Wouldn’t it be nice if the heads of our own national security agencies spoke truth to power like this? Tamir Pardo, head of Mossad, had this to say to a roomful of Israeli ambassadors last week:
“What is the significance of the term existential threat?” the ambassadors quoted Pardo as asking. “Does Iran pose a threat to Israel? Absolutely. But if one said a nuclear bomb in Iranian hands was an existential threat, that would mean that we would have to close up shop and go home. That’s not the situation. The term existential threat is used too freely.”
Tamir Pardo (Photo: AP/Eli Dassa)
Not only is Pardo going on the record to say that this language, favored by the very Prime Minister who appointed him to head Mossad, is overblown, but he did it in front of a roomful of Avigdor Lieberman’s people. This takes guts: Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently found himself in trouble for going off message on Iran when he suggested that Israel is not the sole motive force behind Iran’s nuclear talk.
Unfortunately in the U.S., the national security agencies have been relatively quiet over Iran since the IAEA’s latest, and misinterpreted, report on Iran came out (for a debunking of such misinterpretations, see here). The 2011 NIE, which has not yet been made available to the public, reportedly concludes that “the [U.S.] intelligence community has not determined that Iran has made the strategic decision to build a nuclear weapon, it is working on the components of such a device.”
But as Ray McGovern and Elizabeth Murray remind us, Leon Panetta is no Mike Mullen when it comes to standing down American chickenhawks, or Netanyahu and his Foreign Minister.
The danger today, I believe, is less that Israel will act unilaterally, but that the U.S. will launch a preemptive war on Iran because Obama will be convinced he has no other choice because of the mounting pressure from both conservative and liberal hawks (not to mention neocons) over his Israel and Iran policies in an election year.
Hopefully, voices such as these will increasingly be heard over those clamoring for regime change and airstrikes within and without the administration. So far, though, Tehran, Washington and Tel Aviv are all off to a bad start in 2012.
Are Israelis’ leaving that place like rats do a sinking ship, to borrow a metaphor that may or may not be entirely apropos, but never the less the leaving Israel part remains valid.
Is there any data on the number of applicants wishing to depart the promised land?
An existential threat is a threat to one’s existence and it’s plain enough that a small nuclear armament in the hands of a hostile power does not by itself create a threat to the existence of someone whose armament is massive, though it may produce danger over a long time in combination with other things. But do Mossad chiefs really speak autonomously? Maybe we’re facing a general resort to the rhetoric of defence – walls and fences everywhere, no panic even if Iran becomes rather better armed.
The choice of the words ‘close up shop and go home’ is interesting in a Freudian sort of way, sounding as if the Israelis are on an outing from their real dwellings.
Saw this the other day meant to link. Glad you caught it.
Israel should be forced close up her Apartheid shop and go home from the Occupied Territories
As long as Israel and her Israeli Lobby have been able to keep Egypt a puppet, Saudi Arabia in line, and Iran and Iraq cowed, she was able to create and maintain the Apartheid apparatus.
Egypt is now significally loose from Israeli/Israeli Lobby control, and if Israel cannot beat Iran down – then Israeli/US hegemony in the Middle East will be vastly destabilized and the end of Apartheid ever closer
not iran but the zionist entity (better, the u.s.-israel alliance) is the existential threat – to all living beings.