Los Lobos Locos

Aesop's fables prove too deep for an anti-Israel New York Times columnist.

By JAMES TARANTO
WSJ

Eliminationist anti-Semitism has long been a staple of Iran's 30-year-old fundamentalist regime, where government-organized mobs are led in chants of "Death to America!" and "Death to Israel!" Over the past few years, Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has stepped up the rhetoric, saying in 2005 that the Jewish state "must be wiped out from the map of the world. At the same time, Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons. If this pursuit succeeded, Tehran would have the means to make good on its genocidal threats. Israeli officials express alarm at this prospect. Roger Cohen of the New York Times argues that the Israelis are lying. According to Cohen, the Iranians are bluffing, and the Israelis know it.

Cohen's formulation of this claim is that Jerusalem is "crying wolf." Israeli leaders, he notes, have long expressed alarm about the possibility of Iran's acquiring nuclear weapons. In 1996, then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres (now president) described Iran as "more dangerous than Nazism, because Hitler did not possess a nuclear bomb, whereas the Iranians are trying to perfect a nuclear option." Four years earlier, according to Cohen, Peres "predicted that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 1999" (though we can't find any references to this one in the archives). In 1996, Ehud Barak, now defense minister, put the date at 2004.

Iran does not now have a nuclear weapon. Therefore, Cohen infers, the Israelis fabricated the threat back then, and are doing so again: "Now here comes [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, . . . spinning the latest iteration of Israel's attempt to frame Iran as some Nazi-like incarnation of evil."

In the fable of the boy who cried wolf, the boy, a shepherd, was motivated by boredom. He wanted to amuse himself by alarming his fellow villagers. Cohen does not claim that the Israelis are seeking amusement when they fabricate the Iranian threat, but that they are acting out of self-interest:

What's going on here? Israel, as it has for nearly two decades, is trying to lock in American support and avoid any disadvantageous change in the Middle Eastern balance of power, now overwhelmingly tilted in Jerusalem's favor, by portraying Iran as a monstrous pariah state bent on imminent nuclear war.

Cohen asserts that "Israeli hegemony" over America "is proving a kind of slavery," a statement so ugly that we are surprised it got into print.

In any case, there's a problem with the "crying wolf" metaphor. When the boy first cried wolf, not only was there no wolf, there was no evidence of a wolf. Once the villagers appeared, the boy did not maintain the pretense of a wolf. Instead, he laughed in their faces. He falsely cried wolf more than once, but whenever the villagers came running, he revealed immediately that he had played a joke at their expense.

The Israelis, by contrast, have been consistent in sounding the alarm about Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. So have the U.S. government (under Presidents Clinton and Obama as well as Bush), America's European allies, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and to some extent the regimes in Russia, China and some Arab lands. Is the whole world crying wolf as well? Or have the Israelis managed to fool everyone except Roger Cohen into taking seriously a threat they know is phony?

Here is where things get even more complicated. If, as Cohen suggests, the Israelis are perpetrating a fraud by claiming that Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons poses an existential threat to Israel, they are doing so with a lot of help from the Iranian regime. No one would believe Israel were it not for Tehran's eliminationist rhetoric and its open pursuit of nuclear arms. To make the fable fit these facts, you would have to rewrite it to include an element that a reasonable person would take as evidence of a wolf--say, a man skulking about the flock in a wolf suit.

Cohen vigorously disputes Netanyahu's characterization of the Iranian regime as a "messianic apocalyptic cult." According to Cohen, "Every scrap of evidence suggests that, on the contrary, self-interest and survival drive the mullahs." But one important "scrap of evidence" is, to put it mildly, hard to square with this evaluation--namely, the fact that Iran persists in acting like a messianic apocalyptic cult. Cohen does not even address that point in today's column, but he did take a crack at an explanation in his Feb. 23 column, the one about the happy Jews:

Double standards don't work anymore; the Middle East has become too sophisticated. One way to look at Iran's scurrilous anti-Israel tirades is as a provocation to focus people on Israel's bomb, its 41-year occupation of the West Bank, its Hamas denial, its repetitive use of overwhelming force.

According to this analysis, when Iranian rulers lead mobs in chants of "Death to Israel!" or talk of wiping the Jewish state from the map, their intent is not threatening but hortatory. Iran's "scurrilous anti-Israel tirades" are meant in the same spirit as Cohen's own anti-Israel columns: merely to criticize Israel for doing bad things and encourage it to behave better.

Can't you just imagine the scene? A bunch of ayatollahs are sitting around a table, and one says, "It's no use. Human Rights Watch put out another report on the Palestinians, but the Zionist entity just won't listen." Another ayatollah replies with a twinkle: "I know a way to get their attention!" As fanciful as this is, it also contradicts Cohen's argument that Iran's mullahs are driven by "self-interest." In this instance, he suggests, they are driven by an unselfish concern for peace, human rights and nonproliferation.

So, to sum up, Cohen is asking us to believe that Iran's threats against Israel are both insincere and well-intended, and that Israel's leaders know this but are cynically pretending otherwise in order to preserve their "hegemony" over America. Is this more plausible than to think that the Israelis sincerely view the Iranian regime as a threat, and that maybe, in fact, it is a threat?

As for the boy who cried wolf, Cohen seems to have forgotten how the story ends. The last time the boy cries wolf, there is a wolf.


The New York Times
April 9, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Israel Cries Wolf
By ROGER COHEN

ISTANBUL — “Iran is the center of terrorism, fundamentalism and subversion and is in my view more dangerous than Nazism, because Hitler did not possess a nuclear bomb, whereas the Iranians are trying to perfect a nuclear option.”

Benjamin Netanyahu 2009? Try again. These words were in fact uttered by another Israeli prime minister (and now Israeli president), Shimon Peres, in 1996. Four years earlier, in 1992, he’d predicted that Iran would have a nuclear bomb by 1999.

You can’t accuse the Israelis of not crying wolf. Ehud Barak, now defense minister, said in 1996 that Iran would be producing nuclear weapons by 2004.

Now here comes Netanyahu, in an interview with his faithful stenographer Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, spinning the latest iteration of Israel’s attempt to frame Iran as some Nazi-like incarnation of evil:

“You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”

I must say when I read those words about “the wide-eyed believer” my mind wandered to a recently departed “decider.” But I’m not going there.

The issue today is Iran and, more precisely, what President Barack Obama will make of Netanyahu’s prescription that, the economy aside, Obama’s great mission is “preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons” — an eventuality newly inscribed on Israeli calendars as “months” away.

I’ll return to the ever shifting nuclear doomsday in a moment, but first that Netanyahu interview.

This “messianic apocalyptic cult” in Tehran is, of course, the very same one with which Israel did business during the 1980’s, when its interest was in weakening Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. That business — including sales of weapons and technology — was an extension of Israeli policy toward Iran under the shah.

It’s also the same “messianic apocalyptic cult” that has survived 30 years, ushered the country from the penury of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, shrewdly extended its power and influence, cooperated with America on Afghanistan before being consigned to “the axis of evil,” and kept its country at peace in the 21st century while bloody mayhem engulfed neighbors to east and west and Israel fought two wars.

I don’t buy the view that, as Netanyahu told Goldberg, Iran is “a fanatic regime that might put its zealotry above its self-interest.” Every scrap of evidence suggests that, on the contrary, self-interest and survival drive the mullahs.

Yet Netanyahu insists (too much) that Iran is “a country that glorifies blood and death, including its own self-immolation.” Huh?

On that ocular theme again, Netanyahu says Iran’s “composite leadership” has “elements of wide-eyed fanaticism that do not exist in any other would-be nuclear power in the world.” No, they exist in an actual nuclear power, Pakistan.

Israel’s nuclear warheads, whose function is presumably deterrence of precisely powers like Iran, go unmentioned, of course.

Netanyahu also makes the grotesque claim that the terrible loss of life in the Iran-Iraq war (started by Iraq) “didn’t sear a terrible wound into the Iranian consciousness.” It did just that, which is why Iran’s younger generation seeks reform but not upheaval; and why the country as a whole prizes stability over military adventure.

Arab states, Netanyahu suggests, “fervently hope” that America will, if necessary, use “military power” to stop Iran going nuclear. My recent conversations, including with senior Saudi officials, suggest that’s wrong and the longstanding Israeli attempt to convince Arab states that Iran, not Israel, is their true enemy will fail again.

What’s going on here? Israel, as it has for nearly two decades, is trying to lock in American support and avoid any disadvantageous change in the Middle Eastern balance of power, now overwhelmingly tilted in Jerusalem’s favor, by portraying Iran as a monstrous pariah state bent on imminent nuclear war.

A semblance of power balance is often the precondition for peace. Iran was left out of the Madrid and Oslo processes, with disastrous results. But that’s a discussion for another day.

What’s critical right now is that Obama view Netanyahu’s fear-mongering with an appropriate skepticism, rein him in, and pursue his regime-recognizing opening toward Tehran, as he did Wednesday by saying America would join nuclear talks for the first time. The president should read Trita Parsi’s excellent “Treacherous Alliance” as preparation.

The core strategic shift of Obama’s presidency has been away from the with-us-or-against-us rhetoric of the war on terror toward a rapprochement with the Muslim world as the basis for isolating terrorists.

That’s unsustainable if America or Israel find themselves at war with Muslim Persians as well as Muslim Arabs, and if Netanyahu’s intense-eyed attempt to suck America into a perpetuation of war-on-terror thinking prevails.

The only way to stop Iran going nuclear, and encourage reform of a repressive regime, is to get to the negotiating table. There’s time. Those “months” are still a couple of years. What Iran has accumulated is low-enriched uranium. You need highly-enriched uranium for a bomb. That’s a leap.

Israeli hegemony is proving a kind of slavery. Passage to the Promised Land involves rethinking the Middle East, starting in Iran.

Guest Comment: Roger Cohen of the NYTimes is one of those self-hating Jews who believes that if he defames Israel, he will be accepted as a citizen of the world instead of being recognized as a Jew. He is a disgrace to the name Cohen . Below is a reply to his idiotic article "Israel Cries Wolfe." Aggie

Guest Comment #2:Subj: Taranto/Aesop's fables prove too deep for an anti-Israel New York Times columnist AND Cohen/Israel Cries Wolf

james taranto describes the idiocy and irresponsibility of roger cohen and his moronic description of israel crying wolf over iran. it appears that cohen's malice towards israel has blinded him to to the actual situation in iran. the whole world is wrong-only cohen gets it. cohen ,among his other delusional stances,believes arafat was a man of peace. cohen says the use of force against iran is unthinkable. cohen himself is an unthinking fraud proudly bearing the moniker of useful idiot.
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