The Upcoming Nuclear Threat

Following up on my last entry on critical conversations happening in Hyde Park, earlier tonight at the University of Chicago, there were two lectures on Iran and nuclear technology. I only had time to go to the 7:00 lecture with Benny Morris. His talk was titled A Second Holocaust? The Implications of a Nuclear Iran, and it was sponsored by Chicago Friends of Israel and The Jewish United Fund’s JCRC/Hillel Israel Initiative. Morris is a Professor of History at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheba and has published several books on Israeli history and the Israel-Palestine conflict, including The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited in 2004, and The Road to Jerusalem in 2003.

Morris is a very controversial figure, and he is passionate searcher for the truth.

There is a looming problem that faces the Middle East and the world. It is the clash of civilizations and the possibility of Iran’s developing nuclear weapons.

This is an issue that presses us to think about Japan’s past and the legacy of nuclear technology in our lifetime.

Morris began his lecture by focusing on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s President, who has threatened to “wipe Israel off the map.” Morris said Ahmadinejad has a passion and obsession to destroy Israel, and the fanatic president has reached consensus with the mullahs. Their anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic and anti-West passions are anchored in the Koran when Muhammad struggled against Jewish tribes. But antisemitism had escalated most notably with Khomeini, who claimed that the Jews want to dominate the world, that they are cunning and resourceful and have an insatiable appetite to devour America and Iran. More than anything else, Iran’s hostility to Israel is most clearly seen in Ahmadinejad’s claim that the Holocaust was a legend…

Shouldn’t we be horrified of the possibility of a nuclear Iran, whose leadership has so obsessively sought to deligitimize Israel? What kind of a head of state wants to “use the sword of Islam on the neck of the Jewish state”?

This tension was the focus of tonight’s lecture, and very aptly, Morris reminded us of how frightening the “Islamist universe” has taken on retaliation and obsessive martyrdom—or Jihad’s divine command. For Morris, Iran might very well be willing to “sacrifice” itself for the sake of eradicating “God’s enemy”—and for the sake of eternal salvation.

More pressingly, Morris reminds us of Ahmadinejad’s fiery condemnations of the west—our supposed blind reliance on reason and compromise, our softness on homosexuality and tolerance of gays—and of the fanatics in Tehran who believe that “toppling the west is what Allah wants and is what is to come to pass.”

Clearly this dangerous rhetoric from the Islamist universe is poisonous to the Iranian people and the Middle East. Sadly, it’s a well known fact that opposition in Iran gets shut down by the secret police.

Morris argued passionately for nothing short of total economic sanctions against Iran. Stopping everything from coming into and out of Iran would, Morris believes, collapse their current regime and nuclear program.

But total economic sanctions might not happen, or might not come about in time. We are at a critical time right now, and Morris fears that sanctions might be too late. Just think about who has veto power in the UN Security Council: Russia, China, and France, nations who have vested interests in Iran. These nations lack resolution and impetus precisely at this time where the stakes are at the highest.

Are we looking at the final option, military force? Or should we just allow Iran’s developing nuclear technology?

Precisely because we are studying the legacy of Hibakusha and the damaging effects of low level radiation, we have to confront and understand the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons in the very near future. Israel might defend itself by launching a nuclear warhead at Iran, simply because Israel’s military doesn’t have the power to fight Iran through conventional means. Iran might carry out their threats with a nuclear weapon; it would just take two or three warheads fired at the coast of Israel to unleash total destruction. Adding to this analysis, Morris stated that Iran would not care about collateral damage, that is, the deaths of the Palestinians, or of sacrificing Iran. (I can’t even comprehend this destructive, horrible obsession.) Nonetheless, I don’t think it is necessary to comment on Iran’s rationality regarding foreign policy, especially in light of the British hostages.

Or the US could step in with conventional warfare. Yet Morris aptly points out that the US is still too stuck in the mud with Iraq, that perhaps Bush shot the arrow too prematurely and at the wrong target. Attacking Iran would be difficult. It’s not going to be like Israel’s 1981 bombing of Iraq’s single nuclear reactor—no, Iran is resilient and has taken strategic lessons from history. Iran’s nuclear facilities are in deep underground locations and they are dispersed throughout secret locations.

Morris estimates that it would take the US about 2-3 months to successfully complete an assault of Iran’s nuclear facilities. But such an assault would destabilize the Middle East, and Iran would strike back—through Shiites in Iraq—and Islamic terrorism would sky-rocket. It would expand the Iraq conflict to a regional one with a tsunami of Shia rage, uniting the Muslim world in fierce opposition to America.

A less compelling option, according to Morris, is to exert regional pressure through moderate Arab states, which are mostly Sunni (Iran is mostly Shia). But think about how a nuclear Iran might unleash an arms race in the Middle East.

In the tradition of fiery Q&A sessions, several students and members of the community raised questions on the relationship between Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, Ahmadinejad’s rationality, whether Iran shows a clash of civilizations or the process of globalization and shifting world powers, the likelihood of the US’s military assault, and the crippling political turmoil within Israeli politics, among other topics.

The Israeli soldiers can fight Hamas and Hezbollah, but they are petrified by the threat of a nuclear Iran. Morris urges stronger leadership within the Israeli political realm precisely at this time where, in light of the Holocaust, the state of Israel has reason to fear their total destruction.