ANDREW E. HARROD
December 22, 2013
"Strategic threats are growing longer and longer," Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Captain
Barak Raz stated with respect to the dangers facing his country.
Raz, the IDF Central Command's former
Judea and Samaria (West Bank) Division spokesperson, spoke during a
Dec. 10, 2013, conference call discussing growing dangers to Western
interests in the Middle East.
The conference call occurred in lieu due to inclement weather of a
Capitol Hill panel sponsored by the
Endowment for Middle East Truth
(EMET), a pro-American and pro-Israeli Washington, DC think tank. Raz
focused on Israeli policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians in the conflicted
Judea and Samaria/West Bank. Lebanese Christian Middle East scholar
Walid Phares, meanwhile, joined Raz to discuss the role of Iran's nuclear weapons program in Middle Eastern security.
- In
this photo released by the official website of the office of the
Iranian Presidency, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani speaks during a
news briefing after Iran and world powers agree in Geneva to a deal
over Iran's nuclear program, at the Presidency compound in Tehran,
Iran, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2013. (AP Photo/Presidency Office, Mohammad
Berno)
Phares described the recent
Geneva agreement
with Iran as merely protecting its nuclear weapons program in the long
term. Among other strategic objectives, Iranian nuclear weapons would
provide a "balance of power with Israel" by deterring Israel's nuclear
arsenal in any confrontation over Iranian-supported terrorism.
Similarly, Iranian nuclear weapons would deter any international
intervention to overthrow Iran's Islamic republic, something that
particularly worried Iranian authorities during the
upheaval following Iran's June 12, 2009, elections.
The "very minimal" Geneva agreement would only impose a short term
delay on Iranian uranium enrichment and leave Iran's missile delivery
systems untouched. Yet Phares described this agreement as merely an
"appetizer" for later beneficial agreements with Iran.
Anti-Iranian sanctions lifted under the agreement that had
previously taken years to devise would be "ten times more difficult" to
re-impose in the future. A "tidal wave of businesses" seeking to enter
the Iranian market would lobby to prevent any sanctions renewal.
Unfrozen Iranian assets under the agreement, meanwhile, will enable the
Iranian regime to implement propaganda efforts depicting an Iran
making progress towards regional peace.
A "strategic mistake" is how Israel and Arab Gulf states, worried
about Iranian hegemony, perceive the Geneva agreement. Especially
disturbing was the lack of any American consultation with Israel or any
Gulf allies while negotiating the agreement. This meant, in
particular, a Saudi lobby defeat in America to Iranian interests after
Saudi interests had lost out to the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the
Middle East.
- In
this photo provided by the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA), a
surface-to-surface missile is launched during the Iranian Revolutionary
Guards maneuver in an undisclosed location in Iran, Tuesday, July 3,
2012. Iran's state TV recently reported it had acquired a "massive"
number of long-range missile launchers to "crush the enemy." (Photo:
AP/ISNA, Alireza Sot Akbar)
Iran's
de facto American lobby, the
National Iranian American Council (NIAC), described by Phares as the Iranian "equivalent of
CAIR" or the
Muslim Brotherhood-linked
Council on Islamic American Relations, played an important role here.
The Iranian opposition also "now feels abandoned a second time"
following the Obama Administration's "green light" to Iran's 2009
repression.
The Obama Administration, however, saw reconciliation with Iran as
part of a "two legs" strategy in the Middle East. This approach
involved good relations with Iran as well as with the
Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in places like Egypt. After the
Muhammad Morsi regime fell in Egypt, Phares discerned a policy by the Obama Administration to "go fast" in achieving results with Iran.
Assessing the impact of any future Iranian nuclear weapons in the
Middle East, Phares considered actual Iranian nuclear strikes against
Israel possible if Iranian leaders perceived a "historical moment" to
destroy the Jewish state. Terrorist groups like the MB affiliate
Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon's
Hezbollah,
meanwhile, would not receive the protection of an Iranian nuclear
umbrella. Nonetheless, they could act to hinder any Israeli
countermeasures against Iran's nuclear weapons program. Hezbollah
missiles supplied by Iran, for example, could "bleed Israel" with
strikes on civilian and military targets like airfields.
- Israeli
soldier patrolling next to the Israeli-Palestinian border as some
16,000 reserve troops are drafted in, on November 16, 2012 in Israel. .
Conflict between the Israeli military and Palestine militants has
intensified over the last few days, with Israel striking some 130
targets overnight. According to reports, 18 Palestians and three
Israelis have been killed. Egypt's prime minister Hisham Qandil is due
to make a brief visit to Gaza today and Israel have vowed to suspend
fire for the duration of his visit, provided there's no cross border
attacks from militants. Credit: Getty Images
In light of dangers to Israel from sources like Iran, Raz discussed
the Israeli "high priority" to keep the West Bank as a "low priority"
security threat. A "proactive effort" by the IDF had held a future
Palestinian intifada in this "very critical plot of land" adjacent to
Israel's demographic heartland in check, even as Al Qaeda's first
Palestinian cell emerged in Hebron. Security in the West Bank had a
"positive effect throughout the region," Raz said, that otherwise "is
totally imploding" in the words of EMET President
Sarah Stern. Jordan's Hashemite Kingdom had expressed in the past
reservations to a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, given concerns about a Palestinian polity's stability, Stern in particular noted.
Any lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace, Raz observed, would demand
much more than an agreement with Palestinian authorities, merely "one
of many, many necessary steps." The increasing popularity of Hamas
among Palestinians was a special concern for Raz. The Palestinian
Authority, Raz noted, had not held elections since the
last ballot on Jan. 26, 2006, for fear of a
similar Hamas sweep.
Raz and Phares thus together demonstrated that peace in an anarchic
world in general, and in the Middle East in particular, comes not come
from wishful pacific platitudes but from pragmatic power politics.
Realistic recognition of friends and foes, aggression and appeasement,
means and motives, is indispensable for proper policy formation in the
Middle East and elsewhere. If EMET's briefing is any indication, the
United States and its allies are going to relearn these lessons in the
near future the hard way of bitter experience.
-
Andrew
E. Harrod is a freelance researcher and writer who holds a PhD from
the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a JD from George Washington
University Law School. He is admitted to the Virginia State Bar. He
has published over 110 articles concerning various political and
religious topics at the American Thinker, Daily Caller, FrontPage
Magazine, Faith Freedom International, Gatestone Institute, Institute
on Religion and Democracy, Mercatornet, and World, among others. He
can be followed on twitter at @AEHarrod.
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