At the Atlantic Monthly website, Jeffrey Goldberg finds the UN Human Rights Council vote on the Goldstone report to be “a disaster not just for Israel, but for the West…. It’s only a matter of time before David Petraeus, or Bob Gates, find themselves under attack from the same forces that want to punish Israel for trying to defend itself from a state-sponsored terror group seeking its elimination.”
Meanwhile, James Zogby laments that the report has been much discussed but little read….
The outlook for Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in the short to intermediate term is poor, in part because of political difficulties faced by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, reports Howard Schneider for the Washington Post.
If the United States declines to deal with Hamas, more radical groups may gain a foothol in Gaza, argues Nathan Stock of the Carter Center.
Those who do not follow international news media especially closely may be unaware of the difficulties that have been faced by Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas since the publication of the controversial Goldstone report on the Gaza conflict. Apparently responding to American pressure, the PA declined to press for the report to be discussed at the UN Security Council, which body could in turn have asked the International Criminal Court to initiate war-crimes proceedings.
Subsequently, Abbas has found himself the target of anger. “In Gaza hundreds of posters of Mr Abbas with a black X across his face appeared in public places, and relatives of the victims of the winter’s military operation were throwing shoes at his picture, a reference to the shoe hurled in contempt at the then American president, George Bush, in Iraq.” Not a good sign….
Hamas says that the release of captured Israeli soldier Galid Shalit should take place in a matter of weeks or months. Hamas cofounder Mahmoud Zahar has indicated as much in an interview with Der Spiegel. Hamas recently has released a video of Shalit, provided the first evidence of his condition in a three-year captivity.
The top news of the day included a report in the New York Times regarding dissensus among Western intelligence agencies as to how far along Iran has progressed toward building a nuclear warhead. The American agencies reportedly are sticking to the claim that was made in the controversial 2007 National Intelligence Estimate — that while Iran may want a bomb, it halted work in 2003 and probably has not resumed it. German, French, and especially Israeli intelligence are not nearly so sanguine….
At Salon, Glenn Greenwald sees a rush to war with Iran, and a lack of skepticism in the American media regarding official claims and accusations against that country. “Still, the accusations issuing about Iran are unaccompanied by evidence and raise at least as many [questions] as they answer. Yet here we have, yet again, inflammatory (and, in many eyes, war-justifying) accusations made against an American Enemy, and the American establishment media seems capable of nothing other than mindlessly repeating it, asking no real questions, and doing little other than fueling the fire…. The reason such accusations deserve so much scrutiny is obvious: there is a substantial faction in our political culture which craves a military attack on Iran — the same faction, more or less, that caused us to attack Iraq — and will seize on anything to justify that.”
We shouldn’t rush to war — and accusations against a supposed enemy should be scrutinized. Nevertheless, there are several factors that contribute to momentum on the half of a fairly aggressive anti-Iranian policy. Iran is somewhat richer and more powerful than Iraq, and its leadership has been ideologically bellicose — the public may be inclined to make a prima facie assumption that this regime deserves to be treated harshly. The Iraq debacle to the contrary notwithstanding, much of the public is inclined to look the other way at whatever is represented as necessary for the military and the intelligence services to do in order to protect the country.
Furthermore, any evidence for or against these accusations more than likely will take the form of reports from the intelligence services of one or another country. Only those closest to the corridors of power will have direct access to these — leaving the rest of us in the position of having to take their assertions at face value.
Greenwald links to this analysis by former weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who asserts: “Iran is no closer to producing a hypothetical nuclear weapon today than it was prior to Obama’s announcement concerning the Qom facility.”
Anthony Cordesman, in this morning’s Wall Street Journal, discusses the factors influencing any decision by Israel over whether, and how, to attack Iran. “Israel’s political and military leaders have long made it clear that they are considering taking decisive military action if Iran continues to develop its nuclear program.” Nevertheless, Iran’s program is “dispersed in many facilities in many cities and remote areas, and often into many buildings in each facility—each of which would have to be a target in an Israeli military strike.” Any military campaign “would be far more challenging than the Israeli strike that destroyed Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981…. At best, such action would delay Iran’s nuclear buildup.”
A successful strike would have to destroy hardened underground targets. Furthermore, “a truly successful strike might have to hit far more targets over a much larger area than the three best-known sites. Iran has had years to build up covert and dispersed facilities, and is known to have dozens of other facilities associated with some aspect of its nuclear programs. Moreover, Israel would have to successfully strike at dozens of additional targets to do substantial damage to another key Iranian threat: its long-range missiles.” Nevertheless, “the odds are that Israel can have a serious impact on Iran’s three most visible nuclear targets and possibly delay Iran’s efforts for several years.”
To do more than just delay Iran’s program might require a series of restrikes. The problem would be that “Israel does not have enough forces to carry out a series of restrikes if Iran persisted in creating and rebuilding new facilities, and Arab states could not repeatedly standby and let Israel penetrate their air space. Israel might also have to deal with a Russia that would be far more willing to sell Iran advanced fighters and surface-to-air missiles if Israel attacked the Russian-built reactor at Bushehr.” A “one-time surprise operation” is more realistic than a strategy that would call for a series of restrikes.
Even if it refrains from striking Iran for the time being, Israel need not sit by passively, Cordesman emphasizes. Israel could reinforce its missile and air defenses, and it may have the capacity to destroy Iranian population centers with thermonuclear weapons, thus posing an “existential” threat to Iran. “Moreover, provoking its Arab neighbors and Turkey into developing their nuclear capabilities, or the U.S. into offering them a nuclear umbrella targeted on Iran, could create additional threats, as well as make Iran’s neighbors even more dependent on the U.S. for their security. Iran’s search for nuclear-armed missiles may well unite its neighbors against it as well as create a major new nuclear threat to its survival.”
The London Economist’s “Democracy in America” columnist believes there is little that can be done to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
In Ha’aretz, Gideon Levy thinks Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu overdid it in his speech to the UN yesterday.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cheapened the memory of the Holocaust in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday. He did so twice. Once, when he brandished proof of the very existence of the Holocaust, as if it needed any, and again when he compared Hamas to the Nazis.”
“And if we can compare a poorly equipped terrorist organization to the horrific Nazi killing machine, why should others not compare the Nazis’ behavior to that of Israel Defense Forces soldiers? In both cases, the comparison is baseless and infuriating….”