To Javier Solana: Make Iran an Offer It Can’t Refuse

Dear Mr. Solana,

The reasons for the current impasse over Iran's uranium enrichment programme are simple. So is the solution for breaking it.

The impasse exists because:

• Power-plant-grade enrichment is the first step on the path to weapons-grade enrichment.

• Neither the IAEA nor the CIA has been able to produce any evidence that Iran is lying when it claims it has no weapons intentions. (It didn’t help when the House Intelligence Committee recently issued a report purporting to prove weapons intentions that was immediately rejected as "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated," not by Iran, but by the IAEA).

• Until the burden of proof is met, Russian and China will block meaningful sanctions in the UN Security Council.

The simple solution: make Iran an offer that it cannot refuse and still maintain the credibility of its contention that its programme is only for peaceful purposes.  

When Iran rejected Russia’s proposal to provide an "assured" supply of power reactor fuel from Russia, this did not undermine Iran’s credibility, even in Russia’s eyes. Perhaps this was because Russia realizes that it is perceived as a not-very-reliable energy supplier to neighbors with whom political issues arise. Or perhaps it was because Iran’s refusal to accept energy dependence doesn’t seem unreasonable when most other large nations have made energy independence a central objective of energy and national-security policy.

To provide a real test of Iran’s intentions, the offer must go further. It should be based on the President Ahmadinejad made in his UN speech a year ago: an industrial-scale, international enrichment consortium, based in Iran, to supply fuel to Iranian power-plants. 

Of course it would be foolish to embrace Ahmadinejad’s proposal in a manner that allows Iran to abscond with our nuclear know-how, throw us out of the country, and use what they have learned to build a bomb. Here is how this can be avoided:

First, the UN will ask the IAEA to design an industrial-scale enrichment facility that does not incorporate any know-how that Iran does not already possess at pilot scale. (No P2 centrifuges, for example.)  If the IAEA says this cannot be done, stop here.

Next, we propose that this IAEA-designed facility will be built in Iran by an international consortium (Iran will be a member), subject to these conditions:

1.       Iran will agree not to carry out any uranium enrichment research, development or production activities except at the consortium facility.

2.      The IAEA will be allowed to carry out an intrusive inspections program throughout Iran.

3.      The facility at Natanz must be built according to IAEA specifications, and above ground.

4.      Iran must agree that, once the facility is operational, the IAEA may shut it down and lock it down without Iran's permission if the IAEA, in its sole discretion, has reason to believe that Iran is pursuing nuclear enrichment activities anywhere other than at the consortium facility.

5.      Iran must agree that the armed air forces of NATO are entitled to destroy the facility if Iran takes any action to prevent the IAEA from shutting down and locking down the facility.

This proposal would set a clear test of Iranian intentions.  If Iran refuses to accept now what Ahmadinejad has previously proposed, it would have to be on grounds that the conditions are too onerous. Yet they are merely those necessary to assure the rest of the world that enrichment in Iran does not progress beyond power-plant-grade. When the USA and Europe renew their demand for sanctions following an Iranian rejection, Russia and China will find it much more difficult to justify further waffling. Even if they do continue to waffle, we will have lost nothing, and will have gained much high ground both over Iran, and over the wafflers.

And if Iran accepts? Hawks will scoff at the idea that the IAEA can design and oversee an industrial-scale uranium enrichment facility that Iran can't and won't use to gain time and know-how in its quest for nuclear weapons. But why would we accept the judgment of hawks rather than that of the IAEA? Hawks scoffed in 2002 when they and IAEA disagreed on the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's nuclear aspirations. Who turned out to be right?

If Iran accepts, it will be because their intentions really are peaceful, or because they believe they can fool the IAEA, or because they believe the international community will lack the will to destroy the enrichment plant once Iran's weapons intentions are made manifest.

In the first case, everyone wins. In the second case, Iran will be punished for its mistake unless the hawks are right and the IAEA is wrong. In the third case, Iran will be punished for its mistake unless the NATO powers do indeed lack the resolve to eliminate an Iranian enrichment facility that has gone out of control, in which case shame on us.

There is an emerging consensus that the US should talk with Iran about its nuclear program, without making prior capitulation to our primary demand a pre-condition for talks. But we also need fresh ideas on what to talk about. Why not talk about an offer that Iran can’t refuse?

To Chaim Weizmann: The Moral Algebra of 1947

August 2, 2014,

Dear Dr. Weizmann,

When I wrote to you eight years ago, it was to explain why I believed that the UN's 1947 decision to partition Palestine -- in which you played no small part -- was unwise and unjust, and why the "one-state" solution you fought so strenuously against should have prevailed. Since then, nothing has happened in Israel or Palestine to make me reconsider. This weekend, Israeli jets are bombing Gaza, and Hamas rockets are streaking into Israel. Palestinians shriek, "Lift the seige!" Israelis shriek, "Abandon your demand for the right to return, and recognize our right to exist as a Jewish state!" Israeli Jews and the Palestinians are still at war.

August 15, 2006

Dear Dr. Weizmann,

You were 23 in 1897 when the rabbis of Vienna, enthused by the first Zionist Congress and Theodor Herzl's new book Der Judenstaat (the Jewish State), sent two of their own on a fact-finding mission to Palestine. Do you remember the cable they sent back? "The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man." [1]

Fifty years later, you played an important role in persuading the international community to annul the marriage and give birth to a new, Jewish state in Palestine. Much has happened in Palestine since you left us in 1952, which I would like to tell you about. Then I would like to ask you some hard questions.

History

The state of Israel came into being as a consequence of the UN General Assembly's Partition Resolution (Resolution 181) which was passed in November 1947. At the time, Palestine had approximately 1,200,000 Arab and 600,000 Jewish inhabitants.[2] Almost all of the Arabs had been born in Palestine and were descendents of people who had been living there continuously throughout recorded history, including the history recorded in the books of the Old Testament. The book of Genesis describes the arrival of Israelite tribes in Palestine from Iraq and their settlement among (but not dominion over) the indigenous Canaanite tribes in the 20th or 19th century BC. Within 200 years the Israelites had removed themselves to Egypt. The sixth book of Joshua describes their return to Canaan between 1400 and 1200 BC, and their systematic destruction of Canaanite peoples and settlements.

This conquest was incomplete, and for the next 1200 years the Israelites vied with the Canaanites for control over various portions of Palestine. The Romans expelled most of the Jewish (Israelite) population from Palestine following their last uprising in 66 AD.  In 1917, shortly before Britain replaced the Ottomans as the imperial ruler of Palestine and issued the Balfour Declaration establishing a national home for Jews, the population ratio was ten Arabs (Canaanites) to one Jew (Israelite). By 1947, the Jewish population of Palestine consisted mostly of Europeans who had immigrated to Palestine after 1890. Few of their ancestors had lived in Palestine since 66 A.D.

The Partition Resolution granted sovereignty over 55% of the land [3], containing 500,000 Jews and 400,000 Arabs[4], to the Jewish state of Israel. Jewish sovereignty meant Jewish control over immigration, guaranteeing that Jews would always be in the majority in Israel. The Arab state, comprising 45% of the land, would include 700,000 Arabsand 10,000 Jew. Separately, an international condominium was to be established for Jerusalem, whose population of approximately 200,000 consisted of Jews and Arabs in roughly equal numbers, along with a significant Christian population.

Your Moral Algebra

The argument with which you won the day during the General Assembly’s 1947 debate was put forward in your testimony before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in the spring of 1946. You told the Committee that partition of Palestine was "the lesser injustice."[5] The “greater injustice” in your moral algebra was not the shoah itself -- the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jewish race -- but the suffering of 250,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors then living in refugee camps in Germany and central Europe.

The UN debate was not, however, a yes-or-no decision on the partition plan that had been recommended by the majority members of the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), but rather an either-or choice between partition and an alternative proposal for the future government of Palestine -- put forward by the UNSCOP minority members -- for a single, "bi-national" state in which all Jewish and Arab residents would be citizens. Under this proposal, the Arab and Jewish communities would have powers of local self-government, but a central federal government would be responsible for national defence, foreign relations, immigration, currency, federal taxation, water and waterways, transport and communications.[6]

This "single-state" solution for Palestine was not necssarily a solution for the 250,000 Holocaust refugees in Europe. How immigration policy would have been decided in a bi-national state was not clear, so there was no guarantee that European Jews would be allowed to emigrate to Palestine in numbers that would reverse the Arab majority.

When it came to the vote, America’s President Truman seems to have accepted your moral algebra, against pressure from US oil executives and the advice of his State Department, but mindful of Jewish voters and campaign contributors.[7] Joseph Stalin’s support for partition was equally firm, but founded on a different calculus. Partition would certainly weaken the British position in the Middle East, and possibly even provide a Soviet client state in the region.[8] (Many would also say that an American client state is what Truman had in mind for the new state of Israel.) With both Truman and Stalin in support, a UN General Assembly vote for partition was assured.

The War of Independence

The infant state of Israel faced two immediate difficulties: the Palestinian Arabs and the neighbouring Arab states were implacably hostile to its existence; and the Jewish state as defined in the Partition Resolution was militarily indefensible. The choice for David Ben Gurion, the first Israeli prime minister, was whether to bargain with the Arabs, giving away as little as possible but as much as necessary of what the UN had granted in order to win Arab acceptance of Israel’s right to exist; or whether to seize by force not only the land granted to Israel in the Partition Resolution, but also as much of the land that had been granted to the Arab state as was necessary to defend the Jewish state against its enemies.[9]

Ben Gurion quickly decided for war. When the final cease fire came after 14 months of hostilities with the armies of Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Egypt, Israel’s army had increased the portion of Palestine under Israel’s control from 55% to 79%[10], thereby achieving Ben Gurion’s objective of a militarily defensible state. Six thousand Palestinian Jews, 1% of the population, died in the struggle.

Israeli attacks on Arab villages, towns and cities were a necessary part of the strategy. By the end of the war, over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs had fled homes in what was now Israel. These refugees were living in camps in the 21% of Palestine that was not Israel, and in the neighbouring Arab states. In December 1948, the General Assembly passed Resolution 194(III) resolving that the refugees should be allowed to return home.

Land and People for Peace

The UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP) tried throughout 1949-50 to broker a bargain in which Israel would withdraw to the Partition Resolution borders, allow the Palestinian Arab refugees to return home, and accept the international condominium status for Jerusalem specified in the Resolution. On the other side, the bargain would have required the five Arab states to accept the Partition Resolution and to sign peace treaties with Israel.

None of the six governments involved had much of an incentive to do this deal. Ben Gurion believed Israel was more secure inside defensible borders without peace treaties than inside indefensible borders with peace treaties. Nor was he interested in taking back a hostile Arab population that could make it difficult to maintain a Jewish majority in Israel. He told the UNCCP that the maximum number of refugees Israel allow back into what was now Israel was 100,000, and this only in the context of a comprehensive peace agreement with the five Arab neighbours.[11]

On their side, the five Arab governments refused to meet directly with any Israeli official, or to begin discussion of the terms on which they would accept the Partition Resolution until Israel had first agreed to comply Resolution 194 (III)’s call for the refugees to be allowed to return home. [12]

The resulting stalemate suited the Arab governments, since making peace with Israel could only cause trouble at home, and since the Palestinians – confined to their camps – could not cause much trouble for any of them. (As it turned out, both the Lebanese government and the King of Jordon were wrong about this, but that is another story.) The stalemate suited all parties except the one not represented in the process -- the refugees.

Fifty-six years later, Palestinian Arabs are still living in the camps, surrounded by two new generations of refugees. Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties with Israel without extracting any Israeli concession on return of refugees. Lebanon and Syria remain in a state of cold war with Israel, which occasional flare-ups. The Israeli Defense Forces now occupy the 21% of Palestine that is not claimed by Israel, which is also home to 250,000 Israeli "settlers" who have been given permission by the Israeli government to make their homes in the portion of Palestine that is still in principle not a a part of Israel. The settlers and the IDF clash repeatedly with the Arab militias, and IDF reprisals against civilians (e.g. bulldozing homes in the villages or neighbourhoods of suicide bombers after the fact) have become increasingly common. Inside Israel, the Arab militias have made suicide bombings in cafes and bus-stations the central feature of their political and military strategy, and have recently taken to firing rockets from Gaza at neighbouring towns and villages in Israel.

In this summer of 2006, full-scale hostilities have taken place on two fronts. The IDF pounded Lebanon from the air and sent thousands of troops across the border. Hezbollah has rained rockets on towns and cities throughout the north of Israel. The IDF has pounded the camps and towns in the Gaza strip from the air and with ground forces, while Hamas and other militias fire rockets at neighbouring towns in Israel. So far this summer, the IDF has killed 200 Palestinians in Gaza, many of them militia members, and around five times that number of Lebanese civilians. Hezbollah's rockets have killed 43 Israeli civilians, and 116 IDF troops have died in action.

I regret to inform you, Dr. Weizmann, that fifty-nine years after the Partition Resolution, Palestine is still at war.

Some Hard Questions

The Right to Exist and the Right of Self-Defence

My first question for you is about the moral algebra by which you asserted the right of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine. It seems to me that your argument went something like this: since A has inflicted X on B, it is right for A and B to inflict Y on C provided that Y is less than X.

I don't understand this. On what common scale of measurement for X and Y could you, Harry Truman or any delegate to the UN General Assembly compare the magnitude of two injustices -- the suffering of Europe’s Holocaust survivors on the one hand, and the disenfranchisement of two-thirds of Palestine’s population in order to grant sovereignty over 55% of the land to a colony of European immigrants on the other -- and find one injustice to be greater than the other? It seems to me that no such scale common scale exists, that partition was not a lesser injustice, but merely another injustice. The suffering of the Jewish people at the hands of Europe was infinite, but that suffering could not create a right of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine. The bride was married to another man. The marriage could not be annulled by the heartbreak, even the infinite heartbreak, of another suitor.

My next question is about Israel's legal right to exist. The UN's authority to establish a Jewish state in Palestine may not be debatable as a matter of international law, but surely we should ask whether Israel retains any legal rights under the Partition Resolution, having rejected its obligations under the Resolution on such key provisions as borders, the status of Jerusalem, and the citizenship rights of Palestinian Arabs. (Israel’s 1952 Nationality Law meant that the right of citizenship in the 79% of Palestine controlled by Israel only applied to Palestinians who had not fled during the War of Independence.[13]) While it is true that the Arabs rejected the Partition Resolution in its entirety, I don't see why this should confirm any of Israel’s rights under the Resolution. If anything, Israel’s rejection of the parts of the Resolution it didn’t like combined with the Arabs’ rejection of all of it should mean that the Partition Resolution is a dead letter, conferring no legal rights on anyone.

On the subject of Israel's right to exist, it will upset you to hear that Iran's current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is something of a lunatic who frequently calls for Israel to be wiped off the map. Whether he is merely calling for the state of Israel to be removed from the map of the world in the same way that the land of Palestine was removed from world maps after 1947, or whether he is calling for the extermination of the Israeli people, is unclear. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah (a Shiite militia in Lebanon) is clearer in his views on Israel's right to exist. He has called for de-partitioning Palestine, eliminating Jewish sovereignty, and replacing it with a single Palestinian state, along the lines proposed by the minority members of UNSCOP in 1947. In this respect, while Nasrallah’s organization is an “existential threat” to the state of Israel, it is not an existential threat to Israelis themselves.

The Meaning of Judaism?

I would like update you on the evolution of Israel's security strategy since Ben Gurion decided in 1947 that the best (and only) defence was a good offence. When the War of Independence was won, Ben Gurion favoured defensible borders and few Arabs inside Israel over peace treaties that would require compromise on borders or refugees. Since then, although peace treaties were signed with Jordan and Egypt, and the Sinai was returned to Egypt, Ben Gurion's principles remain the foundation on which Israel's national security edifice has evolved. Today, these have evolved into three guiding principals: pre-emption, deterrence, and unilateralism.

“The meaning of Judaism is this: kill your enemy before he kills you.” This was the answer given by a member of the Jewish settlement in the Arab city of Hebron to Tom Friedman, in his television documentary on the security “fence,” when Friedman asked how the settler could reconcile his Jewish faith with the use of violence to defend the settlers' position in Hebron. Targeted assassination of the leaders of hostile Arab militias has been standard Israeli practice for several years. Israel's pre-emptive air-strike against Iraq's Osirak nuclear power plant in 1981 is further illustration.

The deterrence component of the security strategy is, in essence, "ten eyes for an eye, ten teeth for a tooth." This thinking was evidenced clearly in the early days of the recent war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon when the Israeli ambassador to the USA asked rhetorically at a rally in New York City, “Will our response to Hezbollah’s attack be disproportionate?” To the cheering crowd he then proclaimed, “You bet it will!”

Collective punishment (retaliatory reprisals against civilians, which are prohibited under Articles 51 and 52 of Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions of War) has become another common feature of Israel's deterrence strategy. (Israelis deny this, while correctly pointing out that anyway the other side does it, too.) It has been common practice for the IDF to bulldoze homes in the perpetrator's village or neighborhood after a suicide bombing in Israel. During the recent hostilities in Lebanon the IDF has destroyed power-plants and factories throughout that country. Lebanese civilians, not Hezbollah, depend on electricity and things made in factories (these were not munitions plants). Israel apparently decided that if Hezbollah could not be defeated by the IDF, perhaps the civilian population would turn against Hezbollah if enough suffering were inflicted on it in retaliation for Hezbollah's initial raid. Another example is Israel's strangulation of the Palestinian economy as punishment for electing a government led by Hamas, hoping the suffering would cause the Palestinians to change their minds.

Finally, Israeli security strategy remains firmly unilateral. When the IDF withdrew from Lebanon in 1990 and from Gaza in 2005, Israel did not seek to negotiate a settlement of grievances with the Lebanese or the Palestinians. It simply withdrew. The Sharon government decided that the best (and only) way to protect Israelis against the Palestinians was to build a "security fence" (in fact a very high wall of concrete) separating Israel from Arab territory, as part of a strategy of "unilateral disengagement" from Arab Palestine. This unilateralism is very much in keeping with Ben Gurion's approach to peace with Israel's Arab neighbours: There is nothing to discuss and no-one with whom to discuss it. Leave us alone, and we will leave you alone. This is a strategy for "cold war," in which the antagonists agree not to agree with each other, not to trust each other, not to talk to each other, but not to attack each other.

Unhappily for Israel, the Arab militias will not accept cold war. They care even less than Israelis about the protections which international law demands for non-combatants. Collective punishment is the purpose of suicide attacks by Hezbollah and Hamas on Israeli cafes and bus stations, of Hamas rockets fired at southern Israeli towns from Gaza, and of most of the Hezbollah Katyusha fusillades from Lebanon into northern Israeli towns and cities. Given their weakness in conventional arms, Israel's enemies know that deterrence is not a strategy that can work for them. They do not believe that the best defence is a good offence, that they can take ten teeth for a tooth, or that they can kill their enemy before he kills them. But they do believe that their cause is just, that they die as martyrs, and that eventually they will win, whatever that may mean.

Time to de-Partition ?

In light of the Fifty-Nine Years War between Jews and Arabs in Palestine, my final question for you, Dr. Weizmann, is whether de-partition of Palestine would not now be the lesser injustice.

First consider your 1947 justification for creating Israel -- to provide a home for the 250,000 Holocaust refugees in the camps of Europe. That mission has been accomplished and today over 5 million Jews are living in Israel. De-partition would not undo this.

Next consider this: if Israel has neither any moral nor any legal right to exist as a Jewish state, then the only justification for a Jewish state is to defend Israeli Jews against hostile Palestinians. And if Palestinians are hostile only because the Jewish state exists, is not de-partition the obvious solution? If a single state in Palestine can provide the basic security guarantees to Jews that citizens of any state have the right to expect, what need is there for a sovereign Jewish state in part of Palestine?

De-partition could be implemented quite easily by passing a new UN resolution, the De-Partition Resolution (Resolution 181-A) providing as follows:

1. General Assembly Resolution 181 is hereby amended by this Resolution 181-A. Any provisions of Resolution 181 that conflict with this Resolution 181-A are hereby rescinded.

2. The boundaries of the state of Israel are hereby extended to incorporate the entire land of Palestine.

3. Israeli citizenship is hereby extended to every resident of Palestine, to everyone who was born in Palestine, and to the children of any citizen of Palestine.

4. A Constitution of the State of Israel [none exists at present] shall be drafted by the UN, and shall incorporate the following principles:

a. Every citizen of Israel has the right to vote. Israeli citizenship is guaranteed to every resident of Palestine, to everyone who was born in Palestine, and to the children of any Israeli citizen.

b. The fundamental human rights are guaranteed.

c. The system of government will be a federal one, with powers divided between the federal and communal levels in the manner prescribed in the UNSCOP minority report of 1947. The name of the state may be changed by the federal government.

d. At the federal level, an executive, a legislative, and a judicial branch will be established.

5. The Constitution will become effective when approved by 50% of those voting in a referendum. Until the Constitution becomes effective, the UN has discretion to suspend the application of any law of the state of Israel.

6. Once the Constitution becomes effective, it can only be amended with the approval of the UN General Assembly.

7. Once the Constitution becomes effective, the "highest court of the land" shall be a special court whose justices shall be appointed by the UN General Assembly.

Bad Reasons Why A Single State Would Not Be a Good Idea

If you still think de-partition would be a bad idea, I would like to know why. But please don't give me any of the following bad reasons.

1. De-partition would reward the terror of Hamas and Hezbollah, and would appease the assertiveness of Iran.

Perhaps. But if de-partition would be the wise and just way for the international community to remedy the problematic situation it created in 1947, it doesn't become a bad idea simply because it terrorists want it to happen. If Al Quaeda hijacks an airplane and announces it is going to execute passengers one at a time until I stop beating my wife, would it be wise or just for me to keep beating my wife so as to avoid rewarding terror? The behaviour of individuals, nations and the International Community must be judged by its own lights, not by whether it satisfies terrorist demands.

2. It would be naive to expect de-partition miraculously to dissolve the hatred of Jews, the west and modernism that is so deeply ingrained in the Arab psyche, especially on the jihadist fringe.

Perhaps, but it would be cynical to believe that nothing would change. Even Bernard Lewis, whose theory of "what went wrong" attributes most of Arab antagonism to a collective neurosis, admits that Israel also has something to do with it. In any event, if I am deceived and the hijackers go ahead and start executing passengers, should I continue beating my wife?

3. De-partition would be as unjust to Israelis today as partition was to the Arabs in 1947 -- merely another injustice.

Partition in 1949 disenfranchised 67% of the population from 55% of the land. De-partition today would not disenfranchise anyone. Jews would merely lose majority status, but with the protections of a Constitution written and guaranteed by the International Community. Jews could be Jews anywhere they choose in Palestine. They could send their children to Jewish schools, run or work for Jewish companies, publish Jewish newspapers, eat Jewish food, observe Jewish holidays, worship in Jewish temples and be buried in Jewish cemeteries.

4. De-partition is a backwards-looking solution. You can't change history. The Arabs need to put the past behind them, get over their grievances about the past, and move on.

It would be nice for Israel if the Palestinian Arabs could see things this way. But they can't and there is no reason why they should. There is no statute of limitations on the injustice of the Holocaust, and neither is there any on the injustice of the Partition Resolution.

5. De-partition would lead to communal conflict between Jews and Arabs within the single state.

There has been continuous, violent, communal conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine throughout the 59 years since partition. This violence is at the same time more organized and more anarchic (since there is no higher authority to mediate it) than should be expected in a single state in which the ethnic conflicts would be localized and personalized, and mediated by the international community when necessary.

Dan Badger

London

August 15, 2006

___________________________________________________________

Bibliography

Sachar, Howard M: A History of Israel From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, 2^nd Edition, 2001

Shlaim, Avi: The Iron Wall, 2001

United Nations Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP): General Progress Report and Supplementary Report, 23 October, 1950

United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP): Recommendations to the General Assembly, A/364, 3 September 1947

_________________________________________________________________

Notes:

---

1. Schlaim, p. 3

2. Unless otherwise noted, population figures throughout are taken or interpolated from Sachar and from http://www.israelipalestinianprocon.org/populationpalestine.html#chart1

3. Sachar, p. 292

4, UNSCOP, Recommendations (II), Part II

5. Sachar, p. 262

6. UNSCOP, Recommendations (III)

7. Sachar, pp. 288-291

8. Sachar, p. 286

9. Schlaim, pp. 30-31

10. Schlaim, p. 47

11. UNCCP, Chapter III, paragraph 20

12. UNCCP Chapter I, paragraph 3

13. Sachar, p. 384

To the North Conway League of Women Voters: Fool Us Twice

Good evening everyone, and thank you for inviting me to speak to the North Conway League of Women Voters tonight to explain why you should vote for me, a Democrat, rather than the other guy. I am most grateful to for this opportunity to tell you what I think about the issues, rather than having Karl Rove tell you what I think.

Karl’s remarks here on Monday night made three things clear:

First, the war in Iraq is the overriding issue in the 2006 campaign for Congress.

Second, Karl has decided to see if he can fool enough of the people a second time into believing that America's national security is at stake in Iraq.

Third, Karl has decided that his team’s winning strategy will be to define the electoral choice as cut-and-run (us) versus stay-the-course (them).

I have three things to say about this.

First, to cut and run precipitously from Iraq would be terribly costly, risky, and irresponsible.

Second, so would staying the course, which means we are in a lose-lose position.

Third, the party and the ideology that put our nation into this lose-lose position do not deserve to be re-elected. Those who lead their followers into a lose-lose position can't defend their leadership by demanding that their followers come up with a way to win.

I agree with Karl that cut-and-run would be irresponsible, but not for the reason he states. He says that cut-and-run would be a defeat for America in what he calls the global war on terror. Humbug. Al Quadea was not in Iraq before we invaded, would not have shown up there if we hadn’t invaded, and will disappear quickly after we leave. The Iraqi insurgency is a Sunni insurgency targeted against Iraqi Shiites and Kurds. So long as American troops are defending the Shiite-dominated status quo, the insurgents will have good reason to make common cause with Jordanian, Saudi Arabian, Egyptian, Sudanese and Chechnyan jihadis in Iraq. The minute American troops leave, Al Quadea in Mesopotamia will be asked to leave Mesopotamia, and not politely.

Therefore, America’s war in Iraq has nothing to do with jihadist terror, just as Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Shame on Karl for fooling us once. Shame on us if we are fooled for a second time into believing that our national security is at stake in Iraq.

No, the real reason why it would be irresponsible to cut and run from Iraq has nothing to do with the war on terror. An ancient code says that if you save someone’s life, you are responsible for it from that day on. Since America chose to deliver the Iraqi people from Saddam, and in so doing unleashed the forces of sectarian brutality that are tearing the nation apart, America has a responsibility to the Iraqi people to do whatever it can to put the nation back together again.

But if cut-and-run would betray our responsibility to the Iraqi people, my opponent’s argument for staying the course is irresponsible to the American people. Since Vice President Cheney publicly began building the case for war in Iraq in the fall of 2002, and right up to Karl Rove’s speech last Monday, my opponent’s party has deliberately deceived the American people as to what is really at stake. And they have purposefully avoided asking the American people this question: if there were no connection between Iraq and our nation’s security, would the risks and costs of this war be worth it?

My opponent’s party knows very well that America’s answer would be no. And my opponent’s party knows very well that this is indeed the case – there never was nor is there now any connection between Iraq and the war on terror. It is irresponsible of them to pretend that there is, and to insist that we should stay the course for that reason .

In conclusion: we will pay an awful price if we stay, and an awful price if we leave. My opponent’s party – the party of lose-lose – should at least be honest about what is at stake, and stop pretending this war has anything to do with national security. Then, let the American people decide whether and for how long our responsibilities towards a nation we have “saved” are worth the monthly price of 40-50 American soldiers killed, 300-350 American soldiers’ limbs and lives shattered, and $8 billion of debt for our children to repay.

Thank you very much for listening. I’ll take my first question from Mr. Rove standing at the back of the hall.

Dan Badger

London

June 19, 2006

To John Bolton: Disarming Iran -- Why Consortium Beats Confrontation

Dear John,

For deciding strategy in an adversarial situations, the branch of mathematics known as game theory always gives better results than "hunch theory."  Today a game is afoot over Iran’s nuclear aspirations, and hunch theorists by and large have concluded that confrontation is the appropriate strategy for the west.  However, applying game theory to the problem shows that under all scenarios, a properly-conceived strategy of “consorting” with Iran beats any strategy of confrontation.

Hunch theory approaches Iran's nuclear program from the premise that if Iran's leaders are telling the truth when they say they are only interested in uranium enrichment for electricity, co-operation is a better strategy than confrontation. And vice-versa. Since hunch theory judges the cost and the probability of wrongly guessing "telling the truth" to be greater than the cost and probability of wrongly guessing "lying," co-operation must be the wrong strategy.

I think this analysis is wrong. Whether the Iranian leadership is lying or telling the truth, the consortium strategy trumps any strategy of confrontation, whether by sanctions, intimidation, Elizabeth Cheney's "democracy promotion" (subversion) or Richard Perle riding astride Boeing's Massive Ordnance Penetrator (aka "Big BLU") to its target at Natanz.

How A Consortium Would Work

The core concept in a "properly-conceived policy of consortium" is the idea proposed by Iranian president Ahmadinejad at the UN in September 2005, whereby an industrial-scale uranium enrichment facility would be built and operated in Iran by an international consortium including Iran as a member. However, I would accept Ahmadinejad's proposal but with four conditions attached: 1) the IAEA must be allowed to conduct an "intrusive" inspections program; 2) the consortium must not use any technology not already in Iran's possession; 3) the consortium's facility must be easily destructible from the air; and 4) Iran must acknowledge our right to destroy the facility if Iran breaches the agreement, for example by seizing control of the facility, or by engaging in separate, secret activities to manufacture weapons-grade uranium.

Telling the Truth

If Iran's leaders intentions are truly peaceful and they accept these conditions, the consortium strategy clearly beats any confrontation strategy. Iran gets the reactor-fuel fabrication program it wants, we begin a positive engagement with Iran for the first time in 27 years, and we open eyes and ears on Iranian soil to gather real intelligence (the absence of which in Iraq after 1998, when we blinded ourselves by withdrawing inspectors, contributed mightily to the current disaster in that country.) As a dividend, the $15/bbl Strait-of-Hormuz-conflagration premium on the NYMEX futures market will evaporate.

But even if Iran's intentions are peaceful, the destructibility condition may offend their pride or put them in a position of vulnerability they are unwilling to accept, in which case they may reject the offer. However if they do, the result of the consortium strategy compares favorably with the result if we had pursued confrontation. All confrontation options would remain available, and we would have gained legitimacy by showing a willingness to cooperate, while Iran would have lost legitimacy for allowing pride or paranoia to block a win-win solution. The internal position of Ahmadinejad and his fellow hard-liners may be weakened as well, as he is already being challenged on grounds that he is over-playing Iran's hand.

Some will say that legitimacy in the eyes of the rest of the world is irrelevant in determining how a nation secures its own interests. While I disagree, the disagreement is irrelevant to the argument I am making here. If you don't believe that legitimacy matters, we will call this a draw.   Co-operation and confrontation lead to equally good or bad outcomes if Iran's leaders are telling the truth but reject our offer.

But those who believe that legitimacy matters will note that if Iran rejects our offer, the balance of legitimacy will tilt in our favour in an important way. Not many people around the world argue that Iran should simply be trusted, but hardly anyone outside of what Condi Rice refers to as the "international community" (professional politicians, diplomats and international relations experts in the USA and Europe) accepts the legitimacy of our current posture of saying, "Iran is lying about its true nuclear intentions, and cannot be trusted to enrich its own uranium. If Iran admits that it is lying and cannot be trusted, then diplomacy can begin."   Rice's "international community" takes Iran's defiant reaction to this as further proof of the premise that Iran can't be trusted. Most of the rest of us are shaking our heads in bewilderment as to how the "international community" can call this a form of diplomacy, or expect to it to lead to anything but a nuclear-armed Iran.

Lying

The crux of my argument is that even if Iran's leaders are lying, consortium-with-conditions leads to better outcomes in some scenarios, and no worse outcomes in any other.

First consider what happens if Iran is lying about its intentions and rejects the offer of consortium-with-conditions.  As discussed, we cannot be worse off than if we had pursued confrontation because confrontation would remain an option. The balance of legitimacy both outside and inside Iran will likely have tilted in our favour, giving greater weight and credibility to confrontation strategies than if we had not first tried the consortium. At best, therefore, consortium gives a better outcome than confrontation in this scenario. At worst its outcome is no worse.

Now consider what happens if Iran is lying and accepts our offer.

Clearly there is a risk that Iran will succeed in fooling IAEA inspectors and setting up secret centrifuge fabrication and uranium enrichment facilities that will go undetected. This risk is greater than zero, but not as great as VP Cheney suggested in the fall of 2002 when he declared with respect to Iraq that "inspections don't work." Indeed no reputable analyst has warned that Iraq, Iran or any other nation could successfully conceal a centrifuge fabrication and uranium enrichment program from an adequately-resourced IAEA inspections team with intrusive rights.

However, while the risk of a successful secret weapons program under the nose of intrusive inspectors is greater than zero, the risk of a successful weapons program conducted in the open and with no inspectors to worry about is surely greater still.  If Iran wants weapons, any confrontation policy short of Big BLU ( i.e. sanctions, intimidation or subversion) will make it easier for them to reach the goal than if Iran accepted our offer and then cheated successfully. Even if they lie and cheat, if Iran accepts our consortium offer we are better off than under any confrontation strategy except for Big BLU. And Big BLU only beats consortium in a scenario where Iran successfully conceals weapons-grade enrichment from intrusive inspections -- a scenario that only VP Cheney finds credible.

Next there is the "break-out problem" -- the concern that an enrichment consortium will transfer knowledge and technology that would enable Iran to accelerate its weapons program after expelling the consortium partners.

This problem is not a problem so long as the consortium teaches Iran nothing new and builds nothing they don't already know how to build. Hence the "no new technology" condition. The purpose of the consortium is to build and operate an enrichment plant that can support the annual 3.5%-enriched U-235 requirement of 1,000 MW and 10,000 MW of nuclear power plant capacity. Last week Iran demonstrated that it has achieved this for 1.0 MW of power plant capacity using P-1 centrifuge technology. If the consortium uses the P-1, it will contribute no new knowledge or technology, but rather set up a many-times replication of what Iran already has and knows. (If Iran asks that the consortium be allowed to use the five-times faster P-2 centrifuge technology, it should be up to the IAEA to decide if allowing this will give Iran new knowledge. Iran has reportedly obtained P-2 prototypes from AQ Khan, but the cascade that has produced 3.5% U-235 at Natanz uses P-1.)

Finally, there is the concern that a massively-replicated low-enrichment facility built by the consortium could be seized by Iran and converted to a high-enrichment facility capable of fueling a weapons program. Hence the condition that the consortium's facility must be readily destructible from the air. Not only this, but it must be possible to make and carry out the decision to destroy quickly, without the fuss witnessed when the USA and UK sought UN approval for the invasion of Iraq in the winter of 2002-3.  If the consortium's foreign personnel show up for work one morning to find that the Republican Guards have seized the facility and begun loading centrifuges onto trucks, it must not be necessary to persuade Dominique de Villepin or Vladimir Putin to agree before Big BLU can do what is necessary.

One way to achieve this is for the Security Council to pass the following resolutions:

1.     The Director General of the IAEA must notify the Security Council immediately on finding evidence that Iran is in material breach of the consortium agreement. "Material breach" includes:

Ø      Discovery by inspectors of nuclear fuel manufacturing facilities not previously disclosed, including uranium conversion, centrifuge fabrication and uranium enrichment facilities;

Ø      Actions by any agency of the Iranian government or by any Iranian citizen that impede the consortium or the IAEA inspectors from carrying out their mandated activities.

2.     Unless the Security Council votes otherwise (and unanimously, as is the rule), the air forces of any NATO member country are authorized to attack and destroy the consortium's facility after 24 hours have elapsed from the time when the Security Council receives such notification from the IAEA DG.

If Iran attempts a “break-out,” the facility will be destroyed in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions, and those who would challenge the legitimacy of such action are in a weaker position. “Consortium now” puts us in a better position to pursue confrontation if it becomes necessary than “confrontation now” (when it is not necessary).

Conclusion

In case you hadn't noticed, this essay is organized loosely around a 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 matrix (being mathematicians, game theorists don’t find this strange) with rows headed "consort" and "confront," (our strategy choices), columns headed “telling the truth" and "lying," (Iran’s strategy choices), columns in the z-axis headed “accept” and “reject” (more strategy choices for Iran), and columns in the zz-axis headed “play by the rules” and “cheat” (also Iran’s strategy choices). 

Working through the analysis of each cell of the matrix shows that the “consort” row is what game theory would call a "dominant" strategy. Whether Iran is lying or telling the truth, whether they accept or reject our offer, whether they play by the rules or cheat, the consortium strategy proposed here leads to no worse results than any confrontation strategy under any scenario, and leads to better outcomes under many scenarios.

Readers will find many problems with the strategy I propose. But I leave them with this question: compared to what?

Dan Badger

London

May 1, 2006