Tomgram: Noam Chomsky, Rogue States and Nuclear Dangers
By Noam Chomsky
Posted on August 20, 2015, Printed on August 20, 2015
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176038/
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The first prime-time Republican primary debate of 2015 was an eye-opener of
sorts when it came to the Middle East. After forcefully advocating for the
termination of the pending nuclear deal with Iran, for example, Wisconsin
Governor Scott Walker unleashed an almost indecipherable torrent of words.
This is not just bad with Iran, he insisted, this is bad with ISIS. It is
tied together, and, once and for all, we need a leader whos gonna stand up
and do something about it. That prescription, as vague as it was
incoherent, was par for the course.
When asked how he would respond to reports that Iranian Qods Force commander
Major General Qassem Soleimani had recently traveled to Russia in violation
of a U.N. Security Council resolution, GOP billionaire frontrunner Donald
Trump responded, I would be so different from what you have right now.
Like, the polar opposite. He then meandered into a screed about trading
Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl for five of the big, great killers leaders of
Afghanistans Taliban, but never offered the slightest hint that he had a
clue who General Soleimani was or what he would actually do that would be
so different. Questioned about the legacy of American soldiers killed in
his brothers war in Iraq, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush replied in a
similarly incoherent fashion: To honor the people that died, we need to --
we need to stop the Iran agreement, and then pledged to annihilate ISIS as
well. Senator Ted Cruz seemed to believe that merely intoning the phrase
radical Islamic terrorism opened a surefire path to rapidly defeating ISIS
-- that, and his proposed Expatriate Terrorist Act that would stop Americans
who join ISIS from using their passport to come back and wage jihad on
Americans. Game, set, match, ISIS.
Of the 10 candidates on that stage, only Senator Rand Paul departed from
faith-based reality by observing that ISIS rides around in a billion
dollars worth of U.S. Humvees. He continued, Its a disgrace. Weve got
to stop -- we shouldnt fund our enemies, for goodness sakes. On a stage
filled by Republicans in a lather about nonexistent weaponry in the Middle
East -- namely, an Iranian A-bomb -- only Paul drew attention to weaponry
that does exist, much of it American. Though no viewer would know it from
that nights debate, all across the region -- from Yemen to Syria to Iraq --
U.S. arms are fueling conflicts and turning the living into the dead.
Military spending in the Middle East reached almost $200 billion in 2014,
according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which
tracks arms sales. That represents a jump of 57% since 2005. Some of the
largest increases have been among U.S. allies buying big-ticket items from
American weapons makers. That includes Iraq and Saudi Arabia ($90 billion in
U.S. weapons deals from October 2010 to October 2014), which, by the way,
havent fared so well against smaller, less well-armed opponents. Those
countries have seen increases in their arms purchases of 286% and 112%,
respectively, since 2005.
With the United States feeding the fires of war and many in its political
class frothing about nonexistent nukes, leave it to the indomitable Noam
Chomsky, a TomDispatch regular and institute professor emeritus at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to cut to the quick when it comes to
Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States, the regional balance of
power, and arms (real or imagined). He wades through the spin and
speechifying to offer a frank assessment of threats in the Middle East that
youre unlikely to hear about in any U.S. presidential debate between now
and the end of time. Nick Turse
The Iranian Threat
Who Is the Gravest Danger to World Peace?
By Noam Chomsky
Throughout the world there is great relief and optimism about the nuclear
deal reached in Vienna between Iran and the P5+1 nations, the five
veto-holding members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany. Most of the
world apparently shares the assessment of the U.S. Arms Control Association
that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action establishes a strong and
effective formula for blocking all of the pathways by which Iran could
acquire material for nuclear weapons for more than a generation and a
verification system to promptly detect and deter possible efforts by Iran to
covertly pursue nuclear weapons that will last indefinitely.
There are, however, striking exceptions to the general enthusiasm: the
United States and its closest regional allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia. One
consequence of this is that U.S. corporations, much to their chagrin, are
prevented from flocking to Tehran along with their European counterparts.
Prominent sectors of U.S. power and opinion share the stand of the two
regional allies and so are in a state of virtual hysteria over the Iranian
threat. Sober commentary in the United States, pretty much across the
spectrum, declares that country to be the gravest threat to world peace.
Even supporters of the agreement here are wary, given the exceptional
gravity of that threat. After all, how can we trust the Iranians with their
terrible record of aggression, violence, disruption, and deceit?
Opposition within the political class is so strong that public opinion has
shifted quickly from significant support for the deal to an even split.
Republicans are almost unanimously opposed to the agreement. The current
Republican primaries illustrate the proclaimed reasons. Senator Ted Cruz,
considered one of the intellectuals among the crowded field of presidential
candidates, warns that Iran may still be able to produce nuclear weapons and
could someday use one to set off an Electro Magnetic Pulse that would take
down the electrical grid of the entire eastern seaboard of the United
States, killing tens of millions of Americans.
The two most likely winners, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Wisconsin
Governor Scott Walker, are battling over whether to bomb Iran immediately
after being elected or after the first Cabinet meeting. The one candidate
with some foreign policy experience, Lindsey Graham, describes the deal as
a death sentence for the state of Israel, which will certainly come as a
surprise to Israeli intelligence and strategic analysts -- and which Graham
knows to be utter nonsense, raising immediate questions about actual
motives.
Keep in mind that the Republicans long ago abandoned the pretense of
functioning as a normal congressional party. They have, as respected
conservative political commentator Norman Ornstein of the right-wing
American Enterprise Institute observed, become a radical insurgency that
scarcely seeks to participate in normal congressional politics.
Since the days of President Ronald Reagan, the party leadership has plunged
so far into the pockets of the very rich and the corporate sector that they
can attract votes only by mobilizing parts of the population that have not
previously been an organized political force. Among them are extremist
evangelical Christians, now probably a majority of Republican voters;
remnants of the former slave-holding states; nativists who are terrified
that they are taking our white Christian Anglo-Saxon country away from us;
and others who turn the Republican primaries into spectacles remote from the
mainstream of modern society -- though not from the mainstream of the most
powerful country in world history.
The departure from global standards, however, goes far beyond the bounds of
the Republican radical insurgency. Across the spectrum, there is, for
instance, general agreement with the pragmatic conclusion of General
Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the Vienna deal
does not prevent the United States from striking Iranian facilities if
officials decide that it is cheating on the agreement, even though a
unilateral military strike is far less likely if Iran behaves.
Former Clinton and Obama Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross typically
recommends that Iran must have no doubts that if we see it moving towards a
weapon, that would trigger the use of force even after the termination of
the deal, when Iran is theoretically free to do what it wants. In fact, the
existence of a termination point 15 years hence is, he adds, "the greatest
single problem with the agreement." He also suggests that the U.S. provide
Israel with specially outfitted B-52 bombers and bunker-busting bombs to
protect itself before that terrifying date arrives.
The Greatest Threat
Opponents of the nuclear deal charge that it does not go far enough. Some
supporters agree, holding that if the Vienna deal is to mean anything, the
whole of the Middle East must rid itself of weapons of mass destruction.
The author of those words, Irans Minister of Foreign Affairs Javad Zarif,
added that Iran, in its national capacity and as current chairman of the
Non-Aligned Movement [the governments of the large majority of the worlds
population], is prepared to work with the international community to achieve
these goals, knowing full well that, along the way, it will probably run
into many hurdles raised by the skeptics of peace and diplomacy. Iran has
signed a historic nuclear deal, he continues, and now it is the turn of
Israel, the holdout.
Israel, of course, is one of the three nuclear powers, along with India and
Pakistan, whose weapons programs have been abetted by the United States and
that refuse to sign the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
Zarif was referring to the regular five-year NPT review conference, which
ended in failure in April when the U.S. (joined by Canada and Great Britain)
once again blocked efforts to move toward a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free
zone in the Middle East. Such efforts have been led by Egypt and other Arab
states for 20 years. As Jayantha Dhanapala and Sergio Duarte, leading
figures in the promotion of such efforts at the NPT and other U.N. agencies,
observe in Is There a Future for the NPT?, an article in the journal of
the Arms Control Association: The successful adoption in 1995 of the
resolution on the establishment of a zone free of weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) in the Middle East was the main element of a package that
permitted the indefinite extension of the NPT. The NPT, in turn, is the
most important arms control treaty of all. If it were adhered to, it could
end the scourge of nuclear weapons.
Repeatedly, implementation of the resolution has been blocked by the U.S.,
most recently by President Obama in 2010 and again in 2015, as Dhanapala and
Duarte point out, on behalf of a state that is not a party to the NPT and
is widely believed to be the only one in the region possessing nuclear
weapons -- a polite and understated reference to Israel. This failure, they
hope, will not be the coup de grâce to the two longstanding NPT objectives
of accelerated progress on nuclear disarmament and establishing a Middle
Eastern WMD-free zone.
A nuclear-weapons-free Middle East would be a straightforward way to address
whatever threat Iran allegedly poses, but a great deal more is at stake in
Washingtons continuing sabotage of the effort in order to protect its
Israeli client. After all, this is not the only case in which opportunities
to end the alleged Iranian threat have been undermined by Washington,
raising further questions about just what is actually at stake.
In considering this matter, it is instructive to examine both the unspoken
assumptions in the situation and the questions that are rarely asked. Let
us consider a few of these assumptions, beginning with the most serious:
that Iran is the gravest threat to world peace.
In the U.S., it is a virtual cliché among high officials and commentators
that Iran wins that grim prize. There is also a world outside the U.S. and
although its views are not reported in the mainstream here, perhaps they are
of some interest. According to the leading western polling agencies
(WIN/Gallup International), the prize for greatest threat is won by the
United States. The rest of the world regards it as the gravest threat to
world peace by a large margin. In second place, far below, is Pakistan, its
ranking probably inflated by the Indian vote. Iran is ranked below those
two, along with China, Israel, North Korea, and Afghanistan.
The Worlds Leading Supporter of Terrorism
Turning to the next obvious question, what in fact is the Iranian threat?
Why, for example, are Israel and Saudi Arabia trembling in fear over that
country? Whatever the threat is, it can hardly be military. Years ago,
U.S. intelligence informed Congress that Iran has very low military
expenditures by the standards of the region and that its strategic doctrines
are defensive -- designed, that is, to deter aggression. The U.S.
intelligence community has also reported that it has no evidence Iran is
pursuing an actual nuclear weapons program and that Irans nuclear program
and its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear
weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy.
The authoritative SIPRI review of global armaments ranks the U.S., as usual,
way in the lead in military expenditures. China comes in second with about
one-third of U.S. expenditures. Far below are Russia and Saudi Arabia,
which are nonetheless well above any western European state. Iran is
scarcely mentioned. Full details are provided in an April report from the
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which finds a
conclusive case that the Arab Gulf states have... an overwhelming advantage
of Iran in both military spending and access to modern arms.
Irans military spending, for instance, is a fraction of Saudi Arabias and
far below even the spending of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Altogether,
the Gulf Cooperation Council states -- Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia,
and the UAE -- outspend Iran on arms by a factor of eight, an imbalance that
goes back decades. The CSIS report adds: The Arab Gulf states have
acquired and are acquiring some of the most advanced and effective weapons
in the world [while] Iran has essentially been forced to live in the past,
often relying on systems originally delivered at the time of the Shah. In
other words, they are virtually obsolete. When it comes to Israel, of
course, the imbalance is even greater. Possessing the most advanced U.S.
weaponry and a virtual offshore military base for the global superpower, it
also has a huge stock of nuclear weapons.
To be sure, Israel faces the existential threat of Iranian pronouncements:
Supreme Leader Khamenei and former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad famously
threatened it with destruction. Except that they didnt -- and if they had,
it would be of little moment. Ahmadinejad, for instance, predicted that
under Gods grace [the Zionist regime] will be wiped off the map. In
other words, he hoped that regime change would someday take place. Even
that falls far short of the direct calls in both Washington and Tel Aviv for
regime change in Iran, not to speak of the actions taken to implement regime
change. These, of course, go back to the actual regime change of 1953,
when the U.S. and Britain organized a military coup to overthrow Irans
parliamentary government and install the dictatorship of the Shah, who
proceeded to amass one of the worst human rights records on the planet.
These crimes were certainly known to readers of the reports of Amnesty
International and other human rights organizations, but not to readers of
the U.S. press, which has devoted plenty of space to Iranian human rights
violations -- but only since 1979 when the Shahs regime was overthrown.
(To check the facts on this, read The U.S. Press and Iran, a carefully
documented study by Mansour Farhang and William Dorman.)
None of this is a departure from the norm. The United States, as is well
known, holds the world championship title in regime change and Israel is no
laggard either. The most destructive of its invasions of Lebanon in 1982
was explicitly aimed at regime change, as well as at securing its hold on
the occupied territories. The pretexts offered were thin indeed and
collapsed at once. That, too, is not unusual and pretty much independent of
the nature of the society -- from the laments in the Declaration of
Independence about the merciless Indian savages to Hitlers defense of
Germany from the wild terror of the Poles.
No serious analyst believes that Iran would ever use, or even threaten to
use, a nuclear weapon if it had one, and so face instant destruction. There
is, however, real concern that a nuclear weapon might fall into jihadi hands
-- not thanks to Iran, but via U.S. ally Pakistan. In the journal of the
Royal Institute of International Affairs, two leading Pakistani nuclear
scientists, Pervez Hoodbhoy and Zia Mian, write that increasing fears of
militants seizing nuclear weapons or materials and unleashing nuclear
terrorism [have led to]... the creation of a dedicated force of over 20,000
troops to guard nuclear facilities. There is no reason to assume, however,
that this force would be immune to the problems associated with the units
guarding regular military facilities, which have frequently suffered
attacks with insider help. In brief, the problem is real, just displaced
to Iran thanks to fantasies concocted for other reasons.
Other concerns about the Iranian threat include its role as the worlds
leading supporter of terrorism, which primarily refers to its support for
Hezbollah and Hamas. Both of those movements emerged in resistance to
U.S.-backed Israeli violence and aggression, which vastly exceeds anything
attributed to these villains, let alone the normal practice of the hegemonic
power whose global drone assassination campaign alone dominates (and helps
to foster) international terrorism.
Those two villainous Iranian clients also share the crime of winning the
popular vote in the only free elections in the Arab world. Hezbollah is
guilty of the even more heinous crime of compelling Israel to withdraw from
its occupation of southern Lebanon, which took place in violation of U.N.
Security Council orders dating back decades and involved an illegal regime
of terror and sometimes extreme violence. Whatever one thinks of Hezbollah,
Hamas, or other beneficiaries of Iranian support, Iran hardly ranks high in
support of terror worldwide.
Fueling Instability
Another concern, voiced at the U.N. by U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power, is
the instability that Iran fuels beyond its nuclear program. The U.S. will
continue to scrutinize this misbehavior, she declared. In that, she echoed
the assurance Defense Secretary Ashton Carter offered while standing on
Israels northern border that we will continue to help Israel counter
Irans malign influence in supporting Hezbollah, and that the U.S. reserves
the right to use military force against Iran as it deems appropriate.
The way Iran fuels instability can be seen particularly dramatically in
Iraq where, among other crimes, it alone at once came to the aid of Kurds
defending themselves from the invasion of Islamic State militants, even as
it is building a $2.5 billion power plant in the southern port city of Basra
to try to bring electrical power back to the level reached before the 2003
invasion. Ambassador Powers usage is, however, standard: Thanks to that
invasion, hundreds of thousands were killed and millions of refugees
generated, barbarous acts of torture were committed -- Iraqis have compared
the destruction to the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century -- leaving
Iraq the unhappiest country in the world according to WIN/Gallup polls.
Meanwhile, sectarian conflict was ignited, tearing the region to shreds and
laying the basis for the creation of the monstrosity that is ISIS. And all
of that is called stabilization.
Only Irans shameful actions, however, fuel instability. The standard
usage sometimes reaches levels that are almost surreal, as when liberal
commentator James Chace, former editor of Foreign Affairs, explained that
the U.S. sought to destabilize a freely elected Marxist government in
Chile because we were determined to seek stability under the Pinochet
dictatorship.
Others are outraged that Washington should negotiate at all with a
contemptible regime like Irans with its horrifying human rights record
and urge instead that we pursue an American-sponsored alliance between
Israel and the Sunni states. So writes Leon Wieseltier, contributing
editor to the venerable liberal journal the Atlantic, who can barely conceal
his visceral hatred for all things Iranian. With a straight face, this
respected liberal intellectual recommends that Saudi Arabia, which makes
Iran look like a virtual paradise, and Israel, with its vicious crimes in
Gaza and elsewhere, should ally to teach that country good behavior.
Perhaps the recommendation is not entirely unreasonable when we consider the
human rights records of the regimes the U.S. has imposed and supported
throughout the world.
Though the Iranian government is no doubt a threat to its own people, it
regrettably breaks no records in this regard, not descending to the level of
favored U.S. allies. That, however, cannot be the concern of Washington,
and surely not Tel Aviv or Riyadh.
It might also be useful to recall -- surely Iranians do -- that not a day
has passed since 1953 in which the U.S. was not harming Iranians. After all,
as soon as they overthrew the hated U.S.-imposed regime of the Shah in 1979,
Washington put its support behind Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who would, in
1980, launch a murderous assault on their country. President Reagan went so
far as to deny Saddams major crime, his chemical warfare assault on Iraqs
Kurdish population, which he blamed on Iran instead. When Saddam was tried
for crimes under U.S. auspices, that horrendous crime, as well as others in
which the U.S. was complicit, was carefully excluded from the charges, which
were restricted to one of his minor crimes, the murder of 148 Shiites in
1982, a footnote to his gruesome record.
Saddam was such a valued friend of Washington that he was even granted a
privilege otherwise accorded only to Israel. In 1987, his forces were
allowed to attack a U.S. naval vessel, the USS Stark, with impunity, killing
37 crewmen. (Israel had acted similarly in its 1967 attack on the USS
Liberty.) Iran pretty much conceded defeat shortly after, when the U.S.
launched Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian ships and oil platforms in
Iranian territorial waters. That operation culminated when the USS
Vincennes, under no credible threat, shot down an Iranian civilian airliner
in Iranian airspace, with 290 killed -- and the subsequent granting of a
Legion of Merit award to the commander of the Vincennes for exceptionally
meritorious conduct and for maintaining a calm and professional
atmosphere during the period when the attack on the airliner took place.
Comments philosopher Thill Raghu, We can only stand in awe of such display
of American exceptionalism!
After the war ended, the U.S. continued to support Saddam Hussein, Irans
primary enemy. President George H.W. Bush even invited Iraqi nuclear
engineers to the U.S. for advanced training in weapons production, an
extremely serious threat to Iran. Sanctions against that country were
intensified, including against foreign firms dealing with it, and actions
were initiated to bar it from the international financial system.
In recent years the hostility has extended to sabotage, the murder of
nuclear scientists (presumably by Israel), and cyberwar, openly proclaimed
with pride. The Pentagon regards cyberwar as an act of war, justifying a
military response, as does NATO, which affirmed in September 2014 that cyber
attacks may trigger the collective defense obligations of the NATO powers --
when we are the target that is, not the perpetrators.
The Prime Rogue State
It is only fair to add that there have been breaks in this pattern.
President George W. Bush, for example, offered several significant gifts to
Iran by destroying its major enemies, Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. He
even placed Irans Iraqi enemy under its influence after the U.S. defeat,
which was so severe that Washington had to abandon its officially declared
goals of establishing permanent military bases (enduring camps) and
ensuring that U.S. corporations would have privileged access to Iraqs vast
oil resources.
Do Iranian leaders intend to develop nuclear weapons today? We can decide
for ourselves how credible their denials are, but that they had such
intentions in the past is beyond question. After all, it was asserted
openly on the highest authority and foreign journalists were informed that
Iran would develop nuclear weapons certainly, and sooner than one thinks.
The father of Irans nuclear energy program and former head of Irans Atomic
Energy Organization was confident that the leaderships plan was to build a
nuclear bomb. The CIA also reported that it had no doubt Iran would
develop nuclear weapons if neighboring countries did (as they have).
All of this was, of course, under the Shah, the highest authority just
quoted and at a time when top U.S. officials -- Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld, and Henry Kissinger, among others -- were urging him to proceed
with his nuclear programs and pressuring universities to accommodate these
efforts. Under such pressures, my own university, MIT, made a deal with the
Shah to admit Iranian students to the nuclear engineering program in return
for grants he offered and over the strong objections of the student body,
but with comparably strong faculty support (in a meeting that older faculty
will doubtless remember well).
Asked later why he supported such programs under the Shah but opposed them
more recently, Kissinger responded honestly that Iran was an ally then.
Putting aside absurdities, what is the real threat of Iran that inspires
such fear and fury? A natural place to turn for an answer is, again, U.S.
intelligence. Recall its analysis that Iran poses no military threat, that
its strategic doctrines are defensive, and that its nuclear programs (with
no effort to produce bombs, as far as can be determined) are a central part
of its deterrent strategy.
Who, then, would be concerned by an Iranian deterrent? The answer is plain:
the rogue states that rampage in the region and do not want to tolerate any
impediment to their reliance on aggression and violence. In the lead in
this regard are the U.S. and Israel, with Saudi Arabia trying its best to
join the club with its invasion of Bahrain (to support the crushing of a
reform movement there) and now its murderous assault on Yemen, accelerating
a growing humanitarian catastrophe in that country.
For the United States, the characterization is familiar. Fifteen years ago,
the prominent political analyst Samuel Huntington, professor of the science
of government at Harvard, warned in the establishment journal Foreign
Affairs that for much of the world the U.S. was becoming the rogue
superpower... the single greatest external threat to their societies.
Shortly after, his words were echoed by Robert Jervis, the president of the
American Political Science Association: In the eyes of much of the world,
in fact, the prime rogue state today is the United States. As we have seen,
global opinion supports this judgment by a substantial margin.
Furthermore, the mantle is worn with pride. That is the clear meaning of
the insistence of the political class that the U.S. reserves the right to
resort to force if it unilaterally determines that Iran is violating some
commitment. This policy is of long standing, especially for liberal
Democrats, and by no means restricted to Iran. The Clinton Doctrine, for
instance, confirmed that the U.S. was entitled to resort to the unilateral
use of military power even to ensure uninhibited access to key markets,
energy supplies, and strategic resources, let alone alleged security or
humanitarian concerns. Adherence to various versions of this doctrine has
been well confirmed in practice, as need hardly be discussed among people
willing to look at the facts of current history.
These are among the critical matters that should be the focus of attention
in analyzing the nuclear deal at Vienna, whether it stands or is sabotaged
by Congress, as it may well be.
Noam Chomsky is institute professor emeritus in the Department of
Linguistics and Philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A
TomDispatch regular, among his recent books are Hegemony or Survival, Failed
States, Power Systems, Hopes and Prospects, and Masters of Mankind.
Haymarket Books recently reissued twelve of his classic books in new
editions. His website is www.chomsky.info.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
Dispatch Book, Nick Turses Tomorrows Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and
Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government:
Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a
Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2015 Noam Chomsky
© 2015 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176038
Tomgram: Noam Chomsky, Rogue States and Nuclear Dangers
By Noam Chomsky
Posted on August 20, 2015, Printed on August 20, 2015
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/176038/
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The first prime-time Republican primary debate of 2015 was an eye-opener of
sorts when it came to the Middle East. After forcefully advocating for the
termination of the pending nuclear deal with Iran, for example, Wisconsin
Governor Scott Walker unleashed an almost indecipherable torrent of words.
This is not just bad with Iran, he insisted, this is bad with ISIS. It is
tied together, and, once and for all, we need a leader whos gonna stand up
and do something about it. That prescription, as vague as it was
incoherent, was par for the course.
When asked how he would respond to reports that Iranian Qods Force commander
Major General Qassem Soleimani had recently traveled to Russia in violation
of a U.N. Security Council resolution, GOP billionaire frontrunner Donald
Trump responded, I would be so different from what you have right now.
Like, the polar opposite. He then meandered into a screed about trading
Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl for five of the big, great killers leaders of
Afghanistans Taliban, but never offered the slightest hint that he had a
clue who General Soleimani was or what he would actually do that would be
so different. Questioned about the legacy of American soldiers killed in
his brothers war in Iraq, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush replied in a
similarly incoherent fashion: To honor the people that died, we need to --
we need to stop the Iran agreement, and then pledged to annihilate ISIS as
well. Senator Ted Cruz seemed to believe that merely intoning the phrase
radical Islamic terrorism opened a surefire path to rapidly defeating ISIS
-- that, and his proposed Expatriate Terrorist Act that would stop Americans
who join ISIS from using their passport to come back and wage jihad on
Americans. Game, set, match, ISIS.
Of the 10 candidates on that stage, only Senator Rand Paul departed from
faith-based reality by observing that ISIS rides around in a billion
dollars worth of U.S. Humvees. He continued, Its a disgrace. Weve got
to stop -- we shouldnt fund our enemies, for goodness sakes. On a stage
filled by Republicans in a lather about nonexistent weaponry in the Middle
East -- namely, an Iranian A-bomb -- only Paul drew attention to weaponry
that does exist, much of it American. Though no viewer would know it from
that nights debate, all across the region -- from Yemen to Syria to Iraq --
U.S. arms are fueling conflicts and turning the living into the dead.
Military spending in the Middle East reached almost $200 billion in 2014,
according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which
tracks arms sales. That represents a jump of 57% since 2005. Some of the
largest increases have been among U.S. allies buying big-ticket items from
American weapons makers. That includes Iraq and Saudi Arabia ($90 billion in
U.S. weapons deals from October 2010 to October 2014), which, by the way,
havent fared so well against smaller, less well-armed opponents. Those
countries have seen increases in their arms purchases of 286% and 112%,
respectively, since 2005.
With the United States feeding the fires of war and many in its political
class frothing about nonexistent nukes, leave it to the indomitable Noam
Chomsky, a TomDispatch regular and institute professor emeritus at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to cut to the quick when it comes to
Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States, the regional balance of
power, and arms (real or imagined). He wades through the spin and
speechifying to offer a frank assessment of threats in the Middle East that
youre unlikely to hear about in any U.S. presidential debate between now
and the end of time. Nick Turse
The Iranian Threat
Who Is the Gravest Danger to World Peace?
By Noam Chomsky
Throughout the world there is great relief and optimism about the nuclear
deal reached in Vienna between Iran and the P5+1 nations, the five
veto-holding members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany. Most of the
world apparently shares the assessment of the U.S. Arms Control Association
that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action establishes a strong and
effective formula for blocking all of the pathways by which Iran could
acquire material for nuclear weapons for more than a generation and a
verification system to promptly detect and deter possible efforts by Iran to
covertly pursue nuclear weapons that will last indefinitely.
There are, however, striking exceptions to the general enthusiasm: the
United States and its closest regional allies, Israel and Saudi Arabia. One
consequence of this is that U.S. corporations, much to their chagrin, are
prevented from flocking to Tehran along with their European counterparts.
Prominent sectors of U.S. power and opinion share the stand of the two
regional allies and so are in a state of virtual hysteria over the Iranian
threat. Sober commentary in the United States, pretty much across the
spectrum, declares that country to be the gravest threat to world peace.
Even supporters of the agreement here are wary, given the exceptional
gravity of that threat. After all, how can we trust the Iranians with their
terrible record of aggression, violence, disruption, and deceit?
Opposition within the political class is so strong that public opinion has
shifted quickly from significant support for the deal to an even split.
Republicans are almost unanimously opposed to the agreement. The current
Republican primaries illustrate the proclaimed reasons. Senator Ted Cruz,
considered one of the intellectuals among the crowded field of presidential
candidates, warns that Iran may still be able to produce nuclear weapons and
could someday use one to set off an Electro Magnetic Pulse that would take
down the electrical grid of the entire eastern seaboard of the United
States, killing tens of millions of Americans.
The two most likely winners, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Wisconsin
Governor Scott Walker, are battling over whether to bomb Iran immediately
after being elected or after the first Cabinet meeting. The one candidate
with some foreign policy experience, Lindsey Graham, describes the deal as
a death sentence for the state of Israel, which will certainly come as a
surprise to Israeli intelligence and strategic analysts -- and which Graham
knows to be utter nonsense, raising immediate questions about actual
motives.
Keep in mind that the Republicans long ago abandoned the pretense of
functioning as a normal congressional party. They have, as respected
conservative political commentator Norman Ornstein of the right-wing
American Enterprise Institute observed, become a radical insurgency that
scarcely seeks to participate in normal congressional politics.
Since the days of President Ronald Reagan, the party leadership has plunged
so far into the pockets of the very rich and the corporate sector that they
can attract votes only by mobilizing parts of the population that have not
previously been an organized political force. Among them are extremist
evangelical Christians, now probably a majority of Republican voters;
remnants of the former slave-holding states; nativists who are terrified
that they are taking our white Christian Anglo-Saxon country away from us;
and others who turn the Republican primaries into spectacles remote from the
mainstream of modern society -- though not from the mainstream of the most
powerful country in world history.
The departure from global standards, however, goes far beyond the bounds of
the Republican radical insurgency. Across the spectrum, there is, for
instance, general agreement with the pragmatic conclusion of General
Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that the Vienna deal
does not prevent the United States from striking Iranian facilities if
officials decide that it is cheating on the agreement, even though a
unilateral military strike is far less likely if Iran behaves.
Former Clinton and Obama Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross typically
recommends that Iran must have no doubts that if we see it moving towards a
weapon, that would trigger the use of force even after the termination of
the deal, when Iran is theoretically free to do what it wants. In fact, the
existence of a termination point 15 years hence is, he adds, "the greatest
single problem with the agreement." He also suggests that the U.S. provide
Israel with specially outfitted B-52 bombers and bunker-busting bombs to
protect itself before that terrifying date arrives.
The Greatest Threat
Opponents of the nuclear deal charge that it does not go far enough. Some
supporters agree, holding that if the Vienna deal is to mean anything, the
whole of the Middle East must rid itself of weapons of mass destruction.
The author of those words, Irans Minister of Foreign Affairs Javad Zarif,
added that Iran, in its national capacity and as current chairman of the
Non-Aligned Movement [the governments of the large majority of the worlds
population], is prepared to work with the international community to achieve
these goals, knowing full well that, along the way, it will probably run
into many hurdles raised by the skeptics of peace and diplomacy. Iran has
signed a historic nuclear deal, he continues, and now it is the turn of
Israel, the holdout.
Israel, of course, is one of the three nuclear powers, along with India and
Pakistan, whose weapons programs have been abetted by the United States and
that refuse to sign the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
Zarif was referring to the regular five-year NPT review conference, which
ended in failure in April when the U.S. (joined by Canada and Great Britain)
once again blocked efforts to move toward a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free
zone in the Middle East. Such efforts have been led by Egypt and other Arab
states for 20 years. As Jayantha Dhanapala and Sergio Duarte, leading
figures in the promotion of such efforts at the NPT and other U.N. agencies,
observe in Is There a Future for the NPT?, an article in the journal of
the Arms Control Association: The successful adoption in 1995 of the
resolution on the establishment of a zone free of weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) in the Middle East was the main element of a package that
permitted the indefinite extension of the NPT. The NPT, in turn, is the
most important arms control treaty of all. If it were adhered to, it could
end the scourge of nuclear weapons.
Repeatedly, implementation of the resolution has been blocked by the U.S.,
most recently by President Obama in 2010 and again in 2015, as Dhanapala and
Duarte point out, on behalf of a state that is not a party to the NPT and
is widely believed to be the only one in the region possessing nuclear
weapons -- a polite and understated reference to Israel. This failure, they
hope, will not be the coup de grâce to the two longstanding NPT objectives
of accelerated progress on nuclear disarmament and establishing a Middle
Eastern WMD-free zone.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/160846363X/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/160846363X/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20A
nuclear-weapons-free Middle East would be a straightforward way to address
whatever threat Iran allegedly poses, but a great deal more is at stake in
Washingtons continuing sabotage of the effort in order to protect its
Israeli client. After all, this is not the only case in which opportunities
to end the alleged Iranian threat have been undermined by Washington,
raising further questions about just what is actually at stake.
In considering this matter, it is instructive to examine both the unspoken
assumptions in the situation and the questions that are rarely asked. Let us
consider a few of these assumptions, beginning with the most serious: that
Iran is the gravest threat to world peace.
In the U.S., it is a virtual cliché among high officials and commentators
that Iran wins that grim prize. There is also a world outside the U.S. and
although its views are not reported in the mainstream here, perhaps they are
of some interest. According to the leading western polling agencies
(WIN/Gallup International), the prize for greatest threat is won by the
United States. The rest of the world regards it as the gravest threat to
world peace by a large margin. In second place, far below, is Pakistan, its
ranking probably inflated by the Indian vote. Iran is ranked below those
two, along with China, Israel, North Korea, and Afghanistan.
The Worlds Leading Supporter of Terrorism
Turning to the next obvious question, what in fact is the Iranian threat?
Why, for example, are Israel and Saudi Arabia trembling in fear over that
country? Whatever the threat is, it can hardly be military. Years ago, U.S.
intelligence informed Congress that Iran has very low military expenditures
by the standards of the region and that its strategic doctrines are
defensive -- designed, that is, to deter aggression. The U.S. intelligence
community has also reported that it has no evidence Iran is pursuing an
actual nuclear weapons program and that Irans nuclear program and its
willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a
central part of its deterrent strategy.
The authoritative SIPRI review of global armaments ranks the U.S., as usual,
way in the lead in military expenditures. China comes in second with about
one-third of U.S. expenditures. Far below are Russia and Saudi Arabia, which
are nonetheless well above any western European state. Iran is scarcely
mentioned. Full details are provided in an April report from the Center for
Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which finds a conclusive case
that the Arab Gulf states have... an overwhelming advantage of Iran in both
military spending and access to modern arms.
Irans military spending, for instance, is a fraction of Saudi Arabias and
far below even the spending of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Altogether,
the Gulf Cooperation Council states -- Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia,
and the UAE -- outspend Iran on arms by a factor of eight, an imbalance that
goes back decades. The CSIS report adds: The Arab Gulf states have acquired
and are acquiring some of the most advanced and effective weapons in the
world [while] Iran has essentially been forced to live in the past, often
relying on systems originally delivered at the time of the Shah. In other
words, they are virtually obsolete. When it comes to Israel, of course, the
imbalance is even greater. Possessing the most advanced U.S. weaponry and a
virtual offshore military base for the global superpower, it also has a huge
stock of nuclear weapons.
To be sure, Israel faces the existential threat of Iranian pronouncements:
Supreme Leader Khamenei and former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad famously
threatened it with destruction. Except that they didnt -- and if they had,
it would be of little moment. Ahmadinejad, for instance, predicted that
under Gods grace [the Zionist regime] will be wiped off the map. In other
words, he hoped that regime change would someday take place. Even that falls
far short of the direct calls in both Washington and Tel Aviv for regime
change in Iran, not to speak of the actions taken to implement regime
change. These, of course, go back to the actual regime change of 1953,
when the U.S. and Britain organized a military coup to overthrow Irans
parliamentary government and install the dictatorship of the Shah, who
proceeded to amass one of the worst human rights records on the planet.
These crimes were certainly known to readers of the reports of Amnesty
International and other human rights organizations, but not to readers of
the U.S. press, which has devoted plenty of space to Iranian human rights
violations -- but only since 1979 when the Shahs regime was overthrown. (To
check the facts on this, read The U.S. Press and Iran, a carefully
documented study by Mansour Farhang and William Dorman.)
None of this is a departure from the norm. The United States, as is well
known, holds the world championship title in regime change and Israel is no
laggard either. The most destructive of its invasions of Lebanon in 1982 was
explicitly aimed at regime change, as well as at securing its hold on the
occupied territories. The pretexts offered were thin indeed and collapsed at
once. That, too, is not unusual and pretty much independent of the nature of
the society -- from the laments in the Declaration of Independence about the
merciless Indian savages to Hitlers defense of Germany from the wild
terror of the Poles.
No serious analyst believes that Iran would ever use, or even threaten to
use, a nuclear weapon if it had one, and so face instant destruction. There
is, however, real concern that a nuclear weapon might fall into jihadi hands
-- not thanks to Iran, but via U.S. ally Pakistan. In the journal of the
Royal Institute of International Affairs, two leading Pakistani nuclear
scientists, Pervez Hoodbhoy and Zia Mian, write that increasing fears of
militants seizing nuclear weapons or materials and unleashing nuclear
terrorism [have led to]... the creation of a dedicated force of over 20,000
troops to guard nuclear facilities. There is no reason to assume, however,
that this force would be immune to the problems associated with the units
guarding regular military facilities, which have frequently suffered
attacks with insider help. In brief, the problem is real, just displaced
to Iran thanks to fantasies concocted for other reasons.
Other concerns about the Iranian threat include its role as the worlds
leading supporter of terrorism, which primarily refers to its support for
Hezbollah and Hamas. Both of those movements emerged in resistance to
U.S.-backed Israeli violence and aggression, which vastly exceeds anything
attributed to these villains, let alone the normal practice of the hegemonic
power whose global drone assassination campaign alone dominates (and helps
to foster) international terrorism.
Those two villainous Iranian clients also share the crime of winning the
popular vote in the only free elections in the Arab world. Hezbollah is
guilty of the even more heinous crime of compelling Israel to withdraw from
its occupation of southern Lebanon, which took place in violation of U.N.
Security Council orders dating back decades and involved an illegal regime
of terror and sometimes extreme violence. Whatever one thinks of Hezbollah,
Hamas, or other beneficiaries of Iranian support, Iran hardly ranks high in
support of terror worldwide.
Fueling Instability
Another concern, voiced at the U.N. by U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power, is
the instability that Iran fuels beyond its nuclear program. The U.S. will
continue to scrutinize this misbehavior, she declared. In that, she echoed
the assurance Defense Secretary Ashton Carter offered while standing on
Israels northern border that we will continue to help Israel counter
Irans malign influence in supporting Hezbollah, and that the U.S. reserves
the right to use military force against Iran as it deems appropriate.
The way Iran fuels instability can be seen particularly dramatically in
Iraq where, among other crimes, it alone at once came to the aid of Kurds
defending themselves from the invasion of Islamic State militants, even as
it is building a $2.5 billion power plant in the southern port city of Basra
to try to bring electrical power back to the level reached before the 2003
invasion. Ambassador Powers usage is, however, standard: Thanks to that
invasion, hundreds of thousands were killed and millions of refugees
generated, barbarous acts of torture were committed -- Iraqis have compared
the destruction to the Mongol invasion of the thirteenth century -- leaving
Iraq the unhappiest country in the world according to WIN/Gallup polls.
Meanwhile, sectarian conflict was ignited, tearing the region to shreds and
laying the basis for the creation of the monstrosity that is ISIS. And all
of that is called stabilization.
Only Irans shameful actions, however, fuel instability. The standard
usage sometimes reaches levels that are almost surreal, as when liberal
commentator James Chace, former editor of Foreign Affairs, explained that
the U.S. sought to destabilize a freely elected Marxist government in
Chile because we were determined to seek stability under the Pinochet
dictatorship.
Others are outraged that Washington should negotiate at all with a
contemptible regime like Irans with its horrifying human rights record
and urge instead that we pursue an American-sponsored alliance between
Israel and the Sunni states. So writes Leon Wieseltier, contributing editor
to the venerable liberal journal the Atlantic, who can barely conceal his
visceral hatred for all things Iranian. With a straight face, this respected
liberal intellectual recommends that Saudi Arabia, which makes Iran look
like a virtual paradise, and Israel, with its vicious crimes in Gaza and
elsewhere, should ally to teach that country good behavior. Perhaps the
recommendation is not entirely unreasonable when we consider the human
rights records of the regimes the U.S. has imposed and supported throughout
the world.
Though the Iranian government is no doubt a threat to its own people, it
regrettably breaks no records in this regard, not descending to the level of
favored U.S. allies. That, however, cannot be the concern of Washington, and
surely not Tel Aviv or Riyadh.
It might also be useful to recall -- surely Iranians do -- that not a day
has passed since 1953 in which the U.S. was not harming Iranians. After all,
as soon as they overthrew the hated U.S.-imposed regime of the Shah in 1979,
Washington put its support behind Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who would, in
1980, launch a murderous assault on their country. President Reagan went so
far as to deny Saddams major crime, his chemical warfare assault on Iraqs
Kurdish population, which he blamed on Iran instead. When Saddam was tried
for crimes under U.S. auspices, that horrendous crime, as well as others in
which the U.S. was complicit, was carefully excluded from the charges, which
were restricted to one of his minor crimes, the murder of 148 Shiites in
1982, a footnote to his gruesome record.
Saddam was such a valued friend of Washington that he was even granted a
privilege otherwise accorded only to Israel. In 1987, his forces were
allowed to attack a U.S. naval vessel, the USS Stark, with impunity, killing
37 crewmen. (Israel had acted similarly in its 1967 attack on the USS
Liberty.) Iran pretty much conceded defeat shortly after, when the U.S.
launched Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian ships and oil platforms in
Iranian territorial waters. That operation culminated when the USS
Vincennes, under no credible threat, shot down an Iranian civilian airliner
in Iranian airspace, with 290 killed -- and the subsequent granting of a
Legion of Merit award to the commander of the Vincennes for exceptionally
meritorious conduct and for maintaining a calm and professional
atmosphere during the period when the attack on the airliner took place.
Comments philosopher Thill Raghu, We can only stand in awe of such display
of American exceptionalism!
After the war ended, the U.S. continued to support Saddam Hussein, Irans
primary enemy. President George H.W. Bush even invited Iraqi nuclear
engineers to the U.S. for advanced training in weapons production, an
extremely serious threat to Iran. Sanctions against that country were
intensified, including against foreign firms dealing with it, and actions
were initiated to bar it from the international financial system.
In recent years the hostility has extended to sabotage, the murder of
nuclear scientists (presumably by Israel), and cyberwar, openly proclaimed
with pride. The Pentagon regards cyberwar as an act of war, justifying a
military response, as does NATO, which affirmed in September 2014 that cyber
attacks may trigger the collective defense obligations of the NATO powers --
when we are the target that is, not the perpetrators.
The Prime Rogue State
It is only fair to add that there have been breaks in this pattern.
President George W. Bush, for example, offered several significant gifts to
Iran by destroying its major enemies, Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. He
even placed Irans Iraqi enemy under its influence after the U.S. defeat,
which was so severe that Washington had to abandon its officially declared
goals of establishing permanent military bases (enduring camps) and
ensuring that U.S. corporations would have privileged access to Iraqs vast
oil resources.
Do Iranian leaders intend to develop nuclear weapons today? We can decide
for ourselves how credible their denials are, but that they had such
intentions in the past is beyond question. After all, it was asserted openly
on the highest authority and foreign journalists were informed that Iran
would develop nuclear weapons certainly, and sooner than one thinks. The
father of Irans nuclear energy program and former head of Irans Atomic
Energy Organization was confident that the leaderships plan was to build a
nuclear bomb. The CIA also reported that it had no doubt Iran would
develop nuclear weapons if neighboring countries did (as they have).
All of this was, of course, under the Shah, the highest authority just
quoted and at a time when top U.S. officials -- Dick Cheney, Donald
Rumsfeld, and Henry Kissinger, among others -- were urging him to proceed
with his nuclear programs and pressuring universities to accommodate these
efforts. Under such pressures, my own university, MIT, made a deal with the
Shah to admit Iranian students to the nuclear engineering program in return
for grants he offered and over the strong objections of the student body,
but with comparably strong faculty support (in a meeting that older faculty
will doubtless remember well).
Asked later why he supported such programs under the Shah but opposed them
more recently, Kissinger responded honestly that Iran was an ally then.
Putting aside absurdities, what is the real threat of Iran that inspires
such fear and fury? A natural place to turn for an answer is, again, U.S.
intelligence. Recall its analysis that Iran poses no military threat, that
its strategic doctrines are defensive, and that its nuclear programs (with
no effort to produce bombs, as far as can be determined) are a central part
of its deterrent strategy.
Who, then, would be concerned by an Iranian deterrent? The answer is plain:
the rogue states that rampage in the region and do not want to tolerate any
impediment to their reliance on aggression and violence. In the lead in this
regard are the U.S. and Israel, with Saudi Arabia trying its best to join
the club with its invasion of Bahrain (to support the crushing of a reform
movement there) and now its murderous assault on Yemen, accelerating a
growing humanitarian catastrophe in that country.
For the United States, the characterization is familiar. Fifteen years ago,
the prominent political analyst Samuel Huntington, professor of the science
of government at Harvard, warned in the establishment journal Foreign
Affairs that for much of the world the U.S. was becoming the rogue
superpower... the single greatest external threat to their societies.
Shortly after, his words were echoed by Robert Jervis, the president of the
American Political Science Association: In the eyes of much of the world,
in fact, the prime rogue state today is the United States. As we have seen,
global opinion supports this judgment by a substantial margin.
Furthermore, the mantle is worn with pride. That is the clear meaning of the
insistence of the political class that the U.S. reserves the right to resort
to force if it unilaterally determines that Iran is violating some
commitment. This policy is of long standing, especially for liberal
Democrats, and by no means restricted to Iran. The Clinton Doctrine, for
instance, confirmed that the U.S. was entitled to resort to the unilateral
use of military power even to ensure uninhibited access to key markets,
energy supplies, and strategic resources, let alone alleged security or
humanitarian concerns. Adherence to various versions of this doctrine has
been well confirmed in practice, as need hardly be discussed among people
willing to look at the facts of current history.
These are among the critical matters that should be the focus of attention
in analyzing the nuclear deal at Vienna, whether it stands or is sabotaged
by Congress, as it may well be.
Noam Chomsky is institute professor emeritus in the Department of
Linguistics and Philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A
TomDispatch regular, among his recent books are Hegemony or Survival, Failed
States, Power Systems, Hopes and Prospects, and Masters of Mankind.
Haymarket Books recently reissued twelve of his classic books in new
editions. His website is www.chomsky.info.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest
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Copyright 2015 Noam Chomsky
© 2015 TomDispatch. All rights reserved.
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