By Yoram Getzler. Thank you Haaretz for the two excellent, important and informative interviews over the last two weeks by Ari Shavit. Haaretz and Mr. Shavit have done an important service in bringing to light expert intelligence regarding the challenges presented by the Iranian nuclear threat. And the results of the long term inaction by the Great Powers.
Most everybody, including General Eiland gives PM Netanyahu and his government good marks for bringing the Iranian nuclear threat to the awareness of the international community. however ineffective this has been.
For all that public posturing, the fact is there has been a resounding lack of action sufficient to effect real change on Iran by the international community. I believe that one reason for our current dangerous state of imminent peril is that Netanyahu, brought Auschwitz to the table as the foremost analogy to awaken the world community. His idea was, Auschwitz as threat, if action is not forthcoming. Auschwitz may be a powerful metaphor to most of the Jewish people, but for the world, its just another catastrophe, that happened somewhere else,to other people. I believe a more relevant, appropriate, stimulating analogy should have been the Rape of Nanking in 1937 the attack on Pearl Harbor 1941, Dunkirk 1940 and Stalingrad 1942 to ’43. These were the consequences of excuses, inaction and delay by the Great Powers in the past century.
The international community having chosen to ignore the violent behavior of both Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany and the explicit threats voiced by both governments when both countries were still weak enough to be intimidated by the World Powers paid dearly. This brought about not only the murder of six million Jews but the deaths of an additional fifty four million non-Jews.
Are the Iranians rational? Israeli experts and others have answered yes. Hashemi Rafsanjani former president I believe testified to Iranian rationality when he was president of Iran,. He detailed the cost effectiveness of a single nuclear devise exploded in central Israel against one or even two or three exploding in Iran. At this point an additional example of rational cost effectiveness analysis would accept the consequences of a year or two of additional sanctions causing national sacrifice and hardship compared to giving up an investment that cost Iran billions of dollars and a vast incalculable amount of national prestige and pride invested in the Iranian military nuclear project. Does this equation call for a high level of rational thought to understand the anticipated result of the “too little, too late” classic response of the world community.
NOTE: In retrospect perhaps a strange and eerie comparison with the ineffective negotiations with Iran today by the world powers who have waited until it is all but too late: In 1940 Japanese negotiators were in Washington DC and ended the negotiations with the US government just 30 minutes before the Japanese bombs fell on Pearl Harbor. Which means the Japanese aircraft were already in the air on the way to Pearl Harbor, while the Japanese and Americans continued in polite conversations.
