Lester Crown, the Chicago billionaire who has been President Obama’s advocate to the Jewish community and to Israeli leaders, says that he is confident that Obama “will pull the trigger” if Iran develops a nuclear weapon– even though Iran would not use a nuclear weapon against Israel.
Nukes pose a threat to the Jewish state, Crown says, because Iran would use them to achieve power-parity with Israel and become a “bully in the area,” encouraging Hezbollah to attack Israel every two years, and so wear Israel away by attrition.
Crown, 88, rarely expresses his views publicly. He doesn’t have to. A leading philanthropist, he has the ear of the president. But speaking on July 2 at the Aspen Ideas Festival, interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg, surely the most important journalist on Jewish issues and Israel in the country, Crown acknowledged that he often interprets Obama for Israeli leaders.
Crown described the establishment of Israel as a “miracle”– “To me it isn’t the eighth miracle of the world, it’s the number one miracle”– and Goldberg, who once emigrated to Israel and served in the Israeli military, spoke admiringly of Crown’s “loyalty or service” to Israel: “You’re Lester Crown, no one in Israel can doubt your loyalty or your service to the state of Israel.”
Here’s their exchange on Iran, beginning at minute 42:
Goldberg: “I know you’ve talked to the president about the Iran issue. [Crown nods]. I know you’ve talked to Israeli leaders about the Iran issue.”
Crown: “Yes sir.”
Goldberg: “In fact, I know that Israeli leaders come to you to try to have you explain to them President Obama’s thinking on some occasions. So give us your sense of his thinking on what remains the most pressing foreign policy national security decision in the wider Middle East for the president in the next couple of years. Do you think that if push comes to shove he will actually order a strike against the Iranian nuclear facilities?”
Crown: “…The answer to your question, as far as I am concerned, which is, I’m probably in the minority in saying to it– I said Yes, I think he would. I think two things have happened. I think the Israelis have really at this point have subcontracted that decision to the United States, which really is surprising. I think the time has passed when the Israeli air force with a surgical strike can do the damage that they think needs to be done.
“The Iranian nuclear program– both– in all ways is right near the top, whether it be in missiles, whether it be in centrifuges, weaponization, mineralization– it is right at the point where they can have a nuclear weapon. It is so close. Now whether it’s within two months or six months or a year, obviously– I obviously don’t know.”
Goldberg: “But you feel confident that President Obama has this in hand?”
Crown: “I think first the eight– I guess– Have a vote in the room!– the American public in my opinion wants nothing to do with the Middle East at this point. They’d love it to go away. It’s been a problem. They just would love to see it go away. And with good reason. The American public after Afghanistan and Iraq doesn’t want any more military action in the Middle East at all. And I think the vote would be unbelievably heavily against it.
“I still think he will pull the trigger when that particular point comes. The real question is, Will it be in time or will it be a day late?”
Goldberg: “My final and hardest question is this: What poses a greater threat to Israel, the Iranian nuclear program or Israel’s own policies in the West Bank that as you would argue hurt Israel’s legitimacy and make it difficult to imagine Israel moving forward into the coming decades as it is right now, a Jewish majority democracy? External or the internal?”
Crown: “You have to put it on a time scale… The Iranian thing has to be solved. It just has to– If they have nuclear weapons, what I think will happen, they won’t use them on Israel. But they will become the bully in the area to the point, to our tremendous detriment, the United States’s tremendous detriment and Israel, and they will just authorize Hezbollah to attack Israel, let’s say, every two years. And by attrition, you get ten years from now, you have no country. So that has to be taken care of…
“After that is, the internal part of it. They have to solve themselves. People on the West Bank and the situation with the ultra-Orthodox has to– They can’t allow this to go on because it’s corroding the inside and the whole core of the country.”
The exchange begs the question of why the U.S. should take military action when Crown obviously think deterrence works with nuclear powers. And why the U.S. should take military action when the public want no more wars in the Middle East and the threat is Hezbollah, an Islamist military and political force in Lebanon.
The interview is also interesting for Crown’s expression of dedication to the state of Israel as a haven for Jews because of the legacy of the Holocaust. He says his businessman father bought up aviation parts in the U.S. on behalf of the Israelis in violation of US laws in the 1950s, and that almost all American Jews support Israel.
Crown also states that the two-state solution is imperative and the Palestinians deserve a state in the West Bank. He deplores the Orthodox Israeli settlers as “absolutely impossible” and says he has urged Israeli leaders not to subsidize settlements, but to pull settlers back into Israel.
Crown is a billionaire supporter of Barack Obama, a philanthropist involved in the Council on Foreign Relations, the Chicago Global Affairs Council, and the Aspen Institute. In 2008, he reached out to the Jewish community to win them over to Barack Obama on Israel. In 2010, he reportedly applied pressure on Obama to have him stop criticizing Israel on settlements.
The exchange also features some racism against Arabs.
Goldberg had joked that there were “3 million Jews” in the room and when Karim Kuwar, the Jordanian ambassador to the United States, rose to ask a question about the Arab Peace Initiative, Kuwar introduced himself as “probably the only Arab” there.
“Oh I doubt it,” Goldberg says.
Crown quips: “If you had to have one in the room, this is the best.”
Goldberg laughs raucously.
Thanks to Max Blumenthal.
Thank you Phil for this peek into the inner workings of the Israel project. I found this piece from Norman Finkelstein about the ongoing breakup of American Zionism; the slow motion train wreck, ongoing, even as the old timers continue to believe and gloat that they still control of the locomotive.
Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; 1
Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all.
Friedrich, Freiherr von Logau
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQclvwOepw8
Walter Isaacson “it is because Lester Crown has been the heart and soul along with Renee Crown his father Henry Crown, Steve, Jim, Paula everybody else here the heart and soul of the Aspen Institute. This place (Aspen Institute) exist because of now for generations of the Crown family.”
Kept this issue from being discussed factually for decades. Along with Isaacson
I have not attended the conference for about 15 years. But the I/P factual gates were closed then and had been for years. Friends who have attended for years have said there have been many years where the pro Iraq war and go get Iran guest were loaded up to promote the pro Israel no matter what they do warmongers agenda
And i believe that this story below coming from a man who lived in the bowels of U.S national security is an example of the resentment that is an ongoing seething sore within one segment of that community, namely the analyst side of the house, as opposed to the more troglodyte operational side which would tend to be less informed and thus more easily manipulable side of that community. Phil Giraldi and Paul Pillar along with Ray Macgovern serve as samples of a sentiment seething.
The flaunting of this sort of in your face power will one day backfire against the Israel firsters, if history is any guide for the future.
http://consortiumnews.com/2013/07/22/how-israel-lobby-trained-a-diplomat/
‘The now well-known background to this is an interview more than a decade ago, in which Power suggested that to quell Israeli-Palestinian violence at that time the United States should consider deploying a large protective force even though this might mean “alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import.” The constituency in question, as is its custom, denounced Power as anti-Israeli.
Power’s later means of retaining her confirmability in the face of such accusations was to disavow, totally and tearfully, her own observations. A key event was a meeting with American Jewish leaders at which, according to the meeting’s organizer, she “became deeply emotional and struggled to complete her presentation as she expressed how deeply such accusations had affected her.”
This sequence has made Samantha Power a more valuable commodity to the Israel lobby than if she had never made any comments to offend the lobby in the first place. Sustaining the lobby’s power depends on repeated demonstrations of submission to that power. The lobby could not have gotten a better demonstration of submission than to have the nominated chief U.S. diplomat at the United Nations abandon all evidence of any independent thought on the issues concerned and to make herself indistinguishable from Israeli diplomats.
Besides making for more dysfunction in the confirmation process, this kind of response from a nominee, as when Power said at her hearing that the United States has “no greater friend in the world” than Israel, badly distorts the larger public discourse on important issues. To appreciate how much it is distorted, we have to listen to distinguished and experienced people who are not up for a confirmation vote, do not expect to be in the future, and thus can voice their observations in an honest and untrimmed manner.
One such person is retired Marine Corps General and former Central Command head James Mattis, who last weekend explained some of the cost to the United States of the festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “I paid a military security price every day as a commander of CENTCOM because the Americans were seen as biased in support of Israel,” said Mattis.
Moderate Arabs “who want to be with us,” he said, restrict their support for the United States because they “can’t come out publicly in support of people who don’t want to show respect for the Arab Palestinians.”
Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be one of the agency’s top analysts. He is now a visiting professor at Georgetown University for security studies.
””You’re Lester Crown, no one in Israel can doubt your loyalty or your service to the state of Israel.””
Don’t doubt the US Zionist loyalty to Israel.
Self fulfilling prophecy, always fleeing to that appointment in Samara.
If victory over Iran isnt their death bed something else will be, they cant stop themselves.
Such a total rah rah Israel interview. So far no criticisms at all. Goldberg has come to the Aspen Ideas festival for seven years and been involved with 55 panels and intereviews. Mix it up for heavens sake. Did they say that 64 members of the Crown family were in the audience?
Goldberg and Crown cover the creation of Israel after WWII but somehow just somehow conveniently avoid talking about the confiscation of Palestinian land and the Zionist dream starting in the mid 1800’s.
Goldberg “rebuilding the Jewish state” as if Israel had existed before 1949.
Goldberg “let’s go up to the present”
Goldberg “you can start with Iran if you want to”
Such a fair and balanced interviewer (choke). Holy smokes…line up better people to interview. Such a set up
Lester describes his father being asked to buy illegal military equipment from North American Aviation to ship illegallly to Israel because there was a US embargo against shipping arms to Israel. Then goes onto talk about someone named I think Teddy Colleague who he calls a “master smuggler” Audience laughs as if illegal shipping and “smuggling” of arms is a ok as long as you are a Jew and in particular shipping to Israel