The NY Times published an Op-Ed by Iran's ambassador to the UN, Gholamali Khoshroo, today. It's titled Netanyahu's Nuclear Deceptions. Like many other readers, I found it to be an engaging rebuttal of Bibi's speech and worth reading:
Despite that, alarmist rhetoric on the theme has been a staple of Mr. Netanyahu’s career. In an interview with the BBC in 1997, he accused Iran of secretly “building a formidable arsenal of ballistic missiles,” predicting that eventually Manhattan would be within range. In 1996, he stood before Congress and urged other nations to join him to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capability, stressing that “time is running out.” Earlier, as a member of Parliament, in 1992, he predicted that Iran would be able to produce a nuclear weapon within three to five years. In front of world leaders at the United Nations in September 2012, Mr. Netanyahu escalated his warnings by declaring that Iran could acquire the bomb within a year. It is ironic that in doing so, he apparently disregarded the assessment of his own secret service: A recently revealed document showed that the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, had advised that Iran was “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons.” The United States intelligence community had reached the same conclusion in its National Intelligence Estimate.
There is a debate among Iranian politicians as to whether nuclear weapons would benefit Iran. Some of the machinations revolve around their fears that the US is committed to regime change in Iran and nuclear weapons may prevent it. The fear is somewhat legitimate given our history with the Mosaddegh administration and that of the Shah. I don't think the Obama administration would try to engineer outright regime change in Iran. But a hard-line GOP administration could be another matter altogether. The Wikipedia page on Irani politics around nuclear weapons and assessments of their capabilities seems to be quite thorough and even-handed. My general read is that Iran has the know-how and wherewithal to build a nuclear device, but the political decision to do so has not been made, which seems to be the view of US intelligence as well.
We will nevertheless continue to work with the agency to resolve this issue — despite our skepticism, which leads us to recall the notorious forged document about Niger’s “yellowcake” uranium that was used to coax the Security Council into authorizing the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Khoshroo turns the tables a bit on Netanyahu in bringing up the Palestinian issue and how it creates instability in the region.
There are other great issues at hand in the Middle East. The violent extremism we see in Syria and Iraq is one, and to fight it effectively, we need to ease international tensions. We must all address the problem of the breeding grounds that are delivering fresh recruits to the terrorist cause. Israeli aggression and the occupation of Palestinian territories have always been of major propaganda value for extremist recruitment.
There are many other causes of course, including repressive regimes in many Middle-Eastern states with large youthful populations. I also think many of us discussing this issue underestimate the lively debate among Shia theologians about the morality of nuclear weapons and in general, weapons that kill indiscriminately. The Economist covered this, along with the suggestion that it may be a smokescreen. Now to be fair, religious and moral objections to such a weapon did not stop any of the other nuclear powers. But it's important to recognize that even the ayatollahs are divided, especially when the caricature many in the West have of Iranian Shia religious leaders discounts the diversity of opinions in many other spheres (including human rights, for example the views of Montazeri) and finally I can't resist quoting Khoshroo's coup de grâce:
The paradox of the situation is that a government that has built a stockpile of nuclear weapons, rejected calls to establish a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East, made military incursions into neighboring states and flouted international law by keeping the lands of other nations under occupation, now makes such a big fuss over a country, Iran, that has not invaded another country since America became a sovereign nation.
Though as we discussed elsewhere, the Kurds and Azeris may question that last assertion...
— Cross-posted to NotMeUs.org | @subirgrewal