Israel’s Obsession with Iran’s Nuclear Programme

by Patrick Seale

Released: 13 Jul 2009

Hardly a day goes by without an Israeli spokesman warning of the danger to the world of Iran’s nuclear programme. For Israel itself, the threat is said to be “existential” -- in other words, that Israel’s very survival is at stake.

The latest such warning comes from Uzi Arad, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s national security adviser who, like his boss, is a self-confessed hawk. In a long interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz on 9 July, Arad claimed that, with regard to the Iranian threat, “the urgency here is overriding.”

Netanyahu himself has long argued that the threat from Iran would first have to be removed before Israel could address the Palestinian question. In contrast, President Barack Obama has been urging Israel to give priority to the Palestine question as a contribution to resolving the Iranian problem.

Arad’s statements on Iran and Palestine must be seen in the context of this dispute. Israel wants Obama’s order reversed. It wants Iran tamed first. “If Iran goes nuclear,” Arad declared dramatically, “everything that might be achieved with the Palestinians will be swept away in a tidal wave and go down the tubes overnight.”

What, then, is the current situation with regard to Iran’s nuclear programme? Iran has repeatedly denied that it is seeking to build a nuclear weapon. It does, however, have a civilian nuclear programme, to which it is fully entitled, as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Some analysts suspect that Iran may have a covert military programme. Facing constant threats and surrounded by nuclear powers -- by the United States, Israel, Russia, India and Pakistan -- it would be natural for Iran to seek to acquire a nuclear deterrent, if only for defensive purposes. But most experts believe that Iran is still several years away from being able to build a bomb, if indeed it were trying to do so.

Israel, in contrast, has refused to sign the NPT. Over the past several decades, beginning with French help in the 1950s and 1960s, it has built up a large arsenal of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles.

If Iran were eventually to build a nuclear weapon, would this pose an existential threat to Israel? Few non-Israelis believe this to be true. For one thing, Israel’s submarine-based ‘second strike’ nuclear capability would ensure that, if Iran dared attack Israel, it would itself be immediately destroyed.

Why then all the fuss?

It is true that an Iranian bomb -- if one were ever built -- would undermine Israel’s cherished security doctrine of total regional military hegemony. It would limit Israel’s freedom of action by establishing a system of mutual deterrence -- in other words, a balance of power. It is doubtful, for example, that Israel would have attacked Lebanon in 2006 or Gaza in 2008-9, if Iran had had a nuclear capability.

That is what is really at stake. Israel wants no restraint on its freedom to attack its neighbours at will.

Israel has tried to persuade the world that the Arabs are more frightened of Iran -- and especially of a nuclear-capable Iran -- than of Israel itself. An Israeli journalist even claimed recently that Saudi Arabia had given its tacit permission to Israeli planes to overfly the Kingdom on their way to attack Iran -- a charge angrily denied by Riyadh.

Indeed, as if to reassure Iran that the Gulf States harboured no hostile intentions towards it, the Qatari chief of staff, Maj-Gen Hamad al-Attiyah, visited Tehran this week. The region, he said, attached great importance to promoting relations with Iran.

For the moment at least, Israel has given up threatening to bomb Iran. It is well aware that Barack Obama is totally opposed to military action. When asked recently whether the U.S. had given Israel a ‘green light’ to attack Iran, Obama answered: “Absolutely not!” As a fallback position, Israel is putting great diplomatic pressure on the international community to impose punitive sanctions on Iran.

In spite of the ongoing power struggle in Iran and the repression of the opposition, Obama is still hoping to engage Tehran in dialogue. His aim is to persuade Iran to halt, or at least reduce, its uranium enrichment activities, by offering it political and economic inducements.

This is also the line adopted by the G-8 industrialised countries. At their recent meetings, they agreed “to take stock of the situation” on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting next September. Russia, in particular, has made clear that it is opposed to any increase in sanctions against Iran, or indeed to any move which would lead to its isolation.

In the circumstances, it would seem that Iran would be well-advised to grasp the hand which Obama, against all odds, is still reach out to it.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.

Copyright © 2009 Patrick Seale -- distributed by Agence Global

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Released: 13 July 2009
Word Count: 793
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