Israel Matzav

The US didn't stop Iraq, North Korea or Syria militarily and it won't stop Iran either

Former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Dore Gold argues that the United States will not stop Iran - just like it did not stop Iraq, North Korea or Syria - because it will never have precise enough intelligence to be 100% sure that Iran is building a nuclear weapon, and because there will never be a UN consensus to back such an operation.

Writing in Haaretz on August 8, Israel's former ambassador to the U.S., Salai Meridor, warns that it cannot be assumed that Washington will act in the Iranian case as well. He correctly noted that in the past, the U.S. in fact condemned the 1981 attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor and it refused to take military action against the Syrian nuclear program. He doesn't completely rule out the possibility that the U.S. will act, but he points out that it is not at all certain, for when past administrations were faced with making a decision and the moment of truth was reached, they chose to accept the nuclearization of rogue states over starting a war.

The case of North Korea stands out as an instance in which the U.S. would not take action against a dangerous rogue state that was developing a nuclear weapons capability. In March 1994, North Korea blocked inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from inspecting its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. By June, it appeared that the North Koreans were about to take the spent fuel rods from the reactor and extract enough weapons-grade plutonium for five or six bombs.

The U.N. imposed economic sanctions on North Korea. President Clinton wrote in his memoirs that he was determined to stop North Korea from developing a nuclear arsenal, "even at the risk of war." The Pentagon planned to destroy the Yongbyon reactor, but ultimately pulled back from its threats. Just like today, high-level U.S. officials said that all options are on the table — but that was as far as they went. Negotiations were launched with North Korea that led to the signing of the "Agreed Framework," which the North Koreans violated within a few years. It would become clear that Washington had not pushed hard enough.

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Why has the U.S. not taken more forceful action against rogue states crossing the nuclear threshold? First, there is the issue of intelligence. Even a superpower like the U.S., may not have a sufficiently clear intelligence picture that would allow it to detect that a state like North Korea, which is isolated from the world, is about to conduct a nuclear test. This is also a problem for the American intelligence agencies in a country like Iran.

Indeed, just two years ago, Robert M. Gates, who was then the defense secretary, was quoted saying about the Iranians: “If their policy is to go to the threshold but not to assemble a nuclear weapon, how do you tell that they have not assembled? I don’t actually know how you would verify that.” Gates comments were important. He was a former head of the CIA and has a keen understanding of the real limits of intelligence.

The problem that Gates describes explains why it is hard to move against states developing nuclear weapons if you don't know they are actually taking the last steps towards a bomb. In his memoirs, former Vice President Dick Cheney adds that since the Iraq War, the U.S. intelligence community is afraid of repeating the same error of relying on false intelligence, thereby affecting its decision-making even when it has "solid" information, as was the case with Syria.

Read the whole thing. Israel cannot afford to rely on the US. It must act on its own.

Labels: Iranian nuclear threat, Israeli attack on Iran

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:49 PM