Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Iran, Israel and nukes

Juan Cole makes a point which others have made, but which bears repeating:
Netanyahu's hysteria about Iran is a piece of misdirection intended to sidestep the issue of Israel's own nuclear arsenal. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty, and allows regular inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, even if the latter is not completely satisfied with Iran's transparency. Israel just thumbed its nose at the NPT. Israel would only have the moral high ground in demanding that Iran cease enrichment research if it gave up its own some 150 warheads.
I forget: Is Israel still maintaining the fiction that they don't have nukes, and that the installation in Dimona is really just an overgrown bagel factory?

Officially, the U.S. does want Israel to sign on to the NPT. Believe it or not, the Bush administration was the first to give lip service to that goal. All other presidencies since Nixon's espoused a "see no evil" attitude: If Israel did not officially confess "We got nukes," the Americans would not press them to sign the treaty.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

But it's different when they do it. Israel has the same "kinder and gentler" nuclear warheads that we use.

(Our nukes only incinerate evil doers, and leave the innocent unharmed.)

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Israel is not threatening to wipe Arab nations off the map. Israel is not claiming other nations have no right to exist. Israel has not started any wars with other nations by attacking them. An insistence that Israel disarm that does not take these facts into consideration is disingenuous.

Anonymous said...

Officially, which is to say according to US law, Israel's refusal to submit to the NPT regime and the AEIA monitoring protocols means that we need to cut off all funding and military aid.

XI

Gary McGowan said...

Juan Cole's report is excellent. BTW it's second on his page as I look; here is a direct permalink to the report itself:

http://www.juancole.com/2009/05/obama-netanyahu-meet-produces-few.html

In his second paragraph, Cole gives a link to an article covering the history of U.S.-Israel agreements, and more on recent developments. Informative. (I didn't know that history.)

In the comments on Cole's report, see his 5:13 AM response to Michael Pollak. Cole should be given a regular column in major U.S. newspapers and a lot of air time; he is a treasure.

I just checked: as far as I can see Cole has never been a guest on Bill Moyer's Journal. Twice with Charlie Rose (April, 2005 and Apr 9, 2009:

http://www.charlierose.com/search/search/5461?text=Juan+Cole

and lots and lots at Democracy now-- the most recent being March 17, 2009.

http://www.democracynow.org/search

Anonymous said...

I'd rather use a soldering iron on my penis than a mac for a blog. Yeech. Applebots are Obots all geeked up.

Joseph Cannon said...

"Israel is not threatening to wipe Arab nations off the map."

Look at how much land the Palestinians once had; look what they have now. Israel has practiced genocidal policies -- not any surrounding nation.

"Israel is not claiming other nations have no right to exist."

Palestine. And Israel was pushing a plan to divide Iraq in three.

"Israel has not started any wars with other nations by attacking them."

I suppose there are many Americans (mostly in the south) who would say those same words about the US, even after Iraq. The ability to self-deceive is astonishing.

Israel started the Six-Day war as a pre-emptive attack. The 1973 war was caused by land-theft and Israel's refusal to abide by UN Resolution 242. The invasions of Lebanon were not instigated by Lebanon. The attack on Gaza was pure racist genocide.

"An insistence that Israel disarm that does not take these facts into consideration is disingenuous."

I think guys like you have an interesting view of "the facts." Tell me -- why do Jewish apologists for Israel keep referring to U.N. Resolution 181 while pretending that U.N. Resolution 242 never occurred?

Actually, there are many, many MANY U.N. resolutions that Israel has ignored. Here are a few which are directly relevant to the contention that Israel has never attacked any nation:

228 (1966) -- censures Israel for its attack on Samu in the West Bank, then under Jordanian control.

171 (1962) -- determines that there were flagrant violations by Israel in its attack on Syria.

248 (1968) -- condemns Israel for its massive attack on Karameh in Jordan.

332 (1973) -- condemned repeated attacks against Lebanon

There are many more. Most of the many U.N. resolutions against Israel condemn the country for its crimes against peace and against its neighbors. These resolutions make clear that Israel is, in fact, one of the most belligerent nations in the history of the world.

Israel also attacked the United States by attacking the Liberty.

You should also read the books of Victor Ostrovsky. Except -- aren't those books banned in your country (presuming your country to be Israel)?

mbuckingham said...

Great article, thanks for posting!

Sextus Propertius said...

"Officially, which is to say according to US law, Israel's refusal to submit to the NPT regime and the AEIA monitoring protocols means that we need to cut off all funding and military aid."

And of course, that would apply to India and Pakistan, as well - yet we even share nuclear technology with India (in clear violation of the NPT), in addition to the military and economic aid we supply both countries.

And what of the other NPT signatories who have provided nuclear technology to non-signatory states in violation of the treaty (China, specifically, although some of the former Soviet republics, including Russia itself, as well as France have done this).

Which is worse, not signing the treaty or signing it and then flagrantly violating it?

The US supplies aid (both military and civilian) to every non-signatory nuclear power (including food aid to North Korea).

Anonymous said...

I thought that anon 5:37 was being flip. You mean he was serious? WOW
Those are the kinda facts that keep AIPAC powerful.
beeta

Sextus Propertius said...

"I forget: Is Israel still maintaining the fiction that they don't have nukes, and that the installation in Dimona is really just an overgrown bagel factory?"

If I'm not mistaken, official Israeli policy is "strategic ambiguity", i.e. neither to confirm nor deny that they possess nuclear weapons. They have, however, committed to a "no first use" doctrine (unlike the United States, whose stated policy is "launch on warning").

Anonymous said...

Israel is not threatening to wipe Arab nations off the map.They may not be threatening to do it but they certainly have contingency plans to make it happen.

Some or all of Israel's nukes are warheads mounted on medium-range ballistic missles. I never heard that Israel had ICBM capability but it wouldn't surprise me. If they do then some of the nukes are mounted on ICBMs too.

Israel will have already compiled a list of potential targets and completed all the calculations and computations necessary to program the missles to hit those targets.

It's a good bet that at least some of those missles already have targets programmed into their guidance systems and could be launched in a matter of minutes.

If I was one of Israel's Arab or Persian neighbors I would feel threatened by that situation.

Sextus Propertius said...

"Some or all of Israel's nukes are warheads mounted on medium-range ballistic missles. I never heard that Israel had ICBM capability but it wouldn't surprise me."

Israel also has ALCMs (Air Launched Cruise Missiles) and SLCMs (Submarine Launched Cruise Missiles) and at least three submarines capable of carrying ALCMs.

The Jericho-1 and Jericho-2 are not MRBMs, they're IRBMs (Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles) with a somewhat shorter range (J2 = ~1500km). The Jericho-3, which is supposedly designed to be an MRBM with a range of ~4500KM, is not believed to be currently deployed. Israel certainly has the capacity to build ICBMs (probably based on the Shavit orbital launch platform). Whether there would be any reason for Israel to embark on such an expensive effort is another matter - a Jericho-3 has sufficient range to hit pretty much every Muslim capital except Jakarta.

Assuming, of course, that Israel has nuclear weapons.I

Sextus Propertius said...

"submarines capable of carrying ALCMs."

Obviously, that should be SLCMs

Sextus Propertius said...

"Israel is not threatening to wipe Arab nations off the map.They may not be threatening to do it but they certainly have contingency plans to make it happen."

Of course they do - but contingency planning is what military planners do for a living. I'm sure the US military has contingency plans to invade Canada (regardless of how badly that worked out for us in 1812) and Cuba, and to seize control of Pakistani nuclear facilities in the event of a Taliban takeover (at least I hope they do). I'm sure that our Cold War era plans to use tactical nukes to repel a conventional Russian assault on Germany or Hokkaido are still lying around the Pentagon somewhere. Any military organization that doesn't do this sort of planning is grossly negligent and derelict in its duty.

Sometimes I wonder if Mordechai Vanunu wasn't working for Mossad all along - allowing Israel to leak its nuclear capabilities to its potential adversaries without ever having to acknowledge them. If so, It's certainly been quite successful at discouraging any repeats of the Yom Kippur invasion for the last 23 years.

Of course, it would be an even greater success if the leak were actually false. ;-)