Several months ago the United Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh formed the Iran Task Force with the goal of convincing Pittsburghers that "A Nuclear Iran Is a Threat to Humanity." According to the UJF website, The Iran Task Force is composed of AIPAC, ADL, Bnai Zion, Friends of Israel, Zionist Organization of America.
A kick-off event featuring Michael Ledeen-associate Patrick Clawson was publicized by means of a flier reprising Condi Rice's mushroom cloud warning: against a black background, a flame-coloured mushroom cloud underscored the legend, "A Nuclear Iran: A Threat to Humanity."
In the course of his speech, Clawson endorsed the flier's message and title. Looking for all the world like Britain's Gen. Reginald Dyer fresh from spraying bullets on innocent civilians at Amritsar, the lanky, strawberry-blonde Clawson urged that the US must force Iran to Feel the Pain for its acts of defiance of the US, even as Dyer was intent on punishing Indian protesters for disrespecting British authority. Laying out a sticks and carrots strategy for dealing with Iran, Clawson stated that economic sanctions are the "sticks" that the US and its arm-twisted allies in the UN would use to beat Iran into submission. But, said Clawson, the US has no carrots that Iran would "trust not to be poisoned."
In a USA Today column in mid-2007, Barbara Slavin twinned Iran with Sudan as a target of economic sanctions. In February, 2008, local media announcements regarding a second Iran Task Force event, UJF similarly placed Iran in precisely the same category as Sudan, and demanded that, like Sudan, Iran be subject to sanctions as well as divestment.
The pensions divestment strategy was hatched in Washington in 2004 and, according to an article by Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post
In late 2006, the terror divestment campaign received a major boost when Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu embraced it as a means of slowing down Iran's race to nuclear capabilities.
Encouraged by Netanyahu, Republican presidential hopefuls John McCain, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich announced their support for the plan in late 2006.
Specifically, UJF wants the Pennsylvania State Teachers' and State employees' pension funds to divest from listed corporations that are involved with Iran's banking or energy production, arguing that South African apartheid was brought down by divestment campaigns and so should Iran. (Never mind that Iran is not an apartheid state.)
To this end, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania State representative Joshua Shapiro has sponsored legislation to strip $10 billion from Pennsylvania pension funds' international portfolio. A January 2008 item in Pittsburgh's Tribune Reviewquoted Shapiro:
"My legislation would require SERS and PSERS to invest terror-free," said Rep. Joshua Shapiro, D-Montgomery County, the deputy House speaker who sponsored the legislation. He said the House is likely to vote on the bills within two or three months.
Shapiro said that if Pennsylvania, which has the fifth-largest pension-fund totals in the nation, divested $10 billion in terror-tied corporations, other states might divest enough to force reforms in Iran, for instance.
In an interview with Tony Karon, Dr. Trita Parsi pointed out Netanyahu's about-face on his position on Iran:
not only does Netanyahu’s characterization of Iran have little relationship to reality; Netanyahu himself knows this better than most. Outside of the realm of cynical posturing by politicians, most Israeli strategists recognize that Iran represents a strategic challenge to the favorable balance of power enjoyed by Israel and the U.S. in the Middle East over the past 15 years, but it is no existential threat to the Israel, the U.S. or the Arab regimes.
And that was the view embraced by the Likud leader himself during his last term as prime minister of Israel.
At a meeting hosted by The Israel Project in the run-up to the Annapolis Conference, David Wurmser observed that "Iran gaining nuclear technology is not the greatest threat; the greatest threat Iran poses to Israel and the region is that Hezbollah was successful in beating back the IDF in Lebanon." Whatever Netanyahu's agenda is in financially punishing Iran, it is not hard to make the case that a nuclear Iran a smokescreen and not the real threat.
Furthermore, the notion that economic strangulation might "force reforms" is not only irrational, it is known to be a counterproductive practice that seldom strikes its target and more often harms innocent civilians. In the case of Iran, economic pressure has resulted in the derailment of automobile manufacturing projects with China. Iran is faced with the necessity of creating one million jobs annually just to keep even with its current low employment status; what possible benefit can be gained from bankrupting a country? What rational, or historically aware policymaker, can in good conscience believe that something good can come out of creating the conditions for suffering and possible death?
In a book interview, Naomi Klein, author of "The Shock Doctrine," explained to interviewer Franklin Foer that
John M. Keynes warned in the wake of the Treaty of Versailles that, "if you punish a country, if you deliberately induce a depression, "revenge would not limp;"... the rage that would follow would make the first world war look tame by comparison."
Klein insisted that these lessons are known -- or should be, and there is no excuse for ignoring them.
Americans and their leaders need look back no further than the ten years during which the US enforced sanctions against Iraq to see the devastating impact of economic sanctions on innocent civilians, and remind themselves that policy makers like Hillary Clinton campaign advisor Madeleine Albright made the conscious calculation that half-a-million dead Iraqi children was not too great a price to pay (for whom?) to achieve US goals in Iraq.
Pennsylvania's pension funds are professionally managed, and have ranked among the top ten best managed pension funds in the nation for the past two years. The portfolio has been carefully composed, at great expense, drawing upon --and paying for-- the best financial consulting advice and decision making possible, with the best interests of the pensioners the goal of the funds's managers. UJF seeks to undermine all that work and success, in preference for an interest-group based foreign policy agenda in support of the political goals of Bibi Netanyahu.
In a roiled and frightening economic climate, Pennsylvania's teachers and state employees ought not be forced to bear the added burden of risking their retirement for the sake of Bibi Netanyahu's political agenda carried out by special interest groups such as UJF's Iran Task Force.