Today's
Iran Debate Misses the Point
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While hugely important in terms of Iranian relations with the outside
world, U.S.-Israel relations, and Barack Obama's relations with Congress,
the labored, contradictory, and unspecific Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action has little bearing on whether the mullahs do or do not get nuclear
weapons. Let me explain:
If one assumes, as one should, that the Iranian
leadership is determined to build a nuclear arsenal and the means to
deliver it, then the economic issues (sanctions, boycotts, embargoes)
that drive the P5+1 negotiations are tangential. They affect the speed,
cost, and difficulty of building an arsenal, but do not impede its
ultimate realization.
The only way to stop Iran's program is by using
force, presumably by attacking its nuclear infrastructure from the
air. Yet this prospect, now marginalized as the "war option" in
contrast with two years ago, is no
longer discussed.
With Binyamin Netanyahu just reelected prime minister, Israel has a
leader seemingly prepared to take fateful steps. Distracted by
negotiations, however, we hardly think about this – even though the
Israel Defense Forces has twice before attacked nuclear installations
(Iraq's in 1981, Syria's in 2007), and both times to universal surprise.
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Before and after the
Israeli Air Force attacked the Syrian nuclear reactor at Deir al-Zour
in September 2007.
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Will the Israelis bomb Iran or not? I am unable to answer; but I can
tell you that this, and not the minutiae of the Lausanne Agreement, is
the issue. (April 7, 2015)
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