I appreciate there are differences and nuances in translation. I don’t know Persian so can’t comment one way or the other. It’s also important to note that the Iranian President has little executive power in the foreign arena. Unlike the US President, he isn’t the CINC of the armed forces, cannot declare war, and doesn’t control the security and intelligence services. Still, he is the public face of the regime and translation differences aside, Iran’s hostility toward Israel, not just Zionism, is apparent.

Ahmadinejad was not just expressing a vague wish for the future – he was expressing Iran’s stated policy. The only two factors keeping this “wish” from becoming reality are geography and lack of military capability. It’s clear the destruction of Israel is an Iranian goal as evidenced by their alliance with Syria (an unnatural alliance, I might add) and the significant support they give proxies such as Hezbollah. If Iran, Syria or any of the other countries openly hostile to Israel had the capability, they would surely attempt to destroy Israel as the Arab armies attempted to do in 1967 and 73. While Iran and hostile Arab nations must surely realize that Israel probably cannot be militarily destroyed, at least for now, they still take every opportunity to oppose it and ensure its people live under constant physical threat.

CKR,

I really appreciate your comments. I’ll take a look at the post on your blog. I think we largely agree that the US and other nuclear nations could do much more to reduce arsenals and work against further proliferation.

Finally, I’d like to say that while it may appear from my comments here that I’m a blind supporter of Israel, that is certainly not the case. I feel that many of Israel’s actions and policies have at best been counterproductive. I hope its futile failure in Lebanon these past weeks will serve as a wake-up call to explore other, and hopefully better, methods to ensure its security. The Israeli’s need to realize they cannot eliminate radical elements such as Hamas and Hezbollah by force of arms alone, but that is probably best left for another discussion.

“What good are security assurances from a nation that advocates your destruction?”

Security assurances clearly start from the assumption that all parties grant the others the right to exist.

I try to stay out of detailed Middle East political discussions because my expertise lies elsewhere, so I can’t propose specific ways to deal with this. However, I’ll point out that different groups in the region have different views of Israel and different degrees of willingness to acknowledge its right to exist. We also may misunderstand some of the rhetoric, as Max points out.

Early steps would include encouraging a less hair-trigger approach on all sides, including Israel’s. That would require a third-party mediator who could be seen as an honest broker. Too bad George Bush decided that wasn’t his role.

I also think that bold steps, well-presented, could jump over some of the detailed difficulties, but, again, I don’t feel competent to make specific proposals.

Eric, I think I would distinguish “prestige” (the sense that nuclear weapons grant increased stature to a nation in others’ eyes) from “taboo.” I think the two are related only slightly and that the “prestige” can be decreased without the “taboo” also being decreased. In fact, a serious downgrading of nuclear weapons in the US and Russian arsenal, coupled with strong statements that the world cannot afford to use such weapons, could downgrade “prestige” and increase “taboo.”

I have been mulling some related thoughts on this subject, and your comments and one of the articles in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs encourage me to write up those thoughts for my blog. Hopefully, I’ll be able to post them in the next day or so.

You infer/refer to the supposed ‘statement’ of Ahmadinejad: – his alleged calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map”

The Iranian president is undeniably an opponent of Zionism or, if you prefer the phrase, the Zionist regime. But so are substantial numbers of Israeli citizens, Jews as well as Arabs.

The Iranian president was expressing a vague wish for the future. He was not threatening an Iranian-initiated war to remove Israeli control over Jerusalem, as well-established translation sources confirm; Ahmadinejad was referring to time, not place (i.e.on the map). As serious researchers are aware, the words of Ahmadinejad (who was quoting Khomeini at the time), have been twisted to aid those who wish to whip up hostility towards Iran. Starting with Juan Cole, and going via the New York Times’ experts through MEMRI to the BBC’s monitors, the consensus is that Ahmadinejad did not talk about any maps. He was offering a vague wish for the future – i.e. the removal of the regime that has caused so much sufferring in that region.

I’ve been thinking a bit about your desire to lower the prestige of nuclear weapons. As you’ve mentioned, doing so would have many benefits, but I’d like to throw in discussion of a few of the problems it could cause.

Prestige in this context means, I think, that nuclear weapons are given a special status in the minds of citizens and especially policy makers. You seem to be saying that this special status is one of the main barriers to disarmament and denuclearization. I agree that the unique perceptions of nuclear weapons (that they convey great power status, for one) make certain countries more inclined to pursue them and give nuclear weapons unique (and useful, in many cases) political effects, but such effects are not one-sided.

However, a special perception of nuclear weapons—stemming from their prestige, as we’re calling it, or special status—is also thought to slow proliferation as a central factor in the persistence of the “nuclear taboo.” No one has really been able to satisfactorily explain why nuclear weapons haven’t proliferated much further and faster than they have so far, even though they undeniably have both political and military uses. The taboo is an oft-cited hypothesis that I think is certianly part of the story: for those not familiar with the argument, it basically says that nuclear weapons are seen as such horrible tools that many states are unwilling to pursue them.

So, if we undermine the prestige nuclear weapons convey along with their special status, we may also undermine a factor preventing further proliferation.

In the extreme case, for example, if we eliminate the special status of nuclear weapons and they are eventually seen as “no big deal” to possess, then why would it be such a problem that a country has a few of them? It is difficult to assert that the prestige of nuclear weapons doesn’t justify keeping them while also asserting that they are important (read: prestigious) enough to get rid of entirely.

Part of the difficulty in addressing these nuclear problems stems from one of your earlier points: I think you are correct that deterrence has not been reexamined in sufficient depth following the end of the Cold War.

I agree that small steps are needed. I just think that one of the first must be that parties to this denuclearization strategy at least recognized each other’s right to exist. Negotiations and security assurances cannot happen without that first step in my opinion. What good are security assurances from a nation that advocates your destruction?

All this is not to say I don’t believe it’s not worth a try. I just think that given the very real hostility Israel faces, there is no possibility of them entertaining a nuclear compromise until fundamental issues like recognition are first resolved.

A denuclearized Middle East, like any big international initiative, would not take place all at once.

A first step would probably be from the United States (and, hopefully, Russia), to downgrade the prestige of nuclear weapons, like that October 10 Bush speech I’d love to see.

Another step would be to admit that Israel has nuclear weapons.

Another step would be to develop a regional organization that would oversee denuclearization and perhaps interface with the nuclear neighbors, including India and Pakistan.

Israel’s giving up its nuclear weapons would be tied to security assurances from its neighbors, hopefully mutual.

Things like this look like they can’t happen when you take too big a bite, but when you break them down into smaller steps, they become more conceivable. Further, each step produces a slightly different way of thinking that allows additional subsequent options.

If you insist on solving the whole problem in one step, you usually can’t do it. See, for example, bringing democracy to Iraq at the point of a gun.

Some of us actually understand physics and are interested in arms control.

The US’ virtually unconditional backing of Israel has undermined Israel’s motivation to pursue a reasoned settlement to the Palestinian problem, which is at the root of most of the trouble in the middle east.

The blustery statements out of Tehran—though obviously stupid and counterproductive—are made for domestic consumption and are much less threatening than the actual bombs muslims see dropped on their bretheren, most lately in Lebanon.

The Israeli nulear arsenal is not even admitted to, let alone any reductions in it discussed.

When Iran sees the forces of US and Israel arrayed against it—and given the backdrop of what happened in Iraq—can you blame them for pursuing a program to the edge of weaponization?

If there will be peace and disarmament in the middle east a prerequiste will be the termination of US support for the militaristic expansionist Likud government.

The US does not support Israel, it supports Likud at the expense of Isreal.

This is brought about by the AIPAC, the American-Israeli lobbying group:

eg.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html
and

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19062

from the latter:

“AIPAC claims to represent most of the Jewish community. Its executive committee has a couple of hundred members representing a wide spectrum of American Jewish opinion, from the dovish Americans for Peace Now to the militantly right-wing Zionist Organization of America. Four times a year this group meets to decide AIPAC policy. According to several former AIPAC officials I have talked to, however, the executive committee has little real power. Rather, power rests with the fifty-odd-member board of directors, which is selected not according to how well they represent AIPAC’s members but according to how much money they give and raise.

Reflecting this, the board is thick with corporate lawyers, Wall Street investors, business executives, and heirs to family fortunes. Within the board itself, power is concentrated in an extremely rich subgroup, known as the “minyan club.” And, within that group, four members are dominant: Robert Asher, a retired lighting fixtures dealer in Chicago; Edward Levy, a building supplies executive in Detroit; Mayer “Bubba” Mitchell, a construction materials dealer in Mobile, Alabama; and Larry Weinberg, a real estate developer in Los Angeles (and a former owner of the Portland Trail Blazers). Asher, Levy, and Mitchell are loyal Republicans; Weinberg is a Scoop Jackson Democrat who has moved rightward over the years.

The “Gang of Four,” as these men are known, do not share the general interest of a large part of the Jewish community in promoting peace in the Middle East. Rather, they seek to keep Israel strong, the Palestinians weak, and the United States from exerting pressure on Israel. AIPAC’s director, Howard Kohr, is a conservative Republican long used to doing the Gang of Four’s bidding. For many years Steven Rosen, AIPAC’s director of foreign policy issues, was the main power on the staff, helping to shape the Gang of Four’s pro-Likud beliefs into practical measures that AIPAC could promote in Congress. (In 2005, Rosen and fellow AIPAC analyst Keith Weissman left the organization and were soon after indicted by federal authorities for receiving classified national security information and passing it on to foreign (Israeli) officials.)”

Unfortunately one cannot even discuss this openly in the US, so there is little hope for a peaceful resolution of the Iran issue.

And it is just that—an “issue”, not a “crisis” or some other emergency.

The authors of the LRB article could not even get their paper published in the US!

Read the interview with the authors:

http://www.motherjones.com/interview/2006/07/walt_mearsheimer.html

It is, then, very sensible for Iran to push its nuclear program to the edge of weaponization given the circumstances.

Unfortunate, but sensible.

You want change? Change the way AIPAC perverts US foreign policy.

Start there.