I heard Lebanese-Palestinian journalist Rami Khouri speak two weeks back in Cape Cod. Here he is with an eminently sensible column about Iran's nuclear threat, in which he acknowledges Israel's justifiable concern re nukes (Scott Ritter, after all, said that one nuke near Tel Aviv and the country is finished) but says that a diplomatic solution is possible:
allow Iran to generate nuclear energy without a bomb, especially if
coupled with improvements in bilateral US-Iranian ties. This should be
a doable diplomatic deal.
The wild card — and real concern for
Washington — is whether Israel would panic and unilaterally attack
Iran in coming months, plunging the region, and perhaps global energy
flows, into a catastrophe. Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz said in Washington last week that Iran could one day use nuclear weapons
against the United States and Europe, and not only against Israel. Such
Israeli hysteria and scaremongering are common in Washington, and
usually effective. But this is a rare case where US and Israeli threat
perceptions are not exactly the same. It will be important in coming
months to see if the Israeli or American view wins out in defining
American policy. [emphasis mine]
My takeaway from Khouri's column is that we need to hear Arab and Muslim views. Sending the third-highest State Department official to Geneva last month, Khouri says, gave the "the Iranians one of the things they covet dearly — sitting at the table with the United States as equals." Is this so awful? Khouri himself is an Arab journalist gaining entree in Washington, at the Wilson Center. We will only get out of the cycle of violence when more and more Arab and Muslim voices are heard. The world's just too small.
(Thanks to Rupa Shah for the tip.)
