Each year, the Brookings Institution, a prominent US think-tank, hosts the Saban Forum, a gathering of US and Israeli officials, along with the usual retinue of journalists, academics and observers, to discuss issues of common interest and concern. This year’s theme was “Strategic Challenges in the New Middle East”, and participants sought to focus thought and discussion, in the Saban Centre’s words, “… on historic shifts… and their implication for US-Israeli security and interests in the Middle East region”. Other “strategic challenges” in the Middle East notwithstanding, the threat posed by Iran’s apparent pursuit of nuclear weapons hung like an incubus over this year’s proceedings, and in addressing those concerns in his keynote speech, Secretary Leon Panetta delivered the sort of mixed message which Israeli officials have come to expect from the Obama administration. …. it is fair to suppose that the venue in which he made them was not accidental. ….. in response to questions, the defence secretary said perhaps more than he intended, revealing more of the administration’s true thinking than would have passed muster in his cleared remarks. A military strike on Iran, he said, would not destroy Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but only delay them – perhaps a year or two at best. The relevant targets, he added “are very difficult to get at”. … And against such limited and tenuous gains, one would have to weigh some daunting unintended consequences: a regional backlash which would end Iran’s isolation and generate popular political support for its clerical regime both at home and abroad; attacks against US military assets and interests in the region; and “severe economic consequences” – read: sharply increased oil prices – which would undermine fragile economies in the US and Europe. Finally, he said, initiation of hostilities could produce “an escalation… that would not only involve many lives, but … could consume the Middle East in a confrontation and a conflict that we would regret (emphasis added)” Hardly a ringing call to arms, that.
William A Galston, Senior Fellow at Brookings (and a writer for) The New Republic (says) that he spoke with Israelis of differing political stripes at the conference……..e – not one – believed that the Obama administration would ever exercise a military option to prevent Iranian acquisition of a nuclear weapon. Obama, they have concluded, is wedded to a containment policy; if Iran were nonetheless to acquire a nuclear capability, they are convinced, his administration would reconfigure its containment policy to suit. As Galston points out, this is completely unacceptable to the Israelis. For them, a nuclearised Iran poses an existential threat which they – unike the Americans – literally will not tolerate. This fact is recognised within the administration, and particularly within the US Department of Defence, with which potential hostilities with Iran, however initiated, would be its responsibility to deal. (Congress and Israel) .. perhaps more importantly, the Israelis know that they can pursue (war with Iran) in extremis, without serious fear of repercussions, including a cutoff of US support – diplomatic, military, or otherwise. They know that, where Israel is concerned, policy is not made in the White House, and still less at the Pentagon. It is made in Congress, which stands in thrall to Israel. … The president’s Republican adversaries are parroting the same rhetoric, and fairly slavering at the chance to brand him as soft on the Iranian threat; even his Democratic colleagues would quickly abandon him if forced to make a choice, as the recent Senate vote on toughening Iran sanctions, which went considerably further than the administration wanted, has made clear. The White House, bereft of effective sticks, is reduced to importuning the Israelis, trying to convince them of the seriousness of US purpose in confronting Iran and the effectiveness of its current sanctions policy, while hoping against hope that the Israelis would not take the sort of precipitate action which all would eventually come to regret.
The White House dares not convey weakness to Iran and a lack of resolve both to Israel and to its political critics in the US. Indeed, Secretary Panetta was back at it in his address to the Saban Forum when, after making reference to Iran’s support for terrorists, he asserted that “… a nuclear weapon would be devastating if they had that capability”. Having hyped the Iranian threat incessantly for the past three years, asserting that an Iranian nuclear weapon would have devastating and unacceptable consequences for US interests, the administration has put itself politically in a position from which it cannot escape on its own. |
