‘Iran sanctions won’t work’
SANCTIONS will not stop the Iranian regime from acquiring nuclear weapons, Middle East commentator Daniel Pipes said last week.
SANCTIONS will not stop the Iranian regime from acquiring nuclear weapons, Middle East commentator Daniel Pipes said last week.
Pipes, visiting Australia as a guest of the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), is the founder and president of the Middle East Forum, editor of the Middle East Quarterly journal and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.
The Washington Post has called him “perhaps the most prominent US scholar on radical Islam”, while his writings on Middle East politics, Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism have attracted supporters and detractors alike. Addressing an AIJAC briefing in Sydney, Pipes said the Iran issue would ultimately come down to a question of either accepting an Iran with nuclear weapons or using force to stop them.
“The Iranian government is absolutely dead set on building nuclear arms, and every indication so far has been that nothing has convinced it to have second thoughts,” Pipes said.
“Therefore, this implies that sanctions and other nonviolent methods will not work.”
Pipes indicated he himself is in favour of force, and said the potential fallout – in both economic and potential terrorism terms – would still be preferable to Tehran acquiring nuclear arms. “Although there have been many other tyrants with nuclear weapons … none of them had an apocalyptic mindset,” he said.
Pipes said the Iranian nuclear threat was one of two main threats facing Israel, the other one being delegitimisation. “Delegitimisation really is the battlefield,” he said.
“This is something where everyone has a role to play. Whether it be Max Brenner [protests], or universities cutting off Israeli counterparts, there are many things going on where standing up for Israel is important.”
He said Israel had thus far been mostly shielded from the political upheavals in the area known as the Arab Spring, a term he was quick to say, “I never, ever use – [it’s] seasonally inaccurate, politically inaccurate.
“For the moment Israel is not being directly affected except in Sinai,” he said. “The Egyptians, over the last few days, have put troops and missiles it appears into the Sinai.
“To a certain extent it is without Israeli agreement, and while the Israeli focus has been so much on Iran I worry that this is a major step in breaching the 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.”
GARETH NARUNSKY
Middle East commentator Daniel Pipes.
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