On a recent trip to Washington, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid down the law: America must threaten the Iranians with war if Tehran insists on pursuing its nuclear energy program. We are supposed to take seriously Netanyahu’s threats to strike Iran himself, in spite of the fact that Israel has neither the means nor the political resolve to do so. However, this is not the way Israel operates: their preferred method is to let Uncle Sam do their dirty work, as in Iraq, while they save their resources for aggression closer to home. The Israel-is-about-to-attack-Iran meme gives the Americans cover to take action in the name of preventing a supposedly greater catastrophe. With Israel playing the part of the unhinged pit-bull, Obama’s assigned role is that of the statesman, who is going to give the Iranians one “last chance,” as he put it.
In any case, the results of Netanyahu’s mission were unveiled on Saturday, when the New York Times revealed the opening negotiating position of the US and its European allies in the upcoming talks with Iran: the Western alliance is demanding the dismantling of the heavily fortified Fordo facility and the unconditional surrender of their entire stock of 20 percent enriched uranium.
Or else.
That Iran has every right to enrich uranium to 20 percent under the terms of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), is considered irrelevant by the West: as in the case of Iraq under Saddam Hussein, the Iranians are considered guilty until proven innocent. They must somehow prove they aren’t building weapons: the logical impossibility of proving a negative is also considered irrelevant.
The official position of the US intelligence community remains the same: that the Iranians stopped work on a weapons program in 2003, haven’t resumed it, and there is no evidence they’ve decided to go that route. But why should a US President listen to his own intelligence agencies when the Israelis – and the British – are demanding action? We are apparently a prisoner of our own “allies,” and it is they who are pushing us to war with Iran. That is what this administration’s vaunted “internationalism” is all about.
That the push for war is happening in the context of a presidential election season is all the more cause for worry: you’ll note Obama has taken to invoking Republican icons of late, from Eisenhower to Reagan, in order to justify his domestic policies, and there’s no doubt he wants to move to the “center” on the foreign affairs front, too. This means more than just toughening his rhetoric: as the issuing of this ultimatum shows, it means making real moves toward what seems nearly inevitable at this point – armed conflict with Iran.
