By Daniel Luban
This Friday, the American Enterprise Institute will host an event addressing the question “Should Israel attack Iran?” The event includes, among others, Iran uberhawk Michael Rubin and infamous “torture lawyer” John Yoo, but the real star is likely to be John Bolton, the former U.N. ambassador whose right-of-Attila views left him an outcast even within the second Bush administration. (Bolton was eventually forced out when it became clear that he would be unable to win Senate confirmation for the U.N. post.)
If Bolton’s recent rhetoric is any indication, his AEI appearance may accomplish the formidable feat of making Michael Rubin sound like a dove. Discussing Iran during a Tuesday speech at the University of Chicago, Bolton appeared to call for nothing less than an Israeli nuclear first strike against the Islamic Republic. (The speech, sponsored by the University Young Republicans and Chicago Friends of Israel, was titled, apparently without a trace of irony, “Ensuring Peace.”)
“Negotiations have failed, and so too have sanctions,” Bolton said, echoing his previously-stated belief that sanctions will prove ineffectual in changing Tehran’s behavior. “So we’re at a very unhappy point — a very unhappy point — where unless Israel is prepared to use nuclear weapons against Iran’s program, Iran will have nuclear weapons in the very near future.”
Bolton made clear that the latter option is unacceptable. “There are some people in the administration who think that it’s not really a problem, we can contain and deter Iran, as we did the Soviet Union during the Cold War. I think this is a great, great mistake and a dangerously weak approach…Whatever else you want to say about them, at least the Soviets believed that they only went around once in this world, and they weren’t real eager to give that up — as compared to a theological regime in Tehran which yearns for life in the hereafter more than life on earth…I don’t think [deterrence] works that way with a country like Iran.”
While Bolton coyly refused to spell out his conclusion, the implications of his argument were clear. If neither negotiations, nor sanctions, nor deterrence are options, then by his logic the only remaining option is for “Israel…to use nuclear weapons against Iran’s program.”
Of course, it is nothing new for Bolton and his neoconservative allies to threaten an Israeli strike against Iran. But Bolton’s use of the “n-word” is, I believe, new for him, and marks a significant rhetorical escalation from the hawks. An Israeli strike, nuclear or otherwise, without U.S. permission remains unlikely. But as it often the case, I suspect that Bolton’s intention is less to give an accurate description of reality than it is to stake out positions extreme enough to shift the boundaries of debate as a whole to the right.
[Cross-posted at The Faster Times.]
The application of dangerous executive orders, Patriot Laws Military Commission Act and other laws could make the entire AEI event a terrorist threat and all attendees and especially speakers could be arrested by the U.S government for fomenting and encouraging terrorist acts. But in this instance it is apparently government sanctioned planning of violence that will be occurring. Double Standards are becoming a national political value.
The Congress of the United States has been very busy passing laws restricting freedom in the name of security that can be used arbitrarily. That is why the Founders of this country did not restrict our freedoms, for they could have inserted all kinds of limitations on our rights and freedoms themselves.
The incompetence of the federal government, especially our national elected leaders ought to have been the focus of our Congress after 9/11. Simply following up on valid tips about foreigners learning how to fly jets without wanting to land them and banning box cutters and other similar cutting objects from carry on baggage would have either prevented this horrendous crime or made it much more difficult.
Instead we create an entire new cabinet department, spend hundreds of billions of dollars invading foreign countries that have either nothing or little to do with 9/11 and restrict our freedoms with police state laws. Quite a day job by people all with excellent credit reports.
It is precisely because they believe in an after-life that they will not obtain or use nuclear weapons which they continue to assert are ‘un-Islamic’. At what pt. does fear turn into fascism? Israel has been living in fear for decades and over that time has begun to indulge more and more into scenarios and fantasies of cruelty and destruction. Witness the crowds who gathered at the promontory overlooking Gaza to dance and celebrate the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent people. The Christian fundamentalists who have managed to subvert Christianity to the pt. of transforming it into anti-Christianity are of course clamoring for this mass murder which is the real objective of the planned attack on Iran.
Some pretty sharp comments! I disagree that mass murder would be the “real objective” of a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran. That’s pure hyperbole. The neocons and the evangelistas over here and the Likudists over there are, some of them, bad people (the rest are fools) who would be unmoved by civilian casualties; however, they are not mass murderers. And I say that as someone who is 100% opposed to their policies and goals.
Recall that Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic recently stated that, “I recently asked one of his [Netanyahu’s] advisers to gauge for me the depth of Mr. Netanyahu’s anxiety about Iran. His answer: Think Amalek.” We know that according to the Old Testament, the Amalekites were the greatest enemies of the Jews, attacking them on their escape from Egypt. Thus, metaphorically, Iran’s nonexistent nuclear weapon program is our era’s Amalek’s arsenal that poses an “existential threat” to Israel.
The idea that an ally and mouthpiece of Israel’s PM with such thinking has the nerve to talk about how Iranian leaders view the world is nothing short of astonishing.
Say what you want about Iranian leaders (and I despise them for what they have done to Iranian people, particularly recently), but when it comes to foreign policy, they have been completely pragmatic and realist.
Can’t we just nuke Bolton instead???