By Lior Sternfeld

Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, and his wife, Queen Farah, prepare to depart after a visit to the United States. (photo: WIkicommons)

The relationship between Israel and Iran dates back to the early years of the Jewish state, and constituted the basis of both countries’ geopolitical policies. This political relationship was not, however, merely a matter of the ruling elites. Insofar as Pahlavi’s Iran is concerned, even oppositional circles in the 1960s and 1970s had a complex and sometimes favorable approach to the State of Israel. Moreover, many of these viewed Israel and Iran as essentially exceptional in nature in the contemporary Middle East, a perception that would change definitively for the worse after the 1967 war.

Shortly after the establishment of Israel in 1948, a new love story began in the Middle East. In 1950, Iran granted Israel de facto recognition and opened an embassy in Jerusalem. At that time Iran was (and still is) a homeland to the largest Jewish community in the Middle East, and a safe haven for many Iraqi Jews who had fled persecution in Iraq throughout the 1940s.

Unlike the majority of Jewish communities in Arab countries, many Iranian Jews decided to stay in Iran after the establishment of Israel. While most other Jewish communities in the Muslim world vanished between 1948-1956 and migrated en masse to Israel, the vast majority of Iranian Jews stayed in their homeland and had a complex relationship with the Zionist movement and Israel. This is not to say Iranian Jews were anti-Zionist. However, due to their decision to stay in Iran, Iranian Jewish communities were generally not identified with Zionism. This was, of course, a sharp contrast to most Arab-Jewish communities from Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, and Libya. Many Arab-Jews emigrated to the newly founded State of Israel before 1956, due of increasing tensions (and at times outright persecution) with the local populations on the background of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In the years following Israel’s establishment, non-Jewish intellectual and political elites in Iran generally saw Israel in a positive light. Many were intrigued by early articulations of Labor Zionism, which emphasized the proletarianization of society through dominant trade unions and communal agricultural-based collectives such as the kibbutzim. Left-leaning movements, like the Socialist Union and the communist Tudeh party, were dominant domestic opposition forces in Iranian politics. Once their attitudes towards Israel are examined through a geopolitical lens, their perspectives become significant and understandable. The Soviet Union, which supported the Tudeh Party, also supported the UN Partition Plan of Palestine in 1947 (which divided the land between a future Israeli and Palestinian state) and went on to recognize Israel in May 1948.

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, late Shah of Iran (photo: Wikicommons)

Given the prevalence of the “Aryan Hypothesis” in Iran and the general yearning Westward during the Pahlavi dynasty, an ideological pact with Israel made a great deal of sense. This was especially true after the inception of the White Revolution in 1963, a move that was advertised as an attempt to rapidly modernize Iran along Western lines. The notion that these countries shared a more “Western” attitude even though they were situated in the “East” became an integral part in the foundation of a regional coalition among the non-Arab countries of the Greater Middle East (Turkey, Ethiopia, Iran, and Israel). This coalition came to be known as the “Alliance of the Periphery.”

The Shah, however, was a deeply unpopular and autocratic ruler among the majority of Iranians. Despite Israel’s role in consolidating the Shah’s autocratic rule, the Iranian elite’s fascination with Israel helped to create a surprisingly favorable opinion of Israel in Iran. Due to the close ties between the two governments, Iranians tended to associate Israel with projects like the rebuilding of Qazvin after the earthquake in 1962 rather than with the notoriously brutal Iranian secret police SAVAK, which the Israeli Mossad helped establish and train.

Although many of the political leaders of the Iranian Jewish communities were sympathetic to the Zionist cause, most Iranian Jews remained indifferent to it. In fact, many joined leftist movements in Iran and eventually assumed leadership positions in them, demonstrating that their political allegiances belonged first and foremost to Iran. Naturally, this situation caused major frustration in Israel, a state whose existence was and still is premised on the notion that the destinies of world Jewries and the State of Israel were inexorably intertwined.

The predominant Iranian Jewish interpretation of Zionism was different from the political Zionism espoused by the Israeli establishment at that time. The former did not necessitate the existence of a Jewish state, but rather reflected a religious sentiment and an emotional-cum-spiritual attachment to Zion, the biblical name of Jerusalem. This was not unique to the Iranian Jewry, but rather common among Jews across the Middle East. It, however, remained relevant only to Iranians, as the other communities for the most part ceased to exist post 1948-1956.

While many Iranian Jews had relatives in Israel and had visited Israel before, Israel was not part of their Jewish identity, and they did not see themselves leaving their beloved homeland for any other country — including Israel. Overwhelmingly, they did not share the political interpretation of of Zionism with the Zionist movement and Israel and tied any meaning of the term to the existence of the State of Israel.

To understand the unique place Israel occupied in the Iranian worldview, one should consider that Iranians who wrote about it. Jalal Pahlavi Al-e Ahmad, a foremost Iranian thinker, may have best conveyed the transformation of Israel’s representations in the Iranian public sphere. Al-e Ahmad, a one-time member of the Tudeh leadership, gained leftist-internationalist credentials with the publication of Gharbzadegi (1962), in which he criticized the tendency of broad segments of  Iranian society to blindly mimic the West. Gharbzadegi (“Westoxification”) lamented the inevitable loss of Iranian culture and identity to Western models and paradigms. His publication influenced a later generation of Iranian revolutionaries such as Ali Shariati and the current supreme leader, Sayyed Ali Khamenei.

Given his remarkable place in both the evolution of the Iranian Left and the development of contemporary political ideologies, one would not expect that he should name Israel as a model society. Yet, Al-e Ahmad conjured ideas that were common among intellectual circles in Iran before 1967 — ideas which brought home the message that Israel in its essence was a cultural and political ally.

Two years after the publication of Gharbzadegi, Al-e Ahmad and his wife, Simin Daneshvar, visited Israel. Al-e Ahmad’s travelogue, Safar Beh Vilayet-e Ezrael (Journey to the State of Israel) attests to the profound impression the country left on him. The critical thinker wrote about Israel in nothing less than admiring terms. He described in details a visit to Yad Va’Shem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, and expressed his fascination with the resurrection of the Jewish people after the horrors of the Holocaust. Later, he broadly discussed the Kibbutz in Israel and the state’s socialist ideology in positive terms.

During their visit, Al-e Ahmad and Daneshvar stayed in Kibbutz Ayelet Ha’Shahar in northern Israel. He described the Kibbutz for the Iranian reader as follows: “[…] these people in Israel had already laid the foundation for the socialization of the means of agricultural production in a part of the world which had been inspired by the Russian Social-Democratic movement and not by Stalin.” Thus, Al-e Ahmad associated Israel with the “correct” side of communist ideology, as the contemporary rift in the Tudeh party also created another communist opposition to Stalin’s legacy.

Jalal Al-e Ahmad and Simin Daneshvar’s writing from the Kibbutz Ayelet Ha’Shahar guestbook. (Kibbutz Ayelet Ha’Shahar archive)

There is perhaps another reason for Al-e Ahmad’s great sympathy for Israel. In his travelogue, Al-e Ahmad depicts the Arabs in derogatory terms as ideological and cultural enemies, to say the least. Cultural tensions between Arabs and Iranians surface clearly in the text. As he wrote: “I am a non-Arab citizen of the East who has suffered much at the hands of the Arabs and still does. In spite of all the services that ‘I’ [I as “Iran,” not the person of Jalal Al-e Ahmad] rendered to Islam through the ages and still does, they still refer to me as Ajam,” which, in this context, likely means a “foreigner” and “illiterate” as well. Similar statements can be found throughout the text. Given Al-e Ahmad’s public status, this travelogue certainly had an impact on Iranian perceptions of Israel.

Interestingly, Safar beh Vilayet-e Ezrael was published in a series of newspaper articles which was read and discussed among secular and religious intellectuals. For example, Iran’s current supreme leader, Seyyed Ali Khamenei, later recalled that this travelogue not only puzzled him but also stirred major controversy among the young clerics in Qom, specifically because of the inherent contradiction they saw between this book and Al-e Ahmad’s previous popular writings, first and foremost Gharbzadegi.

The year 1967 was a watershed moment in the relationship between Pahlavi Iran and the State of Israel. The Six Day War, during which Israel invaded its neighboring countries and occupied the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights, transformed Israel into a colonial power in the eyes of Iranian intellectual elites. After the war, many of the Soviet Bloc countries severed their relations with Israel, as did their satellite parties, including the Iranian Tudeh.

Jalal Al-e Ahmad wrote the last chapter of this travelogue in 1968, faithfully reflecting the transformation of Iranian attitudes towards Israel. In this chapter, he describes Israel as a part of a Western capitalist scheme in the region, explaining that the reactionary Arab regimes played into the hands of Israel and the colonial powers. He also criticizes French intellectual elites for their betrayal of the Arabs and supporting, yet again, a new colonial venture. His criticism was aimed directly at Jean-Paul Sartre and Claude Lanzmann for condemning the French colonialism in Algeria and being very critical towards Britain’s ventures, yet miraculously finding a way to ignore the exact same problems when it came to Israel.

Along with the elite’s opinion, Iranian popular perceptions of Israel also changed dramatically after 1967. A clear popular expression of this came about in 1968. That year, the Israeli and Iranian national football teams played against each other in Tehran as part of Asia Cup finals. Habib Elghanayan, a wealthy Jew and a community leader, purchased a large number of tickets for this game for Iranian Jews to attend and cheer for the Israeli team. This game, however, became a site where Iranian fans vehemently showed their discontent with Israel’s policy. The Israeli team and their supporters fell victims to brutal incitement and had to be escorted out of the stadium by the police. This incident reflected a sea change in the Iranians’ attitudes toward Israel. A one-time favorable partner now became an unwanted foreigner, protected only by the grace of the Shah’s iron fist.

Beginning in the 1970s, the Shah attempted to find new alliances in the Middle East and beyond. Iran’s relations with the Soviet Union and some of the Arab countries were revisited. A peace agreement with Iraq and the American election of President Jimmy Carter in 1976, and the subsequent harsh criticisms that Carter voiced against the human rights conditions in Iran, led the Shah to develop a more negative view of the State of Israel. By the late 1970s, the revolution toppled the Shah, and the new regime reflected the Iranian public’s feelings towards the State of Israel with vocal anti-Zionism, kicking the Israeli diplomatic mission out and developing strong ties to the Palestinian resistance. And while the majority of Iranians would come to forget the mixed feelings they initially harbored towards Israel prior to 1967, Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s writings still stand as an almost lonely testament to that time.

Lior Sternfeld is a PhD Candidate in the History Department in the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on Iranian social history and the religious minorities in Iran during the Pahlavi era. This post was first published on the Ajam Media Collective, an online space devoted to documenting and analyzing cultural, social, and political trends across diverse Iranian, Afghan, Central Asian, and their Diaspora communities, and was translated to Hebrew in Haokets. Haokets is a non-profit, independent, progressive Israeli web magazine that hosts critical discussion where hundreds of writers publish professional and original pieces on socioeconomic, cultural and philosophical issues, human rights activism, feminism, and Mizrahi politics. Visit their English-language blog.

I, too, would like to neutralize the threat of the jihadists in Syria, and Hezbollah, and the possibility that they will take control of Assad’s chemical weapons (and worse, much worse, his possible biological weapons). But how is that going to be accomplished? Here, according to Haaretz’s Amos Harel, is what the Americans think it will take.

In briefings recently for American media representatives, administration officials have said that removing the chemical weapons threat in Syria would require ground operations involving no fewer than 75,000 U.S. troops, probably with assistance from other countries. …

A military operation in Syria would require precise intelligence at an extraordinary level. It’s reasonable to assume that it would also involve military resistance on the part of the Assad regime … Intelligence experts are divided over whether Iran and Hezbollah would help defend the Syrian chemical weapon sites in the event of a U.S.-led military operation targeting them. But that would just be the beginning of America’s headache.

The weaponry would have to be collected on the ground and perhaps transported outside of Syria so it could be neutralized and buried; either that or the facilities in which the weapons are stored would have to be destroyed. That’s a task of rare proportions which would take many months to carry out, even if the capture of the weapons proceeded more easily than expected.

If it were possible to do the whole thing by remote control, to simply bomb the chemical/biological weapons out of commission, I’d be in favor of that – so long as innocent people weren’t anywhere remotely close to the explosions, and so long as all that poison couldn’t be carried on the wind anyplace. But such conditions, obviously, are impossible. So bombing the weapons out of existence isn’t an option, either. (The Free Syrian Army says Israel hit a chemical weapons site in the country on Saturday, but there’s been no word from Damascus or Jerusalem on it.)

In all, I can’t think of anything Israel, the United States or anybody else can do to ensure that Syria’s chemical and maybe biological weapons don’t come into the possession of Islamic terrorists. The prospective “no-fly zone” that a lot of Americans are talking about might make it harder for Assad to prosecute the war and thus bring down the level of killing – or it might not. At any rate, a no-fly zone is not going to remove the chemical/biological weapons from Syria or the jihadists who would like to have them.

And I don’t believe Israeli leaders think the air force can stop those weapons from being smuggled out by repeating indefinitely what it did in January – bombing a weapons convoy that was moving from Syria to Lebanon, without Israelis getting injured. If the air force bombs Syria repeatedly, it seems pretty likely that Syrian or Hezbollah missiles will start falling in Israel, and after that anything could happen.

But the thing is, even if Israel or the United States could neutralize all the chemical and biological weapons and all the terrorists in Syria and Lebanon, there would still be plenty more of them around and plenty more being created all the time. And one other thing – the terrorists and those sorts of weapons have been around for a long time, many decades, and so far they haven’t come together. I don’t think it’s because the jihadists are incapable of getting and using such weapons. I remember after 9/11, Rudolph Giuliani said the thing he feared most was somebody going up with a crowd of tourists to the observation deck of the Empire State Building, taking a tiny plastic bag out of his pocket and sprinkling a few specks of anthrax into the winds over Manhattan and killing hundreds of thousands. It hasn’t happened, and it doesn’t seem that hard to do. There have to be other reasons why Al Qaeda-style groups have not used chemical or biological weapons or “dirty bombs” or other reasonably accessible mass killing instruments against its enemies, and I think one of the reasons is deterrence: The reaction against the jihadists and their world, or worlds, would be catastrophic beyond imagination.

I’m not saying such an attack can’t or won’t ever happen. But since it hasn’t yet, and since there’s no way to get rid of the threat, and since an attempt to get rid of it in Syria would seem to be so inordinately daunting and dangerous – and inconclusive – I think the least terrible option is to do nothing and go on trusting to deterrence.  To refrain from attacking anything and anybody in Syria unless they attack first.

As for the humanitarian consideration – the need to stop Assad from killing people by the tens of thousands – if a no-fly zone could help, then by all means. But foreign soldiers should not be ordered to get between Assad and the jihadists who are leading the fight against him. If anybody wants to volunteer to go there as a peacekeeping troop, good luck to him, but no country owes it to Syria or to humanity to risk its soldiers’ lives on such a mission.

Join the discussion:

And when I say swept along, I mean that it is tempting to jump into the ring and do battle – fight fire with fire, stake out the liberal ground in the professional ring of image-peddlers for Israel (IPFI?).

Just what we need.

The Israel Project President and CEO Josh Block (Photo: TIP/CC)

What really grates is the author’s description of Block’s self-image as a defender not merely of Israel, but even more nobly – of the pro-Israel crowd.

Block, while stating that TIP’s mission and goals remain unchanged, comes to the organization with strong convictions about threats that pro-Israel advocacy faces from critics. He sees many of those critics as aligned with the liberal camp. And he paints them in stark terms.

So that’s what this is all about? The conversation over Israel has levitated from policy itself (like the occupation, stupid) to the meta-argument over whether Israel’s image is fairly or unfairly portrayed, to the meta-meta (uber-meta? meta squared?) conversation of whether the pro-Israel camp (a flawed euphemism for pro-occupation) is fairly or unfairly portrayed by the liberal camp, and whether those liberals are fairly or unfairly being called anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, Iran-loving and by association, nuclear-destruction-second-Holocaust-of-Israel extra-terrestrials (all but the final moniker is a paraphrase of Block’s quote in the article – but trust me, it’s there by implication).

Although I work on campaigns for a living, in which images and communications are integral to the effort to connect elites with the public, the question of imaging Israel has gone far, far too far.

I dare each camp to say what it really stands for regarding Israel, and while we’re at it, for the Palestinians too – since Israel does in fact control them. Specifically, I dare the other side to stop trying to distract the conversation, along with millions and millions of dollars, by mumbling about meta-meta. I’ll start! Here’s what I stand for: ending the occupation, preserving and salvaging Israel’s democracy, equality and human rights in every society where I can have an influence. That means mainly in Israel, but since I view Israelis and Palestinians as intertwined under any circumstances, I feel somewhat responsible for both.

I dare the pro-Israel camp to say what it stands for. Members of that camp have created a wildly polarized, self-important discourse (after meeting one recently, he tweeted his surprise to find that I was not a “bat-shit crazy leftie”); so I would have to guess that they are diametrically opposed to everything I believe. That makes the “pro-Israel” camp pro-occupation, anti-democracy, anti-equality, for a pre-emptive strike on Iran even if it happens unilaterally and the Middle East becomes Armageddon. Go on guys, say what you really think: I dare you. And if you can’t, then spend those dollars on some starving people.

Related:
Who is ‘right-wing’ and what is ‘pro-Israel’? 

By Mehrdad Naderi

Hello everyone,

I am a 30-year old Iranian, and I want to write and express my feelings toward you. Throughout my life I have witnessed the effects of a religion-based regime that imposed itself on us during the revolution. As a result of the Islamic Revolution, Iranians have had to pay for the many disasters that followed. After the revolution, Saddam Hussein waged an unwanted war against us that caused both sides a great deal of pain. I was born amidst slogans, and grew up within ideologies that were created by leaders to move and mobilized minds and emotions to serve their own purposes. Those who claimed to be the voice of people owned the revolution. They misused their power by established a new dictatorship that was totally opposed to the goals and aspirations of Iranian people. The fundamentalist regime has been trying to make us scared of the enemy, but I and many others have realized that the real enemy is inside our minds. Our real enemy is ignorance. Our enemy is following emotions instead of wisdom.

Dictators, however, neglect the following principle: the search for truth is a natural, God-given instinct inside every individual, a gift. Therefore, when I became an adult, I decided to travel and learn. I was able to meet people and have conversations with them; I lived among both secular and traditional nations. I studied and investigated, and pursued what I believe to be truth and right. In this journey I have been accompanied by many teachers and friends from my own generation. I would like to share some of the main insights I have learned so far.

I learned from Gandhi to be patient and not to harm others, even the supposed enemy. He said: “Whatever you seed in soil then will become a tree.” I learned from Zoroaster to think, to tell and to do the right thing. I learned from Aristotle and Plato to be doubtful of what I see and of what I am told, and not to conclude the truth from images only.

*****

What I see inside Iran is fear of the enemy. Leaders blame them for difficulties and problems in the country; it is the nature of any authoritarian regime to create an enemy in order to prolong its rule. But the people of Iran identified their needs from within. Although the Islamic Republic regime is very conservative, Iranian people became very modern in thought and in action. They fought for years for democratization, and in recent years, their call for rule of the people has influenced the whole region.

However, the outside world also does not seem to have a clear vision about Iran. The Academy-Award winning film Argo is just one recent example that perpetuates an incorrect foreign image of Iran and Iranian history – mainly, the Iranian revolution was not only about establishing Islamic rule and Sharia law. It was also an expression of the fact that Iranian people did not want dictatorship of the Shah (Kingship). Various other groups were involved in the revolution, including socialists, Marxists, nationalists, liberals and of course Islamists; but, later for various reasons, Islamists were simply the most successful, which led them to establish and impose yet another dictatorship.

The outside world’s perception of Iran must be separated from the regime. Iranians have never abandoned their democratic aspirations. This was proved by the disputed election of 2009, and the the Green Movement that followed, which started with peaceful demonstrations and was cruelly suppressed by the regime). Iranians are left living under a radical-totalitarian regime at home, while at the same time they pay the heavy price for that government’s policies, in the form of international sanctions. However, we are hopeful and seek a peaceful democratization process from within, which is the best remedy for every suppressed nation. What we need is the friendly support of other nations on our path.

****

The global village is made up of diverse religions, thoughts and nationalities, and these must not be used as tools for division. By contrast to the past, global citizens wherever they live and whatever belief they possess, now have the capacity to know each other and find common ground. Faith can lead human beings to love others and treat all people equally.

We live in an age that belongs to public opinion. By promoting respect and tolerance for each other, I believe we will gradually find that every human is armed with love toward others. The more we are aware of this love, the more people will say no to authoritarian leaders who exploit the image of differences as a weapon to divide people, for their own interests and gain.

I prefer to view the difference and diversity of people in the world as a symphony created by God. Diversity does not have to mean conflict, but rather it can be a harmony of colors that makes life beautiful to all. The Persian poet Saadi Shirazi wrote a poem seven centuries ago which is on the gate of the United Nations, and it has been sent into space as a message to other planets. Why don’t we use it on earth? Saadi wrote:

Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you’ve no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain!

[Translation - M. Aryanpoor]

Let us act for each other, and come to closer. As individuals and as the public we are capable of distributing love and awareness. We are armed with literature, poetry, music, cinema, photography, Internet, media, academies, conferences, NGOs, and with knowledge, knowledge, knowledge.

In conclusion, I would like to wish all a very happy Nowruz (Persian New Year)!

Your brother from Iran,

Mehrdad Naderi

Mehrdad Naderi is an Iranian graduate student currently living outside Iran.

Thursday’s Senate confirmation hearing of Chuck Hagel was something out of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” or the 1950s House Un-American Activities Committee sessions. “Senator Hagel, are you now or have you ever been a realist?” “Your soul is in peril, Senator – recant!”

And Hagel recanted, over and over again. Under pressure on Iran and Israel (among other taboo subjects), he apologized to his inquisitors for referring to the “Jewish lobby” (“I should have said ‘pro-Israel lobby’”), apologized for saying it “intimidated” people (“I should have said ‘influenced’”), caved in over saying the lobby had gotten Congress to do “dumb” things (couldn’t think of a dumb thing it had ever gotten Congress to do).

On Iran he recanted for opposing military force to stop it from going nuclear (“All options must be on the table,” and “My policy is one of prevention, and not of containment”), recanted for suggesting that the Revolutionary Guard was not a terrorist organization, also recanted for suggesting that Hezbollah was not a terrorist organization.

Best of all, he apologized for having said Israel was not justified in “keeping Palestinians caged up like animals.” (“If I had the opportunity to edit that, like many things I’ve said, I would like to go back and change the words and meaning. I regret using that choice of words.”)

What an embarrassing thing to watch. What a blood-chilling, Orwellian  bunch, these interrogators, especially Lindsey Graham. Feeding them is the most virulent branch of the pro-war/anti-Muslim lobby: Sheldon Adelson, the Emergency Committee for Israel and Weekly Standard magazine, led by their hit men William Kristol, Michael Goldfarb and Noah Pollak.

Hagel needs five Republican votes to get confirmed as secretary of defense; reports are that it’s touch and go. At this point, I don’t think it matters; he’s been so compromised, so smacked around by Israel’s enforcers, that he’d probably be afraid to say anything but “yes” to Netanyahu once he got to the Pentagon.

This was a spectacle of America and Israel at their worst. It was the worst of the Obama administration, too, a reminder of why this president’s second term is unlikely to be any better than his first as far as the Middle East is concerned.

Oh well. So much for Chuck Hagel. Another great white hope vanquished.

In the last two years we have spent more than 11 billion NIS (3 Billion USD) on security delusions that were not carried out and will not be carried out… it is a sum which is well beyond the multi-year budget […]

Olmert added that he

…believes that these moves will not be carried out, because 2012 was “the decision year.” During last year they scared the entire world and eventually nothing was done on this issue.

Related:
Iranian analyst: For a fair offer, Iran will compromise on its nuclear program
Israelis fear nuclear Iran, but don’t believe Israel will attack
The 9 most important questions (and answers) on an Iran strike

President Barack Obama watches as PM Netanyahu and Palestinian President Abbas shake hands. While the administration is clearly frustrated with Netanyahu, it has also lost interest in the Palestinian cause. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

Four years ago, I traveled to the United States to cover the Democratic and Republican conventions. It was an inspiring experience, largely due to the unique feelings that accompanied the candidacy of (now) president Obama. Judging from afar, it seems that much of this excitement is gone, and the current elections are a frustrating and rather cynical experience. Still, if I were an American living in the U.S., I probably would have voted for President Obama for many reasons – from LGBT rights to Supreme Court nominations. Living in a country that provides affordable and rather effective public health care, the only problem I see with Obamacare is the rather limited goals of the program.

But I am not American, and I would like to judge these elections from my perspective as an Israeli, and mainly through the issues that dominate my political engagement.

My country, Israel, was mentioned 34 times in the U.S. presidential debate on foreign policy. Only Iran got more mentions, and most of them also had to do with Israel. China, seen by many as the greatest challenge to the United States, came in a close third. Strangely enough, the Palestinians – whose issue is so closely linked to Israel’s – were only mentioned once, and even this one time was by Romney – a man who thinks there is no way to end the conflict and no need to terminate the occupation, so why bother.

This week, wearing his new, moderate persona, Romney had this to say:

You look at the record of the last four years and say, is Iran closer to a bomb? Yes. Is the Middle East in tumult? Yes. Is — is al-Qaida on the run, on its heels? No. Is — are Israel and the Palestinians closer to — to reaching a peace agreement? No, they haven’t had talks in two years. We have not seen the progress we need to have…

Leaving aside the absurd notion that it is the role of the United States to end the “turmoil” in the Middle East, New Romney has a point. It is no surprise that President Obama failed to address the Palestinian issue, or as Americans like to call it, “the peace process.” The administration had very little to be proud of.

Shortly after president Obama was elected, he promised not to turn his back on the Palestinian people. It was a brave statement, considering that in some places, even mentioning the word Palestinians is a non-starter. Yet those turned out to be empty words, when it was revealed that the administration couldn’t stand the political price that the Israeli prime minister made it pay at home. After some back and forth between Jerusalem and Washington, the president appointed Dennis Ross – the man most associated with the diplomatic failure of the last couple of decades – to head  Middle East policy, or more accurately, to win favors with the Lobby and the heads of the Jewish communities. The president then blocked a largely symbolic Palestinian statehood bid at the UN, and ended up vetoing a Security Council resolution on the settlements that was a copy of previous State Department declarations.

Today, the United States is the enabler of the occupation: it provides the military infrastructure, the financial aid and the diplomatic cover for it. If it hadn’t done so, the continuing denial of basic human rights from millions would have ended long ago. Some might argue that the president had no choice, and that this is the result of unique circumstances and power relations in Washington. If so, then Washington needs to change, and right now, there is no reason to support those denying it. While the administration is clearly frustrated and resentful of Prime Minister Netanyahu, it also seems to have simply lost interest in the Palestinian issue.

The Palestinian issue is the main reason for my political engagement. The desire to end the occupation and to have Palestinians enjoy equal rights is what lies behind most of my political choices. There is something hollow in the robotic repetition of a commitment to Israel, without showing the slightest interest in the fundamental matter that shapes the lives of real people here, Jews and Arabs. It simply feels wrong to play along with this attitude, no matter how effectively one can rationalize it.

I do not expect the United States to pick sides in Israeli politics and I don’t want it to be anti-Israel. I expect it to be anti-occupation. In this particular sense, the Obama administration was much worse than Bush’s, who forced the road map upon both sides, and made Israel abandon its plan to built in the E1 region northeast of Jerusalem. Naturally, Bush was operating in a different environment, but as even former head of Mossad Ephrayim Halevi notes, for some reason Republican administrations are always more effective at keeping Israeli expansionist tendencies at bay. Maybe we should keep this in mind. In terms of policy – and not just rhetoric – I am not that sure anymore that a Romney administration would be that different from Obama’s.

There will be unfortunate and unpleasant results for a Republican victory in the coming elections. The celebrations in both the Israeli right and neo-con circles will be difficult to bear. Some might argue that it would make the Lobby even more powerful. But such micro-politics can only take you so far. At the end of the day, leaders should be judged on their actions. If Israel wasn’t on the agenda at all, it would have been a different case. But Israel is discussed constantly, and the administration has been making all  bad choices. There is zero evidence that things will be better in the second term – only wishful thinking. It’s simply not enough to win my support.

Luckily, I don’t get to vote.

Tonight’s Obama-Romney foreign policy debate is no doubt going to go heavy on the issues of Iran and Israel. By rights, Obama has a powerful argument to make against his opponent, one that, in a more perfect America, could scare a lot of those “floating voters” who’ve deserted him into floating back to his corner. And it wouldn’t be demagoguery – it would be taking a legitimate fear of a Romney presidency, one that’s based strictly on the candidate’s own words, and focusing in on it. In a more perfect America, Obama could do that tonight; in America such as it is, he can’t.

The argument to be made is that if Romney gets elected, there’s a much greater chance America will go to war in Iran, because when it comes to Iran – or anything else having to do with Israel and the Middle East – Romney swears by everything Bibi Netanyahu says. He keeps stressing that there must be “no daylight” between America’s policy and Israel’s. Well, Israel’s policy on Iran, as laid out for a decade or more by Netanyahu, is that America should bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities to rubble, and that if America won’t do it, Israel must.

While Romney hasn’t committed himself to attacking Iran, he has very publicly agreed with Netanyahu that the bar for American military action should be set much lower that where Obama has put it. According to Obama’s strategy, which calls for attack if and when Iran starts weaponizing its nuclear program, war is not inevitable. According to Netanyahu’s strategy, which calls for an attack if Iran continues to refuse to dismantle its nuclear program, war is already overdue. From the New York Times story on Romney’s fundraising speech in Jerusalem at the end of July:

Mitt Romney said Sunday that preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear capability should be America’s “highest national security priority,” stressing that “no option should be excluded” in the effort. …

While the Obama administration typically talks about stopping Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, Mr. Romney adopted the language of Israel’s leaders, who say Tehran must be prevented from even having the capability to develop one. …

Mr. Netanyahu, whose relationship with Mr. Obama has been rocky, was generous in his praise of Mr. Romney. “Mitt, I couldn’t agree with you more, and I think it’s important to do everything in our power to prevent the ayatollahs from possessing the capability” to develop a nuclear weapon, the prime minister said earlier in the day.

In case anyone missed Romney’s statement, he repeated it in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:

When we say an Iranian nuclear-weapons capability—and the regional instability that comes with it—is unacceptable, the ayatollahs must be made to believe us.

It means placing no daylight between the United States and Israel.

It’s bad enough that a candidate for president has emphatically and proudly enslaved much of America’s foreign policy to that of a foreign country and its leader. But on Iran, Romney is enslaving America’s policy to that of a foreign leader who very plainly wants America to go to war – yesterday.

I believe this would scare a lot of independent or undecided voters out of voting for Romney – if they understood the importance of what he’s saying, which Obama could certainly explain to them tonight. But Obama won’t, or at any rate he won’t do so bluntly enough to scare people, because it would backfire terribly. If the president were to attack Israel’s policy toward the Iranians, the Palestinians or anybody else, it would immediately translate in the current American political environment as support for terror. If you oppose Israeli policy, you support Israel’s enemies, and Israel’s enemies are America’s enemies – the Islamic world, the terrorists. That, finally, is the Israeli war camp’s strongest card in the U.S. – not the Israel lobby, not evangelical Christians, but post-9/11 American Islamophobia, which spreads well beyond Israel’s right-wing American Jewish and Christian fans. 21st century American Islamophobia lets Bibi get away with anything. It’s going to be in Romney’s corner tonight, and if Romney wins on November 6, it will amplify Netanyahu’s calls for war.

For this reason alone, Americans ought to be scared of electing Romney. Unfortunately, they’re too scared and antagonistic toward Muslims to hear about it, especially from someone whose middle name is Hussein.

By Aylin Gurzel

FAMAGUSTA – Turkey has tried to broker negotiations between Iran and the West over Iran’s nuclear program. But, with talks repeatedly failing to generate any substantive progress, Turkey’s leaders are beginning to consider how a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities would affect their country’s interests.

When Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002, it sought to improve relations with Iran. To some degree, the two countries began with a blank slate, given that they had largely kept their distance from each other for several centuries. But Turkey’s mediating role in nuclear negotiations fueled suspicion in Iran, complicating Turkey’s efforts to establish a strong bilateral relationship.

But Turkey persisted. After all, it had staked its foreign policy on building relationships with its neighbors, and its leaders believed that their country’s NATO membership and geographical position would help it to assume an influential role in the region.

In order to capitalize on Turkey’s strengths, its government insisted on participating in the nuclear talks – even hosting a session in Istanbul this year. According to Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, Turkey’s priority was “a stable and secure region within the framework of a new global order.”

But the continued impasse over Iran’s nuclear program has led Turkey to reassess its options. Turkey, which is covered by NATO’s nuclear umbrella, views international efforts to promote nuclear non-proliferation as woefully inadequate. As a result, a debate has been underway in Turkey over whether to pursue the development and acquisition of nuclear weapons. If negotiations remain deadlocked, and proliferation increases in the region, the country might well pursue this course.

Supporters believe that an Iranian nuclear breakout would justify such a move from Turkey. Conservative AKP deputy Ihsan Aslan, for example, has asserted that, given Israel’s nuclear arsenal, Muslim countries should also possess nuclear weapons. A nuclear-weapons program, he has argued, would bolster Turkey’s leadership position in the region.

Meanwhile, opponents contend that a nuclear Iran would only destabilize the Middle East. Former Turkish Ambassador to the United States Faruk Logoğlu has argued that a nuclear Iran would not only threaten the flow of oil, but would also make a regional war more likely.

Despite the high stakes, hopes for an agreement are low, especially given Iran’s increasing estrangement from Turkey. Since the establishment of a NATO missile-tracking radar in Turkey’s Malatya province, Iran has been hurling threats at its neighbor.

Moreover, the two countries are at odds over the crisis in Syria. Iran has provided substantial support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, while Turkey has advocated military intervention on behalf of opposition forces. And, despite Iranian officials’ claims that they have nothing to do with increased terrorist activities in Turkey by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, Turkey’s leaders remain unconvinced.

As a result, Turkey’s continued mediation efforts have become strained. Turkish National Intelligence Organization Undersecretary Hakan Fidan recently visited Iran to discuss its nuclear program and the deepening crisis in Syria. Soon after, National Security Council Secretary Saeed Jalili – Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator – headed to Ankara for further talks with Davutoğlu and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. But, according to Turkish media, Erdoğan gave Jalili the cold shoulder.

Further destabilizing the region are enduring tensions between Turkey and Israel. The dispute over the Mavi Marmara – the Turkish ship that was bringing supplies to Gaza in 2010 when Israeli commandos boarded and seized it, killing nine Turks – remains a source of contention. While trade continues, the two countries’ military relations were halted abruptly.

An attack on Iran’s facilities would likely bring the two countries onto the same side. But unresolved hostilities with Israel could affect Turkey’s choices.

Turkey’s military is already planning to defend the country against an Iranian attack – a move that may lead Turkey to take a more aggressive stance on Syria. And the Turkish government is preparing for a halt in Iranian oil exports by diversifying its suppliers.

In short, despite Turkish leaders’ efforts to broker an agreement, they seem to be accepting the possibility of an attack on Iran as a last resort. Now their priority is to prepare for that eventuality, so that military conflict will not take Turkey by surprise.

Aylin Gurzel is an assistant professor of international relations at Eastern Mediterranean University. This article first appeared on Project Syndicate.

I love it when people say there’s no comparing a nuclear Iran to a nuclear Soviet Union because, after all, the Soviets weren’t really a threat to blow up America, people weren’t afraid they would just go crazy and push the button – they weren’t religious fanatics like the Iranians, they were a stable, rational regime. Definitely. I remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, which happened 50 years ago this week. I was 11, and one night towards the end of it, when the U.S. had blockaded Cuba and was threatening to invade if Russia didn’t take down its nuclear missiles in that little Commie country “90 miles off our coast,” the topic of conversation among the kids on my block was the possibility of nuclear war. Growing up in the early 1960s on that block in Los Angeles, there were only two news events big enough to warrant our attention: the Kennedy assassination and the Cuban missile crisis. During that last week of October 1962, we were too young to be really afraid of a nuclear war, but the fear in the country was so intense that it trickled down to us; we were giddy with excitement over this real-life Twilight Zone drama.

So please don’t anybody tell me that Americans weren’t scared shitless of Russia’s nuclear weapons. Yet we survived, thanks to Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). I see no reason why nuclear Israel can’t survive a nuclear Iran the same way.

I’m sure that if Americans of mainstream political views were reading this, most of them would say: you just disproved your point. America almost didn’t survive the Soviet Union’s nuclear power during the Cuban missile crisis – do you want to take that sort of chance again with a nuclear Iran?

But this is the thing most Americans don’t know – it wasn’t Russia that was threatening war 50 years ago, it was the U.S. People in America believed their country was acting in self-defense. The Russians wanted to point nukes at us from 90 miles away, and we had to stop them. And that’s what Kennedy did – he gave Khrushchev an ultimatum. Khrushchev “blinked,” took down his missiles in Cuba and the world was safe again.

In fact, though, the U.S. already had nuclear missiles pointed at the Soviet Union from just across the border in Turkey, and within striking distance from Italy; Khrushchev just wanted to level the playing field, so to speak. And America was prepared to go to war with the Soviet Union over it. (The crisis ended on October 28 when Kennedy finally agreed to Khrushchev’s deal: the Soviets remove their missiles from Cuba and the U.S. removes its missiles from Turkey and Italy – but only after Khrushchev agreed that the American “concession” not be made public, and be carried out a few months after the Soviet climb-down in Cuba to avoid the appearance of linkage, of a quid pro quo. If there was a fanatic in this whole episode, it was America.)

There are a couple of resemblances between the American attitude to the Soviets 50 years ago and the Israeli attitude toward Iran today. Israel also thinks that if it attacks – with or without the Americans – it will be doing so in self-defense. The difference is that while Americans at large didn’t know about U.S. missiles in Turkey and Italy (though some Americans obviously did), all Israelis know now that Israel has lots of nuclear weapons. How can they contemplate starting a war against another country, a war that will not be negligible and could be devastating, for doing the same thing, building nukes, that Israel has been doing for over 40 years? Why does Israel insist that either Iran backs down or it will strike, just as America did with the Soviets 50 years ago? As Noam Chomsky said of the Kennedy administration’s thinking in his recent  TomDispatch article on the golden anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, it is the belief that “we are Good.”

That’s it. We are Good, we mean well, we want peace, so we have rights that do not accrue to those others, those Evil ones. And if they try to claim the same rights we have, we are entitled – nay, we are duty-bound – to use military force to stop them. We are Good, so we can point nukes at the Russians, and if they try to point nukes back at us, we can attack them because they’re Evil. We are Good, so we can build all the nuclear bombs we want, and if the Iranians try to build just one, we can attack them because they are Evil. It’s not that might makes right, but that right justifies might. We start the war, but it’s not a war of aggression, it’s a war of self-defense – always. By definition.

This ideological disorder didn’t begin with America in the Cuban missile crisis, of course, and it won’t end with Israel in Iran (if we end up in, or over, Iran.) But this week, and particularly on Monday when Obama and Romney try to out-tough each other in their foreign policy debate, it’s worth remembering where that disorder nearly led the world in late October 1962, especially since so many Americans and even more Israelis are still afflicted by it.