Let’s Be Honest About Israel’s Nukes

By VICTOR GILINSKY and HENRY D. SOKOLSKI:      Sept.18, 2013    New York Times
 THE recent agreement between the United States and Russia on Syria’s chemical weapons made clear what should have been obvious long ago: President Obama’s effort to uphold international norms against weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East will entangle the United States in a diplomatic and strategic maze that is about much more than Syria’s chemical arsenal.

President Bashar al-Assad of Syria insists that the purpose of his chemical arsenal was always to deter Israel’s nuclear weapons. If Syria actually disarms, what about Egypt and Israel? Egypt (about whose chemical weapons the United States has been strangely silent) points to Israel. And Israel of course has its own chemical weapons to deter Syria’s and Egypt’s, and it is not about to give them up.  A headline in the Israeli daily Haaretz a few days ago stated: “Israel adamant it won’t ratify chemical arms treaty before hostile neighbors.”These three countries have not adhered to the Biological Weapons Convention either. And Israel is not a member of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, despite having developed a formidable nuclear arsenal of its own, which will soon become the central fact in this drama, whether the United States likes it or not.

An obstacle of America’s own making has long prevented comprehensive negotiations over weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. While the world endlessly discusses Iran’s nuclear capabilities and the likelihood that it will succeed in developing an atomic arsenal, hardly anyone in the United States ever mentions Israel’s nuclear weapons.  Mr. Obama, like his predecessors, pretends that he doesn’t know anything about them. This taboo impedes discussions within Washington and internationally. It has kept America from pressing Egypt and Syria to ratify the chemical and biological weapons conventions. Doing so would have brought immediate objections about American acceptance of Israel’s nuclear weapons.

What sustains this pretense is the myth that America is locked into covering up Israeli nuclear bombs because of a 1969 agreement between President Richard M. Nixon and Israel’s prime minister, Golda Meir. For Mr. Nixon, it was mainly about gaining Israeli support in the cold war. He and Mrs. Meir understood the need to discourage the Soviets from providing their Arab allies with nuclear weapons. A declared Israeli nuclear arsenal would have led to pressure for Moscow to do so. But such cold war reasons for America to stay mum evaporated decades ago. Everyone knows the Israelis have nuclear bombs. Today, the main effect of the ambiguity is to prevent serious regional arms-control negotiations.

All other countries in the region are members of the nonproliferation treaty, but there are still unresolved issues. Syria was caught building an illicit nuclear reactor in 2007, which Israel swiftly bombed. Mr. Assad still has not allowed international inspectors to fully investigate that obliterated reactor site. And Syria’s ally Iran is suspected of trying to assemble its own weapons program to challenge Israel’s nuclear monopoly. Indeed, many analysts believed that Mr. Obama’s decision to issue a “red line” barring the use of chemical weapons in Syria was in fact driven by the perceived need to demonstrate that he was prepared to use force against Iran if it moved further toward nuclear weapons.

This witches’ brew was supposed to become the subject of an international conference, mandated in 2010 by the unanimous vote of the members of the nonproliferation treaty, including the United States. But that conference hasn’t happened, in part because of White House ambivalence about how it might affect Israel.

In April, the American assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation, Thomas M. Countryman, expressed hope that the conference would be held by this fall. And earlier this month, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, urged all parties to set a conference date “as quickly as possible.” He also argued that it should include Israel and Iran. Russia attempted to include the conference in last week’s agreement, but Secretary of State John Kerry resisted. It is not going to go away.

If Washington wants negotiations over weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East to work — or even just to avoid making America appear ridiculous — Mr. Obama should begin by being candid. He cannot expect the countries participating in a conference to take America seriously if the White House continues to pretend that we don’t know whether Israel has nuclear weapons, or for that matter whether Egypt and Israel have chemical or biological ones.

And if Israel’s policy on the subject is so frozen that it is unable to come clean, Mr. Obama must let the United States government be honest about Israel’s arsenal and act on those facts, for both America’s good and Israel’s.

Victor Gilinsky, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is an energy consultant. Henry D. Sokolski, a former deputy for nonproliferation policy in the defense department, is executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/19/opinion/global/lets-be-honest-about-israels-nukes.html?WT.mc_id=AD-D-E-OTB-GLOBOP-0913-&WT.mc_ev=click&WT.mc_c=__

Syria's senior cleric pardons the rebels who killed his son

The Grand Mufti of Syria preaches a message of forgiveness

Robert  Fisk                        International/UK                            23 September 2013

 ‘I met those men who assassinated my own son – and they told me they didn’t even know whom they were killing.” Sheikh Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, the Grand Mufti of Syria, sits in a straightbacked chair, his immaculate white turban atop a narrow, intelligent and very troubled face. “He was only 21, my youngest son. On that day, he was to be betrothed to his future wife.  I said to the two men ‘I forgive you’ and I asked the judge to forgive them. But he said they were guilty of 10 times as many crimes and must be judged.”

 “All the men involved were Syrians, from Aleppo. They said they received their command from Turkey and Saudi Arabia, that they were each paid the equivalent of £350; Saria Hassoun’s life was worth a total of just £700.

Sheikh Hassoun is, you might say, government-approved – he prayed beside Bashar al-Assad in a Damascus mosque after a bomb warning – and his family, let alone he himself, was an obvious target for Syria’s rebels. But his courage and his message of reconciliation cannot be faulted. In whatever new Syria arises from the rubble, Sheikh Hussein should be there even if his President has gone.  And he speaks with remarkable frankness. When I tell him that I fear the mukhabarat intelligence service in Syria contaminates all it touches, including the institutions of government, he does not hesitate for a moment before replying.

“I suffered from the mukhabarat. I was taken from my post as a preacher from 1972 until 2000. I was taken from my position as Friday speaker in the Aleppo mosque and from lecturing on four occasions. The intelligence services all over the world are the same: they never look after the interest of the human being – they only look after their own institution. And he asks whether it is not also true that the American intelligence services do not also spy on Americans and all of Europe, a difficult question – it must be said – to deny. “Let us put aside the Prophet Mohamed, Jesus and Moses – all the rest of the world are controlled by intelligence services.”

Unlike most Syrians, the Mufti looks forward rather than back. He prays for a Geneva 2 conference. “I am the Mufti of all Syrians – Sunni Muslims, Christians, Alawites, Druze – of all the diversity of sects we had before the war. There is no choice other than reconciliation; it is the only way back. But to offer reconciliation, we must eliminate the ‘external hand’ first.”

“And if the neighbouring countries like Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon don’t try to make this same reconciliation, the fire of crisis will flow to them, especially Turkey. For all Syrians, we are open for them to come back. The problem is those who came from outside Syria – especially from Iraq and Turkey – who came without visas over smugglers’ trails either to meet death or to overthrow the authorities here.”

. And on the question of sarin gas, he takes the government’s side of the story. He quotes Bashar al-Assad as saying he would never use gas against Syrians - that if he had used it, the war would not have gone on for two and a half years.  The first major use of gas came in March at Khan al-Assal in Aleppo province, near the Mufti’s residence, when at least 26 civilians suffocated to death. This is his version of what happened.

“Some of the farm labourers reported to me that all the terrorists in the area had suddenly left – the night before the attack – and had evacuated all their people. So the civilians were happy – they were civilians and many were the wives and children of soldiers – and so they went back at last to their homes. Then came the chemical missile attack. I said at that time, in March, that this event is just an experiment, that gas will be used again in other places.”

This, of course, is not a story the Americans want to hear. Five months ago, the Mufti was invited to speak at George Mason and George Washington Universities in the United States and he travelled to Jordan for his visa. He says he was asked to go to the US embassy in Amman where he was interrogated by a woman diplomat from behind a glass screen.  “I was so insulted that I decided not to go and I left for Damascus the next morning.”

The Mufti is a most secular man – he was even once an Assembly MP for Aleppo. “I am ready to go anywhere in the world to say that war is not a sacred deed,” he says. “And those who have fought under the name of Jesus, Mohamed or Moses are lying. Prophets come to give life, not death…. Let us cease the language of killing. Had we paid all the funds of war to make peace, paradise would exist now. This is the message of my Syria.”

A dangerous man indeed. .”    [Abridged]         http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/i-had-five-sons-now-i-have-four-syrias-senior-cleric-pardons-the-rebels-who-killed-his-son-8835441.html

Robert Fisk in Damascus

Independent/UK                         18 SEPT. 2013

And so the war goes on. Missile alerts may be over but the killing fields remain, untouched by Obama’s pale threats or Sergei Lavrov’s earnestness. The Syrian army fights on in the rubble and the shells fly over Damascus and the road from Lebanon is still littered with checkpoints. Only when you reach the city do you notice how many people have now built iron guard doors before their homes and iron gates on car parks. The claim that 40-50,000 rebels surround the capital is probably untrue but there are up to 80,000 security men and soldiers inside Damascus and, on this battlefront, they may well be winning.

It’s a campaign that started long before the use of sarin gas on 21 August and continued long afterwards. But on that fateful night, the Syrian army did mount one of its fiercest bombardments of rebel areas. In 12 separate attacks, it tried to put special forces men inside the insurgent enclaves, backed up by artillery fire. 

I was chatting yesterday to an old Syrian friend, a journalist who used to be in the country’s special forces and he – quite by chance – said he was embedded with Syrian government troops on the night of 21 August. These were men of the Fourth Division – in which the President’s brother Maher commands a brigade – and my friend was in the suburb of Moadamiyeh – the site of one of the chemical attacks. He recalls the tremendous artillery bombardment but saw no evidence of gas being used. This was one of the areas from which the army was attempting to insert bridgeheads into rebel territory. What he does remember is the concern of government troops when they saw the first images of gas victims on television – fearing that they themselves would have to fight amid the poisonous fumes.

Frontline Syrian forces do carry gas masks but none was seen wearing any. “The problem,” my friend said, “is that after Libya there are so many Russian weapons and artillery pieces smuggled into Syria that you don’t know what anybody’s got any more. The Libyans can’t produce enough of their oil but they sure can export all Gaddafi’s equipment.” But that doesn’t necessarily include sarin gas. Nor does it let the Syrian government off the hook. The protocols on the use of gas and missiles are said to be very strict in Syria so, of course, we come back to the old question: who ordered those missiles fired during the awful night of 21 August?

Some questions are familiar. Why use gas when so much more lethal weaponry is being flung at rebel forces across the country? If the government wanted to use gas, why not employ it north of Aleppo where not a single government soldier or official exists? Why in Damascus? And why wasn’t gas used on this scale in the previous two years? And why employ such a dreadful weapon when the end result is that Syria – by giving up its stocks of chemical weapons – has effectively lost one of its strategic defences against an Israeli invasion? Wasn’t Israel the real winner in all this?

Most probably Israel is also the winner in Syria’s civil war, as its once great neighbour is smashed and pulverised by a conflict which may continue for another two years. Syria was never a wealthy nation, but rebuilding its smashed cities and railways and roads is going to take many years. Rumours in Damascus are thicker than the smoke which envelops part of the city. Among the latest is an allegedly secret Western demand that a new Syrian government be formed of 30 ministers – 10 of them regime figures and at least 10 others independents – and that there must be a total restructuring of the army and security services. Since the West no longer has the means of enforcing such ambitious plans, all this sounds unlikely. Unless the Russians are also supporting the idea.

North of Damascus, the Jabhat al-Nusra forces are now way back from the ancient, partly Christian town of Maaloula which was recaptured by the Syrian Third Armoured Division. But this poses another question. Why on earth did the Nusra fighters take Maaloula if they had no intention of holding it? Did they think that the Syrian regime would be so distracted by the thought of an American attack that it would lack the will to drive them out? Sadly both sides have ceased to care about the weapons they use or the immorality of using them. When an Islamist fighter can film himself eating the flesh of a dead soldier, all scruples have gone.

Not long ago, rebels in Damascus murdered a woman in Harasta. One of her sons is now serving in the Syrian army. He has never touched or fired gas in his life. But as a member of his family said to me, “if he was ordered to, he would not have the slightest hesitation. He would love to revenge himself on those who killed his beloved mother.”
[Abbrev]   

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/robert-fisk-in-damascus-in-syrias-capital-assads-troops-may-be-winning-this-war--untouched-by-obamas-threat

A message to the West from the man who wants to bring Iran in from the cold

The new President of Iran explains why his overtures to the West deserve a fair hearing

HASSAN ROUHANI           Independent/UK             21 SEPTEMBER 2013

 Three months ago, my platform of “prudence and hope” gained a broad, popular mandate. Iranians embraced my approach to domestic and international affairs because they saw it as long overdue. I’m committed to fulfilling my promises to my people, including my pledge to engage in constructive interaction with the world.  The world has changed. International politics is no longer a zero-sum game but a multidimensional arena where co-operation and competition often occur simultaneously. Gone is the age of blood feuds. World leaders are expected to lead in turning threats into opportunities.

The international community faces many challenges in this new world – terrorism, extremism, foreign military interference, drug trafficking, cybercrime and cultural encroachment – all within a framework that has emphasised hard power and the use of brute force.We must pay attention to the complexities of the issues at hand to solve them. Enter my definition of constructive engagement. In a world where global politics is no longer a zero-sum game, it is – or should be – counterintuitive to pursue one’s interests without considering the interests of others.

A Sadly, unilateralism often continues to overshadow constructive approaches. Security is pursued at the expense of the insecurity of others, with disastrous consequences. More than a decade and two wars after 9/11, al-Qa’ida and other militant extremists continue to wreak havoc. Syria, a jewel of civilisation, has become the scene of heartbreaking violence, including chemical weapons attacks, which we strongly condemn. In Iraq, 10 years after the American-led invasion, dozens still lose their lives to violence every day. Afghanistan endures similar, endemic bloodshed.

The unilateral approach, which glorifies brute force and breeds violence, is clearly incapable of solving issues we all face, such as terrorism and extremism. I say all because nobody is immune to extremist-fuelled violence, even though it might rage thousands of miles away. Americans woke up to this reality 12 years ago.

At their core, the vicious battles in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria are over the nature of those countries’ identities and their consequent roles in our region and the world. The centrality of identity extends to the case of our peaceful nuclear energy programme. To us, mastering the atomic fuel cycle and generating nuclear power is as much about diversifying our energy resources as it is about who Iranians are as a nation, our demand for dignity and respect and our consequent place in the world. Without comprehending the role of identity, many issues we all face will remain unresolved.

I am committed to confronting our common challenges via a two-pronged approach. First, we must join hands constructively to work toward national dialogue, whether in Syria or Bahrain. We must create an atmosphere where peoples of the region can decide their own fates. As part of this, I announce my government’s readiness to help facilitate dialogue between the Syrian government and the opposition.

Second, we must address the broader, overarching injustices and rivalries that fuel violence and tensions. A key aspect of my commitment to constructive interaction entails a sincere effort to engage with neighbours and other nations to identify and secure win-win solutions. We and our international counterparts have spent a lot of time – perhaps too much time – discussing what we don’t want rather than what we do want. This is not unique to Iran’s international relations. In a climate where much of foreign policy is a direct function of domestic politics, focusing on what one doesn’t want is an easy way out of difficult conundrums for many world leaders. Expressing what one does want requires more courage. After 10 years of back-and-forth, what all sides don’t want in relation to our nuclear file is clear. The same dynamic is evident in the rival approaches to Syria.

This approach can be useful for efforts to prevent cold conflicts from turning hot. But to move beyond impasses, whether in relation to Syria, my country’s nuclear program or its relations with the United States, we need to aim higher. Rather than focusing on how to prevent things from getting worse, we need to think – and talk – about how to make things better. To do that, we all need to muster the courage to start conveying what we want – clearly, concisely and sincerely – and to back it up with the political will to take necessary action. This is the essence of my approach to constructive interaction.

As I depart for New York for the opening of the UN General Assembly, I urge my counterparts to seize the opportunity presented by Iran’s recent election. I urge them to make the most of the mandate for prudent engagement that my people have given me and to respond genuinely to my government’s efforts to engage in constructive dialogue. Most of all, I urge them to look beyond the pines and be brave enough to tell me what they see – if not for their national interests, then for the sake of their legacies, and our children and future generations.             

This article appeared originally in the Washington Post    [Abbrev.]

Worldview by Ian Harris Otago Daily Times Sept. 13, 2013

Most people probably give only a passing thought to the worldview through which they interpret the world around them. It’s simply there, a basic orientation of mind and heart absorbed from their culture, shared by their peers, and confirmed or modified by experience.  For people of faith, good religion will inform and enhance their worldview, bad religion will distort it. That’s also true for those who reject religion: their worldview will be shaped by whatever takes its place.

Till recently, two distinct religiously-based worldviews have moulded westerners’ view of the relationship between human beings and the planet that sustains them.

The first is that the world is there for humans to use to their advantage, a stance rooted in the opening chapter of Genesis. There God is depicted as a divine being over and beyond creation, a supernatural artist, superb designer, supreme craftsman, inventive physicist, masterful chemist, innovative biologist – in sum, maker of all that is.

The chapter is a resounding poem of praise, affirming the world as good in every part, from the sun and stars to plants and trees, birds and fish, beasts and humans.

Then Adam and Eve, symbolic of men and women in every age, messed up. Despite that, it was to humankind that God had given dominion over every other creature. They were to fill the earth and subdue it (though always within the constraint of their responsibility to God). That was the natural order of things.

By the Middle Ages, however, this rosy view of the world and humanity’s place in it had gone sour. In stark contrast to that emphasis on Earth blessed by the goodness of God, the church had burdened everyone with the appalling horror of sin. Earth had become a vale of woe, a sink of iniquity, the basest part of the universe.  One medieval writer lamented that we humans are “lodged here in the dirt and filth of the world, nailed and riveted to the worst and deadest part of the universe”. Human fulfilment lay not here, but in the soul’s release from this squalid dump into the everlasting bliss and purity of heaven. Of course Earth had its uses in providing food, clothing and shelter, but beyond that, why bother?

In the modern world that grim view has faded, but it hasn’t disappeared. Some fundamentalist Christians, especially in the United States, have given it new life. They see the biblical injunction to exercise dominion over nature as the green light for exploiting it without restraint. By way of example, an American Secretary of the Interior during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, James Watt, wanted to give developers unlimited access to national parks and resources. His reasoning was that the earth “is merely a temporary way station on the road to eternal life. It is unimportant except as a place of testing to get into heaven. The earth was put here by the Lord for his people to subdue and to use it for profitable purposes on the way to the hereafter.” That is execrable theology.

More recently, President Obama gave the green light to take advantage of the retreating northern icecap by drilling for oil in Arctic waters. European companies are also staking out oil and mineral prospecting interests in ice-bound Greenland and the surrounding sea.  Meanwhile the New Zealand Government has approved research to establish what mineral resources lie buried in our national parks. It would be naive to imagine this is simply to add to the sum of human knowledge.  

Of course the big mining and manufacturing companies don’t rely on a theological argument to pursue their interests. Making money for their shareholders is reason enough. But common to both the medieval attitude and that of many international corporates is the view that nature has no intrinsic value: it is there to be exploited and serve its human masters in whatever ways they wish. In today’s world, that mindset is dangerous. Earth is suffering from massive population growth, portentous climate change, the pollution of air, land and water, and extinction of species. Unprecedented technological power is being applied to achieve exponential industrial growth. This is making a few people unbelievably rich, while depleting Earth’s resources and threatening not only our human future, but the earth’s.  

Lump all this together, and it is obvious that the relationship of the human species to the earth has changed radically – and in the new environment, those old Christian perspectives that helped produce the crisis are overdue for a paradigm shift.

That is happening: more next time.