Thomas Schelling, a Nobel laureate and an expert in nuclear strategy, spoke at the New America Foundation in Washington last week. Having recently attended the highly influential Herzliya Conference in Israel, Schelling said:
I was impressed with how many Israelis speculate that what Iran wants to do is to get just about where Japan is in terms of nuclear capability. Get to where they could have a few bombs in a few months, or maybe a few weeks, but not overtly test anything to prove they have it and maybe not to claim they have it.
I don’t know where the Iranians might get that idea, but I’d heard about it for a couple of years from Americans who study Iranian apparent nuclear policy and it strikes me as an idea that might not occur to the Iranians but it strikes me as a good idea. I don’t see any way to make them back down from where they are, but it might be possible to persuade them not to take the final step…
Israel’s President Shimon Peres, who also attended the Herzliya Conference yet lacks the slightest nuance in his assessment of Iran’s intentions, yesterday declared that Iran poses a threat to the whole civilized world.
“A threat to the peace of the Jewish people always carries the danger of turning into a threat to the civilized world as a whole,” Peres said in Jerusalem on Sunday.
That’s a statement eerily reminiscent of something the Israeli historian, Martin van Creveld, said a few years ago while referring to Israel’s own nuclear arsenal: “We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.”
Which begs the question, given that Israel is said to have an arsenal of several hundred nuclear weapons and Iran so far has none: Of which state should we be more afraid?
In considering the Iranian nuclear threat, there is another reason for thinking that the Iranians may well have calculated that attaining a nuclear capability without assembling a nuclear arsenal is in their best interests — not simply because of the international ramifications but because of the regime’s own internally complex and fractious power dynamics.
For Iran to actually acquire the bomb and not simply the means to produce it, begs difficult questions of command and control. Could the regime withstand a potential power struggle that might ensue over how weapons might be dispersed and under whose authority? The prospect of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards becoming Iran’s nuclear masters might be sufficiently galling to everyone outside the IRG, that nuclear capability appears as full a measure of nuclear power that the Islamic state can safely handle.
When it comes to assessing Iran’s nuclear intentions there is an abundance of evidence that it is indeed a rational actor and virtually none that it operates in the thrall of an apocalyptic vision of the future.
This article is cross-posted at Woodward's site, War in Context.
So you suppose eee will insist that it is totally hypocritical for the United States to be even talking about Iran having nuclear weapons when we’ve got so many ourselves and we’re the only who’s ever used one in an attack?
I’m guessing, not so much, huh.
“We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.”
Martin Creveld’s statement has always struck me as dodgey. It’s not as though he’s referring to genocide. So if Israel is defeated in war and forced to surrender unconditionally then Israel will “take the world down with it” even though there is no guarantee that surrender would result in genocide. A country led by mad men!
As shocking as those statements are, I still feel they are merely rhetorical and largely targeted at the states in the region.
It is of my opinion that Israelis who make these ridiculous statements assume that Israel will go down fighting in a war against its neighbors and not through a campaign of international non-violence.
sounds like a threatening gesture of a man with a very-small schwanz. -and a sore winner at that.
It reminds me of the movie Carrie. A prank is played on a girl at the high school dance and she is humiliated and proceeds to burn the entire school to the ground with all the kids inside -Foe or friend; you’re coming with me.
Van Creveld in the same piece (2003):
So he threatens to go atomic if the world would not accept ethnic cleansing. No war-situation, and not regional.
Let us not forget he is a military historian, and was a professor at Hebrew University. Only halfway in his career, not sooner, he was surprised to learn from the UK re Northern Ireland that you can also beat terrorism by not murdering, because murdering breeds new terrorists. That was new to him!
Israel’s President Shimon Peres, who also attended the Herzliya Conference yet lacks the slightest nuance in his assessment of Iran’s intentions, yesterday declared that Iran poses a threat to the whole civilized world.
Can a man be any more conceited? If anything its his country that’s a real threat to the world by trying to enlist a variety of countries to engage in hostile actions against a country positioned in one of the most volatile regions in the world (a country that poses zero threat to anyone and hasn’t invaded another country in hundreds of years).
I was impressed with how many Israelis speculate that what Iran wants to do is to get just about where Japan is in terms of nuclear capability. Get to where they could have a few bombs in a few months, or maybe a few weeks, but not overtly test anything to prove they have it and maybe not to claim they have it.
I don’t know where the Iranians might get that idea, but I’d heard about it for a couple of years from Americans who study Iranian apparent nuclear policy and it strikes me as an idea that might not occur to the Iranians but it strikes me as a good idea. I don’t see any way to make them back down from where they are, but it might be possible to persuade them not to take the final step…
This assessment makes the most sense. Anyone who has spent a decent amount of time in the Middle East and met Iranians in the process knows that not only are Iranian people as rational as any other group of people but that their leadership (whether you like them or not) have based their foreign policy in a very cautious and pragmatic manner.
I highly doubt the Iranians would risk their situation by arming themselves with nukes and pointing them at various capital cities in the region. Furthermore, its become quite clear that Iran is looking for a grand bargain type settlement with the United States.
However, Israeli belligerence and refusal to accept another powerful country in the region has made it incredibly difficult for the United States to bargain with the Iranians on reasonable terms. We can’t forget that it was the Iranians that helped us knock out the Taliban and to an extent Saddam.
Ironically, the United States has far more common interests with Iran than it does Israel in securing the Persian Gulf region. But because our foreign policy for the ME region at the moment is heavily influenced by “Israeli concerns” we will slowly watch Iran become more powerful, and when its time to make the grand bargain the United States will be forced to give up ALOT more than it bargained for.
It is of my opinion that back in 2001, the Iranians would have settled for merely the lifting of the US sponsored trade embargo on their country for a normalization of relations. However, now, 10 years of neocon-zionist foreign policy blunders later, the Iranians probably won’t settle for anything less than a full US military withdrawal, the complete lifting of the embargo, the complete de-listing of all Iranian supported militias from the T-list, a guarantee that the United States will allow Iran to manage the Persian Gulf (and all the wealth involved), and probably even an apology.
The Iranians will most likely put all of these requests on the negotiating table, they may not get them all, but the fact that they can even negotiate from such a high position despite their military and economic weaknesses relative to the United States only speaks to the sheer retardation of our foreign policy under the neocons and zionists.
Another case of projection.
You only hear about the ‘what if Iran gets the bomb’ and how it will be armageddon if so. Yet, I’ve not seen many journalist discussing the possiblity of them having nuclear technology.
What will they do with this capability even if they had the bomb? Iran is not a nation that is warlike, as history indicates, and they would be foolish to launch a strike on Israel.
If Iran gets a nuclear warhead, will they work to defend the Palestinians? Doesn’t seem like that will happen currently, but if Iran became the silent partner of Palestinians, would that be such a bad thing?
Israel once pledged never to be the first country to “introduce” nuclear weapons into the Middle East. But building a nuclear arsenal is certainly introducing nuclear weapons into the region. And what is one to make of the threat that Israel will take down the whole world with it?
What is Israel saying? If you don’t help us take out Iran’s nuclear program we will unilaterally destroy the planet?
I’ve never heard of any nuclear power threatening to destroy all civilization before.
And how would she do it? Even if Israel detonated all 200 of its nuclear weapons that wouldn’t destroy the planet. Or are we supposed to infer that Israel would use those weapons to make sure all all the other nuclear superpowers also jumped into the fray and expended all their nuclear weapons as well? If Iran attacks Israel, Israel will not only retaliate against her but also against all the Arab countries as well as Russian and China too? Does this include the US (on the grounds that that’s what we get for not helping Israel)?
The phrase “stiff necked” hardly seems adequate to this kind of attitude.
If Iran attacks Israel, Israel will not only retaliate against her but also against all the Arab countries as well as Russian and China too?
If anyone should be afraid, it is the Europeans. Israeli Zionists have shown no indication of having forgiven Europeans, even though only a handful a nations had anything to do with the Holocaust and that soon no one who was alive then, even as a child, will still be walking the Earth.
Consider the unbelievable ‘you owe us whatever we want’ attitude that we Americans are subjected to by many Zionists. What do they think of Europeans? German political leaders are f-cking clowns to be giving nuclear weapons capable submarines to the IDF.
Members of the Israeli political establishment are neither Americans nor Europeans. I think it is a fundamental error to try to understand their reasoning and thinking by projecting our traditional values onto them. If Israeli starts to dissolve as a Jewish state, through war, internal fragmentation, or even negotiation, Europeans should keep their air and naval defenses on the highest alert. Hopefully the US Navy is keeping 24/7 tabs on Israel subs.
“Hopefully the US Navy is keeping 24/7 tabs on Israel subs.”
And hopefully a President Johnson clone won’t be in the Oval Orifice and
there won’t be a repeat of the USS Liberty.
Let’s see .. this is the same Iran we worked closely with – after they volunteered their help – in the direct aftermath of 9/11 … they facilitated our CIA’s entry into Afghanistan and aided us in the initial take-down of the Taliban there as well as other help … naturally this flowed from their self-interest but the fact is they worked with us in a sophisticated, realpolitik fashion and it wasn’t until the israel-first neocons in the Bush administration decided upon their “axis of evil” propaganda that Iran was rebuffed and made into a pariah and now has sat in the cross-hairs of the fake “war-on-terror” ever since
Israel is the bad actor in the region … Israel is the threat … Israel is the problem and America needs to correct the problem (as in impose a harsh peace deal that gives them no wiggle room – they will swap a LOT of land for peace)
Juan Cole has several articles on this subject link to juancole.com and says that the term is “nuclear latency.”
It’s too bad “crippling sanctions” weren’t placed on Israel back when it could have done some good. Now the world has a nuclear monster on its hands.
But the really important thing is that Iran is apparently now (finally!) building refineries. Once its has the capacity to refine its own gasoline, it will be much more independent. They should have done this a long time ago, before wasting so much on the nuclear option.
“It’s too bad “crippling sanctions” weren’t placed on Israel back when it could have done some good.”
I think John Kennedy might have wanted to wanted to do something like that. He was hacked at the Israelis for bricking over elevators and hallways to the weapons development section at Dimona when American inspectors showed up.
It’s a shame Kennedy never got to finish his work as President. Who knows just how much in a better position the United States would be if we hadn’t lost him.
Correcto mundo. Israel wouldn’t have the bomb, and The Lobby would be registered as an agent of a foreign government.
There’s no evidence that Iran is producing nuclear weapons but, if it were, it would be entirely justified based on the fact that the U.S. and Israel have both threatened to attack it. In fact, if Iran could play by “our” rules, it would be fully justified in launching pre-emptive self-defence strikes.
Countries like Iraq and Afghanistan have fallen to the forces of “freedom” and “democracy” precisely because they were unable to deter said forces. If Saddam had had an arsenal of nukes and strong conventional forces, he’s still be in power and Americans would still be shaking his hand and doing business with him.
That being said, Iran would not launch nuclear strikes against Israel because it knows it would be pulverized in return. It’s not about destroying Israel – it’s about having the right deterrent to keep the bullies at bay.
I think it’s even more rudimentary than that — Iran would not launch nukes at Israel unless it was already the victim of nuclear strikes for two quintessential reasons: A) Jerusalem is the third holiest site in Islam, and we’re talking about a theocratic / republic hybrid government; and B) the Palestinians are one of the strongest social justice issues in Iran about anything outside of Iran.
In the UK the Independent newspaper was headlining Ahmedinejad’s glorying in military power and claims that no one would dare to attack Iran. One of the problems about Israel’s sabre rattling is that the threats have been uttered so often – and so often through a succession of pliable academics and journalists who look increasingly like people who have no information but take orders – that the whole apparatus of threats has come to seem empty. The threats to blow up Rome really seem empty from the start. There are circumstances where hundreds of nukes are just junk, which may be good news for humanity really.
I don’t see the analogy (eerily reminiscent) between Peres statement and van Creveld’s warnings. Peres words feels a bit like blackmail. Something like look we tell you, you better believe us. If we are threatened all good people in the world are threatened. The Good fighting the Evil. Peres forces ahead: Forward brave soldiers, the neocon’s WWIII/IV is still very much around. A new Hitler ante portas.
While it feels that exactly this forcing ahead will recruit a constant wave of new fighters …
But van Grevald in fact says these kind of wars can’t be won by conventional armies.
Reading his quotes again, after all these years, I was reminded very much of the Dutch people that asked him after an interview, how could they help? I still hear what they heard, it sounds very much like a cry for help. But oddly enough he answered: No thank you, Israel can help herself. It somehow felt at the time that this peculiar statement triggered a rather vicious campaign on the web against him. And the rhetorically ambiguous got turned into a threat.
Can Israel help herself against Iran? Doesn’t it need support. Ideally a willing America? …
I do not believe that van Creveld was threatening the West with an Israeli nuclear attack but rather warning that there were crazies inside Israel that were capable of doing so if the Jewish state were sufficiently threatened. He brought this up in the context of discussing the “transfer” movement inside Israel (of which he does not agree) and despairing about dangerous currents inside Israel. I believe his comments have been widely misinterpreted with respect to what he actually thinks should happen.
When this interview (or article, not sure now what it was) first appeared it struck me as significant because of a discussion I had with an American zionist who served in the IDF in the late 80s. At one point in a quite heated discussion with this individual I said that sooner or later the US would finally come to the conclusion that Israel was becoming an unneeded burden and realize that we would stop giving them unconditional support. His response was quite chilling: namely if the US ever withdrew its support the US should know that all of those nuclear warheads are not just targeted at the Arabs. This was a memorable response to say the least, but I attributed it to his personal psychosis. Though it did make me wonder what these IDF soldiers discussed in their spare time. But when I saw van Creveld’s words it made me think that this idea of launching nuclear weapons against the West went much higher in the chain of command than just some enlisted loser in the IDF.
van Creveld deserves some acknowledgment for bringing this possibility to our attention.
I took a class on strategic thinking with The Strategy of Conflict as the textbook. I was lucky to see Schelling guest lecture about another topic that same semester. His view about Iran is interesting and having a near nuclear weapon capability may be enough for Iran, as its leadership indicates. The problem is not Iran’s willingness to go only this far. The problem is US’ and Israel’s insistence of servitude to their militant hegemony, which forbids Iran’s ability to strategically defend itself from Israeli nuclear attack.
Tommy, your’s is a very wise comment, and succinct. Thanks. It’s interesting how either/or the US government and Israel’s are; nobody is discussing in public, or even remarking on a solution involving allowing Iran near nuclear capability–as Japan, for example has.
If you look carefully at various statements from Israelis like the ones aired above, I think it means one thing – “we will continue our course, we are not going to change, and if you try to stop us from this murderous colonial occupation we will take you down with us.” In other words the threat of attack, the animus is not set in “if we are attacked,” it is set that “if you try to alter out present course.” No one who has any sense believes that anyone in the region will attack Israel, but Israel wants to hedge it bets that it will continue its course until they own the land from sea to sea.
It sure looks like that to me too, VR.
The only unrest Israel is looking for is the one that will take attention off of its intention to complete their course. Ben-Gurion called it the “revolutionary moment,” or the distraction/cover, the excuse, the smoke screen, to complete Israels design.
I’m sure VR’s right that there is no intention to change course, but the high point of threats to deport the Palestinians came around 2003, when van C made his remarks? That tide has since receded. As for Iran, Ahmedinejad may be vainglorious but threats, anti-Iranian or other, repeated and repeated over the years must in the nature of things lose their deterrent power. This seems to me to fit in with Henry Siegman’s view that the course of action has never been meant to include any dramatic solution or utter change of the situation but is built around ‘living without a solution’ whilst constantly making both conciliatory and threatening remarks.
–And expanding illegal settlements, facts on the ground.
Now that Saudia Arabia has announced its going nuclear, we have a different ball game.
link to businessinsider.com
Saudi Arabia Announces Nuclear Plant, And It Could Have Huge Consequences For U.S.-Iran Relations
Yes fascinating indeed. Watch the right wing blame this onIrN for starting a nuclear arms race.
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