The strained relationship between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu during the last few days over Israel’s threats of unilateral action against Iran has focused the world’s attention on the sensitive issue of nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Would this mess be avoided, and would Israel be safer, if Netanyahu agreed to a regional nonproliferation treaty as will be discussed at a conference in Finland later this year? Or would giving up nuclear weapons be suicidal for Israel?
Why Would Jerusalem Budge?
By Mya Guarnieri, blogger, +927
Might Israel attend the meeting about a nuclear-weapon-free Middle East in Finland? Certainly. Just like it has "participated" in the peace process — with no real intention of making concessions. In both cases, there are no consequences for Israel sticking to its agenda. So why would Israel budge?
Israel won't sign a nonproliferation treaty, because that would mean giving up its military edge in the Middle East. Obama's speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee suggests that the U.S. will ensure that Israel remains the regional powerhouse.
This question has arisen before, in 2010, when Netanyahu and Obama were already in office. The U.S. supported the initiative; Israel, of course, rejected it.
What’s changed since then? Little to nothing. If anything, Israel has only become more defiant. Last year, Obama called for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal based on 1967 borders. But 2011 saw Israel increase settlements in the West Bank.
For me, where it gets really interesting is that the U.S. initially wanted Israel to sign the nonproliferation treaty, back in the late 1960s, and Israel wouldn't. This is a reminder that the six decades of friendship Obama spoke of earlier this week weren’t always so friendly. Some argue that Israel's refusal to sign this treaty may have given Iran the incentive to go nuclear. It’s similar, perhaps, to how Israel had a hand in creating Hamas. Israel wanted a rival to Fatah; instead, it got, as The Wall Street Journal says, “unintended and often perilous consequences.”
Speaking of Israel creating its own bogeyman, a pre-emptive strike on Iran might actually push Iran to accelerate its nuclear program, as it has been argued was the case with Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq — creating exactly the scenario Israeli leaders fear the most.
Israel’s Right to Survive
By Daniel Gordis, author, "Saving Israel"
International exasperation with Israel’s role in its conflict with the Palestinians has created an atmosphere so poisoned that, in the name of “fairness,” even proposals that could lead to the destruction of the Jewish state are now given serious hearing.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran has repeatedly said that the Jewish state must be destroyed. The weapon he now seeks would enable him to carry out his threat. Is “nuclear nonproliferation,” a euphemism for denuding Israel of its defensive capacity, really the way to respond?
If Iran is a rational actor, the only factor preventing its attacking Israel is Israel’s second-strike capacity. And if it is not rational, all the more reason Israel should not bear sole responsibility for ensuring that Iran not acquire such a weapon of mass destruction. Every reasonable observer of the Middle East knows which country might use such a weapon, and which would not. Can anyone, no matter how critical of Israel on the Palestinian front, even imagine a scenario in which Israel would use a nuclear weapon pre-emptively against an enemy? Has the international conversation become so corrupted we now compare Israel’s moral compass to Ahmadinejad’s?
Had Israel’s neighbors ever accepted its right to exist, a level nuclear playing field might be fair. But they never have, and after Hosni Mubarak and Bashar al-Assad, Israel will face more enemies, not less.
Israel was founded after the worst genocidal rampage in history, when the West admitted that because of its own failings, the Jews were never permanently secure anywhere. Israel was the West’s belated attempt to ensure the future of the Jewish people. Do the Jews now deserve a future less than they did 65 years ago?
No state has an obligation to commit suicide because the world has tired of a conflict that it cannot settle. No people has an obligation to disappear just to placate a world that no longer cares about its existence. And the West has no moral right to make the Jews, once again, the victims of its own moral failures and its unwillingness to do what is right.
Come Out of the Nuclear Closet
By Micah Zenko, Council on Foreign Relations
Israel has been a nuclear weapons state since May 1967, when Prime Minister Levi Eshkol ordered the assembly of two nuclear devices to be driven to the Egyptian border, in the event that Arab troops defeated the Israeli forces. Over the past 45 years, Israel has refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, place its civilian nuclear program under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards, or even acknowledge that it has the bomb. Instead, Israeli officials such as Prime Minister Netanyahu have maintained, “We won’t be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East.”
It is time for Israel to come out of the nuclear closet.By maintaining this fiction, Israel has pigeonholed itself as an international pariah, allowing adversaries and the nonaligned movement to use Israeli intransigence as an excuse to slow progress on nuclear nonproliferation objectives, including preventing a nuclear Iran.
Israel’s bombs are not the primary reason that the Iranian regime has covertly pursued some capabilities for a nuclear weapon. Iran has been surrounded by the bomb for decades, including United States nuclear weapons-capable submarines; the Soviet Union’s arsenal in border countries; Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities; and the estimated 60 B-61 bombs still in Turkey. Nevertheless, a long-term and comprehensive agreement with Tehran to permit the verification that nuclear material is not being diverted from civilian use requires threat reductions via security guarantees and limits on other countries’ nuclear programs, including Israel’s.
But Israel will not eliminate its nuclear weapons program simply in order to reduce regional tensions or pave the way for a broader Middle East peace. Israeli officials have said off the record that they would only acknowledge their nuclear program and discuss constraints after a sustained end to regional hostilities and reciprocal limitations on its neighbors’ W.M.D. programs.
There are three concrete steps that the Israeli government should take. First, provide transparency about the size, command and control, nuclear security features, and nonproliferation objectives of its nuclear arsenal, following the example of other states that have not signed the nonproliferation treaty. Second, in light of its intention to pursue civilian nuclear energy, sign a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency covering all existing or future nuclear facilities. Third, actively participate in international forums, like the conference on the W.M.D.-free Middle East to be held in Finland later this year.
A Security Linchpin
By Meyrav Wurmser, Hudson Institute
For decades, Israel has demonstrated that it conceives of and uses its nuclear program responsibly to deter its enemies, and it never caused Egypt, Jordan or Saudi Arabia to seek a nuclear program.
In contrast, Iran has consistently portrayed its program as an offensive agent of Israel’s annihilation, as the widow of one nuclear scientist recently assassinated made clear. Since Iran’s program existentially threatens Israel, Israel must possess the means to deter or defeat the realization of that threat. Nowhere is this difference between Israel’s and Iran’s programs highlighted more than by Saudi officials who have stated Iran’s, not Israel’s, program is the red line which provokes Riyadh’s quest for nuclear weapons.
Nor would an Israeli offer of disarmament defuse tensions. Iran maintains that only threats and violence cower Israel. An Israeli attempt to seduce Tehran into surrendering its ambitions by accepting regional disarmament would only confirm Iran’s belief that its belligerence and aggressive behavior toward Israel achieved what no other leaders could. So, rather than moderate Tehran’s ambition, it would reward Iran's aggression, confirm its strategy of threats, and encourage it to accelerate.
Regarding the regional proliferation environment, Israel’s nuclear program is only one of the problems with weapons of mass destruction. Israel has long accepted the idea of a W.M.D.-free zone, but only linked to solidly verifiable agreements on biological weapons, which are incapable of being verifiably controlled. For Israel to disarm without an effective biological control regime is to leave Israel asymmetrically vulnerable to a W.M.D. attack.
Israel relies on its ultimate weapon to guarantee its numerical inferiority will not translate into destruction – very much like numerically inferior NATO forces refused to sign away their rights on first-use of nuclear weapons to guarantee Warsaw Pact armies could not translate their numerical superiority into victory.
The West has anchored its vision of Arab-Israeli peace to land-for-peace. As Israel withdraws from territories, it surrenders security and strategic depth for which only strategic power – namely maintaining its nuclear arsenal – can compensate. Repeatedly, Israel’s allies and neighbors traded acquiescence in its nuclear status for Jerusalem’s strategic confidence and willingness to trade land for peace, which yielded, among other things, the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.
Peace Should Precede a Pact
By Ehud Eiran, former Israeli government official
Traditional Israeli policy has been that only when the region becomes peaceful and stable, would Jerusalem be willing to discuss regional nonproliferation possibilities.
Israel's position is a result of its rather accurate belief that its very legitimacy is contested by its immediate environment, and that only its technological and military superiority stands between it and annihilation. Jerusalem's approach is further a result of the existing limits of international regimes to contain outliers and liars such as Iran and North Korea. As a result, Israel preferred over the years to engage as little as possible with international nonproliferation regimes. It seems to me that current regional realities, including the political instability and the apparent Iranian pursuit of a military nuclear program, despite the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, provide further support for Israel's position.
Yet, framed differently and broadened, a discussion about regional security, including nonproliferation issues, may actually be beneficial for Israel. After all, its pursuit of advanced weapons is a result of a deep sense of insecurity; therefore, any effort to reduce these insecurities could open the way, in the long run, for some nonproliferation possibilities. Driven by a power-based belief system, there is a greater chance that Israel would enter such talks if they are properly crafted. Specifically, they should be in line with its interests rather than built to constrain them. Indeed, under these conditions Israel took part in the Arms Control and Regional Security working group that was part of the Madrid peace process in the in the 1990s.
Since then the region changed. Compared to the hopeful 1990s these are probably times with a greater security deficit. Similarly, the term security changed and it now includes issues like refugee flows and broader notions of human security.
On both accounts then, a regional conversation on security will be fruitful. Granted, this is not a comprehensive treaty, but it is a realistic goal, and one that may take us a step a closer to a better regional reality.
Deterrent or Bargaining Chip?
By Zeev Maoz, political scientist
A comprehensive and verifiable weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone in the Middle East is in Israel’s best long-term interest. Israel should be leading an effort to establish a regional security regime, for three principal reasons.
First, in contrast to what most Israelis seem to believe, Israel’s nuclear deterrence has been patently ineffective. Israel was not able to prevent or stop missile and rocket attacks on its population centers by Saddam Hussein in 1991, by Hezbollah in 2006, or by Hamas from 2007 to '09. It was diplomacy and moderation that led to peace with Egypt and Jordan, not nuclear deterrence. Paradoxically, raising the specter of a nuclear Iran indicates that Israel’s leaders do not trust their own nuclear deterrence. What is the use of a deterrence policy that does not deter?
Second, Israeli nuclear monopoly in the Middle East is not sustainable over the long run. An Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear installations would buy Israel some time at best, at a high cost. Iran and others will ultimately find a way to acquire such weapons. Moreover, several Middle Eastern states possess chemical and biological weapons and long-range ballistic missiles. Ultimately, Israel would have to choose between a nuclearized and a nuclear-free Middle East. The latter poses far greater risk to its security and survival than the former.
Third, Israel could use its nuclear weapons as a bargaining chip that would help the nation define the terms of the regional security regime. It could supplement the “land for peace” principle with the “nukes for security” principle.
Israel’s military strategy has been daring and creative, while its peace strategy has been hesitant and reactive. It is time Israeli diplomacy caught up to its military ingenuity.
Accept the Unthinkable
By Menachem Klein, Bar Ilan University
Israel's "nuclearophobia" goes much beyond security concerns. It is rooted in Israel’s perception of itself and its region. In 2006 and again this year, Ehud Barak defined Israel as a villa in the jungle. As long as this concept rules over the Israeli mind, Israel will never trust its Arab neighbors, nor expect them to behave rationally.
Israel relies on its armed forces, not on regional nonproliferation treaty and regional peace accords. Its diplomats serve its generals, not the other way around.
Moreover, Israel asks the international community to let it remain exceptional. Rules regarding nuclear weapons implemented in other parts of the world are irrelevant in the Middle East. Israeli leaders believe we must possess existential insurance weapons to deter our neighbors and have second-strike capability, for Israel can't be solely blamed for Middle East wars.
The psychological and historical causes of these views are understandable and undeniable. But today, the Jewish state, at the age of 64, is no longer absorbing many Holocaust survivors. Therefore it can be expected to remain loyal to its pre-Holocaust Zionist foundations, which were not about building a citadel-state or living by the sword.
Zionism is also about leaving behind old concepts as it brings the Jewish state into the family of nations as an equal member. It’s about time for Israeli leaders to understand that Israel's economic, physical and technological superiority and its political exclusivity cannot assure the state's long-term existence. They need to consider regional security and peace agreements so that Israel no longer remains outside the international supervision of nuclear weapons.
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