Last week, Israeli historian Benny Morris argued on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times that Israel "will almost surely attack Iran's nuclear sites" in coming months. He argued that this would be a positive development, because if Iran gets a nuclear bomb the "Middle East will almost certainly face a nuclear war."
Much of what Morris says in his column entitled, Using Bombs to Stave Off War is quite logical, but there are several underlying and incorrect assumptions that undermine his argument. First, Morris assumes that diplomacy will fail. There is no reason to assume that a diplomatic solution, which the United States and the Europeans have been pursuing, cannot be achieved.
Second, Morris asserts that because all of Israel's leaders say that Iran getting a nuclear bomb means Israel's destruction that this is indeed the case and necessitates an Israeli first strike. Dr. Morris takes both the rhetoric of Iranian and Israeli leaders too much at face value. Rhetoric is a political tool, not an expression of what political leaders actually intend to do.
Iran's leaders, particularly President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's who disgustingly threatens to "wipe Israel off the map," are not stating their political plans. They use extreme rhetoric, because it is good domestic politics. This in no way indicates that Iran intends to use nuclear weapons. Iran's quest for nuclear weapons - a technology that is now more than 60 years old - is mostly about national pride and establishing Iran as a regional power on par with Israel, India, and Pakistan - all of whom have nuclear weapons.
Israeli leaders know this. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the Israeli civilian and military leadership know that Iran has no intent to launch nuclear weapons at Israel or anybody else in the region. For Olmert - who is up to his neck in corruption probes - it is good domestic politics to stand strong against an Iranian threat. He has little real interest in actually bombing Iran. Morris actually correctly explains the many negative consequences for Israel of attacking Iran.
The overall problem with the entire Morris argument is that it is imbedded in the racist assumption that the Muslim leadership of Iran is irrational. He asserts that the Mutually Assured Destruction, which kept peace between the US-USSR for 40 years and India-Pakistan for a decade, will not work with Iran. He assumes that because Iranian leaders hold fundamentalist religious beliefs and use extremist rhetoric that they are inherently irrational.
He argues this explicitly: "Given the fundamentalist, self-sacrificial mindset of the mullahs who run Iran, Israel knows that deterrence may not work as well as it did with the comparatively rational men who ran the Kremlin and White House during the cold war. They are likely to use any bomb they build, both because of ideology and because of fear of Israeli nuclear pre-emption." His argument is deeply flawed nonsense. Many Soviet and American leaders held extreme religious and political beliefs during the Cold War, but acted rationally for national self-preservation.
We are in Iraq today, because many Americans misunderstood the Middle Eastern realities and didn't understand that Iraq had no connection to 9/11. As a country, we allowed our prejudices about Islam to prevent us from distinguishing among very different Muslims. Even if Iraq had had an active nuclear weapons program in 2003 and attained nuclear weapons it wouldn't have shared them with terrorists to use against Israel or the US, because Saddam Hussein wasn't self-destructive. His entire evil career was based on self-aggrandizement not self-destruction. Iran's leaders are also not self-destructive. It is remarkable that a distinguished historian like Benny Morris allows his prejudiced view of Islam to cloud his view of political reality. He is basing his view of politics on a prejudiced view of Iran and Islam.
Iran, unlike Iraq, undoubtedly has an active nuclear weapons program. But its goals are not to attack Israel or other US allies. It is seeking respect on the world stage. It does not have a suicidal "self-sacrificial mindset." Airstrikes against Iran would be bad for Israel, bad for the U.S. and bad for the entire world. Let us hope that the war mongering Benny Morrises of the world don't lead us into an unnecessary and deeply destructive conventional or nuclear confrontation.