In light of the fact that Israel is in possession
of at least 200 (surreptitiously-built) nuclear
warheads, and considering the reality that,
according to both US and Israeli intelligence
sources, Iran neither possesses nor pursues
nuclear weapons, the relentless hysterical
campaign by Israel and its lobby against the
Iran nuclear deal can safely be characterized
as the mother of all ironies—a clear case of
chutzpah.
As I pointed out in a recent essay on the nuclear
agreement, the deal effectively establishes
US control (through IAEA) over the entire
production chain of Iran’s nuclear and related
industries. Or, as President Obama put it (on
the day of the conclusion of the agreement),
“Inspectors will have access to Iran’s entire
nuclear supply chain—its uranium mines and
mills, its conversion facility and its centrifuge
manufacturing and storage facilities. . . . Some
of these transparency measures will be in place
for 25 years. Because of this deal inspectors
will also be able to access any suspicious
location.”
Even a cursory reading of the text of the
agreement shows that, if ratified by the US
congress, the deal would essentially freeze
Iran’s nuclear program at a negligible,
ineffectual level of value—at only 3.67%
uranium enrichment. Israel and its lobby
must certainly be aware of this, of the fact that
Iran poses no “existential threat to Israel,” as
frequently claimed by Benjamin Netanyahu
and his co-thinkers.
So, the question is: why all the screaming and
breast beating?
There is a widespread perception that because
the nuclear agreement was reached despite the
lobby’s vehement opposition, it must therefore
signify a win for Iran, or a loss for Israel and
its allies. This is a sheer misjudgment of
what the deal represents: it signifies a win
not for Iran but for Israel and its allies. And
here is why: under the deal Iran is obligated
to (a) downgrade its uranium enrichment
capabilities from 20% of purity to 3.67%, (b)
freeze this minimal level of 3.67% enrichment
for 15 years, (c) reduce its current capacity
of 19000 centrifuges to 6104 (a reduction of
68%), (d) reduce its stockpile of low grade
enriched uranium from the current level
of 7500 kg to 300kg (a reduction of 96%),
and (e) accept strict limits on its research
and development activities. While some
restrictions on research and development are
promised to be relaxed after 10 years, others
will remain for up to 25 years.
In addition, Iran would have to accept an
extensive monitoring and inspection regime
not only of declared nuclear sites but also of
military and other non-declared sites where the
monitors may presume or imagine incidences
of “suspicious” activity. The elaborate system
of monitoring and inspection was succinctly
described by President Obama on the day of
the conclusion of the agreement in Vienna
(July 14, 2015): “Put simply, the organization
responsible for the inspections, the IAEA, will
have access where necessary, when necessary.
That arrangement is permanent.”
These are obviously major concessions that
not only render Iran’s hard-one (but peaceful)
nuclear technology ineffectual, but also
weaken its defense capabilities and undermine
its national sovereignty.
So, the lobby’s frantic objection to the
nuclear agreement cannot be because the
deal represents a win for Iran, or a loss for
Israel. Quite to the contrary the agreement
signifies a historic success for Israel as it tends
to remove, or drastically undermine, a major
challenge to its expansionist schemes in the
Middle East—the challenge of independent,
revolutionary Iran that consistently opposed
such colonial schemes of expansion and
occupation.
Thus, the reasons for the lobby’s panicky, or
more likely feigned, protestations must be
sough elsewhere. Two major reasons can be
identified for the lobby’s vehement opposition
to the nuclear deal.
The first is to keep pressure on negotiators in
pursuit further concessions from Iran. Indeed,
the lobby has been very successful in quest of
this objective. A look back at the process of
negotiations indicates that, under pressure,
Iran’s negotiators have continuously made
additional concessions over the course of the
20-month long negotiations. For example,
when negotiations began in Geneva in
November 2013, discussion of Iran’s defense
industries or inspection of its military sites
were considered off the limits of negotiations.
Whereas in the final agreement, reached 20
months later in Vienna, Iran’s negotiators have
once-taboo measures of national sovereignty.
The lobby is of course aware of the fact that
the 159-page long nuclear deal is fraught
with ambiguities and loopholes, which leaves
plenty of room for haggling and maneuvering
over the many contestable aspects of the
deal during its 25-year long implementation
period. This means that, even if ratified by the
US congress, the deal does not mean the end
of negotiations but their continuation for a
long time to come.
The shrill, obstructionist voices of the lobby’s
operatives are, therefore, designed to continue
the pressure on Iran during the long period of
implementation in order to extract additional
concessions beyond the agreement.
The second reason for the lobby’s relentless
campaign to sabotage the nuclear agreement is
that, while the agreement obviously represents
a fantastic victory for Israel, it nonetheless
falls short of what the lobby projected and
fought for, that is, devastating regime change
by military means, similar to what was done to
Iraq and Libya.
This is no conspiracy theory or idle
speculation. There is well-documented,
undeniable evidence that the lobby, as a
major pillar of the neoconservative forces in
the US and elsewhere, set out as early as the
late 1980s and early as 1990s to “deconstruct”
and reshape the Middle East in the image of
radical Zionist champions of building “greater
Israel” in the region, extending from Jordan
River to Mediterranean coasts.
Indeed, radical Zionists’ plans to balkanize
and re-mold the Middle East are as old as
the state of Israel itself. Those plans were
actually among the essential designs of Israel’s
founding fathers to build a Jewish state in
Palestine. David Ben Gurien, one of the Key
founders of the state of Israel, for example,
stated unabashedly that land grabbing,
expulsion of non-Jewish natives from their
land/homes and territorial expansion is best
achieved through launching wars of choice
and creating social chaos, which he called
“revolutionary” times or circumstances. “What
is inconceivable in normal times is possible in
revolutionary times; and if at this time the
opportunity is missed and what is possible in
such great hours is not carried out—a whole
world is lost”.
While the plans to foment war and create
social convulsion in pursuit of “greater Israel”
thus began with the very creation of the
state of Israel, systematic implementation of
such plans, and the concomitant agenda of
changing “unfriendly” regimes in the region,
began in earnest in the early 1990s—that is,
in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of
the Soviet Union.
As long as the Soviet Union existed as a
balancing superpower vis-à-vis the United
States, US policy makers in the Middle
East were somewhat constrained in their
accommodations of territorial ambitions of
hardline Zionism. That restraint was largely
due to the fact that at the time the regimes
that ruled Iraq, Syria and Libya were allies of
the Soviet Union. That alliance, and indeed
the broader counter-balancing power of
Soviet bloc countries, served as a leash on
the expansionist designs of Israel and the
US accommodations of those designs. The
demise of the Soviet Union removed that
countervailing force.
The demise of the Soviet Union also served
as a boon for Israel for yet another reason: it
created an opportunity for a closer alliance
between Israel and the militaristic faction of
the US ruling elites—elites whose interests
are vested largely in the military-industrial-
security-intelligence complex, that is, in
military capital, or war dividends.
Since the rationale for the large and growing
military apparatus during the Cold War years
was the “threat of communism,” US citizens
celebrated the collapse of the Berlin Wall as
the end of militarism and the dawn of “peace
dividends.”
But while the majority of the US citizens
celebrated the prospects of what appeared to
be imminent “peace dividends,” the powerful
interests vested in the expansion of military-
industrial-security-intelligence spending felt
threatened. Not surprisingly, these influential
forces moved swiftly to safeguard their
interests in the face of the “threat of peace.”
To stifle the voices that demanded peace
dividends, beneficiaries of war and militarism
began to methodically redefine the post-
Cold War “sources of threat” in the broader
framework of the new multi-polar world,
which purportedly goes way beyond the
traditional “Soviet threat” of the bipolar
world of the Cold War era. Instead of the
“communist threat” of the Soviet era, the
“menace” of “rogue states,” of radical Islam
and of “global terrorism” would have to do as
new enemies.
Just as the beneficiaries of war dividends view
international peace and stability inimical to
their interests, so too the militant Zionist
proponents of “greater Israel” perceive peace
between Israel and its Palestinian/Arab
neighbors perilous to their goal of gaining
control over the “promised land.” The reason
for this fear of peace is that, according to a
number of the United Nations’ resolutions,
peace would mean Israel’s return to its pre-
1967 borders. But because proponents of
“greater Israel” are unwilling to withdraw from
the occupied territories, they are therefore
afraid of peace—hence, their continued
attempts at sabotaging peace efforts and/or
negotiations.
Because the interests of the beneficiaries of
war dividends and those of radical Zionism
tend to converge over fomenting war and
political convulsion in the Middle East, an
ominously potent alliance has been forged
between them—ominous, because the mighty
US war machine is now supplemented by the
almost unrivaled public relations capabilities
of the hardline pro-Israel lobby in the United
States.
The alliance between these two militaristic
forces is largely unofficial and de facto; it is
subtlely forged through an elaborate network
of powerful neoconservative think tanks such
as The American Enterprise Institute, Project
for the New American Century, America
Israel Public Affairs Committee, Middle
East Media Research Institute, Washington
Institute for Near East Policy, Middle East
Forum, National Institute for Public Policy,
Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs,
and Center for Security Policy.
In the immediate aftermath of the Cold
War, these militaristic think tanks and their
hawkish neoconservative operatives published
a number of policy papers that clearly and
forcefully advocated plans for border change,
demographic change and regime change in
the Middle East. Although the plan to change
“unfriendly” regimes and balkanize the region
was to begin with the removal of Saddam
Hussein’s regime, as the “weakest link,” the
ultimate goal was (and still is) regime change
in Iran.
For example, in 1996 an influential Israeli think
tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and
Political Studies, sponsored and published
a policy document, titled “A Clean Break:
A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,”
which argued that the government of Prime
Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu should
“make a clean break”
with the Oslo peace
process and reassert
Israel’s claim to
the West Bank and
Gaza. It presented
a plan whereby
Israel would
“shape its strategic
environment,”
beginning with the
removal of Saddam
Hussein and the
installation of a
Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad, to serve as
a first step toward eliminating the anti-Israeli
governments of Syria and Iran.
The influential Jewish Institute for the
National Security Affairs (JINSA)
also occasionally issued statements and
policypapers
that strongly
advocated
“regime changes”
in the Middle
East. One of
its hardline
advisors Michael
Ladeen, who
also unofficially
advised the
George W. Bush
administration on
Middle Eastern
issues, openly
talked about
the coming era
of “total war,”
indicating that the United States should
expand its policy of “regime change” in Iraq to
other countries in the region such as Iran and
Syria. “In its fervent support for the hardline,
pro-settlement, anti-Palestinian Likud-
style policies in Israel, JINSA has essentially
recommended that ‘regime change’ in Iraq
should be just the beginning of a cascade of
toppling dominoes in the Middle East.
It follows from this brief sketch of the lobby’s
long-standing plans of regime change in Iran
that, as mentioned earlier, its opposition to the
nuclear deal is not because the deal does not
represent a win for Israel, or a loss for Iran, but
because Iran’s loss is not as big as the lobby
would have liked it to be, that
is, a devastating regime change
through bombing and military
aggression, as was done in Iraq
or Libya.
What the lobby seems to
overlook, or more likely,
unwilling to acknowledge or
accept, is that regime change
in Iran is currently taking place
from within, and the nuclear deal
is playing a major role in that
change. The lobby also seems
to overlook or deny the fact
that the Obama administration
opted for regime change from
within—first through the so-called “green revolution” and now through
nuclear deal—because various US-Israeli
led attempts at regime change from without
failed. Indeed, such futile attempts at regime
change prompted Iran to methodically build
robust defense capabilities and geopolitical
alliances, thereby establishing a military and
geopolitical counterweight to US-Israeli
plans in the region.
Furthermore, The Obama administration’s
plan of “peaceful” regime change seems to be
more like an experimental or tactical change of
approach to Iran than a genuine commitment
to peace, as it does not rule out the military
option in the future. If Iran carries out all
its 25-year long obligations under the deal,
regime change from within would be complete
and military option unnecessary—in essence,
it would be a gradual, systematic retrogression
to the days of the Shah. But if at any time in
the long course of the implementation of the
deal Iran resists or fails to carry out some of
the highly draconian of those obligations, the
US and its allies would again resort to military
muscle, and more confidently too because
success chances of military operations at that
time would be much higher, since Iran would
have by then greatly downgraded its military/
defense capabilities.
* Ismael Hossein-zadeh is Professor Emeritus of
Economics (Drake University). He is the author
of Beyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis (Routledge 2014), The Political
Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave–Macmillan 2007), and the Soviet Non-capitalist
Development: The Case of Nasser’s Egypt (Praeger Publishers 1989). He is also a contributor to
Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.
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