@@ Hasbara: Mossad program to keep Iran weak @@
Arash
February 24, 1993
War on Iran?
Israel versus Iran
By Israel Shahak
From his book "Open Secrets: Israeli Nuclear and Foreign Policies"
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0745311512)
Since the spring of 1992 public opinion in Israel is being prepared for the prospect of a
war with Iran, to be fought to bring about Iran’s total military and political defeat.
In one version, Israel would attack Iran alone, in another it would ‘persuade’ the West to
do the job.
The indoctrination campaign to this effect is gaining in intensity. It is accompanied by
what could be called semi-official horror scenarios purporting to detail what Iran could
do to Israel, the West and the entire world when it acquires nuclear weapons as it is
expected to a few years hence.
A manipulation of public opinion to this effect may well be considered too phantasmagoric
to merit any detailed description. Still, the readers should take notice, especially since
to all appearances the Israeli Security System does envisage the prospect seriously.
In February 1993 minutely-detailed anticipations of Iran becoming a major target of
Israeli policies became intense.
I am going to confine myself to a sample of recent publications (in view of the monotony
of their contents it will suffice), emphasizing how they envisage the possibility of
‘persuading’ the West that Iran must be defeated.
All Hebrew papers have shared in advocacy of this madness, with exception of Ha'aretz
(http://www.haaretzdaily.com) which has not dared to challenge it either. The Zionist
‘left’ papers, Davar (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davar) and Al-Ha-mishmar
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Ha-Mishmar) have particularly distinguished themselves in
bellicosity on the subject of Iran; more so than the right-wing Maariv
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maariv).
Below, I will concentrate on the recent writings of Al-Ha-mishmar and Maariv about Iran,
only occasionally mentioning what I found in other papers.
A major article by the political correspondent of Al-Ha-mishmar, Yo’av Kaspi bears the
title that summarizes its contents: ‘Iran needs to be treated just as Iraq has been’ (19
February 1993). The article contains an interview with Daniel Leshem, introduced as ‘a
retired senior officer in the Israeli Military Intelligence, now member of the Centre for
Strategic Research at the Tel Aviv University’ (http://www.tau.ac.il/jcss).
Daniel Leshem (http://www.acpr.org.il/people/dleshem.html) is known to be involved in
forming Israeli strategies. His account of how Iran is going to nuclearize is too dubious
to merit coverage here as are his lamentations that ‘the world’ has been ignoring the
warnings of the Israeli experts who alone know all the truth about what the Muslim states
are like. However, his proposals for the reversal of the progress of Iranian
nuclearization are by all means worth of being reported.
Daniel Leshem begins by opining that the Allied air raids had very little success in
destroying Iraq’s military and especially nuclear capabilities, but, owing to Allied
victory on the ground, UN observers could succeed in finishing the job. Harping on this
‘analogy’, Leshem concludes: ‘Israel alone can do very little to halt the Iranians. We
could raid Iran from the air, but we cannot realistically expect that our aerial
operations could destroy all their capabilities. At best, some Iranian nuclear
installations could in this way be destroyed. But we couldn’t reach their major centers of
nuclear development, since that development has proceeded along three different lines in a
fairly decentralized manner, with installations and factories scattered widely across the
country. It is even reasonable to suppose that we will never know the locations of all
their installations, just as we didn’t know in Iraq’s case’.
Hence Daniel Leshem believes that Israel should make Iran fear Israeli nuclear weapons,
but without hoping that it might deter it from developing their own; he proposes ‘to
create the situation which would appear similar to that with Iraq before the Persian Gulf
crisis’.
He believes this could ‘stop the Ayatollahs, if this is what the world really wants’. How
to do it? ‘Iran claims sovereignty over three strategically located islands in the Persian
Gulf. Domination over those islands is capable of assuring domination not only over all
the already active oilfields of the area, but also over all the natural gas sources not
yet exploited. We should hope that, emulating Iraq, Iran would contest the Persian Gulf
Emirates and Saudi Arabia over these islands and, repeating Saddam Hussein’s mistake in
Kuwait, start a war.
This may lead to an imposition of controls over Iranian nuclear developments the way it
did in Iraq. This prospect is in my view quite likely, because patience plays no part in
the Iranian mentality. But if they nevertheless refrain from starting a war, we should
take advantage of their involvement in Islamic terrorism which already hurts the entire
world.
Israel has incontestable intelligence that the Iranians are terrorists. We should take
advantage of this by persistently explaining to the world at large that by virtue of its
involvement in terrorism, no other state is as dangerous to the entire world as Iran.
I cannot comprehend why Libya has been hit by sanctions, to the point that sales of
military equipment are barred to it because of its minor involvement in terrorism; while
Iran, with its record of guiding terrorism against the entire world remains entirely free
of even stricter sanctions’.
In true-blue Israeli style, Daniel Leshem attributes this lamentable state of affairs to
Israel’s neglect of its propaganda (called ‘Hasbara’, that is, ‘Explanation’).
He nevertheless hopes that Israel will soon be able ‘to explain to the world at large’ how
urgent is the need to provoke Iran to a war.
Provoking Iran into responding with war or measures just stopping short of war, is also
elaborated by many other commentators. Let me just quote a story published by Telem Admon
in Maariv (12 February) who reports that ‘a senior Israeli’, that is, a senior Mossad
agent, ‘about two weeks ago had a long conversation with the son of the late Shah, Prince
Reza Pahlavi’ in order to appraise the man’s possible usefulness for Israeli ‘Hasbara’.
In the ‘senior’s’ opinion, ‘Clinton’s America is too absorbed in its domestic affairs’,
and as a result ‘the prince’s chances of reigning in Iran are deplorably slim. The prince’s
face showed signs of distress after he heard a frank assessment to this effect from the
mouth of an Israeli’.
Yet the ‘senior’s’ appraisal of the prince was distinctly negative, in spite of ‘the
princely routine of handing to all visitors copies of articles by Ehud Yaari’ (an Israeli
television commentator suspected of being a front for Israeli Intelligence,
http://bnaibrith.org/lbureau/full_bios.cfm?speaker=63). Why? In the first place because
‘the prince shows how nervous he is. His knees jerked during the first half-hour of the
conversation.’ Worse still, his chums ‘were dressed like hippies’ while ‘he kept
frequenting Manhattan’s haunts in their company and addressing them as if they were his
equals’.
The ‘senior’ deplores it greatly that the prince has emancipated himself from the
beneficial influence of his mother, ‘who had done a simply wonderful job traveling from
capital to capital in order to impress everybody concerned with her hope to enthrone her
son in Iran while she is still alive’. Her valiant efforts look to me as connected, to
some extent at least, to the no-less-valiant efforts of the Israeli ‘Hasbara’ before it
had written off her son.
But what might happen if both Israel and Iran have nuclear weapons? This question is being
addressed by the Hebrew press at length, often in a manner intended to titillate the
reader with anticipated horrors. Let me give a small sample. In Al-Ha-mishmar (19
February), Kaspi interviewed the notorious ‘hawk’, Professor Shlomo Aharonson
(http://micro5.mscc.huji.ac.il/~politics/faculty/Aronson/Aronson.html), who begins his
perorations by excoriating the Israeli left as a major obstacle to Israel’s ability to
resist Iranian evildoing. Without bothering about the left’s current lack of political
clout, says Aharonson: ‘The left is full of prejudices and fears. It refuses to be
rational on the nuclear issue. The left doesn’t like nuclear weapons, full stop. The
opposition of the Israeli left to nuclear weapons is reminiscent of the opposition to the
invention of the wheel’.
Profound insights, aren’t they? After spelling them out, Aharonson proceeds to his
‘scenarios’. Here is just one of them: ‘If we established tomorrow a Palestinian state, we
will really grant sovereignty to an entity second to none in hostility toward us. This
entity can be expected to reach a nuclear alliance with Iran at once. Suppose the
Palestinians open hostilities against us and the Iranians deter us from retaliating
against the Palestinians by threatening to retaliate in turn against us by nuclear means.
What could we do then?’ There is a lot more in the same vein before Aharonson concludes:
‘We should see to it that no Palestinian state ever comes into being, even Iranians
threaten us with nuclear weapons. And we should also see to it that Iran lives in
permanent fear of Israeli nuclear weapons being used against it’.
Let me reiterate that the Israelis are also bombarded ceaselessly with official messages
to the same effect. For example, General Ze’ev Livneh, the commander of recently
established Rear General Command of the Israeli Army said (in Ha'aretz, 15 February) that
‘it is not only Iran which already endangers every site in Israel’, because, even if to a
lesser extent, ‘Syria, Libya and Algeria do too’. In order to protect Israel from this
danger, General Livneh calls upon ‘the European Community to enforce jointly with Israel
an embargo on any weaponry supplies to both Iran and those Arab states. The EU should also
learn that military interventions can have salutary effects, as proven recently in Iraq’s
case’.
Timid reminders by the Hebrew press that Israel continues to have the monopoly of nuclear
weapons in the Middle East, were definitely unwelcome to Israeli authorities. In
Hadashotof 29 January and 5 February, Ran Edelist, careful to rely only on quotes from the
U.S. press, raised the problem of nuclear waste disposal from the rather obsolete Dimona
reactor and of other possible risks of that reactor to Israeli lives and limbs. He was
‘answered’ by numerous interviews with named and unnamed experts, all of whom fiercely
denied that any such risks existed. The experts didn’t neglect to reassure their readers
that the Israeli reactor was the best and the safest in the entire world.
But speaking in the name of ‘the Intelligence Community’ Immanuel Rosen (Maariv, 12
February) went even further. He disclosed that the said ‘community’ felt offended ‘by the
self-confident publications of an Israeli researcher dealing with nuclear subjects. This
researcher has recently been found by the Intelligence Community to pose “a security risk”,
to the point of observing that in some states such a researcher “would have been made to
disappear” ’. Ran Edelist reacted in a brief note (in Hadashot, 14 February), confining
himself to quoting these revealing ideas of ‘the Intelligence Community’, and drawing
attention to threats voiced there. But apart from Edelist, the press of the only democracy
in the Middle East’ either didn’t dare comment, or was not allowed to.
The press is allowed, and even encouraged, to discuss one issue related to Israeli nuclear
policies: to say how clever Shimon Peres (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peres) was in
pretending to agree to negotiate nuclear disarmament and then raising unacceptable
conditions for entering any such negotiations.
An example of this is Akiva Eldar’s coverage in Haaretz (19 February), of Yitzhak Rabin’s
excoriation of Egypt on television a few days earlier. Rabin
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitzhak_Rabin) scolded Egypt for suggesting that a Middle
East regional nuclear disarmament agreement would be desirable. Eldar comments that The
Prime Minister is known to loathe anything that relates to Egypt. Aiming at Boutros Ghali
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boutros_Boutros-Ghali), he said in a public speech: “What
can you expect of him? Isn’t he an Egyptian?” Rabin is particularly averse to Egyptian
insistence that the Middle East should be completely denuclearized.
Shimon Peres, by contrast, favors using Egypt as an intermediary in various diplomatic
pursuits, while recognizing that Cairo’s reminders on the subject of Dimona obstruct his
real mission, which is to mediate between Egypt and the grand man in Jerusalem.’
Therefore, after ‘Egypt recently invited Israel to a symposium that “would deal with both
conventional and non-conventional armed confrontations”, a high-level discussion was held
in the Foreign Ministry on how to pretend to accept the invitation and then "to decline
elegantly". The solution was to communicate to Egypt the Israeli agreement in principle to
attend the symposium on three conditions: that it be chaired by the U.S. and Russia; that
its agenda be unanimously determined by the chairmen and all the participants; and, most
interestingly, that nothing be discussed unless the presence of all other Arab states, not
just of Syria and Lebanon, but also – hard to believe – of Libya and Iraq, be assured in
advance. In this way, any conceivable discussion of nuclear affairs was effectively
precluded.’ I find it superfluous to comment on Eldar’s story.
But I do want to make some comments on the incitement of Israelis against Iran. I am well
aware that a lot of expert opinions and predictions quoted here will sound to non-Israeli
readers like fantasy running amok. Yet I perceive those opinions and predictions, no
matter how mendacious and deceitful they obviously are, as politically quite meaningful.
Let me explain my reasons. In the first place, I have not quoted the opinions of raving
extremists. I was careful to select only the writings of respected and influential Israeli
experts or commentators on strategic affairs, who can be presumed to be well acquainted
with the thinking of the Israeli Security System. Since militarily Israel is the strongest
state in the Middle East and has the monopoly on nuclear weapons in the region,
strategical doctrines of its Security System deserve to be disseminated world-wide,
especially when they are forcefully pressed upon the Israeli public.
Whether one likes it or not, Israel is a great power, not only in military but also in
political terms, by virtue of its increasing influence upon U.S. policies. The opinions of
the Israeli Security System may mean something different from what they say. But this
doesn’t detract from their importance.
But there is more to it. Fantasy and madness in the doctrines of the Israeli Security
System are nothing new. At least since the early 1950s those qualities could already be
noticed.
Let us just recall that in 1956 Ben-Gurion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ben-Gurion)
wanted to annex Sinai to Israel on the ground that ‘it was not Egypt’. The same doctrine
was professed in 1967-73 with elaborations, such as the proposal of several generals to
conquer Alexandria in order to hold the city hostage until Egypt would sign a peace treaty
on Israeli terms.
The 1982 invasion of Lebanon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Invasion_of_Lebanon)
relied on fantastic assumptions, and so did the 1983 ‘peace treaty’ signed with a ‘lawful
Lebanese government’ put in power by Sharon.
All Israeli policies in the Territories are not just totally immoral, but also rely on
assumptions steadily held and advocated without regard for their fanciful contents. It
will suffice to recall how Yitzhak Rabin together with the entire Israeli Security System
perceived the outbreak of the Intifada first as an Iranian manipulation and then as a
fabrication of western television and press. They concluded that if the Arabs are denied
opportunities to fake riots in order to be photographed, the unrest in the Territories
could be suppressed with ease.
Relevant to this is the fact that Israeli policies bear the easily recognizable imprint of
Orientalist ‘expertise’ abounding in militarist and racist ideological prejudices
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalist).
This ‘expertise’ is readily available in English, since its harbingers were the Jewish
Orientalists living in English-speaking countries, like Bernard Lewis
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Lewis) or the late Elie Kedourie
(http://www.geocities.com/martinkramerorg/Kedourie.htm) who had visited Israel regularly
for hobnobbing on the best of terms with the Israeli Security System.
It was Elie Kedourie who performed a particularly seminal role in fathering the
assumptions on which Israeli policies rest and who consequently had in Israel a lot of
influence. In Kedourie’s view, the peoples of the Middle East, with the ‘self-evident’
exception of Israel, would be best off if ruled by foreign imperial powers with a natural
capacity to rule for a long time yet.
Elie Kedourie believed that the entire Middle East could be ruled by foreign powers with
perfect ease, because their domination would hardly be opposed except by grouplets of
intellectuals bent on rabble-rousing.
Elie Kedourie lived in Britain, and his primary concern was British politics. In his
opinion the British refused to continue to rule the Middle East, with calamitous effects,
only because of intellectual corruption of their own experts, especially those from the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office at Chatham House, who were misguided enough to dismiss the
superior expertise of minority nationals, particularly Jewish, from the Arab world, who
alone had known ‘the Arab nature’ at first hand.
For example, in his first book, Elie Kedourie says that as early as 1932 (!) the British
government was misguided enough to grant Iraq independence (it was faked, but never mind)
against the advice of Jewish community in Baghdad.
On many occasions during his recurrent visits to Israel, from the 1960s until his death,
Elie Kedourie would assure his Israeli audiences (one of which I was a member) that Iraq
could ‘really’ be still ruled by the British with ease, under whatever disguises it would
be convenient to adopt, provided the grouplets of rabble-rousers would be dealt with by a
modicum of salutary toughness. That, the opportunities for education would be restricted
so as not to produce a superfluous number of intellectuals, prone to learn the western
notions of national independence. True, Kedourie also opposed the idea of exclusive Jewish
right to the Land of Israel as incompatible with his imperialistic outlook, but he favored
the retention of Israeli permanent rule over the Palestinians. The rather incongruous
blend of Kedourie’s ideas with the Land of Israel messianism is already an innovation of
Israeli Security System vintage.
The implications of the Elie Kedourie doctrine for Israeli policy-makers are obvious.
First, Israel always seeks to persuade the West about what its ‘true’ interests and ‘moral
duties’ in the Middle East are.
It also tells the West that by intervening in the Middle East they would serve the
authentic interests of Middle Eastern nations. But if the western powers refuse to listen,
it is up to Israel to assume ‘the white man’s burden’.
Another implication of Kedourie’s doctrine, acted upon by Israel since the early 1950s
already, is that in the Middle East no other strong state is to be tolerated. Its power
must be destroyed or at least diminished through a war.
Iranian theocracy may have its utility for the Israeli Hasbara, But Nasser’s Egypt was
attacked while being emphatically secular. In Both cases the real reason for the Israeli
threat to start a war was the strength of the state concerned.
Quite apart from the risks such a state may pose to Israeli hegemonic ambitions,
Orientalist ‘expertise’ requires that natives of the region always remain weak, to be
ruled always by their traditional notables but not by persons with intellectual capacity,
whether religious or secular.
Before World War I, such principles were taken for granted in the West, professed openly
and applied globally, from China to Mexico. Israeli Orientalism, on which Israeli policies
are based, is no more than their belated replica. It continues to uphold dogmas which, say
in 1903, were taken for granted as ‘scientific’ truths. The subsequent ‘troubles’ of the
West are perceived by the Israeli ‘experts’ as a well-deserved punishment for listening to
intellectuals who had been casting doubt on such self-evident truths. Without such rotten
intellectuals, everything would have remained stable.
Let us return to the special case of Iran, though. Anyone not converted to the
Orientalistic creed will recognize that Iran is a country very difficult to conquer,
because of its size, topography and especially because of fervent nationalism combined
with the religious zeal of its populace.
I happen to loathe the current Iranian regime, but it doesn’t hinder me from immediately
noticing how different it is from Saddam Hussein’s. Popular support for Iran’s rulers is
much greater than for Iraq’s. After Saddam Hussein had invaded Iran, his troops were
resisted valiantly under extremely difficult conditions.
All analogies between a possible attack on Iran and the Persian Gulf War are therefore
irresponsibly fanciful.
Yet Sharon and the Israeli Army commanders did in 1979 propose to send a detachment of
Israeli paratroopers to Tehran to quash the revolution and restore the monarchy.
They really thought, until stopped by Menachem Begin
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menachem_Begin), that a few Israeli paratroopers could
determine the history of a country as immense and populous as Iran!
According to a consensus of official Israeli experts on Iranian affairs, the fall of the
Shah was due solely to his ‘softness’ in refraining to order his army to slaughter
thousands of demonstrators wholesale. Later, the Israeli experts on Iranian affairs were
no less unanimous in predicting a speedy defeat of Iran by Saddam Hussein.
No evidence indicates that they have changed their assumptions or discarded their
underlying racism. Their ranks may include some relatively less-opinionated individuals,
who have survived the negative selection process which usually occurs within groups
sharing such ideologically-tight imageries.
But such individuals can be assumed to prefer to keep their moderation to themselves,
while hoping that Israel can reap some fringe benefits from any western provocation
against Iran, even if it results in a protracted and inconclusive war.
* Israel Shahak (1933–2001) was a Professor of Chemistry at Hebrew University in
Jerusalem, and an outspoken critic of the Israeli government and of Israeli society in
general. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Shahak
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ir-shahak.html
Kavik Kang
news:czTee.1241$pi1....@newscontent-01.sprint.ca...
Sounds like a damn good program!!!
> War on Iran?
Very soon, yes, but only because Iran insists. We've given them every
opportunity to avoid it.