Ultimately, I agree with what Tom Friedman is saying about what Israel should be saying and doing about the Iran Deal, so I want to be clear about that. But there’s just something so Suck.On.This about his “out-crazy” theory that I have to mention it.
I’d also note the reason Hezbollah hasn’t launched an unprovoked attack on Israel since 2006 is it knows, by experience, that Israel’s core strategic doctrine is this: No enemy will ever out-crazy us into leaving this region.
Israel plays, when it has to, by what I’ve called “Hama rules” — war without mercy. The Israeli Army tries to avoid hitting civilian targets, but it has demonstrated in both Lebanon and Gaza that it will not be deterred by the threat of civilian Arab casualties when Hezbollah or Hamas launches its rockets from civilian areas. It is not pretty, but this is not Scandinavia. The Jewish state has survived in an Arab-Muslim sea because its neighbors know that for all its Western mores it will not be out-crazied. It will play by local rules. Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah know this, which is why Israel’s generals know they possess significant deterrence against an Iranian bomb.
It’s a nice little construct, a way of trying to understand the region. But it’s all such horseshit.
Israel has three concerns about Iran having a nuclear weapon but none of them involve Iran actually launching one at them and so none of them are really about deterrence in the sense Friedman intends.
First, if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, it will, like the Soviet Union/Russia, North Korea and Pakistan, become freer to act however it wants in its sphere of influence.
So, second, the Arab nations will be tempted to create a nuclear weapons capability of their own to protect themselves and to give them more freedom of action.
And, third, there’s always the small possibility that proxies could be used to attack Israel with a smaller nuclear device or dirty bombs that have as their origin the Iranian nuclear program or some future Arab program.
But, even these concerns are not foremost in Netanyahu’s mind. His main concern is to prevent Iran from getting the legitimacy that will be conferred by having the sanctions lifted and normal trade and travel policies restored.
We organized the sanctions on Iran to get them to the nuclear bargaining table. Israel wants the sanctions to cause regime change, and short of that they want permanent international isolation and the maintenance of Iran as a pariah state.
This is a much higher priority for Netanyahu than the bomb precisely because the bomb is not the primary thing he’s worried about. Iran will not fire a bomb at Israel and it is extremely unlikely that they will hand one to Hizbollah or any other nuts. And even an Arab nuclear program seems like a pretty remote threat at the moment due to all the turmoil in the region.
But the Iranian regime will remain hostile and has the ability to cause problems for Israel by non-nuclear means. Getting right with the international community will only increase their conventional threat.
So, Friedman isn’t even talking about the real issues and the real concerns.
Instead, he’s still operating on the same assumption that led him to support the Iraq invasion, which is that the Arabs need to be treated with a little irrational brutality or they won’t behave.
And, whether you accept that argument or you don’t, it’s not pertinent to Israel’s opposition to this deal.
