Briefing at the British House of Commons, October 12, 2009

2009-10-20T01:36:00.000-07:00

By kind invitation of Patrick Mercer MP, Dore Gold, Dore Gold, Israel's former UN Ambassador and special advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu, spoke of the very real threat posed to global security by Iran's nuclear ambitions. He explained how a nuclear armed Iran poses a very different threat to other nuclear armed states. The world's biggest sponser of international terrorism, a nuclear armed Iran would provide an umbrella of protection to numerous terrorist organisations, greatly reducing the ability of states to deal with these threats effectively. The meeting was held at the Houses of Parliament on 12 October 2009.

This subject, the rise of nuclear Iran, relates to the security of all of us. Iran’s ambitions, Iran’s missile programme, Iran’s nuclear programme, relate to the security not just of Israel but of the entire Middle East and I would say the world.

Let me begin with a fundamental question: Why do we suspect Iran? Why do we think Iran is developing nuclear weapons? When the October talks in Geneva were about to begin there were Western diplomats who were still saying, “Let Iran convince us that this is a civilian nuclear programme”.

Why is it that I don’t buy that Iran’s nuclear programme is is purely civil? The easiest answer to that is the fact that Iran today has the third largest reserves of oil in the world and the second largest reserves of natural gas in the world, so why the desire to develop nuclear power to provide electricity?

Nonetheless, I’m going to accept half the Iranian argument because in 2006, the Iranian energy minister noted that Iran is not investing sufficiently in the maintenance of its oil fields, and a lot of that has to do with Western sanctions on Iran. As a result, he predicted that by 2015 the decline of the Iranian oil fields will lead to a situation where Iran no longer exports oil and all production will be solely for internal purposes. So if we take his argument, one could understand that maybe they have to turn to nuclear energy. It also turns out that Iran has domestic uranium ore that they can mine, so if they were seeking a nuclear alternative to petroleum, they would have uranium as a source of electricity.

Why, even if we accept the argument that their oil fields are declining, is that still a phoney argument? Because it turns out that if you look at the size of the uranium deposits in Iran, they aren’t that great. Those working in the US state department have estimated that if Iranians built six reactors for domestic production, their uranium reserves would be sufficient to run those reactors for just 12 years. You don’t build a whole industry if all you’re going to get is 12 years out of it.

So my argument is that the uranium in Iran may not be sufficient for producing electricity, but it is certainly sufficient for manufacturing of atomic bombs.

Let me add one other element. The concern of the international community since the disclosure of the first uranium enrichment plant in 2002 at Natanz, has been the question of why Iran has to enrich uranium domestically. Most countries with civilian nuclear programmes don’t enrich their own uranium, they import enriched uranium; Spain and Sweden for example. Indeed, if all its stock is sufficient for just 12 years with six reactors, they’re going to have to import anyway, so why go through this expensive process now of building enrichment reactors? Again, all this points to a different intent. It has to do with developing an atomic weapons programme.

A number of other pieces of information have come together that should cause a great deal of alarm in people who follow this subject. First of all the quantities of uranium that have already been enriched. At the time of US elections in 2008, the IAEA said Iran had produced 839kg of low-enriched uranium. By August 2009, that number had reached 1,508kg. What you need for an atomic bomb is 700kg of low-enriched uranium which you put back into modified centrifuges to reach the higher-enriched weapons grade uranium. That 700kg of low-enriched uranium will yield about 20-25kg of weapons-grade uranium, meaning that Iran can now produce two atomic bombs.

The second element that has us concerned has to do with the sensitive information the IAEA has been disclosing, provided to it by various Western intelligence agencies. For instance, the CIA laptop containing detailed drawings of how to build a nuclear warhead and optimum altitudes for flight. You can say that’s information the CIA put forward for its own reasons, but the IAEA, in 2008, lectured to ambassadors about that information and other information it received. Some of you may have heard of the secret annex to that report that was not disclosed to the public. I can only read a few lines:

“The agency has information, known as the ‘alleged studies’, that the Ministry of Defence of Iran has conducted, and may still be conducting a comprehensive programme aimed at the development of a nuclear payload, to be delivered using the Shahab 3 missile system”

The Shahab 3 is a 1,300km-range missile with the capacity to hit Saudi Arabia and Israel and here the IAEA is saying that Iranians seem to be designing how to outfit the warhead of that missile with nuclear weapons. We are also seeing in Iran the development of a robust ballistic missile system that goes far beyond what many people believe.

When you put these elements together, it all points to a full-blown nuclear weapons programme, and nothing else. I think what’s also a concern is the fact that Iran is not a “status-quo” country. There are countries in the world that are happy with what they have, that aren’t interested in expansion or intruding on their neighbours and basically just want to be left on their own. Then there are states that are active, that are actively intervening in the affairs of their neighbours and have interests well beyond their own borders and Iran is really in that latter category. It is Iran that is engaged in the insurgency in Afghanistan, providing the Taleban, who were their enemies 10 years ago with weaponry and other forms of assistance to fight US and UK forces in that country. It is Iran that has been engaged in Iraq, particularly through the Shiite militias in southern Iraq. It is Iran which declared, earlier this year that Bahrain, an independent kingdom, is a province of Iran. And that came from individuals
very close to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khameini. Iran is active in Lebanon; it created and sustains Hezbollah. It’s involved in the Gaza Strip, in Egypt, Sudan and Yemen.

So if you take the fact that Iran is one of the largest supporters of international terrorism today, and you team that up with the nuclear capabilities that I’ve been describing, you have a security situation which the West has not yet seen. This is an entirely new situation that we have to anticipate and understand. And it makes the handling of the Iranian issue all the more urgent.

What makes the problem all the more difficult is that we have been facing in the last few years a number of influential organisations and individuals who have been purposefully understating the problem. First and foremost among these is the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) from December 2007.

It stated, “We assess with high confidence that until the fall of 2003, Iran was working to develop nuclear weapons, but we judge that in the fall of 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons programme.”

When the US NIE says the programme’s been halted, most people think that’s the problem solved. The problem with the report is that it deals only with certain aspects of the programme. Now with hindsight, looking at recent reports of a secret uranium enrichment site constructed near Qom, these words should be outrageous to us. When President Obama disclosed this new facility, senior members of his administration gave a briefing that they put on the website saying, “We have known about this secret facility for several years”.

That takes us back to 2007 at least, and yet the NIE said that uranium enrichment work had halted. In other words, the US probably knew about the Qom facility, and yet chose to pretend it was finished.

This is just one example of how this whole problem has not been properly dealt with. We were even told that the supreme leader had issued a fatwa declaring the acquisition of nuclear weapons to be immoral. So the message was, be calm and don’t worry. Yet there is no nuclear fatwa. I asked a top Iranian scholar in the US, and he could not find the fatwa. This is a falsehood, but it’s another example of the falsehoods that have been misleading people on this issue.

I want to ask you the following question: What does it mean to have an Iran with nuclear missiles? Most people think of it like Russia and the US having nuclear weapons. You press a button to launch; they work as a deterrent and so on. I have a different, more realistic scenario. I think we have the problem that the world’s biggest supporter of international terrorism is about to get a nuclear umbrella, and that means that terrorist groups will have a protective umbrella over them

The whole point of George W. Bush’s decision to remove the Taliban after 9/11 was to send a very clear message: “You attack the American homeland and we will take down your regime”.

This is probably why the US is so determined to stay in Afghanistan in spite of all the difficulties. But fast forward to 2012. Iran has operational nuclear weapons that can strike deep into Europe, and eventually towards the Eastern seaboard of the US. Will the US, UK and NATO as a whole have the same freedom of manoeuvre to say to states that support terrorism, “We will take you down if you attack us?” Will, the US Congress authorise sending forces abroad against a state armed with nuclear weapons? In other words the entire balance in the War on Terror shifts, because the state that is the largest global sponsor of terrorism today now has nuclear capabilities.

One further, crucial mistake people make is to believe that Iran’s protective umbrella will only extend to Shiite terror groups. But Iran supports the Taliban in Afghanistan. When Al-Qaeda had to find new sanctuary after the 2001 invasion, it went to two places immediately: Pakistan and Iran, and there was a huge al-Qaeda presence in Iran, and there is still an al-Qaeda presence today.

In Azerbaijan, which is a Shiite state, there’s a Sunni insurgency fighting the Shiite regime, but for reasons of geopolitics, Iran supports the Sunni insurgency against the Shiite government of Azerbaijan because it’s pro-American.

What I am trying to suggest is that this nuclear umbrella of Iran will unfurl and will be able to provide protection, not just to Shiite Hezbollah, but to Sunni organisations such as al-Qaeda and Hamas.

In terms of how this threat is viewed not just in the West, but in the Arab world, for instance Saudi Arabia, I have no doubt that if the doors were closed, the Saudis would agree with most of what I have just said. People forget that in 1996, there was an organisation called Hezbollah al-Hejaz, or ‘Saudi Hezbollah’ operating inside Saudi territory, which killed 19 US airmen helping train the Saudi air force, and a number of Saudis in an attack.

I believe there is a lot of common interest in the Middle East to see Iran halted. I personally believe this is best facilitated through discussion with Israelis and regional security forces, but we shouldn’t make this all very public. It should be handled quietly.

In fact, a major problem comes from Europe in the form of EU funding for NGOs that are involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict, but which pursue agendas which are incompatible with member state policies. I like transparency, but there is an extensive amount of EU intervention in our conflict that is incompatible with the security of Israel.

As for Russia, for its own commercial reasons, it has decided to complete the shared reactor at Bushir that was begun with the Germans during the time of the Shah. The Russians claim they have an arrangement with the Iranians to supply them with uranium and to take out the used fuel rods from that reactor so they cannot be reprocessed to produce plutonium. I simply would not rely on Iran to be honest on this.

If the international community doesn’t act, could Israel act alone, without the US? I will say that Israel has been thinking about this problem for a very long time. A country does not develop advanced satellite technology if it’s just concerned with monitoring Hezbollah operatives across the border. The Israeli air force has been training for action and all options are on the table, but I would say the official position is that there is hope, even at this late date, that the key players in the international community will take action. This is not just a security interest for Israel, but the Arab states and I would say Europe as well.

So how can we stop Iran without military force? Iran is dependent upon imports for 40 per cent of its consumption. If the EU and US said, “You cannot do business in the EU and US if you sell gasoline to Iran,” that would drastically reduce the gasoline supply, push up the prices internally and destabalise the regime. That’s effective action that doesn’t require a Security Council resolution; that doesn’t require Russian acquiescence and that doesn’t require the firing of a single shot. What it requires is the political will.

I will finish by asking you to remember North Korea. In 2002, it suddenly made a decision to evict the IAEA nuclear monitors and tear the seals off their nuclear reactors. By 2006, it conducted its first nuclear test and in 2009 we saw the second. In other words, North Korea succeeded in breaking out of the IAEA’s limitations and conducting tests.

Iran followed all this closely and unfortunately, what they are internalising today is that the West has little will. In July, the G8 declared Iran had until September to put forward a serious proposal on their nuclear programme. The Iranians sent a five-page memo which frankly was mostly drivel. Now the deadline has passed and nothing has happened. The next thing that has happened has been the disclosure of the secret nuclear facility at Qom. So what have the Iranians learned? They have learned that they can break every deadline and every barrier and nothing happens.

You might think that Iran’s behaviour at present is brazen and risky. It looks much less brazen and risky if you recall how often Iran has already defied the West and got away with it. It is my belief that Iran is now not far from the short sprint to developing weapons-grade uranium.

Dore Gold: While America Sleeps

2009-08-31T01:23:00.000-07:00

Source- Powerline, August 28, 2009

Dore Gold served as Israel's ambassador to the United Nations from 1997 to1999. Dr. Gold's new book -- The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West -- has just been published by Regnery. The book addresses one of the most critical issues confronting the civilized world at present. We accordingly invited Dr. Gold to write about the book for Power Line readers. He has graciously responded as follows:

For over two decades, Iran has been identified in various U.S. official reports as the most prominent state-supporter of terrorism in the world. Its terrorist arm, Hizbullah, struck at the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut in 1983, killing 241 American servicemen; it also bombed the French military headquarters at the same time. It unleashed attacks on Western embassies in Kuwait, and held Western hostages for years in Lebanon.
Recently, Iran has directly supported insurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan with arms and training against U.S. and allied forces. Iran has vastly expanded its security ties in Latin America, especially with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who has allowed Hizbullah to run freely in his country. True, given this background, in Western capitals one can hear the refrain that Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons is "unacceptable," but there is little sense of urgency that is behind those statements.
The Obama administration pinned its hopes on diplomatic "engagement" with Iran when it took office. The idea was that Tehran could be persuaded to drop its nuclear program through unconditional direct talks. While Washington has made repeated overtures to Iran's leaders, they have rejected outright any concessions in the nuclear field. Then came the June 12 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the mass riots against the Iranian regime for rigging the elections. It became immediately appropriate to ask why should the U.S. hold high level meetings with this Iranian regime and give it any international legitimacy.
Nonetheless, there is now a late September deadline that the Iranians have been given to take up Washington's repeated offers. While "engagement" appears to be losing its relevance as the cornerstone of American policy in the Middle East, it is not clear what President Barack Obama will chose to replace it. There are well-connected journalists who are reporting that "Plan-B" is to accept the reality of a nuclear Iran and to hold it in check with deterrence. In the meantime, as of June 2009, according to the data of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Iranians have managed to enrich enough uranium to fuel two atomic bombs, should they decide to take the enrichment process to the next stage and produce military-grade material.
Why is the the impending Iranian challenge not at the top of the agenda of every Western government?
A cottage industry has downplayed the Iranian problem for years. Back in 2007, there was the poorly-worded U.S. National Intelligence Estimate that took information about a temporary suspension of part of the weaponization portion of the nuclear program in 2003 and presented it so that many thought the whole nuclear program had been terminated.
Surprisingly, there are still many voices affecting the policy debate on Iran who seek to understate the problem. It should come as no surprise that the Russians try to present Iranian intentions in a favorable light; they have been selling weapons and technology to Tehran for years. They also do not want the US to deploy missile defenses in Europe against Iran. Thus in 2008, Sergei Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to Washington reassured his listeners at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace that Iran posed no threat to the West.
In 2009, a joint Russian-American report for the East-West Institute played down the dangers emanating from Iran's ballistic missile program. It boldly concluded that "the military threat from Iran to Europe is not imminent," also adding that there was no evidence that Iran was able to develop "solid-propellant rocket motors" (solid-fueled rocket capability would put Iran in a whole new league of missile powers).
The East-West Institute report was extensively quoted and featured in both the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Yet within days of its release, the Iranians tested a new solid-fuel missile, called the Sejil, that had a reported range of 1,350 miles and could strike European territory. But in the meantime, the impression had already been given that the Iranian threat was not what it had been trumped up to be.
Then there are some influential commentators who just dismiss the Iranian problem completely. For example, Fareed Zakaria, one of the most respected experts on U.S. foreign policy, put forward the thesis in a Newsweek cover story on June 1, 2009, that Iran had no intentions of developing nuclear arms because there was a fatwa (an Islamic legal ruling) issued by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in 2004 describing "the use of nuclear weapons as immoral."
While Iranian diplomats often cite the story of Khamenei's "nuclear fatwa" as a ploy to mislead Western audiences, a careful perusal of the Supreme Leader's website shows that the purported decree is not even listed along with his other legal rulings ( see here), which are normally carefully updated by the Iranian authorities. In short, the famed "nuclear fatwa," at best of dubious value to the West in any case, does not even exist. But Zakaria's claim undoubtedly contributed to the general sense that the Iranian challenge is not urgent.
It is possible that in many circles, the idea of another nuclear power is not so disturbing. After all, both Pakistan and North Korea tested nuclear weapons and the sky did not fall. But Iran is very different from those cases. The North Korean regime sees nuclear weapons as part of its internal survival strategy; it does not see itself exporting its revolution to Japan and Taiwan. Iran's military leaders still speak about exporting the Islamic Revolution. In 2008, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards told his fellow officers: "Our revolution has not ended." He then added: "Our Imam did not limit the movement of the Islamic Revolution to this country, but drew greater horizons."
Few understand the significance of the moment the world is facing. A nuclear Iran involves the merger between radical Islam and nuclear weapons technology. When al-Qaeda attacked New York and Washington on 9/11, it operated from bases in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The Taliban did not have nuclear weapons or long-range missiles. As a result the US and its NATO allies could retaliate and remove the Taliban regime from Kabul, setting an example for any state that hosts global terrorist organizations that threaten the American homeland.
But a nuclear Iran will be able to offer a protective, nuclear umbrella over al-Qaeda or any group, allowing it to strike with impunity. Would the West move against a nuclear Iran, the same way it went after the Taliban in Afghanistan? In short, a nuclear Iran will totally alter the international security environment, setting the stage for a new scale of terrorist threats that the world has not yet witnessed.
A nuclear Iran can still be stopped. Iran is closing in on the finish line, but has not yet crossed it. As has been pointed out by others, Iran has many vulnerabilities, particularly its dependence on imported gasoline and other refined petroleum products (it does not have enough oil refineries). What is needed is strong Western leadership to stand up to this challenge, that is not distracted by analysis that claims Iran is not really a problem. All forms of Western leverage over the Iranian regime must be used to bring to a halt its nuclear program.
The Iranian problem cannot be swept under the rug with arguments that hold no water and help put the leaders of the Western alliance to sleep bogging them down with doubts that lead to dangerous inaction.

Dr. Gold gives this column the title "Iran approaches the nuclear finish line: Why is the world complacent?" My heading for the post alludes to Donald Kagan and Frederick Kagan's 2000 book While America Sleeps: Self-delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to the West Today, which itself recalled Churchill's While England Slept and JFK's Why England Slept. The blogger conference call with Dr. Gold discussing his new book has been posted here.

Dore Gold: Stop Iran Before It Builds Nuke

2009-08-30T06:17:00.000-07:00

by: Jim Meyers
Former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and best-selling author Dore Gold tells Newsmax that the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran is more immediate and more dangerous than commonly believed.

Gold, whose latest book is "The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West," asserts that the Islamic Republic already has the nuclear fuel necessary to produce two atomic weapons.

And he warns that a nuclear Iran would not only threaten Israel and Europe, but surely set off a nuclear arms race throughout the Middle East.

See Video: Dore Gold talks about the Iranian threat and what Obama must do to stop it - Click Here Now

Gold's earlier New York Times best-sellers include "The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City." He served at the U.N. from 1997 through 1999, and is currently president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Newsmax.TV's Kathleen Walter asked Gold where Iran stands now with its nuclear program.

"We know from data of the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran has already enriched uranium in sufficient quantities so that they have basically the feedstock for making military grade uranium sufficient for two atomic bombs," Gold said.

"That is of June 2009. If no one stops the centrifuges from spinning in Natanz — that's where the enrichment is going on in Iran — then they will have even more enriched uranium in the future.

"In terms of missiles, they have new missiles which they have been launching that are solid fuel, that are multi-stage, and are able to strike targets deep into European territory."

Is it too late to block Iran from developing a nuclear bomb, and what should President Barack Obama do about the Iranian threat? Walter asked.

"I don't think it is too late to block Iran," Gold declared.

"I think there are a number of measures that can be taken very quickly. First of all, President Obama and the administration have spoken about engaging Iran. A lot of time has been given in 2009 for that engagement, and essentially the message from Iran is they will not stop their nuclear program.

"That means the West as a whole has to move to a new stage of painful, I repeat painful, sanctions on Iran, even if it's implemented just by the U.S. and its European allies. That can cut very deeply into the Iranian economy, especially if the export of gasoline and other refined products is halted.

"Last but not least, the military option must be on the table. In my book I prove that only the fear of a Western military strike, along with painful sanctions, might bring the Iranians to stop what they're doing."

Walter asked why Iran has been allowed to get this far with its nuclear development.

"I stress in the book that almost every American administration and many European leaders have totally underestimated the threat of Iran," Gold responded.

"There is a whole cottage industry trying to present to the American people and to the Western alliance as a whole the idea that Iran does not have hostile intentions. That is completely wrong."

Asked how Israel is faring in the face of the Iranian threat, the former Israeli ambassador told Newsmax:

"I think the Israeli leadership is fully aware that Iran has stated that it wants to destroy the state of Israel, and it has said that in the context of its acquisition of atomic weapons.

"Israel is preparing to defend its people if Iran decides to move down that road. But Israel is also aware that the entire Middle East is today threatened."

A nuclear Iran would lead to a "chain reaction" across the Middle East, with countries like Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia all seeking their own nuclear weapons programs.

"You would suddenly have, in the most unstable part of the world, multiple nuclear powers that would each suspect each other of planning to strike one another, creating a very unstable security situation for the whole area," said Gold.

But the real problem with a nuclear Iran, he added, is that Iran is the "greatest supporter of international terrorism around the world, and terrorist organizations would act far more freely knowing that the country that is supporting them has a nuclear umbrella.

"For that reason a nuclear Iran must be stopped."

See Video: Dore Gold talks about the Iranian threat and what Obama must do to stop it - Click Here Now

Iran's nuclear aspirations threaten the world

2009-08-16T06:50:00.000-07:00

By Dore Gold

August 6, 2009

Writing From Jerusalem - Defying both history and logic, the idea that the West should diplomatically engage with Tehran still commands an important following.

Despite the massive waves of demonstrators across Iran who charged their government with rigging the June 12 presidential elections, there still are officials in the Obama ad- ministration who seem to believe that engagement with the Islamic Republic should "remain on the table," as columnist Roger Cohen put it in the New York Times Magazine this week. Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, agrees: "We would like very much that soon we will have the possibility to restart multilateral talks with Iran on the important nuclear issues," he said on June 24.

But they're wrong, just as they have been from the start. Indeed, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about sticking to engagement. The main one is that it has already been tried -- and utterly failed. Iran has consistently used the West's willingness to engage as a delaying tactic, a smoke screen behind which Iran's nuclear program has continued undeterred and, in many cases, undetected.

Back in 2005, Hassan Rowhani, the former chief nuclear negotiator of Iran during the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami, made a stunning confession in an internal briefing in Tehran, just as he was leaving his post. He explained that in the period during which he sat across from European negotiators discussing Iran's uranium enrichment ambitions, Tehran quietly managed to complete the critical second stage of uranium fuel production: its uranium conversion plant in Isfahan. He boasted that the day Iran started its negotiations in 2003 "there was no such thing as the Isfahan project." Now, he said, it was complete.

Rowhani's revelation showed clearly how Iran exploited the West's engagement. Moreover, the Iranians violated their 2004 agreement with the EU and brilliantly dragged out further negotiations that followed. Equally important, they delayed Western punitive moves against them, keeping the U.N. Security Council at bay for years.

Mohammed Javad Larijani, a former deputy foreign minister and brother to Rowhani's successor as chief negotiator, admitted the logic of diplomatic engagement from the Iranian side: "Diplomacy must be used to lessen pressure on Iran for its nuclear program."

Advocates of engagement with Iran often use an unfair argument to advance their case: Their cause, they claim, is opposed mainly by Israel, which is pushing its own narrow agenda. True, Israel is a target of Iran, whose leadership calls for the "elimination of Israel from the region" -- to quote the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said this years before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. So that there would be no confusion about Iranian intent, Khamenei's words were hung from a Shahab 3 missile in a military parade in 2003.

But Israel is not Iran's only target. If that was the case, the Iranians would have had no reason to develop missiles that fly well past Israeli territory to Central Europe and beyond.

In fact, the greatest engagement skeptics today are the leaders of the Sunni Arab states from Morocco to Bahrain. The Gulf states in particular have repeatedly been the targets of Iranian subversion operations. Bahrain was called the 14th province of Iran earlier this year by one of Khamenei's key advisors. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have been attacked by Iranian-backed Hezbollah operatives in the past. Iran still occupies islands belonging to the United Arab Emirates, close to the oil tanker routes that go through the Strait of Hormuz.

And Cairo just cracked a large Iranian-supported Hezbollah cell that was planning attacks on key economic centers in the Egyptian state.

For these reasons, Arab officials don't need prompting from Israel. Their common fear is that a nuclear Iran will embolden groups such as Hezbollah, which will feel it enjoys a nuclear sponsor protecting it from any retaliatory action. Unlike their Western counterparts, these Arab officials are savvy enough to distinguish between status quo states that just want to assure the security of their borders and ideologically driven revolutionary powers like Iran with expansive aims.

An Iran with hegemonial aspirations will not be talked out of acquiring nuclear weapons through a new Western incentives package. Only the most severe economic measures aimed at Iran's dependence on imported gasoline, backed with the threat of Western military power, might pull the Iranians back at the last minute. Until now, U.N. sanctions on Iran have been too weak to have any real impact.

It is critical to understand that an Iran that crosses the nuclear threshold after repeated warnings that doing so is "unacceptable" would be even less likely to be deterred in the future. It would provide global terrorism the kind of protective umbrella that Al Qaeda never had back on 9/11, including Hezbollah cells located at present in Central Europe and Latin America. Some Arab states, like Qatar, have already been largely "Finlandized," to borrow a Cold War term for states that make their foreign policy subservient to the wishes of a powerful neighbor. But as Iran's nuclear program continues unopposed, more Arab states will follow, changing the Middle East entirely.

Halting the Iranian nuclear program is a global imperative; acquiescing to a nuclear Iran in the hope that it will pragmatically understand the limits of its own power would be a colossal mistake.

Dore Gold served as Israel's ambassador to the United Nations from 1997 to 1999. His new book, "The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West," will be published next month.

Edited Items

2009-08-16T03:41:00.000-07:00

Please check back to this page in order to read extra passages that were not included in the Rise of Nuclear Iran.

Further Reading

Briefing at the British House of Commons, October 12, 2009

Dore Gold: While America Sleeps

Dore Gold: Stop Iran Before It Builds Nuke

Iran's nuclear aspirations threaten the world

Edited Items