By Nicola Nasser*
To keep "all options on the table" in the U.S. -- Israel
plans to change the incumbent Syrian and Iranian regimes and neutralize what
both countries perceive as an imminent "threat" is a formula missing the only
feasible option to defuse their perceived threat peacefully, which is obviously
much cheaper in money and human souls.
On August 19, Israeli former
head of the Operations Directorate of the Israeli military, Maj. Gen. (res.)
Uri Saguy, wrote in Haaretz that late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak "Rabin strove to achieve agreements with our neighbors before
the Iranians got a bomb. If we had
peace accords today with the Arab countries and with the Palestinians, what
exactly would the Iranians' conflict with us be about? "
Giving priority to making peace with Syria, Lebanon and
the Palestinian people on the land -- for -- peace basis, which is the essence of
the Arab Peace Initiative proposed by the 22 -- member states of the Arab League
in 2002, would disarm Iran of its Arab, Palestinian credentials and create a
new regional environment that would in turn render any Arab alliance with Iran
unnecessary and would uncover Iranian regional expansion as an endeavor sought
per se by Tehran.
Instead, Israel is running away from peace making to warmongering,
risking embroilment of the United States in a war on Iran that Washington does
not want, at least for now.
Four-star
chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey said on August 19 that
he has been conferring with his Israeli counterpart Benny Gantz on a regular
"bi-weekly" basis and " we've admitted to each other
that our clocks are turning at different rates."
Iran's Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali " Khamenei has not ["probably"] given orders to start building
a [nuclear] weapon," according to Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak in a CNN
interview on April 20; His Iranian counterpart Ahmad Vahidi this week dismissed
Israeli warmongering as "psychological war;" General
Martin Dempsey cautioned against an Israeli strike saying
it would not destroy Iran's nuclear program; President Shimon Peres last week joined senior
security, military and political experts to warn against a unilateral Israeli
strike not coordinated with the U.S.
In the RAND Review for spring this year, Ambassador James
Dobbins, who directs RAND's international security and defense policy center,
and three expert analysts argued that " an Israeli or American attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would make
it more, not less, likely that the Iranian regime would decide to produce and
deploy nuclear weapons. Such an attack would also make it more, not less,
difficult to contain Iranian influence."
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