The U.S.-Israeli response, of course, is that the Jewish state requires nuclear dominance to avoid being attacked and liquidated by Iran.\u00a0 But this makes no sense.\u00a0 The idea that if the Iranians had nukes, they would commit national suicide by using them to attack Israel is farcical. \u00a0Their quest for a deterrent to Israel\u2019s overwhelming military superiority may be mistaken, since it is far from clear that deterrence actually deters, but it is neither irrational nor aimed at annihilating Jews.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s be clear about this.\u00a0 An unconventional war between Israel and Iran has been going on for decades, with each side committing violent acts and making bloodthirsty threats against the other. \u00a0But Israel and the U.S. have always had a choice.\u00a0 They can assume that hostile acts and threats by Iran indicate a permanent, existential danger to their people and resolve to \u201cdestroy them before they can destroy us.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0Or they can recognize that such actions and threats on both sides are part of a vicious cycle of aggressive acts, and that pacific action can blunt or eliminate the apparent threat.\u00a0 Yasir Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization threatened for years to annihilate Israel \u2013 and ended by recognizing it in exchange for promises (never fulfilled) of national autonomy.\u00a0 Iran entered into the JPCOA nuclear agreement with the U.S. and five other countries and adhered to it until Donald Trump tore it up.<\/p>\n
The Israelis\u2019 \u201ctunnel vision\u201d when it comes to Iran is at least understandable.\u00a0 They and the regime in Teheran have distrusted and menaced each other for a long time.\u00a0 But Trump has absolutely no excuse for his deliberate misreading of Iranian intentions.\u00a0 Iran constitutes no danger whatever to the North American people \u2013 that state is a threat only to the empire-builders who seek to control the entire region and its mineral wealth by setting Jews against Muslims, Sunnis against Shiites, nation against nation, and tribe against tribe. The Iranians and their allies dare to stand up to the United States and its allies \u2013- that<\/em> is why Trump hates them as much as Bush hated the Iraqis and Biden the Libyans.<\/p>\n Should Iran have nuclear weapons?\u00a0 Of course not!\u00a0 No nation should possess nukes \u2013 least of all the imperialists who use their near monopoly of weapons of mass destruction to force poorer and weaker peoples to do their will.\u00a0 Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the other nuclear oligarchs need to give us all a break. \u00a0They need to stop bombing Iran and calling for its disarmament when they have absolutely no intention to disarm themselves.<\/p>\n __________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n The question that not even Congressional opponents to a war against Iran ask: Why the Iranians can\u2019t have a nuclear weapon if they want one? US citizens have been taught to believe that there are good and evil nations and regimes, Iran being an evil, \u201crogue\u201d state that only wants nukes to destroy Israel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[853,1126,1050,742,88,767,1323,1565,450,249,70],"class_list":["post-297186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","tag-atomic-weapons","tag-hegemony","tag-imperialism","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-nuclear-club","tag-nuclear-free-middle-east","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297186"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":297187,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297186\/revisions\/297187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/richard-rubenstein.jpg\")
<\/a>Richard E. Rubenstein is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/em><\/a> and a professor of conflict resolution and public affairs at George Mason University\u2019s Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution. A graduate of Harvard College, Oxford University (Rhodes Scholar), and Harvard Law School, Rubenstein is the author of nine books on analyzing and resolving violent social conflicts. His most recent book is <\/em>Resolving Structural Conflicts: How Violent Systems Can Be Transformed (Routledge, 2017). <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"