to see mention of Israel’s nuclear arsenal (if I missed some mentions, they must have been rare).
Yet Israel’s bomb is obviously relevant to the controversy. The facts are deliberately murky, but Israel has had nuclear weapons for at least forty years, though it has never officially acknowledged their existence. The Israeli diplomatic approach has been called “nuclear ambiguity.”
I asked a friend who’s a national-security correspondent in Washington why news stories don’t mention Israel’s bomb. He shrugged off my question. “Because everybody knows that,” he said. Probably that’s true among policy elites and politicians, though I am not so sure this is widely known among average Americans.
In any case, if everyone knows Israel has the bomb, why not acknowledge this in the public debate?
I asked another friend (a well-informed journalist sympathetic to the Palestinian cause) why reporters don’t talk about the Israeli bomb. “Groupthink,” he said. “It’s almost as though Israel gets a bye from the media.”
The Iranians, he added, have raised the issue of the Israeli bomb many times in the past, but their complaints were generally ignored in the Western press. Iranian diplomats pointed out that Iran has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and submits to international inspections as the treaty requires (though Iran still hides stuff, as The New York Times account described). Israel has never signed the NPT and therefore does not submit to inspections.
My point is, the existence of Israel’s nuclear superiority is clearly a pivotal fact of life in the chaotic conflicts and occasional wars of the Middle East. It should not be left out.
Israel’s bomb might be an important factor in motivating Iran to seek a nuclear bomb of its own (though Iran denies that intention). It might also be the subtext for Netanyahu’s bellicose warnings and his occasional calls for bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Bibi’s country would lose valuable leverage if it no longer had a nuclear monopoly in the region. Yet it might be considered a provocative act if Israel bluntly acknowledged its nuclear arsenal.
According to Wikipedia’s account, largely based on scholarly sources, Israel has seventy-five to 400 bombs (others say it is more like 100 to 200). It has never threatened to use them anywhere, though during the Yom Kippur War in 1973 Israeli leaders put eight of its nuclear-armed F-4’s on alert. Its adversaries no doubt got the word.
Other nations with nukes are Pakistan, India and North Korea as well as the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France. The United States is the only nation that has ever used atomic bombs on people in another nation—Japan at the close of World War II.
The Center for Public Integrity in Washington published an article in September 2014 by Douglas Birch and Jeffrey Smith that described the tangled history of Israel’s poorly kept secret. Some scholars, they wrote, complained that the lack of candor complicates efforts to confront Iran, since the US government cooperates in the pretense of not knowing.
Back in 2009, President Obama was asked about whether Israel possessed nuclear bombs. “With respect to nuclear weapons, you know, I don’t want to speculate,” the president said. In US terms, it is an official secret. The government can even prosecute people with security clearance if they tell the truth to the American public.
In a sense, Israel’s nukes have been like an “invisible hand” that warns hostile neighbors and keeps them from going too far. At the same time, however, Israel adopted an “option of pre-emption”—attacking neighbors like Iraq and Syria with non-nuclear bombs if they seemed to be developing nuclear arms.
Israel’s essential rationale was described by various sources cited by Wikipedia: “It cannot afford to lose a single war and thus must prevent them by maintaining deterrence including the option of preemption.”
That brings the story back around to Bibi. For roughly twenty years, Netanyahu has now and then called for bombing Iran to crumple its nuclear intentions. The Obama administration is attempting to accomplish the same result peacefully, through negotiations.
As Juan Cole has written in The Nation, that may be a false choice, because Israeli intelligence and a former defense minister have admitted that Iran has no nuclear weapons program. Cole explained: “Nuclear weapons are in any case defensive, not offensive, and Iran could not deploy a bomb (if it had one, which it doesn’t) against Israel because the Israelis would retaliate by wiping Iran off the map,”
In other words, even if Tehran were to acquire nukes, it could not use them against Israel. Both nations would become prisoners of the stalemate that ruled the United States and Soviet Union for forty years during the Cold War. The doctrine was known as Mutually Assured Destruction, or MAD for short..
That’s an unsatisfying result for the hawks in Israel but also the hawks in the United States. Remember Senator John McCain singing his light-hearted little ditty? “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran.”
But isn’t talk-talk preferable to risking massive human slaughter and the destruction of nations? The war party in Washington evidently doesn’t think so. Inspired by Bibi, wannabe warriors are brutally trashing their American president. Their logic assumes the mullahs in Tehran are crazy fanatics and that crazy people are not deterred by the prospect of self-destruction.
If Obama’s negotiations fail or Republican meddling derails them, then Americans would face the ultimate question. Do we really want to go to war—again—in the Middle East? Israel might face a different question. Do Israeli citizens really want to bomb Iran if their American friends say, No, thanks—this time you’re on your own?
Maybe the Times reporters, Broad and Sanger, could do another article about the Israeli bomb that has been absent from the debate.
By: Wiliam Greider, The Nation, March 12, 2015
“Kerry Teaches Rubio The Basics About The Middle East”: Explaining Current Events To A Student Who Failed To Do His Homework
At the recent CPAC gathering, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a likely Republican presidential candidate, seemed to stumble on one of the basic facts of the Middle East. “The reason Obama hasn’t put in place a military strategy to defeat ISIS is because he doesn’t want to upset Iran,” the Florida Republican said.
The senator seemed confused. In reality, President Obama has put an anti-ISIS military strategy in place, and that’s fine with Iran, since Iran and ISIS are enemies.
I’d hoped that Rubio just misspoke, or had been briefed poorly by an aide, but apparently not – -at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing this afternoon, the far-right Floridian continued to push this strange theory, pressing Secretary of State John Kerry on the point. “I believe that much of our strategy with regards to ISIS is being driven by a desire not to upset Iran so they don’t walk away from the negotiating table on the deal that you’re working on,” Rubio said. “Tell me why I’m wrong.”
And so, Kerry told him why he’s wrong.
For those who can’t watch clips online, here’s the heart of the exchange.
KERRY: What’s important, senator, with respect to your question is to understand this. And I think this has been a misread by a lot of people up here on the Hill, to be honest with you. There is no grand bargain being discussed here with regards to this negotiation, this is about a nuclear weapon potential. That’s it. And the president has made it absolutely clear they will not get a nuclear weapon. Now the presumption by a lot of people up on the Hill here has been that we somehow aren’t aware of that goal even as we negotiate that goal. Our negotiation is calculated to make sure they can’t get a nuclear weapon. It’s really almost insulting that the presumption here is that we’re going to negotiate something that allows them to get a nuclear weapon.
RUBIO: Well I haven’t discussed about the nuclear weapon but I – and I’m not saying there is a grand bargain – what I’m saying is that I believe that our military strategy towards ISIS is influenced by our desire not to cross red lines That the Iranians have –
KERRY: Absolutely not in the least.
Rubio went on to insist that many of our Sunni allies in the region – including Jordan and U.A.E. – feel as if we’ve kept them “in the dark” about the nuclear talks with Iran, reducing our “trust level” in the region.
Again, Kerry had to patiently explained to the Republican, “Senator, that is actually flat wrong.”
Honestly, it was like watching a competent teacher trying to explain the basics of current events to a student who failed to do his homework. Andrea Mitchell said the Secretary of State took Rubio “to school.”
Rubio recently said he’d have an important advantage in the race for the White House because he, unlike the GOP governors, has “a clear view of what’s happening in the world.” The senator added that for governors running for president, international affairs will be “a challenge, at least initially, because they don’t deal with foreign policy on a daily basis.”
That’s not a bad argument, though it’s predicated on the assumption that senators who deal with foreign policy actually have some idea what they’re talking about. This afternoon, Rubio fell far short.
For more on today’s committee hearing, be sure to check out msnbc’s related coverage.
By: Steve Benen, Yhe Maddow Blog, March 11, 2015
“GOP Hates Obama More Than A Nuclear Iran”: Republicans Will Reap What They Have Sown
That letter to Iranian leaders from 47 Republican senators could well destroy critical bipartisanship in U.S. foreign policy for years to come and treacherously undermine the bargaining power of the person constitutionally authorized to conduct American affairs abroad—the President of the United States. On top of what House Speaker John Boehner did by unilaterally inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress, this letter seriously points to one terrible conclusion: a formidable number of Congressional Republicans hate President Obama more than they love America.
These acts go entirely beyond legitimate criticism of presidential actions abroad. They are not like a few legislators wandering in foreign lands and expressing their disagreement with their government. They surely exceed the usual congressional resolutions of disagreement with presidential policy.
What the 47 did was not a trivial matter or “a tempest in a teapot,” as Senator John McCain has described it. It could well affect possible Iranian concessions in the end game. The ayatollahs could well conclude from that letter that concessions they might have made just aren’t worth it politically, as the agreement would go nowhere anyway. They’d be taking political risks for nothing.
Beyond these negotiations, the effects on our national security may well be profound and lasting. Just look at the future implications of what these Republican senators said in their letter. They maintained, in effect, that this thing a President of the United States has been negotiating will either be thrown out by Congress or discarded by the next president, so don’t waste your time. Did the 47 even consider how future Congresses would apply such words to future presidents?
For one moment, did these senators think about how their actions could affect the ability of President Barack Obama to protect the safety of America? Did they consider how their insistence that he doesn’t matter affects his power to protect American interests and lives in the Middle East or NATO countries? These noble legislators were saying Mr. Obama doesn’t speak for Congress or the American people, and bad guys of the world, you can defy him and thus the United States however you wish.
And don’t think for a second that Democrats will forget these acts of near treachery to a sitting president of their party when a Republican president takes the helm. Don’t expect the Democrats to be saints and models of self-restraint given the behavior of Speaker Boehner and these 47 Republicans. At some critical time, in some critical place, Democrats will exact revenge on a Republican in the White House and, alas, on US national interests. At some point, the Republicans will reap what they have sown.
Seven sitting Republican senators fully realized the consequences of what their colleagues were doing and refused to sign the letter. Those with such good sense merit mentioning: Bob Corker, Lisa Murkowski, Jeff Flake, Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins, Dan Coats, and Thad Cochran. At least some senatorial Republicans put their country above partisanship, blind ideology, and hatred of the duly elected President of the United States.
Many Republican worthies who have conducted U.S. national security policy in the past and who may do so in the future know well that the agreement being negotiated with Iran by Mr. Obama is not another Munich or a sellout, as Israel’s prime ministerial hit man intoned to Congress. Putting all the baloney aside (and boy there are mountains of it this time), in the simplest terms this agreement extends the time for an Iranian nuclear breakout to a bomb and enhances our knowledge of what’s going on with nuclear programs inside Iran through greater inspections.
It’s surely not heaven, and the Iranians surely can’t be trusted, but it’s surely better than the idiotic alternatives. These would be forgoing the agreement and letting Iran simply get to a bomb quickly, as the severest critics fear they will, or going to war with Iran to delay that day.
Those who argue that Iran will be brought to its knees by enhanced economic sanctions ignore history. Look at North Korea, Pakistan, Cuba and so forth. Look at the fact that a large majority of Iranians feel they should have peaceful nuclear energy capability. Look at the fact that all the countries partnering with the U.S. in negotiating with Iran (Britain, France, China, Russia, and Germany) back the current negotiating track, which includes a gradual lifting of economic sanctions. And stare at the reality that if we stiff our own sensible negotiating track with Tehran, then our negotiating partners will lift their own sanctions from Iran without an American “OK.”
The White House was right on the mark in saying that the only ones who rejoiced at the Republicans’ unintelligible rant were the hardliners in Tehran. They don’t want the agreement either. Have these 47 Republican senators ever wondered if they might be green-lighting those in Tehran who yearn for Iran to be a nuclear power?
The House Republicans who invited a foreign leader to Congress to attack the President of the United States and the 47 Republican senators who undermined U.S. national security with their letter can’t be expected to repent. Anyone who would do these things may well be beyond redemption. But Republican leaders who have effectively and nobly carried out US foreign policy in the past and may do so in the future must step up now to protect America’s future.
By: Leslie H. Gelb, The Daily Beast, March 10, 2015
“Netanyahu’s ‘Mr. Security’ Mirage”: If Anything, He Has Done Far More To Damage Israel’s Security Than Strengthen It
Ahead of Israel’s March 17 election, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has arrived in Washington on a mission to undermine President Obama’s Iran policy. This, his latest and greatest diplomatic affront, has starkly revealed the degree to which many here have tired of his shtick.
But what may come as a surprise is that Israelis are sick of Bibi too.
Of course, not all feel indigestion at the thought of Netanyahu being reelected next month. But polls show his favorability rating at an all-time low. Meanwhile, the cost of living for the average Israeli has become extraordinarily high — 40 percent of Israelis are unable to make ends meet — and a majority claim socio-economic and social justice issues as their top priority in this election. A majority also say that Netanyahu’s main rival, Labor’s Yitzhak Herzog, is most fit to handle this issue.
Yet, Netanyahu continues to run neck-and-neck with Herzog and his center-left “Zionist Union” alliance. The reason for this is revealed in the same polls that show voters’ distaste for Netanyahu’s handling of the economy: they still trust him most when it comes to security. With his “It’s either me or ISIS” campaign line, Netanyahu has shown that he will stop at nothing to define the election in alarmist terms. Indeed, Israelis have always voted according to this most existential of issues. Assuming they do again, it seems likely that Netanyahu will be Prime Minister for the fourth time.
But the case to be made for Netanyahu as “Mr. Security” is flimsy at best — an assessment consistently put forth by former heads of Israel’s Mossad and Shin Bet intelligence services. If anything, he has done far more to damage Israel’s security than strengthen it.
Netanyahu’s ongoing Congressional speech fiasco is only the most recent example, whereby he has weakened Israeli security on multiple fronts. In choosing to publicly challenge President Obama on his home turf, the Prime Minister has further eroded their personal relationship — a feat that seemed nearly impossible. Polls show that over two-thirds of Americans oppose the speech.
Because of Obama’s unpopularity in Israel, Netanyahu’s perceived “toughness” in standing up to the President may provide short-term political gains at home. But Netanyahu is harming bipartisan support for Israel and alienating young Americans in particular — an ever-more dangerous prospect for Israel’s future.
Even worse for Israel’s security is what Netanyahu seeks to accomplish: undermining any nuclear deal with Iran that could possibly be achieved. The likely result of his success would be a war devastating for Israel, the U.S., and the region — and one that would not prevent Tehran from ultimately getting the bomb. Iran has the technical know-how to build a nuclear weapon, yet it has so far chosen not to. An attack by the U.S. or Israel would likely convince Iranians that possession of nuclear weapons is in their best interest.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s record on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been a similar disaster for Israel’s security. The ongoing occupation of the West Bank (alongside continued expansion of settlements) and Gaza is far from the only reason for the Palestinian terrorism Israel faces, but it is nonetheless a fundamental factor. Netanyahu has not offered a single initiative to end the conflict. To those proposed by others, such as the Arab Peace Initiative offering Israel full diplomatic relations with most of the Arab and Muslim world, he has never even offered a response.
Instead, Netanyahu now states that Israeli control of the West Bank must continue forever, and his government has made clear that it has no strategic vision beyond management of the status quo.
But Netanyahu has failed to even manage the status quo effectively. He has no strategy for dealing with Hamas — negotiating with them to release hundreds of prisoners one day and fighting a new war against them the next. Before last summer’s conflict, he failed to deal with the vast system of Hamas tunnels, which led to the avoidable deaths of Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers. Further loss of Israeli life was largely prevented by the Iron Dome missile defense system – funded by the same administration Netanyahu continually thumbs his nose at. And his decision to massively bombard civilian areas in Gaza and its horrific consequences hurt Israel’s image abroad and provoked strong criticism from the White House and State Department.
Ultimately, nothing was gained from the war besides a temporary weakening of Hamas, who Israeli military intelligence says is “ready to go [to war] today”. In the meantime, Gaza has sunk further into misery and extremism.
That’s not all. In the immediate wake of the war in Gaza, Netanyahu’s security failures were again on full display in Jerusalem. He declined to prevent right-wing MKs from making provocative visits to the Temple Mount, leading Jordan — one of only two Arab countries with which Israel has a peace treaty — to withdraw its ambassador. Meanwhile, he allowed Israeli settlers to carry out midnight takeovers of houses in Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem, another action that helped fuel months of Palestinian rioting and “lone-wolf” terrorism. Netanyahu has blamed the latter actions on alleged incitement by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, but most Israelis think Netanyahu has done nothing to curb incitement from his own side.
In reality, the only thing Netanyahu has managed to secure is his own political survival. Though his resume is a desert littered with failure, he has managed to create a “Mr. Security” mirage. In a matter of weeks, we will find out if the Israeli public has finally seen through it.
By: Aaron Mann, Outreach and Research Consultant at Americans for Peace Now; The Blog, The Huffington Post, March 2, 2015
“Drifting Towards Another Middle East War?”: Remember What Happened When Democrats Supported An Avoidable War With Iraq
As the White House sharpens its criticism of congressional efforts to short-circuit negotiations with Iran via a new sanctions regime, progressives are slowly waking up and smelling the campfire coffee of another Middle East “war of choice.”
In part because active resistance has been limited, there are an awful lot of Democratic fingerprints on the sanctions legislation, and even more de facto defiance of Obama from Democrats who have fallen silent. Here’s how Greg Sargent sums up the current situation:
The basic storyline in recent days has been that the pro-sanctions-bill side is gaining in numbers, while the anti-sanctions-bill side hasn’t — even though the White House has been lobbying Dems very aggressively to back off on this bill, on the grounds that it could imperil the chances for a historic long-term breakthrough with Iran. As Josh Rogin puts it, “the White House’s warnings have had little effect.”
We’re very close now to the 60 votes it needs to pass. The Dem leadership has no plans to bring it to the floor, but there are other procedural ways proponents could try to force a vote. And if the numbers in favor of the bill continue to mount, it could increase pressure on Harry Reid to move it forward. Yes, the president could veto it if it did pass. But we’re actually not all that far away from a veto-proof majority. And in any case, having such a bill pass and get vetoed by the president is presumably not what most Democrats want to see happen.
At TNR, our own Ryan Cooper looks at Cory Booker’s decision to support sanctions, and concludes he’s just not afraid of the heat he will eventually receive from an awakened Democratic Left.
You will hear some Democrats and even a few Republicans claim they are trying to strengthen the adminstration’s hand in their negotiations, but that’s a shuck. The whole idea is to torpedo the talks because Bibi Netanyahu believes they are aimed at the wrong goal: keeping Iran from developing nuclear weapons, as opposed to Bibi’s demand that Iran lose its capability of developing nuclear weapons. If that means war, so be it.
This time around, of course, those in the Democratic Party opposing a drift into war have the White House on their side, and the precedent of what happened when a lot of Democrats supported a similarly avoidable war with Iraq. But if antiwar Democrats don’t start making some real noise, the configuration of forces in Congress will continue to deteriorate, and we could be looking at a war foisted on an unwilling commander-in-chief.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, January 14, 2014
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