‘Only a credible US threat will deter Iran’
IRAN will only step back from developing nuclear weapons if it feels the threat of an American strike against it is credible – and so far that isn’t the case.
IRAN will only step back from developing nuclear weapons if it feels the threat of an American strike against it is credible – and so far that isn’t the case.
That’s the message from two leading experts who have been visiting Australia this month – Jerusalem Post military correspondent and defence analyst Yaakov Katz, and senior fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies in Washington Dr Emanuele Ottolenghi.
Speaking at a briefing hosted by the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council last week, each outlined the threat to both the Jewish State and the world posed by the Islamic Republic, and their belief that while sanctions may be effective in slowing down the nuclear program, they won’t, by themselves, prevent it.
Comparing Iran to inmates who’d escaped from a mental asylum, Ottolenghi joked that the latter turned back when they got tired. Iran, by contrast, he insisted, was a rational actor – even if run by Holocaust-denying fanatics – and that it had come too far to simply abandon its program when it faced a few final hurdles.
“I don’t expect diplomacy to work because they are moderates,” he said. “I expect diplomacy to work because they don’t want to die as a regime.
“A realisation that whatever else happens they will not be able to achieve their goal and they will pay a tremendously high price trying, nevertheless, may bring them to their senses.”
Ottolenghi believes it would be the regime’s survival instinct that would lead Iran’s leadership to cut a deal, “not out of humanity towards the human race”.
Noting that many of their nuclear scientists had been assassinated or defected, and that there had been numerous attempts to sabotage the program, Katz concurred. “The Iranians for a good part of the past decade have overcome unbelievable obstacles and have done what they’ve done against all odds … every possible way to stop them has been used but they’ve overcome it. And they’ve reached the stage where… all they are is a decision away [from making a bomb].”
“For you to say today just with diplomacy we can stop them, the temptation is too great … There has to be something far greater than just diplomacy on the table, far greater than sanctions … You have to have a real credible military threat.”
So far, though, that threat was lacking, said Katz, because the Obama Administration wasn’t explicit enough in drawing its red line and because Iran sensed the United States was putting the brakes on Israel from acting alone.
“Even though Israel is beating the war drums and sabre rattling at the same time, when Israel threatens and waves the big stick, when someone from the United States, whether its Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta or National Security adviser [Tom] Donelan, or even the president himself, comes out and says ‘No Israel, now is not the time to attack’, it almost seems as if, from an Iranian perspective … ‘there’s no way Israel is attacking’.”
Katz added that only a credible threat from the US would suffice, not Israel, as “we’re peanuts compared to America”.
Rhetoric though, he explained, was not enough. The red line had to be drawn with a show of force by America to back it up. “They could put aircraft carriers in the Gulf,” he said. “They could conduct maneuvers in the Persian Gulf, they could beef up their forces in the Persian Gulf, they could come out and say if you continue to enrich uranium to 20 per cent … we will attack you, in no clearer terms.”
ZEDDY LAWRENCE
Emanuele Ottolenghi.
comments