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Jewish World Review Jan. 26, 2007 / 7 Shevat, 5766 Iran's Ahmadinejad is winning By Caroline B. Glick
Over the past week evidence of Ahmadinejad's success was legion. On
Wednesday, London's Daily Telegraph reported that Iranian-North Korean
nuclear collaboration has reached new heights. Not only were Iranian
scientists present at North Korea's nuclear test last October, according to
the Telegraph, North Korean nuclear scientists are in Iran today assisting
their Iranian counterparts in preparing a nuclear test that could take place
by the end of the year.
This new information means that the timeline for Iranian acquisition of
nuclear bombs has been shortened dramatically. If just months ago US
intelligence officials claimed that Iran would not acquire nuclear weapons
until 2011, and if just six weeks ago Mossad chief Meir Dagan told the
Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Iran needed two years
to acquire the bomb, the report that Iran could test a nuclear weapon by the
end of 2007 means that there is reason to fear that Iran will have the means
to launch a nuclear attack against Israel next year.
Moreover, recently there have been several reports that all Iran's nuclear
facilities are working at full strength to increase uranium enrichment.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki's announcement Monday that 38
predominantly Western UN nuclear inspectors would be barred from returning
to the country is yet another sign that Iran's nuclear efforts are being
stepped up. As well, Iran's acquisition last month of advanced Russian Tor
M-1 anti-aircraft missiles demonstrates that with Russian assistance, Iran
is preparing seriously for war.
Aside from North Korea's apparent nuclear alliance with Iran, we have the
escalation of chaos by Iran's proxy arm in Lebanon. This week Hizbullah
moved ahead with its stated goal of overthrowing Prime Minister Fuad Siniora's
government. It should be clear from the events this week in Lebanon that
Iran is working to undermine any semblance of order in that country in order
to facilitate its exploitation as a forward operating base against Israel.
As Nobel laureate Professor Israel Aumann explained Wednesday at the
Herzliya Conference, the empowerment of Iran's terror army in Lebanon is an
acute strategic threat to Israel. Aumann noted that there is every reason to
fear that Iranian nuclear bombs could be transferred to its terror proxies.
A nuclear attack against Israel aimed at annihilating the Jewish state can
be conducted by relatively primitive delivery systems. And there is little
reason to doubt that Hizbullah possesses such systems.
Iran's recent diplomatic successes are also quite impressive. This week,
Iran signed a defense pact with Belarus. The agreement comes on the heels of
Ahmadinejad's successful state visit to Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. Indeed,
Iran's hyperactive diplomacy is bringing about a situation in which every
state with a beef against the US or Israel is collaborating on some level
with Iran. Bringing this point home on Wednesday was Arab League Secretary
General Amr Moussa. In his speech before the Global Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland on Wednesday, Moussa expressed opposition to any US military
strike against Iran's nuclear installations.
In the realm of international public opinion, Iran's position is anything
but weak. This was made clear last Saturday in London in the course of a
public debate between London's pathologically anti-American and anti-Israel
mayor Ken Livingstone and US Islamic scholar Dr. Daniel Pipes. During the
debate, Livingstone noted in a laconic manner that evoked no outrage that he
thinks that the establishment of the State of Israel was a mistake.
Speaking at the Herzliya Conference Tuesday, former minister Natan Sharansky
explained the significance of statement's like Livnigstone's for Israel's
national security. Sharansky warned that today international opinion is more
sympathetic to the view that Israel should be destroyed than European
opinion in 1939 was to Germany's exhortations that the Jewish people should
be expunged from Europe. As a result of the Arab-Islamic-Leftist campaign to
demonize Israel that has been going on systematically for more than six
years, today throughout the world there is a large and growing sense that
wiping Israel off the face of the earth wouldn't be particularly
objectionable.
Many members of the audience who heard Sharansky's remarks on Tuesday serve
in official capacities vested with responsibility for contending with this
terrible state of affairs. So the question that must be asked is what are
they and the politicians they serve under doing to contend with the growing
specter of national destruction?
Unfortunately, on the level of international diplomacy the answer is
precious little. Israel's top leaders spend most of their time spreading
baseless promises that everything is under control. Aside from that, they
engage in either feckless or counter-productive diplomatic activity.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for instance has visited world capitals and told
us that he is building a coalition. Yet, all evidence to the contrary. When
he visited Germany — a potential coalition partner against Iran — Olmert
failed to give the Germans any reason to work with us against Iran. His
visits to Russia and China were preordained failures since there is no
chance that those countries — who are assisting Iran economically,
militarily and diplomatically — will lift a finger to prevent Teheran from
acquiring nuclear weapons.
For their part, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defense Minister Amir Peretz
and Deputy Premier Shimon Peres are working to build international
coalitions to join forces not against Iran, but against Israel. All three
are encouraging the US, Europe and the Arabs to pressure Israel to give
Judea and Samaria to Hamas and Fatah — Iran's Palestinian proxies.
A proper Israeli foreign policy would serve to check and undermine Iran's
international maneuvering. It would work to bring about Iran's
delegitimization and isolation in the international community. It would work
to dry up Iran's bank accounts and so unravel the stability of the regime
and then act to overthrow it through popular insurrections. An effective,
coherent foreign policy would be aimed at building solid international
coalitions in which Israel could be part of an international military effort
to destroy Iran's nuclear installations. Or, at the very least, it would
prepare international public opinion for a unilateral Israeli military
campaign against Iran.
There is a small group of prominent Israelis who currently serve in no
official capacities who are privately acting to delegitimize and isolate
Iran internationally. Members of this group include opposition leader and
former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Sharansky, former IDF Chief of
General Staff Lt. Gen. (res.) Moshe Yaalon, MK Dani Naveh and former UN
ambassador Dore Gold. These men are pushing to have Ahmadinejad indicted
under the Genocide Convention for inciting to genocide by calling for Israel's
destruction. Many also work tirelessly to explain the magnitude of the
Iranian nuclear threat not only to Israel, but to the entire world.
On the economic warfare front, Netanyahu is waging a one-man war — and
rather successfully at that — to push forward an international campaign to
divest from companies doing business with Iran. A study conducted by the
Washington-based Center for Security Policy showed that US public employee
pension funds are heavily invested in such companies. Divestment from these
companies could potentially cause hundreds of billions of dollars in losses
for Iran.
During the Herzliya Conference, Republican presidential contenders including
former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, former House Speaker Newt
Gingrich and Senator John McCain all went on record in support of pension
fund divestment. Moreover, Netanyahu met with the state treasurers of
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, Maine and Connecticut on Tuesday in
Boston and urged them to divest their public employee pension funds from
companies that do business with Iran. If all five states were to divest
their funds, Iran would stand to lose $71 billion.
There are a significant number of prominent public figures — both Jewish and
non-Jewish — in the world that fervently wish to join forces with Israelis
to defend against Iran and the forces of global jihad more generally. A
number of them participated in the Herzliya Conference. Sharansky noted that
during the course of the war with Iran's army in Lebanon last summer,
several prominent foreigners volunteered to help Israel in defending itself
in the crucial battle for international opinion. Yet these esteemed friends
of Israel, such as Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz and former Canadian
Justice Minister Irwin Cotler could get no information from the Foreign
Ministry, the Prime Minister's office, the Defense Ministry or the IDF's
Spokesman's Unit. No one could be bothered to talk to them. No one had time
to help them help Israel.
In a similar fashion today, angry voices are emanating from the Foreign
Ministry and the Prime Minister's Office complaining about Netanyahu's
efforts. Olmert, Livni and others have repeatedly accused Netanyahu of
alarmism and are seeking to silence Israel's most effective defender in the
international arena today.
Tomorrow will mark the 62nd anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. In
recent years, the international community has declared the day International
Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Under the morbid influence of the Iran discussions at Herzliya, this week I
paid a visit to Yad Vashem's new museum. On display were several copies of
Der Sturmer — Josef Goebbels' infamous anti-Semitic propaganda organ. What
was most striking about the caricatures that pictured Jews as monkeys and
monsters in human form was how stupid and primitive they were. If we had had
the power then to respond to the demonization campaign that paved the way to
Birkenau and Babi Yar, we could have defeated it. But we did not have the
power then.
Today, the genocidal propaganda emanating from Iran, the Arab media and the
radical Left is no less foolish and flimsy. If we are wise enough to fight
it as a nation and a state, there is no doubt that we will be victorious.
All Ahmadinejad's coalitions and evil intentions cannot help him against a
roused Jewish people.
But if we want to win, we need to fight.
JWR contributor Caroline B. Glick is the senior Middle East Fellow at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC and the deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Comment by clicking here.
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