IIPM EDITORIAL: Paper tigers under siege, the real ones go scot free

The voices in power in the West are being quite unfair in their condemnation of Iran
Nuclear threats & counter-threats are a subtext of our times,

steadily, it seems, becoming more insistent. The July meeting in Geneva between Iran and six major world powers on Iran’s nuclear programme ended with no progress. The Bush administration was widely praised for having shifted to a more conciliatory stand – namely, by allowing a US diplomat to attend without participating – while Iran was castigated for failing to negotiate seriously. And the powers warned Iran that it would soon face more severe sanctions unless it terminated its uranium enrichment programmes.

Meanwhile, India was applauded for agreeing to a nuclear pact with the US that would effectively authorise its development of nuclear weapons outside the bounds of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), with US assistance in nuclear programmes with other rewards – in particular, to US firms eager to enter the Indian market for nuclear and weapons development, and ample payoffs to parliamentarians who signed on, a tribute to India’s flourishing democracy. Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Stimson Centre and a leading specialist on nuclear threats, observed reasonably that Washington’s decision to “place profits ahead of nonproliferation” could mean the end of NPT if others follow its lead, sharply increasing the dangers all around.

During the same period, Israel, another state that has defied the NPT with Western support, conducted large-scale military maneuvers in the eastern Mediterranean that were understood to be preparation for bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities. In a New York Times Op-Ed article, “Using Bombs to Stave Off War,” prominent Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote that Iran’s leaders should welcome Israeli bombing with conventional weapons, for “the alternative is an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland.”

Purposely or not, Morris is reviving an old theme. During the 1950s, leading figures of Israel’s governing Labour Party advised in internal discussion that “we will go crazy (“nishtagea”) if crossed, threatening to bring down the Temple Walls in the manner of the first “suicide bomber,” the revered Samson, who killed more Philistines by his suicide than in his entire lifetime.

Israel’s nuclear weapons may well harm its own security, as Israeli strategic analyst Zeev Maoz persuasively argues. But security is often not a high priority for state planners, as history makes clear. And the “Samson complex,” as Israeli commentators have called it, can be flaunted to warn the master to carry out the desired task of smashing Iran, or else we’ll inflame the region and maybe the world.

Shortly after the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, which left some 15-20,000 killed in an unprovoked effort to secure Israel’s control of the occupied territories, Aryeh Eliav, one of Israel’s best-known doves, wrote that the attitude of “those who brought the ‘Samson complex’ here, according to which we shall kill and bury all the Gentiles around us while we ourselves shall die with them,” is a form of “insanity” that was then all too prevalent, and still is.

US military analysts have recognised that, as Army Lt. Col. Warner Farr wrote in 1999, one “purpose of Israeli nuclear weapons, not often stated, but obvious, is their ‘use’ on the US,” presumably to ensure consistent US support for Israeli policies – or else. Gen. Lee Butler, former commander in chief of the US Strategic Command, observed in 1999 that “it is dangerous in the extreme that in the cauldron of animosities that we call the Middle East, one nation has armed itself, ostensibly, with stockpiles of nuclear weapons, perhaps numbering in hundreds, and that inspires other nations to do so.” This is hardly irrelevant to concerns about Iran’s nuclear programmes, but is off the agenda. Also off is Article 2 of the UN Charter, which bars threat of force in international affairs. Both US political parties insistently proclaim their criminality, declaring that “all options are on the table” with regard to Iran’s nuclear programmes.

For Complete I I P M Article, Click on IIPM Article

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008

An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative