Whenever I visit my local sports club in order to get away from the Iranian crisis and the frozen peace process, someone always bothers me with questions such as: "Are we going to attack Iran?" or, "Is there going to be a war?" The manager asked me once, seriously, whether he should remove the equipment from the shelter and stock it with mineral water. I was never asked, "Is there going to be peace with the Palestinians?" or, "Are we going to freeze the settlements in the Occupied Territories?" These days, fear of another war is much stronger in Israel than hope for peace. Most people don't realize there is a linkage between their fear of the Iranian threat and the stalemate in the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
My club members are in good company. At a press conference on April 3, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated his position that peace with the Palestinians will not affect the Iranian ambition to develop nuclear weapons. He may be right. But I do not believe Iran will accept Israeli nuclear superiority. I cannot imagine that the day will come when the ayatollah's regime will accept the view that the Islamic Republic is not entitled to develop weapons that the Jewish state has been holding for decades (in accordance with the Israeli censor regulations, in order to maintain the ambiguity policy, I must add: "according to foreign sources"). In the Iranian view, to surrender unilaterally to Israeli-American pressure would mean accepting the argument that Iran is a pariah state. This touches the most sensitive national, religious and cultural Persian nerves.
Since the nuclear race has much to do with pride, a policy that ignores this element will not bring an end to the conflict. Sanctions have not persuaded the Iranian regime to stop the nuclear program and are not likely to produce regime change. Military attack may, in the best case, postpone for a few years the development of the bomb—while, however, arousing severe anti–American and anti–Israeli sentiments in the Muslim world. Both options will produce a severe energy crisis in the West.
The above analysis doesn't mean that we have to sit back and watch the entire Middle East go nuclear. There is another option, which is based on the premise that regional problems require regional solutions. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (or WMDs), and especially the nuclear issue, cannot be separated from other regional issues. I believe the best way to remove the Iranian nuclear threat is through a comprehensive package deal based on a regional agreement on nonproliferation of WMDs and regional peace. This has been Israel’s official policy since the 1970s, when it declared that once all its neighbors come to term with its existence and put an end to the state of war, Israel will support a regional nonproliferation treaty (NPT). This is separate and distinct from the global NPT, which Israel doesn’t trust.
The regional concept is not new to the United States. In 1991, President George H. W. Bush tried to attach this nonproliferation vision to the Middle East peace process then unfolding in Madrid. The United States and Russia cosponsored a multilateral committee on arms control (along with multilateral committees on water, refugees, environment and economic cooperation). Unfortunately, President Clinton embraced the separate bilateral negotiations in the Israel-Palestinian track and the Israeli-Syrian track. Thus, he ignored the multilateral tracks. The arms-control committee evaporated with the deterioration of the Oslo process in the aftermath of the 2000 Palestinian uprising.
The 2002 Arab Peace Initiative (API), which offers Israel peace and normal relations with Arab countries in return for territories and a just solution to the refugee problem, represented another basis for a comprehensive solution. The API is mentioned in the Middle East Road Map that President George W. Bush presented in 2003. A few months before that, the API was endorsed by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in its annual meeting, which took place in Teheran. It would be difficult for Iran to turn down an American-Israeli plan that ended forty-five years of occupation of what they perceive as Muslim land. In addition, they would be able to take credit for the establishment of a Palestinian State, ending the Jewish annexation of the holy sites in Jerusalem and finding a solution to the Palestinian problem. The plan would leave the door open for a settlement with Syria and Lebanon on the basis of territories for peace and security arrangements.
The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty conference, scheduled to be held in Helsinki in December, offers Israel and Iran a platform for building the pillars of proliferation of peace and nonproliferation of WMD. Two years ago, Israel voiced opposition to such a conference, but according to an April 11 report in Ha'aretz Israeli Daily, Finland's undersecretary of state for foreign affairs Jaakko Laajava visited Jerusalem recently for talks about Israel's involvement in the conference. In January, Laajava met with Iran's foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi. He also visited other regional countries and held meetings with UN officials as well as representatives of countries that have permanent membership in the UN Security Council.
Comments
Akiva Eldar wrote:
Eldar is precisely right that a Nuke-Free Mideast Accord would not only solve all the problems that Israel and the U.S. say are being caused by Iran now, but would indeed have lots of added benefits too, such as creating a strong non-proliferation example and perhaps momentum too. And it would be a hopeful thing too given that Iran has long indicated it would agree to a stringently verified NFME Accord. But he doesn't even realize the import of what he himself wrote when he noted that Israel's "official policy since the 1970s ... declared that once all its neighbors come to term with its existence and put an end to the state of war, Israel will support a regional nonproliferation treaty." In other words Israel has essentially said it will never disarm itself from its nukes no matter what everyone else does until milk and honey flow in the streets and an earthly paradise is reached, which for those with even a passing familiarity with Israel know that this is the way it tells ideas it doesn't like to go to hell. And this is specifically shown here due to Israel's response to the Arab League initiative—twice now offered and still outstanding—for everyone in the region to grant Israel the peace and recognition it says it so wants, because what has indeed been Israel's response to this? Absolute and utter silence. It hasn't even deigned to recognize that this offer has been made, no doubt because it requires Israel to get off the Palestinian land it is sitting on. I don't know if Eldar is just incapable of putting 2+2 together or is just confused here, but the absolute stark, bottom-line, logically irrefutable reality is that for all its talk about its worries over nuclear threats or usage in the Mideast generally that is not Israel's goal at all. If so it would be jumping at the chance to get rid of them with a Nuke-Free Mideast Accord. But of course that would require it to give up its own nukes. Instead, as everyone sees and is again simply and logically inarguable, what Israel is really insisting on is it having the sole ability to be the sole nuclear threatener or user in the Mideast, period. In short, that it be enshrined as having some permanent, eternal power of life or annihilation over all its neighbors, while they have none and remain perpetual inferiors.