Israel, Alone

The nuclear cat is out of the bag – and Olmert issues a warning…

An Important Article
By Justin Raimondo

".....Yet, taken in context – not only the context of the interview, but the context of Israel's present position – I would argue the Israeli Prime Minister was sending a message not only to Iran, but also to the U.S.....

The message sent to Washington – and, indeed, to the entire world – is that Israel is making a clean break with the policies of the past, based as they were on a strategy of economic, diplomatic, and military dependence on Western allies. Israel feels it has been abandoned by the West, including not only Britain but also the U.S. – and all bets are off.

This fear of abandonment, although greatly exaggerated, is not entirely unfounded. It is based on a sensitive reading of the political dynamics in the U.S. and the threatened future of Israel's "special relationship" with the Americans. The Israel lobby in the U.S. has recently taken it on the chin four times in a row, without so much as getting a punch in edgewise: it started with the arrest and indictment of two top AIPAC officials, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, for espionage. They are charged with funneling classified information, some of it high-level stuff, to Israeli embassy officials. Then there was the Harvard University research paper authored by professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, documenting and decrying what they called "the Lobby" and its distorting effect on American foreign policy. Now there's the Baker-Hamilton commission linking the Palestinian question to our "grave and deteriorating" prospects in Iraq, and, to top it off, the Jimmy Carter book.

The Lobby is reeling. For the first time since the Eisenhower era, our Israeli-centric policy in the Middle East is being openly and successfully challenged.....

The road to Damascus and Tehran would run through Baghdad, however, as the authors of "A Clean Break" put it:

"Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq – an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right – as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions."

Syria and Lebanon were seen by the Clean Breakers as the front line in their battle to expand the frontiers of Israeli power. Following a successful campaign to "redefine Iraq," it would be possible to envision a "profound" shift in the regional "strategic balance of power." Jordan would be drawn into the new order, and the Israelis would succeed in "diverting Syria's attention by using Lebanese opposition elements to destabilize Syrian control of Lebanon."

A decade after the Clean Break scenario was conceived, its policy prescriptions read like prophecies. However, as the game plan approaches its projected climax – an attack on Iran and/or Syria – there are numerous indications the U.S. is bailing, and not only in Iraq. The appearance on the American political and intellectual scene of forces willing and able to challenge the Lobby's unquestioned hegemony over U.S. foreign policy – especially when it comes to the crucial [.pdf] Middle East – threatens to scuttle the Clean Break scenario. Israel wants regime-change in Syria and Iran, while the Baker-Hamilton folks want to open up negotiations with them over the future of Iraq........

Now that the full disaster in Iraq is unfolding in all its bloody viciousness and tragic futility, the Israelis are catching a lot of the blame, and the power of the Lobby is being undermined, perhaps fatally. The cord to the U.S., which has sustained Israel for so long, is in danger of being cut – before Israel is ready to make the break. Iraq is destroyed, but the front-line enemies of Israel – Syria and Iran – are still left standing......

No wonder the Israelis have abandoned all pretenses of reasonableness and are now threatening to plunge the Middle East into the throes of a nuclear Armageddon. Israel is alone against the world, or so their leaders seem to believe: cornered, they are revealing their true face, snarling their resentment and defiance – their ire directed not just or even primarily at the Iranians, but at U.S. policymakers.....

Would the Israelis ever use them? That is the question that we have to ask in light of Olmert's unprecedented admission. After all, why "come out" to the world as a nuclear power at this particular moment? Surely the threat of a nuclear first strike against Iran is implicit in Olmert's "slip of the tongue."

The Israeli conceit is that to equate a regime such as the one that rules in Tehran with Israeli "democracy" is an obscene "moral equivalence" that overlooks the obvious: after all, we can trust Tel Aviv with WMD, but not the Iranian ayatollahs. Yet the growing extremism dominating Israeli political life, as demonstrated by the rise of such a dangerous character as Avigdor Lieberman, points to a troubling trend that has culminated in Olmert's stunning announcement.

We are now about to experience the consequences –the "blowback" – of our Israel-centric policy, which has fostered and nurtured Israeli ultra-nationalism in the womb of the "special relationship." As in so many other cases of aiding and abetting foreign "freedom fighters," we'll find we have created yet another monster. By the time this realization dawns on us, however, it will, unfortunately, be too late."