As a Holocaust survivor, commenting on the lessons of WWII, said:
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‘When somebody says they want to kill you, you should believe them.’
To remain at peace when you should be going to war may be often very dangerous. The tyrant city… is a standing menace to all…. Let us attack and subdue her, that we may ourselves live safely for the future. – Thucydides, (circa 460–395 BCE)
No government, if it regards war as inevitable even if it does not want it, would be so foolish as to wait for the moment which is most convenient for the enemy – Otto von Bismarck (1815–1890)
If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival – Winston S. Churchill (1874-1965)
I was prompted to devote this week’s column once again to Iran’s nuclear endeavor by a rather irate email I received, chiding me over the article I wrote last week, in which I warned that without a credible military threat to reinforce them, sanctions were unlikely to induce the decision-making echelons in Tehran to “stop the centrifuges.”
Heady headlines
My somewhat irascible electronic interlocutor urged me to read a Sunday Times report on the situation in Iran, which announced that “as hardship bites… [a] collapsing currency, soaring food prices fueled by UN sanctions have brought panic and dissent to the streets,” and counseled that I exercise “a little patience before we send our boys to war.”
Indeed, it was not only the Sunday Times that devoted headlines to the impact the economic strictures were having on commercial activity in the country.
For example, The New York Times heralded: “A New Sign of Distress as Iran’s Currency Falls…. The rial has fallen in value by about 40 percent over the past week.”
In a similar vein, The Washington Post proclaimed: “Tensions over Iran’s currency spark clashes between protesters, security forces.”
The British Telegraph headline declared: “Iran sanctions bite as protests hit Tehran streets,” having one day previously pronounced that “Iranian currency plummets to record low as US sanctions take hold.”
Under the headline, “US touts success of Iranian sanctions,” United Press International conveyed an upbeat White House assessment that “US sanctions imposed on Iran are some of the toughest in history and they’re having a ‘profound impact’ on Tehran.” It, too, referred to the steep devaluation of the Iranian currency, noting: “The Iranian rial collapsed last week, sending protesters into the streets.”
Deceptive, dangerous disconnect
I must confess feeling a little disconcerted by my cyber-correspondent’s critique.
It seemed that I had failed – at least partially – in conveying what was supposed to be the core-concept of the column: There is no clear causal link – neither conceptual nor empirical – between the socioeconomic suffering that sanctions inflict on the general population, on the one hand, and their ability to influence the decision-making echelons in highly authoritarian regimes, on the other.
Thus on their own – without being backed by a credible threat of martial might – there is, at best, a tenuous relationship between the public pain sanctions impose and the willingness of the ayatollahs to stop the centrifuges.
Let me try again – with the help of others.
A recent opinion piece in The Guardian (a source I seldom find suitable for corroborative citations) elucidates the point at hand.
Authored by Hassan Hakimian of the prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and aptly titled “Iran’s economy is hurting – yet sanctions are not a nuclear deterrent,” it admirably articulates the causal disconnect between the applied stimulus (sanctions) and the desired effect (idle centrifuges):
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“The underlying logic of these extrapolations is that ‘if sanctions are hurting, they must be working .’ But this overlooks a number of important issues…. [A]lthough Iranian sanctions are harsh, other economies have withstood harsher economic pressures in the past and there is no shortage of regimes under sanctions which have survived without changing their course – North Korea, Zimbabwe and Cuba, to name but a few.”
Moreover, it correctly identifies that:
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“despite growing economic pain, there seems as yet no overriding reason why the Iranian regime might back down on its nuclear stance…. As with so many sanctions in recent history, the sanctions against Iran are clearly proving capable of destabilizing the economy and inflicting pain on ordinary people, while the prospect of achieving their stated objective of nuclear nonproliferation in the region remains elusive.”
Disconnect (cont.)
Similar skepticism was expressed by the Telegraph’s Jeremy Warner. While acknowledging that the impact of the sanctions is “horrible for the Iranian people,” he concedes: “Whether it will have the desired effect in toppling the regime and halting nuclear advancement is another matter altogether. Much of the experience with sanctions is that they don’t work[!].”
His colleague Colin Freeman put this across in somewhat more concrete and colorful terms:
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“It has been pretty clear from the experience in Iraq, Burma and elsewhere, that sanctions don’t do much…. Saddam Hussein and his family, for example, never stopped living in obscene luxury during a decade of sanctions on Iraq. Nor have sanctions ever much cramped the style of Burma’s golf playing generals, or Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF clan. After all, when you’re part of the ruling clique in a dictatorship, there are always ways to keep yourself comfortable.”
The puzzling thing about the prevalence of sanctions and the fallacious belief in their efficacy is that the glaring flaw in their operational rationale has been known for decades. Indeed, in my previous column I referred to a 1998 paper published by Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, which clearly identified this, stating:
“Economic sanctions are blunt instruments that wreak havoc with an economy. They especially afflict a country’s ordinary citizens, often without affecting the ruling elite. Sanctions have not undermined the despotic rulers in Fidel Castro’s Cuba or Kim Jong-il’s North Korea, both of which have endured tight US economic sanctions [for decades].”
Time of the essence
This ability of beleaguered authoritarian regimes to resist compliance with sanctions over extended periods is a matter of acute – arguably, existential – significance for Israel.
For it, the question of when sanctions can induce compliance is just as crucial as the question of whether they can induce it at all.
The goals of the sanctions against Iran – at least from Israel’s point of view –are sharply different from the sanctions that have been imposed in most – if not all – other cases, both in terms of the specificity of their scope and the urgency of their schedule.
In most other cases, sanctions’ objectives have been more broadly defined, typically relating to the general inequities of an incumbent regime, and largely open-ended with regard to their duration.
For Israel, the goal must be clearly defined.
It is not regime reform or even regime change, although that might be a positive development, depending on the successor regime.
Rather, the goal is more narrowly defined as the verifiable termination of Tehran’s nuclear program.
Likewise, for Israel, the timetable for sanctions has a clear cut-off date: The weaponization of the enriched uranium that Iran has acquired. Once Iran develops the ability to assemble a deliverable (whether by missile or otherwise) nuclear weapon, continued sanctions are largely irrelevant – or at least their relevance will be dramatically degraded.
After all, if the West displays little stomach for confronting Iran militarily, before it acquires weaponized nuclear capability, there is little reason to believe that it will have the stomach to do so once it has. But more important, the Iranian regime will have every reason to believe it won’t.
Bearing this in mind, surely only the foolish or the uninformed would believe that the regime in Tehran would recoil from inflicting economic hardship on its populace for an extended period – while forcibly suppressing public discontent –if that gave it time to complete the weaponization of its program
Interpreting Iranian intentions
Ever since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s 2005 address to 4,000 students at an event titled “The World Without Zionism,” and the dramatic New York Times headline it generated: (“Wipe Israel ‘off the map’ Iranian says”), a fierce debate, more scurrilous than scholarly, has raged over whether the Iranian regime really harbors genocidal intentions toward Israel.
For example a Washington Post headline asked, “Did Ahmadinejad really say Israel should be ‘wiped off the map.’” Prof. Stephen Walt, co-author of the infamous The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, opined – unsurprisingly – that “I don’t think he is inciting to genocide.”
Well, here is a short “anthology” of declarations of Iranian intent/inclination from senior Iranian political and military leaders spanning over a decade, which might help resolve the issue.
Ahmadinejad, at the “World without Zionism” event: “Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury… Our dear Imam [Ruhollah Khomeini] ordered that this Jerusalem-occupying regime [Israel] must be erased from the page of time. This was a very wise statement… Soon this stain of disgrace will be cleaned from the garment of the world of Islam, and this is attainable.”
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Khomeini successor : “Iran’s position…is that the cancerous tumor called Israel must be uprooted from the region… the perpetual subject of Iran is the elimination of Israel from the region.”
Former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani: “The employment of even one atomic bomb inside Israel will wipe it off the face of the earth, but would only do damage to the Islamic World. It is not unreasonable to consider this possibility.”
Maj.-Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, former commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards : “With God’s help the time has come for the Zionist regime’s death sentence.”
Maj.-Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of the Revolutionary Guards : “In the near future, we will witness the destruction of the cancerous microbe Israel.”
When they say they want to kill you…
These citations comprise a minute sampling of a plethora of public pronouncements conveying Tehran’s preference for a world without Israel, and its resolve to implement that preference. Indeed, no matter what controversy may rage among Western pundits as to the subtle nuances of the Farsi language, there seems little confusion on the ground in Iran.
As if to dispel any lingering ambiguity that non-Farsi-speaking folk may still entertain, government entities have erected billboards and draped banners on official buildings, military buses and barracks, and even on Shahab missiles in parades, bearing English translations of slogans that proclaim: “Israel must be uprooted and wiped off the pages of history” or “Israel should be wiped out of the face of the world” or “Israel must be wiped off the map.”
Accordingly, it would clearly be wildly imprudent to evade the commonsense interpretations of these statements of intent, or to ignore the wise counsel of the unnamed Holocaust survivor, who, when commenting on the lessons he had learned from his experiences during World War II, advised: “When somebody says they want to kill you, you should believe them.”
Ostrich Syndrome
In a recent Jerusalem Post opinion piece, Prof. Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies, warned that in dealing with Iran, the West was suffering from what he designated the “Ostrich Syndrome” in refusing to recognize reality.
He described, boldly and honestly, the situation that Western hesitancy has allowed to arise: “The domestic suffering caused by the economic sanctions has not changed the regime nuclear policy. At this late stage…nothing will stop the nuclear program except for the use of force.”
Sadly, Inbar is right.
Unless faced with the “cold steel” of a credible threat of kinetic force, there is little reason to believe Iran will relinquish its goal – and every reason to believe it will not.
As for my anxious email critic who prompted this column, perhaps the most important question – both ethically and operationally – would be: If a military clash is unavoidable, when would it be preferable to prepare to “send our boys to war”? Before the Iranians acquire a nuclear weapon? Or after?
And if we can’t be sure that we can get our timing exactly right, so as to attack at the very last moment, when should we “send our boys to war”?
Just a little too early? Or just a little too late?
Martin Sherman (www.martinsherman.net) is the founder and executive director of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies.
I’m with you on that 100%!@ Bert:
@ SarahSue:
I find it interesting that we, living in Eretz Israel, must be sensitive to a people who has engendered the most vicious enemies of ours and is planning to destroy us.
Not in my time. I see no need to show consideration for them when as a whole they intend to destroy us. They must gird themselves to remove the beasts that rule them or they will have to accept the consequences.
As to the consequences to the rest of the world. Sorry. There are no more victims of peace here.
Most of the “rest of the world” either facilitated Iran’s race for nuclear bombs directly or ignored the repeated calls by the islamic beasts.
No interested on what the “rest of the world” thinks either.
And while we are it…
The US administration has re allocated 90 nuclear bombs B 6 1 model to Turkey about two years ago when Gates was still the Secretary of defense and was asked to do so by Soetoro. They were at INCILIK TAFB facing Israel across the med.
Let me see how anyone “sensitive” performs to remove them from there back to the US.
Also remove the 5800 US airmen and techs there and the US aircraft as well.
NOW!
Good stuff SarahSue!
@ yamit82:
I’ll second that.
SarahSue don’t stay away so long.
@ SarahSue:Maj. Gen. Sid Sachnow, United States Army ,retired, is a Holocaust survivor from Lithuania. In his book “Hope and Honor” published in 2004 he states (Page 154): “The one thing that I did know was when an enemy of the Jews said he wants to destroy us… believe him… take very seriously.”
Yamit82 is correct. You are correct. However, you both suffer from a major flaw…. you read and interpret the way you want to. You spend a lot of time and energy
singing to the choir. Put your time and energies into reaching those who are reachable and still are not your fold.
I wish I could disagree with you, but I can’t
@ SarahSue:
I miss you!
@ LT COL HOWARD:
@
Sorry if you believe I am wasting your time. I re-read you comments and still stand by what I said about your assumptions & scenarios. I will add:
Why should this scare American Jews? Most unless they have relatives or close friends in Israel would be very sorry and they might donate more money to Israel, some might write letters to the to the “Jewish World” but like their fathers and grandfathers in 1940-45 they will mostly carry on with their lives as if their were no threat to us or anybody else.
I don’t believe most American Jews are very concerned with Israel or even care very much about any existential dangers to Israel by Iran or anyone else. They are more concerned with what most Americans and especially most liberal non Jewish Americans are concerned with.
That said, I’m not to sure how much the average Israeli is concerned or even cognizant of the danger from Iran, which is I believe: extensive regional nuclear proliferation that can’t be controlled. Whether Iran attacks us or not in the near future, others will when they get their nukes. All are failed states with only oil revenue of some keeping them on life support.
Iran does not have to attack Israel to bring us to our knees; the threat alone will break us spiritually and economically, checkmate our own nuclear deterrent which will no longer be a credible, thereby rendering all future conflicts conventional where Israel is daily losing our edge, if we have not long ago lost it in fact.
Everybody likes a winner and Israel had the respect of the world after 67 war and Jews in America were proud of Israel. Then came the 73 war which demoralized the Israeli people and those proud American Jews retrenched to positions held before 67. When Israel began to retreat by giving up territory won in 67 and held by the skin of our teeth in 73, we lost the respect of the world and also of the Jews. We became in their eyes weak losers.
“I would rather be a winner the world hates than a loser the world loves and dead” I am paraphrasing Kahane.
According to latest polls if Olmert runs he will beat BB by a wide margin. Some things never change here. That emphasizes my long contention that Israelis hate BB and will vote for even Olmert as a consequence. Don’t know who is more confused and dysfunctional, The USA or Israel?
LT COL HOWARD said, If, Israel decided to strike back with its own nuclear weapons: Whom would it be killing, except millions of Iranians also struggling to topple the regime?
I watched the revolution in Iran very closely. A goodly amount of the information I obtained was from an Iranian website, written by Iranians involved in the revolution. Many of us in America had a great deal of sympathy for those people. I did also until I started researching the people they wanted to put up as their new leader. There where several names being bandied about. What all these people had in common was that they did not oppose Iran’s nuclear program. In essence, the people they were selecting to head the revolution had no intention of stopping Iran’s nuclear program. This was a nasty fact that was not given to the American people by the main stream media. The Green Revolution was portrayed as a nice bunch of people that wanted freedom and democracy just like us. The truth of matter was that the people of Iran wanted to replace one dictator for another that would allow them the practice islam lite rather than islam heavy.
What you are trying to do, Lt. Col. Howard, in interpret an islamic county though a western lens. You try to impose sanity on an insane country. It never works. The Iranians are not afraid of retaliation because they think the world is too afraid to retaliate and more importantly they are not afraid to have their people die. You pointed out that this would be an act of martyrdom. It follows then, that any decision made by Iran will not include reducing casualties.
While we are trying to divine when the best time strategically to strike Iran, they will be using a completely different set of criteria. If they strike, it will be on a auspicious day in islamic history, just as 9/11 was.
You also said, confront your liberal Jewish friends. I do not have any liberal friends, Jewish or otherwise. I consider these people to be as dangerous as the Iranians. I confront them often and they are impervious to logic and reason. However, on a more positive note, Caroline says the number of Jews voting for Obama is 70%. Martin Sherman says it is 60%. Carl from Jerusalem shows a new poll saying that it is 45%. It seems that some of these insane liberals are regaining their sanity.
Final note, you asked Yami to stop wasting your time and the reader’s time. Yamit never wastes my time and I hope I did not waste your time, either.
SarahSue
@yamit 82 please don’t waste your time, my time, and the readers time . Examine my postings #1 and #2. I said “confront your liberal friends ”. This says to them:you believe that Iran can be deterred… Okay” you believe the mullahs are “rational”.… Okay. You are rooting for regime change to bailout the situation… Okay. You got your wishs. Now what? Think about this scenrio.
I have no argument with what you say. But over the years, you have dwelled on things that I did not say.
There is no question about the mandate to terminate the Iranian Islamic threat.
Only suicidal maniacs could possibly be willing to “live” with a nuclear armed Islamic Iran that has consistently declared its plan to destroy us all.
The problem is that we seem unable or unwilling or both to elect leadership that will be true to the mandate. We, the Jewish people keep on electing here the same cadre that for 20 years failed to do that, in fact created a huge danger by importing enemies and assaulting Jews. I am not convinced that a military that is geared to use rubber bullets, paint ball guns, white paint loaded tank ordnance and bombs boulder as “retaliation”, is credible as a tool of war, and IT SHOWS that repeatedly.
And, not to be left out, the US Jews also solidly elected and would re elect Mr. Soetoro Obama who they knew then and now is an enemy of Israel and a tacit ally of Iran.
Solution?
A New system of government here and a turn about in the US.
A Civilized Nation cannot reason with The Uncivilized.
They must be dismantled in their ‘generation.’
Our mandate from Heaven is to ‘Purge the evil from our midst.’
Do what Moses did. He called out to the people, “All WHO ARE ON THE LORD’S SIDE, COME TO ME.”
Those who DID NOT COME, were destroyed. It’s really not that difficult to accomplish.
If we had only done that in every instance where the Uncivilized were TAKING OVER, they would
have been identified and dismantled ‘IN THEIR DAY.’
Because man has not cleaned House, The Creator will return and show us how it’s done.
Thy Kingdom Come.
The enemedia dutifully publishes what the Obama White House sends out to them and pretends this is reporting. We essentially have state run media.
Israel already fears that Assad in Syria might unleash his biological and chemical weapons against Israel if he feels sufficiently desperate. Israel and other countries fear Syria, fear Iran, fear North Korea, fear Pakistan, fear Russia and fear China because they are all considered powerful and dangerous. The problem is that no one really fears Israel which is considered reasonable and therefore subject to pressure. Yet Israel has the ability to destroy surrounding countries plus much of the Mid East oil fields and trigger a collapse of already fragile western economies. Perception counts in influencing nations. I wish Israel would make it clear that it will never bow to outside pressure and can exact terrible retribution on those who conspire against it.
@ LT COL HOWARD:
You make several assumptions I am not convinced are true or accurate.
A-Why do you believe they would not attack Israel for fear of our retaliation? If they believe we have the ability to retaliate devestating to them why has it not curbed their drive to attain nuclear capability at the expense of their economy and ultimately at the expense of their regime?
For them Death by Jihad is a reward not a punishment. They all seek their carnal paradise.
B-For the Islamic ideologues striking Israel and even America, is purpose driven whether it happens sooner rather than later depends I think on their belief that such a strike will be successful. Assuming Israel has a second strike capability and whether the Arrow defense system might succeed opening up the possibility of their being destroyed without the concurrent total destruction of the Jewish State; they would have to overload the defense system with multiple nukes and dummies in order to insure at least one or two get through. Estimates that they would need at least 5-10 devices launched together with many dummies.
C- It was the Iranian opposition of Rafsanjani who were the main drivers of the Iranian Nuclear program and they were the main opposition to the present regime in the last (Not so popular uprising), put down expeditiously and brutally by the current regime.
Regime change does not in Iran guarantee a change in attitude re: Nukes or that they will be any more favorable or timid towards Israel and America. The Arab Spring results should be seen as a model in the Muslim world.
Even the Shah was considering Nuke development and Israel even offered them assistance in development. In any event, they had the assistance of USA, Germany and France, Russia, China, Argentina and Venezuela eager for fat Industrial and construction contracts from Iran.
History: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_program_of_Iran#History
Depending on the type of nukes and where they are detonated even if one or two get through it would not necessarily mean the end of the Jewish state. Estimates that Israel might suffer from 10k- 100k casualties will be devastating but not necessarily catastrophic.
There are many ways to skin the Iranian nuclear cat without destroying most of the Iranian people although I am not opposed to collective punishment for any nation or people who threaten my and my nations existence. Every nation including yours Colonel is responsible ultimately for the actions of their governments even when they are dictatorial.
All peoples have the right and duty of insurrection against despotic regimes.
If Israel cannot stop the attainment of Iranian Nukes they should go after the Iranian economic engine (oil fields) and their delivery capabilities (missile and ICBM sites), civilian and military leadership, (Targeted assassination) Lastly, level Tehran if all else fails.
Confront your liberal Jewish friends (especially liberal Jewish rabbis) with this not unlikely scenario. Sanctions work and the Iranian regime sometime in late 2013 or 2014 is in the process of being overthrown. Iran has obtained nuclear weapons capability since no military action had been taken by the US or by Israel to forestall this.
If the Iranian regime is in danger of being overthrown, will they use their nuclear weapons against Israel?
The temptation was always there, but it iwas curbed by the fear of retaliation. But now the logic of such a strike—a jihadist Hail Mary—would become persuasive.
If, Israel decided to strike back with its own nuclear weapons: Whom would it be killing, except millions of Iranians also struggling to topple the regime? And assume the regime, at its dying breath, managed at least to fulfill its core ambition to destroy the Jewish state: Would it not be a worthy capstone for the Islamic Republic? Suicide is a sin, but this would be an act of martyrdom on a world-historical scale.
Possibly, if you agree with the danger of this scenario, instead of posting here, you might want to direct your comments to the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles. The editor-in-chief is robe@jewishjournal.com The president of the publishing group is davids@jewishjournal.com
Maj. Gen. Sid Sachnow, United States Army ,retired, is a Holocaust survivor from Lithuania. In his book “Hope and Honor” published in 2004 he states (Page 154): “The one thing that I did know was when an enemy of the Jews said he wants to destroy us… believe him… take very seriously.”