Archive | February, 2022

Putting Climate Change on the Back Burner

27 Feb

[Prefatory Note: The post below is a conversation between the journalist and author, CJ Polychroiou, and myself. This text has previously been published in various online sites in mid-Februrary. Nothing is changed except the title. My concerns have been intensified by geopolitical encounter resulting from the Ukraine Crisis.]]

Putting Climate Change on the Back Burner

Q1. The climate crisis is the greatest challenge of our time, but, so far, we seem to be losing the battle in the effort to avoid driving the planet to dangerous “tipping points.” Indeed, a climate apocalypse appears to be a rather distinct possibility given the current levels of climate (in)action. Having said that, it is quite obvious that the climate crisis has more than one dimension. It is surely about the environment, but it is also about science, ethics, politics, and economics. Let’s start with the relationship between science and the environment. Does science bear responsibility for global warming and the ensuing environmental breakdown given the role that technologies have played in the modern age?

I think science bears some responsibility for adopting the outlook that freedom of scientific inquiry takes precedence over not considering the real world consequences of scientific knowledge. The exemplary case being the process by which science and scientists contributing to the making of the nuclear bomb, and in this instance, some of the most ethically inclined scientists and knowledge workers, above all, Albert Einstein, were contributors who later regretted their role. And, of course, the continuous post-Hiroshima development of weaponry of mass destruction have enlisted leading biologists, chemists, and physicists in their professional roles to produce ever more deadly weaponry, and there has been little scientific pushback.

With respect to the environmental breakdown that is highlighted by your question, the situation is more obscure. There were scientific warnings about a variety of potential catastrophic threats to ecological balance that go back to the early 1970s. These warnings were contested by reputable scientists until the end of the 20th century, but if the precautionary principle included in the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment (1972) would have been implemented, then certainly scientists bore some responsibility for continuing to work toward more capital efficient means of finding technological applications for oil, gas, and coal. As with adverse health effects post-Enlightenment beliefs that human progress depended on scientific knowledge inhibited regulation for the benefit of the public good. Only when civil society began to sound the alarm were certain adjustments made, although often insufficient in substance, deferring to private interests in profitability and public interests in the enhancement of military capabilities and governmental control.

Overall, despite the Climate Change crisis, there remains a reluctance to hamper scientific ‘progress’ by an insistence on respecting the carrying capacity of the earth. Also science and scientists have yet to relate the search for knowledge to the avoidance of ecological dangerous technological applications, and even more so in relation to political and cultural activities. There is also the representational issue involving the selection of environmental guardians and their discretionary authority if a more prudential approach were to be adopted.

Q2.  Th climate crisis also raises important ethical questions, although it is not clear from current efforts to tame global warming that the world takes them seriously. Be that as it may, how should ethics inform the debate about global warming and environmental breakdown?

The most obvious ethical issues arise when deciding how to spread the economic burdens of regulating greenhouse gas emissions in ways that ensure an equitable distribution of costs within and among countries. The relevance of ‘climate justice’ to relations among social classes and between rich and poor countries is contested and controversial. As the world continues to be organized along state-centric axes of authority and responsibility, ethical metrics are so delimited. Given the global nature of the challenges associated with global warming this way of calculating climate justice and ethical accountability in political space is significantly dysfunctional.

Similar observations are relevant with respect to time. Although idea of ‘responsibility to future generations’ received some recognition at the UN nothing tangible by way of implementation was done. Political elites, without exception, were fixed on short-term performance criteria, whether satisfying corporate shareholders or the voting public. The tyranny of the present in policy domains worked against implementing the laudatory ethical recognition of the claims of the unborn to a healthy and materially sufficient future.

Taking account of the relevance of the past seems an ethical imperative that is neglected because it is seen as unfairly burdening the present for past injustices. For instance, reparations claims on behalf of victimized people, whether descendants of slavery or otherwise exploited peoples, rarely are satisfied, however ethically meritorious. There is one revealing exception, reparations imposed by the victorious powers in a war.

In the environmental domain, the past is very important to the allocation of responsibility for the atmospheric buildup of greenhouse gas emissions. Western countries that benefitted from many decades of industrialization seem more responsible for global warming than the late developers. Yet in some instances, particularly Africa and the Middle East, this gross difference is further aggravated by the dual facts of minimal responsibility for global warming yet maximal vulnerability to its harmful effects.

These various ethical concerns are being forced onto the agendas of global conferences. This was evident at the 2021 COP-26 Glasgow Climate Summit under UN auspices. The inter-governmental response was disappointing, and reflected capitalist and geopolitical disregard of the ethical dimensions of the climate change challenge.

Q3. Politics, unfortunately, also figures most prominently in the climate crisis, with questions even being raised as to whether our current system of government, both at the national and international level, is adequate to meet the greatest challenge of our time. What are your thoughts on this matter?

As suggested, addressing the global challenge of Climate Change with the tools developed for problem-solving in a state-centric world possessing weak institutional mechanisms for the effective promotion of the global public good is the organizational root of the problem. The UN was established with the ahistorical hope that the Great Powers of international relations would cooperate for peace as successfully as they cooperated for war between 1939 to 1945. Despite lofty rhetoric the UN was designed to be a weak global mechanism. Why else disempower the UN by giving the victors World War II a right of veto, which in effect was a recognition of the primacy of geopolitics.

Besides geopolitics, there were other obstacles to global oriented problem-solving as a result of the persistence and expansion of statism after the collapse of European colonialism. This dominance of statism was reinforced by rigid ideological adherence to nationalism on the part of political leaders, shaping relations with other countries even if disguised somewhat by alliance diplomacy, ‘special relationshops’ (Israel), and neoliberal patterns of globalization.

The core political issue is upholding the indispensable need for unprecedented degrees of globally-oriented cooperation to address effectively Climate Change challenges that were being stymied by the continuing dominance of statist and geopolitical tendencies in international relations. These tendencies favor the part over the whole in multilateral forms of problem-solving. This structural reality has been recently been accentuated by the rise of autocratic hyper-nationalist leaders in many important states and by recent preoccupations with overcoming the COVID pandemic and containing its negative economic spillovers.

Until a robust mechanism for the promotion of global public goods is established the political potential of present structures of world order do not seem capable of fashioning prudent and effective policies to cope with Climate Change. For such a mechanism to be established will require the shock effect of future climate catastrophes or a powerful, widely supported, militant transnational civil society movement dedicated to the protection of the earth.

Q4. The climate crisis also reflects the failure of economics, with the  argument being made that capitalism is actually the cause of the problem and climate change merely a symptom. Given where we are, and with the window of opportunity rapidly closing, should the fight against global warming be also a fight against capitalism?

David Whyte ends his book on ecocide with these stark words: “We must kill the corporation before it kills us.” The guiding idea of contemporary capitalism is to maximize short-term profitability, a posture that contradicts the kind of approach that would protect the natural habitat against the ravages wrought by contemporary capitalism.

However, the issue may be broader than capitalism. Socialist governments, exercising greater state control over the economy, have exhibited no better record when it comes to environmental protection or taking responsible account of longer term threats to the natural habitat. State-dominated economies may be less concerned about profitability, but their preoccupation with maximizing economic growth and susceptibility to corruption is as dangerous and destructive.

Until economic and political policies are grounded upon a new kind of citizenship featuring patriotism to humanity gains political traction it seems highly improbable that ecological threats will be addressed responsibly.

Q5. From your own perspective, how do we move forward in the fight against global warming? Indeed, what might be possible approaches to overcome climate inaction on the part of the status quo?

You saved the most difficult question for last! I do think education in the broad sense is key, including rethinking citizenship and activist civic participation. It is also essential that efforts be made to enable the UN to act more independently of geopolitical and nationalist manipulations, which have prevented the UN from playing an influential role throughout the COVID pandemic. This regressive interaction with states was highlighted by the hostility of Trump’s presidency to any kind of meta-nationalist approach to the control of the virus, including his disgraceful decision to defund and disengage from the WHO.

A more credible UN requires independent and increased funding by way of an international tax as well as curtailing of the right of veto by the five Permanent Members of the Security Council. Such global reforms will not happen without substantial pressure from civil society mobilizations coupled with the emergence of more enlightened leadership in important countries.

As suggested above, a reconstituted world order responsive to the magnitude and character of climate change challenge would seem to require the radical transformation of economic activity. This seems as though it could happen only through a revolutionary process, either as something that took the unprecedented shape of a transnational movement or spread from state to state as did the Arab Spring of 2010-2011, but without sparking a counterrevolutionary backlash.

Because there is no currently visible transition strategy to move from where we are to where we need to be, indulging the utopian imagination is a political act, envisioning futures attuned to the Climate Change agenda.

I believe that our escape from present entrapment depends on ‘a politics of impossibility.’ Our leaders and general consensus is that politics should be conceived as ‘the art of the possible,’ which assessess the play of forces to discover what it feasible. My argument has been that what is understood by the political class as feasible is insufficient to produce satisfactory policies and practices with regard to climate menaces. That is, the politics we know lacks the capacity to generate a solution.

It is evident that the impossible happens. This was manifested in recent international experience by the victories of national resistance movements in several major 20th century anti-colonial wars, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa. In each instances, before the impossible happened, experts deemed the outcome utopian or impossible, not worthy of the attention of serious, sane persons. What seems clear is that the impossible happens only when the mobilization of people is great enough to produce outcomes that defy the perceptions of those forces committed to the permanence of the status quo.

This leads me to view the future as uncertain and unknowable. For this reason, whatever future we believe necessary and desirable can unfold, defying current expectations. This makes it rational and justifiable for patriots of humanity to engage on behalf of this better future. There are many signs that a green vision of the future is gaining support throughout the planet, especially among youth who have most to lose, and hence to gain. Youth may be the vanguard among those demanding ecologically responsible patterns of humane governance for the planet.

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On Israel as an Apartheid State: an Interview with Richard Falk

19 Feb

[Prefatory Note: An interview David Falcone originally published in COUNTERPUNCH prompted by the Amnesty Report but extending beyond it.]

FEBRUARY 11, 2022

On Israel as an Apartheid State: an Interview with Richard Falk

BY DANIEL FALCONE

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Photograph Source: Chris Yunker – CC BY 2.0

Daniel Falcone: Could you give the context of the framework that brought us to Amnesty International’s findings regarding Israel and Palestine? What has changed regarding the organization to make this happen?

Richard Falk: I have no insight into the inner workings of Amnesty International, but it seems obvious from the length and detailed coverage in their 278-page report that this undertaking was begun years earlier. There were undoubtedly several elements in the background that prompted AI to undertake an inquiry that was bound to be controversial, and from experience to result in an insulting backlash with likely adverse impacts on funding. It has, perhaps, become a bit awkward for AI to dodge the issue of apartheid any longer given the 2001 reports of the two of the most prominent civil society human rights NGOs, Israel’s B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch, which detailed their reasons for concluding that the allegations of apartheid were well grounded in factual evidence and legal analysis.

I would also add that the UN Social and Economic Council for West Asia (ESCWA) academic report co-authored by Virginia Tilley and myself, released in March 2017 had reached similar conclusions, producing acrimonious reactions by Israel and the United States. This pushback reached a climax in a Security Council session, when the American representative, Nikki Haley arrogantly threatened the UN with a punitive response unless this report was repudiated. The recently elected Sec. General, dutifully ordered the report removed from the ESCWA website, which led the director of ESCWA, Rima Khalaf, to resign rather than carry out, a task left to her more compliant successor. So far as I know our report, although removed from the ESCWA website, was never repudiated.

Daniel Falcone: Yair Lapid called the report “false” and “antisemitic.” Do you suppose he believes this to be the case? It seems to be a talking point that is losing its effectiveness. 

Richard Falk: I have now carefully read the AI Report and have concluded that it maintains the highest professional standards of research and analysis throughout. Of course, any legal argument made in the context of a complex fact situation of this sort is subject to logically plausible divergent interpretations. Lawyers earn their livings by learning how to mount arguments defending their respective clients, and I am sure Israel and its supporter abroad have many qualified jurists who can interpret the evidence along lines consistent with Israeli claims of constitutional democracy with human rights equally protected whether the objecting party is a Jew or Palestinian.

Yet for Yair Lapid and others to attack the AI Report as ‘a despicable lie’ that is full of falsehoods, as well as being the work of anti-Semites is nothing other than a shaming tactic designed to redirect the conversation away from the substance of the apartheid allegations to an inquiry into the dubious motivations of AI. This is in an inflammatory and disgracefully irresponsible way of responding in view of AI’s long, distinguished identity as among the most trusted and professional human rights organizations in the world. It is reminiscent of the manner Israel has chosen to respond to all criticisms over the course of the last decade, especially during the period when Netanyahu was prime minister. A similar diatribe was launched against the International Criminal Court a year ago when it formally authorized an investigation of Israeli criminality in response to well-evidenced allegations of a series of distinct crimes by the Palestinian Authority (PA). Incidentally, the PA did not list ‘apartheid’ among its legal grievances.

Daniel Falcone: Lawrence Davidson just wrote a piece called the “Israeli Pogrom,” citing a Zionist group’s attack on Palestinians. Do you see this type of extreme violence as cause for leading up to the report?

Richard Falk: The Davidson essay is devoted to a critique of Israeli settler violence directed at Palestinian civilians living in the West Bank. It shows significantly the double standards manifested by Israeli indulgence of Palestinian abuse by Israeli settlers, while displaying a contrasting vigilance with respect to protecting Jews from Palestinian violence whether in Occupied Palestine or Israel. This certainly manifests racial discrimination carried out with the complicity of the Israeli State. However, it is not evidence of the ideology or even the existence of an apartheid system of control, which either explicitly or implicitly premises governance on racial inequality as between a dominant and subordinate race and adopts specific policies to ensure the persistence of structures of inequality. In Israel’s case it denies complicity and rejects racism as part of its governance plan.

Whether such Israel’s persistent disregard of the obligations of an Occupying Poweras set forth in the Fourth Geneva Convention played any role in leading AI to investigate the apartheid allegation remains unknowable as the organization has made no such reference. It is more plausible to suppose that the earlier reports on the apartheid claim played a principal role in leading AI to join the chorus although this is also a matter of conjecture.

Daniel Falcone: According to Haaretz, the US seems ready to dismiss the Amnesty International findings, can you comment on the state of the bipartisan consensus?

Richard Falk: I never for a minute expected the U.S. Government, including Congress, to accept an accusation of apartheid directed at Israel, no matter how impeccable the source and how persuasive the evidence and analysis. For one thing, it would break the special relationship causing a serious disruptive backlash domestically as well as gravely weaken the anti-Iran alliance in the Middle East. We should by not be surprised by the primacy of geopolitics when it collides with the requirement of international law and human rights standards, as well supposedly affirmed national values such as here, anti-racism.

For another, Biden like most of his presidential predecessors unabashedly follows unwaveringly a pro-Israel path in relation to grievances of the Palestinian people, although less crudely than Trump. This predisposition led Biden even to accept several of Trump’s more extreme shows of support for Israeli defiance of the UN consensus, including moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem, the normalization agreements with Arab neighbors, and the annexation of the Golan Heights. In effect, Biden has lowered his voice while maintained continuity most of Trump’s policies. The apparent discontinuities in the form of reviving support for a two-state solution or objection to further settlement expansion are gestures at best, widely known to be policy non-starters having a long record of zero behavioral impact. Above all, because the Oslo-type diplomacy has become superseded by Israeli disinterest in negotiating with the Palestinians, as equals with a shared acceptance of the principal goal being the establishment of an independent sovereign Palestine.

As a result, there is a wide gap in perceptions and attitude between the U.S. Government and the human rights civil society consensus on this crucial question of how to evaluate the apartheid charges. As the AI Report clearly argues, the evidence points to apartheid, and this engages international responsibility to take positive steps to suppress and punish the crime. On this basis AI recommends imposing an international arms embargo on Israel and urges the ICC to investigate the question of Israeli criminality and its legal consequences that is raised by the evidence of Israeli apartheid.

Daniel Falcone: Can you comment on how the Palestinian question is evolving in mainstream US circles? It seems that both individuals and institutions have become more robust to deal with the potential consequences of this political engagement. Can the movement maintain its intensity and enter liberal pragmatic spaces at the same time in your estimation?

Richard Falk: Despite notable developments, Israel continues to hold most of the cards as to the approach taken to the Palestinian question in the U.S. Although the bipartisan consensus and the Zionist civil society infrastructure has somewhat frayed due to the excesses of illiberal Trumpism and because of the increasing normalization of the apartheid critique, Israel still has the upper hand with respect to Congress, White House, and Beltway think tanks.

At the same time, the symbolic victories achieved by the Palestinians over the course of the last two years are significant from a Legitimacy War perspective. Admittedly, to an uncertain extent these developments have been offset by the successes of Trump’s normalization diplomacy (‘The Abraham Accords’), especially as endorsed and extended during the first year of the Biden presidency. It seems premature to reinterpret the symbolic balance between Israel and Palestine as it plays out in the U.S., The picture should become clearer during the next two years.

Because the apartheid line of critique indicts Israel for systemic criminality, which can only be overcome by renouncing the fundamental Zionist claim to secure a fully sovereign Jewish state, it will likely run into a stone wall of resistance in the United States, including in liberal Zionist circles. This resistance may take the form, as it has in NYT/CNNresponse to AI Report, which has been to maintain a stony silence. It is my impression that, not only in the U.S. but throughout the West, liberal opinion with respect to Palestinian grievances is evasive, if not entirely silent. Neither the alternative of implementing the AI recommendations nor the alternative of endorsing the official Israel pushback by way of attacking the reports as full of falsehoods and the work of anti-Semites is acceptable. Under these conditions silence and evasion seem like preferred options.

Yet such a course of action amounts to a validation of critiques of double standards. To weep about excess police force in responding to Hong Kong protest demonstrations or the treatment of the Uyghurs but avert eyes when it comes to the reality of prolonged Palestinian suffering and suppression of basic rights may be a contradiction is morally unacceptable, especially given the history of Western involvement in the political evolution of the Israeli state. At some point, the contradiction may become too blatant to accept even if it currently seems to remain an attractive pragmatic solution in relation to the apartheid critique.

Daniel Falcone: Is there any possibility that mainstream groups labeling the situation as “Apartheid” are making an oversimplification? Aren’t some parts of the region “better” than conditions were in South Africa, and some “worse,” as Chomsky points out. Also, is there a fear that the Palestinian cause is being reduced to a type of US middle class classical rights movements discourse, largely focused on symbolic political rights without constructing a path to wholesale economic policy and transformative justice?

Richard Falk: You raise an important set of overlooked issues. In retrospect, many progressives in South Africa feel that it was a severe mistake to settle for political rights and forego any challenge to white economic and social privilege. And it is also true that when Nelson Mandela was hailed for achieving the breakthrough agreement bringing the apartheid regime to an end, little attention was given to the widespread poverty of the black majority or the gross inequalities in health care, housing, educational opportunity that have hardly changed in the more than 30 years sincepolitical apartheid was dismantled.

At the same time, if Mandela had pressed demands for a more comprehensive approach to societal injustice no agreement at all would have been forthcoming. I am reminded of Hannah Arendt’s comparison between the American Revolution and the French and Russian Revolutions. She argues that the American Revolution was a humanitarian and political success because it didn’t seek to challenge economic and social structures, whereas the French and Russian Revolutions fell a bloody victim to their own laudable ambitions. Arguably the popular movement in Egypt that overthrew an autocratic leader settled for too little, making itself vulnerable to counterrevolutionary reversal, which occurred two years later. I think we are left with an insoluble problem that must be addressed in terms of the particularities of the situation.

Applying these considerations to the Palestinian situation, I would argue that it is preferable to accept limited goals in a manner like what ended apartheid in South Africa. This is ambition enough given the Palestinian circumstances and might make apartheid-ending diplomacy eventually negotiable. As in post-apartheid South Africa, I believe it best to leave the admittedly important economic and social agenda to post-apartheid Israel/Palestine, although realizing that these formidable justice issues remain unresolved.

Daniel Falcone is an activist, journalist, and PhD student in the World History program at St. John’s University in Jamaica, NY as well as a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He teaches humanities at the United Nations International School and resides in Queens.

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Is The Amnesty International Report an Israeli ‘Sharpeville Moment?’

10 Feb

[Prefatory Note: The following interview contains some probing questions put to me by C. J. Polychroniou. The interview was published in Truthout  on February 9th, following the release on February 1st, of the explosive Amnesty International Report finding Israel to be guilty of committing the continuing crime of apartheid. How much longer can governments, the UN, and liberal Zionist close their eye in face of the mounting consensus in the international human community on the question of Israeli apartheid?]

Is The Amnesty International Report an Israeli ‘Sharpeville Moment?’

Q1. Amnesty International’s new report exposes Israeli abuses against Palestinians. The report shows that Israel imposes a form of domination and oppression against Palestinians under its control that qualifies as a system of apartheid under international law. In this context, it affirms the 2017 United Nations report that you had helped produce and for which you were personally attacked by Nikki Haley at the Security Council. Yet, the report is full of lies, according to Israel, and some of its strongest allies (US, UK, and Germany) reject the description of Israel as an apartheid state. Let’s start with the most basic question of all: Is there anything in the report that is not true? If not, why has it caused such a bipartisanship fury in the US?

I think it is important to assess the AI report in the wider context of the perception of Israeli apartheid over the course of the last five years since the issuance of ESCWA Report in 2017 [Richard Falk & Virginia Tilley, “Report on Israeli Practices Towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid,” UN ESCWA Report, March 15, 2017]. In 2001 two comprehensive reports by widely respected human rights organizations added weight to the apartheid allegations. The first one by the most established and internationally trusted Israeli NGO devoted to the protection of human rights, B’Tselem. It has developed an outstanding reputation for professionalism over the years. [“A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is Apartheid,” B’Tselem, Jan. 12, 2021.] The second report was issued by Human Rights Watch, the flagship human rights civil society organization in the United States with offices around the world. [“A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution,” Human Rights Watch, April 27, 2001, 312 pp.] The AI Report should be seen as the culmination of a trend validating allegations of Israeli apartheid, at least within international civil society. [“Israel’s Apartheid Against the Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity, Amnesty International, Feb. 1, 278 pp.]

To dismiss and denigrate these reports adhering to the highest human right research standards, as Israeli and American leaders and spokespersons have attempted to do, calling the AI Report full of ‘lies’ and the work of ‘anti-Semites’ is a shameless slander. Such inflammatory language is designed to shift the conversation from the message to the messenger. This interpretation of the tactics of those rejecting the AI Report is strengthened by the absence of any serious effort to refute the substantive charges. So far there has been a bipartisan angry rejection of the AI Report in Congress, and virtual silence in the mainstream TV and print media. How different would be the U.S. reaction to an Amnesty Report summarizing the breakup of Hong Kong demonstrations or damning the Chinese denial of human rights to the Uyghur minority. The inevitable  conclusion reached is that international law and human rights function for the U.S. Government as geopolitical tools rather than normative principles. 

Another element of context seems highly relevant. This pushback against the AI should be understood in light of a recent Israeli campaign to demonize the protection of human rights in Israel and Occupied Palestinian Territories. The most dramatic move of this character was the Executive Order issued on October 19, 2021 by the Defense Minister, Benny Gantz, declaring six of the most respected civil society organizations in the West Bank to be ‘terrorist organizations’ on the basis of secret and undisclosed evidence deemed ‘legally dubious’ even in liberal Israeli media venues such a Haaretz. A large sector of public opinion in North America and Europe, including in liberal Zionist circles, was shocked by Gantz’s crude move, which was followed up by Major General Yehuda Fuchs, the military commander in the West Bank by a milder declaration that five of the six organization listed by Gantz were ‘unlawful associations’ under his authority to issue Emergency Regulations. (one organization exempted from the list because it had previously been earlier so designated). At least, General Fuchs refrained from repeating the more severe condemnation of Gantz, but the intention was the same, to inhibit donors and to neutralize the efforts of civil society to cope with the hardships of prolonged Israeli occupation of the West Bank and attendant violations of international humanitarian law.

A final issue of context results from the Israel’s Knesset in the form of the 2018 Basic Law proclaiming Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish people, who alone have the right of self-determination within Israel’s still unspecified borders, although the settler communities on the West Bank were clearly intended to be incorporated as part of Israel. The importance here is the extraordinary claim of Jewish exclusivity in what had been for centuries the homeland of a majority Palestinian population. When the colonialist Balfour Declaration was declared in 1917 the Jewish minority in Palestine was less than 10% of the total population of Palestine despite feverish efforts of twenty years of the Zionist Movement to settle Palestine with as many Jews as possible.

These issues of context are of help when assessing both the AI Report and the criticisms directed at it. Responding directly to your inquiry about whether there is reason to accord credibility to the Israeli response. In long reports of this nature there are sure to be contradictory ways of interpreting the evidence. The legal profession depends upon the plausibility of such diverse readings of the evidence. Yet. having collaboratively written one report and carefully read the others, I can assure you that there is no ‘lie’ or even irresponsible allegation in any of the four reports. Because of the sensitivity surrounding accusations of apartheid directed at Israel as well as the realistic apprehension that Israel and its most ardent supporters habitually resort to dirty tactics to discredit critics, the AI authors and researchers leaned over backwards to avoid making suspect allegation. They were scrupulous throughout in compiling and interpreting the evidence. I believe any objective reading of the reports would agree that the highest standards of competence and canons of responsible investigation were upheld. Unlike the apartheid leaders of South Africa, Israel’s leaders deny the charges of apartheid altogether while defending their belief in the appropriateness of the practices and policies used to uphold security given the nature of Israel as a state of the Jewish people. Yet rather than substantively defending reliance on apartheid Israeli apologists are irresponsibly attacking the integrity of the report and the supposedly despicable motivations of its authors and sponsoring organization..  

You also understandably also ask ‘why the fury?’ if the reports themselves are not mendacious, but serious objective assessments of allegations, then why would Israel not respond in kind with contrary interpretations of the evidence or by a show of evidence that the Israeli system of controlling Palestinians is consistent with a reasonable construction of Israeli security imperatives. After all, Israel has plenty of skilled jurists who always seem ready to go along with the prevailing Israeli policies based on Jewish supremacy. For instance, the Israeli Supreme Court upheld the legality of 2018 Basic Law, and its chief judge even had the temerity to assert that the law didn’t alter the democratic character of the Israeli state.

 I suppose that at some point an attempt will be made to put forward an argument in defense of Israel’s racial policies, although differing in nature from South Africa’ overt legal, moral, and political defense of apartheid. I believe Israel will never admit to the apartheid allegations but would defend its laws, policies, and practices as reasonable given security threats facing the country. This approach by way of legalism would be quite a stretch given the essentially uncontested evidence that Israel’s policies and practices do satisfy the accepted international definition of apartheid relied upon in international law circles, which rests on systemic racial domination together with the demonstration of a specific intent to impose and maintain system by all necessary means.

I would contend that from time of the 1948 War during which more than 700,000 were uprooted from their homeland mostly becoming refugees in neighboring Arab countries generations ago Israel was administering race relations according to an apartheid ethos. The destruction of several hundred Palestinian villages was an incriminating complement to the wartime coercive departure of Palestinians. Israeli intentions became even clearer by an official blanket denial to Palestinian refugees of thei4 international law right of return. These features accompanying the establishment of Israel lends credence to the view apartheid was integral to Israel’s state-building project from its origins until the present day.

Israel is understandably distressed by this growing civil society consensus that its treatment of the Palestinians amounts to apartheid. To begin with, apartheid is listed as one of the crimes against humanity in Article 7 of the Rome Statute governing the operations of the International Criminal Court. As the AI Report contends, if apartheid exists then there is present an international responsibility to take steps to bring it to an end. Although Israel has refused to govern its behavior by international law standards in relation of other issues, it nevertheless deeply resents being so charged. It is especially reactive to critics and organizations that have positive and generally apolitical reputations, which includes AI, HRW, and B’Tselem.

There is still the puzzle posed by Israel’s long record of defying international law without suffering adverse consequences, a position made possible by the unconditional geopolitical support provided by the United States, which is also often reinforced by its European allies. It is notable that despite the civil society consensus, few governments other that post-apartheid South Africa have been prepared to go along with the apartheid allegation in inter-governmental contexts, presumably fearing a backlash. This reluctance of governments and international institutions to implement the conclusions and recommendations of AI exposes the political weakness of  a normative consensus opposed by strong geopolitical forces.

Yet it is admittedly not foolish for Israeli officials and think tank policy experts to be worried. Even though Israel will not waver in its rejection of the apartheid allegation at this time or alter its policies of domination and victimization, it has suffered a serious setback. Symbolic politics have an underappreciated relevance to the long-term resolution of internal and international conflicts ever since 1945. This relevance runs counter to the lingering, anachronistic belief of political realists that the flow of world history reflects relative military capabilities. It should be illuminating to realize that the anti-colonial wars were eventually won by the nationalist side that prevailed on the symbolic battlefields of Legitimacy Wars rather than by prevailing by its military prowess in the combat zones. The U.S. experiences in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan illuminate various facets of this shift in the post-World War II balances of power that derive from the resolute pursuit of legitimate grievances, and the weakening of capabilities that arise from losing the Legitimacy War.

Beyond this, Israel has learned from the South African experience that anti-racism and anti-colonialism have strong mobilizing appeals in contemporary world society that can give rise to powerful global solidarity campaigns that encourages national resistance, and eventually influences the calculations of political leaders. Such concerns help explain Israel’s excessively punitive tactics adopted in reaction to the nonviolent BDS international campaign. South Africa criminalized internal forms of opposition to apartheid, but it never tried to pressure other government to take similar action against supporters of BDS, including in the U.S.       

Q2.  Let’s talk about the concept of apartheid. There is clearly severe discrimination inside Israel against Palestinians, but one could argue that there are many analogues elsewhere, including in the US. What are the similarities between apartheid South Africa and contemporary Israel in terms of the latter’s treatment of Palestinians living inside Israel?

The criminal internationalization of the South African regime of racial supremacy gradually occurred during the period after World War II. This process featured an increasing role of the United Nations in a global campaign of delegitimation of South Africa’s form of racism. The campaign initially concentrated on the former German colony that became under the control of Pretoria after World War I, becoming known as South West Africa and only years later challenging apartheid orientation of the Afrikaner leadership in South Africa itself. This latter development was the most direct encroachment on territorial sovereignty of a UN member in the early experience of the Organization. The campaign succeeded in having apartheid formally declared to be an international crime, initially in the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of Apartheid, and more recently enumerated in Article 7 of the Rome Statute governing the operations of the International Criminal Court.

It is important to understand that although the origins of apartheid as an international crime are entirely bound up with the experience of South Africa its internationalization from the outset was intended to reach any system of overt domination and victimization based on race, without any requirement that the racist regime so accused resemble the racist regime that governed South Africa until the mid-1990s.

The most widely accepted definition of apartheid is contained in Article 2 of the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of Apartheid. Racism, understood as discrimination based on ideas of ethnic superiority and inferiority, does not necessarily imply apartheid. For instance, the Nazi genocidal approach was unconcerned with using the state and its administrative apparatus to keep the races apart as its genocidal intention centered on erasing or exterminating inferior races, especially Jews and Roma.   Separation and racial discriminatory policies and practices are crucial components of apartheid forms of control, but by themsleves, lacks the element of specific intent as evidenced and sustained by cruel acts a system of domination with the purpose of keeping the subjugated race under the explicit control of the dominant race. In Israel and Occupied Palestine this has meant domination by Jews as implemented by an array of administrative decrees and nationality laws restricting immigration of non-Jews, and denying Palestinian refugees right of return, which is an international legal entitlement.

Even the sort of systemic racism that exists in the United States is embedded in the socio-economic-culture of the society rather than existing as an expression of the overt ideology and practices of the state. To be sure sub-national political entities are complicit to varying degrees in carrying out racist policies, which is often exhibited by allowing racist civil society sentiments to shape the behavior of public institutions. The United States with impacts from its notorious past that included the implemention of a genocidal approach to Native American indigenous communities and a labor system in agriculture based on generations of slavery. This dubious legacy is illustrated by the continuing disposition in the American South of trial juries to convict whites accused of murdering blacks, while rushing to guilty verdicts however scant the evidence if the case involves the prosecution of a black defendant accused of murdering a white woman. Also, double standards in policing expose the deep roots of anti-black racism in the U.S. as giving rise to the Black Lives Matter movement and the complex, contradictory societal reactions to the police homicide of George Floyd in May of 2020 in the Northern city of Minneapolis.

The similarities between Israeli and South African apartheid relate to the historical and ideological narratives of both countries in which European settlers displaced, subjugated, and exploited the resources of the indigenous population, and claimed rights of ethnic supremacy based on race. In both South Africa and Israel, native claims to homeland were overridden, and the settlers took over control of all aspects of governance with the intention of keeping the natives permanently under strict control, using law and lawmaking as a principal tool of control and exploitation by the state and its favored settler ethnicity.

The dissimilarities between Israel and South Africa derive from fundamental demographic, economic, and ideological considerations. The fact that the white minority was never more than 25% of the South African population meant that inclusive democracy could not be entertained as a legitimating option, while for Israel political democracy was a fundamental aspiration of the Zionist Project of establishing and legitimating a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This undertaking relied on biblical and historical connections to the land of Palestine (eretz Israel) that went back for hundreds of years. Israel’s first and most illustrious president, David Ben Gurion, put aside his secularized Judaism, famously declaring ‘the Bible shall be our weapon,’ by which he presumably meant that Zionism would mobilize support from Jews and others by insisting that Jews had a sacred right to return to the biblically promised land.

A further fundamental dissimilarity related to the economic role of blacks in South Africa and Palestinians in Israel. South African wealth was derived mainly from extractive industries involving mining, which depended on a large source of cheap labor. In contrast, Palestinian cheap labor undercut a well-organized labor movement at the core of the Zionist movement, and was considered inessential to the growth and development of Israel. The Israeli economy came increasingly to emphasize high technologies, including armaments, in part to avoid any future dependence on Palestinian labor.

In this regard, many on the Israeli right even now favor ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to achieve racial purity in Israel and to complete the work of de facto annexation of the West Bank. These concerns reference the so-called ‘demographic bomb’ that is seen as posing a future threat to the presently solid Jewish majority in Israel, and hence to political control. This threat arises partly from the higher Palestinian fertility rate, which if Israeli annexation plans become fully realized would lead to a 50:50 division of the combined population of fourteen million living in Israel and Occupied Palestine, which would mean a circumstance of demographic equality, which would weaken the case for considering Israel to be a Jewish state, and for that reason alone is regarded by most Israelis as intolerable, portending worse to come.

Q3. I raised the previous question about the relevance of the comparison between apartheid South Africa and contemporary Israel because when it comes to the occupied territories, the situation is far worse than apartheid. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out to me in some personal exchange, which I believe to be correct, “South Africa needed  its Black population, and catered to them at least to a limited extent. Israel had no need of the Palestinians in the occupied territories and is making life unlivable for them.” Can you comment on this as I think it really raises questions about the broad use of the term “apartheid” when it comes to describing the Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories.

In my understanding, Chomsky’s essential insight is correct and significant, but I do not agree that South Africa catered to the black population more than Israel do to the Palestinian. Because Israel rests its claims on being ‘democratic’ it caters to the Palestinian minority of 20% in a variety of ways to sustain its international image of political legitimacy. The South Africans drew strict color lines that deprived blacks of any civil or political rights, while Palestinians in Israel proper can vote and even form their own political parties and serve in the government.

The greater harshness of Israeli apartheid arises from the Israeli ambition to control a relatively limited territory as compared to the South African ability to rely on African townships and bantustans for purposes of segregation, security, and control in a rather sparsely populated country. In effect, the proximity and demographic vitality of the Palestinians, ‘the dangerous neighborhood’ of hostile Arab countries, the historical legacies of the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, and the character of Palestinian armed resistance led Israel to be more engaged in violent repressive activities than were the South Africans, especially in Gaza. Also, Israeli concerns with demographic implications of a diminished Jewish majority led both to its adoption of a politics of fragmentation involving the dispersal of Palestinians beyond Israel’s borders and to the exclusion of Palestinians seeking fulfillment of their right of return. South Africa, as devising apartheid from the perspective of a racial minority, never had to cope with these specific to Israel concerns.

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The Problematics of Middle Eastern Diplomacy: The Case of Iran

2 Feb

[Prefatory Note: this is a modified, updated version of an article published in CounterPunch, January 30-31, 2022.][*]

The Problematics of Middle Eastern Diplomacy: The Case of Iran  

When a nuclear agreement with Iran was reached by U.S.- led multilateral diplomacy in 2015, despite vigorous opposition from Israel, it was widely viewed as the greatest foreign policy achievement of the Obama presidency, and for good reason. It also showcased the potentialities of great power cooperation when national interests sufficiently converge in a manner that supports the pursuit of the regional and global public good. In those days before Washington’s strategists and foreign policy wonks rediscovered the joys of geopolitical confrontation, not only the major NATO powers (UK, France, and Germany), but more intriguingly, China and Russia, joined as signatories to what became known at the time as the 5 +1 Iran Nuclear Agreement or simply, JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

That Iran was willing to curtail its nuclear program without demanding compensating moves by Israel remainss a surprise. Decades earlier Israel had been permitted, indeed helped, to acquire secretly the means to establish and develop a nuclear weapons capability without any adverse international reaction, becoming in 1967 or so the first state in the Middle East to possess nuclear weapons, although discreetly, to avoid embarrassment for the geopolitical promoters of a anti-proliferation approach to the risks posed by nuclear weapons. It would have seemed reasonable for Iran to have adopted a posture of willingness to commit itself to a nuclear-free Middle East, which would have been a more dramatic move toward denuclearizing the Middle East than was JCPOA. Why did Iran refrain in 2015 and now again, even with a hardline leadership in control of its government? Perhaps, because the Iranian leadership understood there was no prospect of sanctions relief if it depended on Israel’s willingness to give up its status as a nuclear weapons state. In this sense, the 2015 agreement can be interpreted either as a diplomatic triumph by the P-5 + 1 in so limiting the negotiating agenda, and especially the U.S., or as an indication that Iran was prepared to close its eyes to the unreasonableness of demanding restrictions on its nuclear program while ignoring the far greater breach of the nonproliferation ethos by Israel over a period of many years. Iran apparent willingness to accept such a bargain can only be explained by the high priority given to ending the societal devastation being wrought by the sanctions. It appears that the 2021-2022 Vienna talks among the five adherents to JCPOA (plus indirect talks with the U.S.) have similarly not been faced with demands to address Israel’s nuclearism, quite possibly for similar reasons.  

Why did this exhibition of constructive diplomacy happen in a region of the world, entailing overlooking Israel’s arsenal of nuclear weapons coupled with its belligerent posture so as to reduce tensions with regard to Iran, which had long been a major site of struggle, strife, and periodic warfare ever since 1979? I presume the main motivation was war avoidance in the Middle East and the belief that JCPOA contributed to the overall goals of nonproliferation and thus avoided a regional arms race by major Arab states to acquire nuclear weapons in the event that Iran crossed the nuclear threshold.

A secondary consideration prompted by the lingering failures of the Iraq ‘democracy promotion’ regime changing intervention of 2003 was to reduce the level of American military and political engagementsd in the Middle East. The 2015 initiative to downgrade Iran as a confrontational priority was seen as facilitating Obama’s ill-advised ‘pivot to Asia.’
Proclaiming this pivot amounted to geopolitical coded message for ‘taking on China in the South China Sea.’ How different might the mood and politics have been had Obama instead opted for a ‘pivot to America!’ And even now it may not be too late for a turn away from global militarism, although Biden, frustrated in achieving his campaign promises by Republicans on the home front, now seems hell-bent on pivoting toward Russia, Iran, and China, all at once. Biden seems to be yearning for the good old days of the crisis-fraught geopolitics of the Cold War with the most opportune zones of confrontation currently being the Ukraine, Iran, and Taiwan.

A side benefit of the 2015 agreement, not often noted, was to give moderates in Iran a major victory in the form of achieving sanctions relief, unfrozen bank accounts, and a path to normalcy in their external relations. The agreement was vigorously opposed at the time by Israel and its supporters, as well as hawkish elements in the U.S. political class. Their main contentions were that Iran would be free from enrichment and centrifuge limits by 2030 and that the agreement did not include an enforceable Iranian pledge to end support for anti-Israeli, anti-Saudi, and anti-American political actors in regional conflict situations as well as to place restraints on its missile program. Iran has adamantly insisted on separating diplomacy concerning its nuclear program from its political involvements in regional politics and its national security posture. In effect, although willing to overlook Israeli nuclearism, Iran has been steadfastly unwilling to alter its sovereign independence with respect to foreign policy or

In relation to the non-nuclear elements of its national security posture.  

When Trump came along in 2017, the unraveling of JCPOA was a foregone conclusion, guided as much or more by his vindictive resolve to erase Obama’s legacy in ways designed to degrade and denigrate the achievements of his predecessor, while gaining praise from Israel, many members of the U.S. Congress, and militarists in and out of government. Trump somewhat absurdly denounced the agreement as one-sided in Iran’s favor, a betrayal of Israel’s security interests, and thus calling for replacement by a more stringent arrangement, or according to his transactional mindset, ‘a better deal.’ In May of 2018 Trump withdrew the U.S. from the agreement, followed that June by the reimposition of sanctions, which were later further intensified inflicting great damage on the Iranian economy and civilian population. These moves were all part of a comprehensive approach to Iran that came to be known as ‘maximum pressure.’ These escalating steps toward confrontation were hailed by Israel’s leaders. In contrast, the repudiation of JCPOA was not appreciated by the five other signatories, and deeply destabilizing for the region as well as striking a devastating blow to the reformist government in Tehran led by President Hassan Rouhani, having the effect of opening the gates for the hardline victory of Ebrahim Raisi in the 2021 elections. It also led to retaliatory action by Iran, especially attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman.

In Tehran this return to the tense pre-2015 days was regarded as confirmation that the West, and especially the U.S., could not be trusted to keep its word and was regarded as evidence that Washington remained determined to bring the Iranian government to its knees in pursuit of its political agenda. Trump had also authorized the assassination of General Qasim Soleimani in early 2020, the most popular of Iranian leaders and seen as a future president of the country. In such an atmosphere Israel felt emboldened enough to assassinate Iran’s leading nuclear scientists and to engage in unlawful sabotage attacks on its nuclear facilities without adverse effects.

As might have been expected, Iran although it gave the remaining JCPOA signatories a year to overcome the U.S. withdrawal, eventually responded by gradually increasing the enrichment of uranium fuel that were somewhat closer to weapons grade levels, reportedly reaching 60% as well as installing higher quality centrifuges. Despite these steps, Iran reiterated its intention not to develop nuclear weapons on numerous occasions, and Western intelligence services confirmed that there was no evidence that Iran was intent on becoming a nuclear weapons state in the near future. Israel and its supporters issued alarmist statements suggesting that Iran was only weeks away from have the bomb, and was determined to become a nuclear weapons state.

When Trump was defeated and Biden elected in 2020, it was naively assumed to be just a matter of time until the 2015 Agreement was restored, and again made operational. After all, Biden had pledged to do so throughout his campaign to become president. It turned out to be far from simple in practice, partly because there was plenty of pushback from Israel and Republicans, and a lack of enthusiasm on the part of many Democrats. In the meantime, the leadership in Iran shifted, with a conservative cleric, Ebrahim Raisi easily elected to replace Rouhani in early 2021. It is relevant to observe that Raisi was a pre-Trump advocate of skepticism about the wisdom of trying to reach a diplomatic accommodation with the West. Despite this background, after being elected Raisi has seemed open to restoring JCPOA, yet entertaining this option in an understandable spirit of caution, suspicion, and firmness. Despite pressure from Washington, Iran has refused so far to engage in direct talks, now in their eighth round, with the U.S. in Vienna. Iranian officials have been telling the media that Iran is awaiting reliable signs from the U.S. that it is prepared to remove all sanctions without conditions accompanied by guaranties that it will not again withdraw from whatever arrangement is agreed upon. Once such a willingness is signaled, if it is, Iran will agree to direct talks. Until then, it will discuss the issues directly only with governments of the remaining five signatories, that is, 5+1 minus the U.S., allowing the co-signatories to serve as intermediaries in what amount to pre-negotiations with Washington the purpose of which seems to be to allow Tehran ascertain whether negotiations of the U.S. return to the 2015 framework will be fruitful. Iran seems determined not seem so weak as to accept whatever arrangement the U.S. insists upon, or to be in a position of being portrayed as a deal-breaker when it refuses the conditions set by the American negotiators.  

Beyond the obstacles associated with satisfying Israel’s alleged security concerns and a determination not to get mired in controversial foreign policy initiatives, Biden sought in the early months of his presidency to focus on domestic issues, especially the social and economic fallout from the pandemic. This meant an avoidance of even the semblance of a break with Israel, which helps explain why the White House made a series of unusual high-profile gestures to reassure Israel that the U.S. would not act unilaterally in negotiating the renewal of its participation in the 2015 agreement, but would coordinate with Israel its negotiating efforts to restore JCPOA. The only way for Biden to find such a level of approval by Israel for a restored nuclear agreement with Iran is if the new arrangements appeared to strengthen the constraints of the 2015 text by removing sunset clauses terminating vital features of the agreement, and through inclusion of more stringent monitoring and verifying procedures to assess compliance with permanent restrictions on enrichment, testing, stockpiling, and centrifuges. The U.S. has also signaled that the pace of sanctions relief would be quickened if Iran additionally pledged to roll back its political engagements hostile to the interests of the Gulf monarchies, Israel, and the U.S.. These engagements by Iran are supposedly currently causing trouble for Western interests in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Lebanon, and Gaza.

Matters of Context

Most important is the acknowledgement and relevance of the Trump withdrawal from the 2015 agreement because he (following Israel’s encouragement) thought it a bad deal. Because Iran reacted, at first cautiously, hoping for some compensatory actions from the European countries, which was never forthcoming. It seems obvious that Iran wanted the agreement to survive the U.S. withdrawal, but not at the cost of enduring the renewal of sanctions. With the present effort to restore JCPOA the U.S. acts as if it doesn’t even owe Iran an apology to Iran but seeks to condition its renewal of participation on the acceptance by Iran of a new more restrictive agreement, policy goals partly dictated by domestic circumstances. Anything less, will be openly attacked by Trumpists and by Israel, at least by the Netanyahu-led Likud opposition party.

The peculiarities of American politics should have been put aside in the Vienna diplomacy, and not heightened expectations about what it was reasonable to demand from Iran. If this was politically untenable, then Biden should have been willing to confess that his campaign pledge to restore American participation in the JCPOA was ill-considered. After all, from Iran standpoint it would have been reasonable to expect not only an apology and some compensation for the damage done to Iranian society by the post-2018 Trump sanctions. Instead Washington acts as if it is doing Iran a favor by rejoining and it is Iran that should be willing to accept more U.S. participation. 

It is important to appreciate the broader context of both the 2015 agreement and this attempt to renew compliance by both the U.S. and Iran with or without an alteration of its terms. To begin with, as mentioned, the 5 +1 group should recognize that Iran’s willingness to curtail its nuclear program without reference to Israel’s nuclear weapons, constituted a major concession without which negotiations would have been fruitless from their outset. It should also be appreciated that a genuine concern with nonproliferation, regional stability, and the equality of states would have made it reasonable for Iran to insist on prior Israeli denuclearization or parallel negotiations of a Middle East Nuclear Free Zone. What is more, such an inclusive approach to regional denuclearization would have served the regional and global public good. At the same time, for Iran to condition negotiations curtailing its own nuclear program by linkage to Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal would preclude any diplomatic attempt to end Iran’s suffering from sanctions. It seems virtually certain that Israel would refuse all efforts to call into question its national security posture, including its right to possess and develop nuclear weaponry, and almost as certain that the U.S. and Europe would not exert pressure on Israel to link its relationship to the weaponry with efforts to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program never crossed the nuclear threshold.

Related to this, is the failure of Iran in its public discourse to condition its willingness to accept international controls be tied to an acceptance by Israel and the U.S. of a commitment to refrain from destabilization efforts to undermine the authority of the Iranian government or to damage its nuclear facilities by covert operations. In other words, Iran has not conditioned its participation in the 2015 agreement or its renewal on respect for its sovereign rights as prescribed under international law. This again is a meaningful indication of the importance Iran attaches to sanctions relief and overall normalization.

During this period of diplomatic uncertainty, Iran’s diplomacy has not been passive. The January drone attacks on Abu Dhabi by Houthi rebel forces in Yemen are assumed in the West to be undertaken with the approval of Tehran, and may be thought of as a setoff to Israel’s periodic attacks and threats directed at Iran, as well as a neutralizing response to the anti-Iranian moves of the Gulf monarchies. Whether the political allies of Iran in the region can be considered ‘Iran proxies,’ as contended in the Western media, is somewhat fanciful.

From the Western perspective, Iranian efforts to disregard the constraints of JCPOA seem to suggest an Iranian ambition to be at least a threshold nuclear weapons state, that is, capable of acquiring nuclear weapons in a matter of weeks. It remains ambiguous as to whether Iran is seeking leverage in the bargaining process currently underway or indeed had become disillusioned with accepting restraints in exchange for shaky promises of sanctions relief in light of Trump’s 2018 withdrawal, and the failure of the other parties to the agreement to step in to neutralize the imposition of harsh sanctions. In light of this history, it seems reasonable for Iran to demand a commitment against withdrawal or the reimposition of sanctions, although it may

not be implementable within the constitutional frameworks of the 5 + 1 states. For example, if Trump is reelected in 2024, it seems a near certainty that he would repeat his moves of 2018 without meaningful internal legal or political obstruction, especially given the conservative majority in the U.S. Supreme Court. If the restored agreement took the form of an international treaty, its legal durability might be enhanced, but such an instrument would require submission to the ratification procedures of the participating countries. Such a requirement would undoubtedly doom the agreement as the Republicans in the U.S. Congress, probably with help from some Democrats, would block ratification, which in any event would have to gain a 2/3rds majority in the Senate.

The broader context should not be overlooked. Imposing sanctions on Iran in relation to its nuclear program is unlawful as even the nonproliferation treaty does not impose such restrictions, making the sanction an unlawful exercise of force. Beyond this, foregoing nuclear weapons is from the perspective of international law a voluntary matter. The NPT gives parties to the treaty a right of withdrawal on the basis of supreme national security interests to be explained by an official explanation. Israel has resisted pressures to join the NPT, which would remove its ability to hide behind a refusal to admit or deny the possession of nuclear weapons.

Geopolitical Spillovers

If the agreement were to be restored within the JCPOA framework with minimal modifications, and is then implemented, including a show of tacit respect exhibited by Israel and, most importantly, if the promised sanctions relief is forthcoming and expeditiously implemented, the likelihood of a stabilizing impact on regional and global relations would greatly increase. It would also strengthen the political position of Raisi in Iran, claiming that greater diplomatic firmness yields better results.

If the Vienna talks fail, however, then the prospects for a heightening of regional tensions is likely, taking the form of intensifying anti-Iranian confrontational tactics, maintenance of sanctions, and a reactive Iranian pushback by way of asserting its leverage in regional hot spots. The likelihood of Iran’s alignment with Russia and China also becomes probable, already foreshadowed by long-term trade agreements, high-profile diplomatic visits, and recent joint naval training exercises. Again, the Raisi leadership will likely be strengthened by the claim that diplomacy failed, interpreted as showing the unwillingness of Raisi to fall into the kind of trap that occurred when the moderate leadership of Rouhani took the poisoned bait in 2015. The increased availability of reliable geopolitical alternatives that would ease the economic hardships long experienced by the Iranian people would also work to Raisi’s advantage.

Israel’s mood in its comparable post-Netanyahu phase exhibits continuity its stand of belligerent hostility toward Iran consisting of coercive diplomacy and threatened military strikes, combined with a major effort to expand the normalization accords, which was the final Trump gift to Israel, strongly affirmed by the Biden leadership. Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog’s, January visit to the UAE exhibited both the belligerence and the spirit of Israeli post-normalization self-confidence. While visiting the “Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi spoke these alarming words: “There are only two alternatives in this region. One is peace, prosperity, cooperation, joint investments and a beautiful horizon for the people, or alternatively, or alternatively what Iran is doing, which is destabilizing the region and using its proxies to employ terror.” This kind of language boils down to normalization for Israel, confrontation for Iran, the forces of stability versus the forces of chaos and terror, good versus evil.

As if to confirm my worst fears, Israel conducted at the beginning of February a huge air force drill off its coast to simulate what the Times of Israel called ‘a massive attack’ on Iran’s nuclear facilities. These military exercises included dozens of F-15, D-16, and F-35 fighter jets, and featured what was described as the unusual presence of an officer of U.S. Air Forces as an ‘observer’ of such classified military exercises. Among the practice maneuvers tested were mid-air refueling operations, long-range military strikes, and responses to anti-aircraft fire. This provocative event was reinforced by extra Israeli budgeting to fund preparations for a military attack on Iran and a formal statement by the Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, that regardless of whether an agreement is reached in Vienna, Israel reserves the right to protect its population by the means of its own choosing. The stunning silence of Biden/Blinken in the face of this belligerent independence and military drum beats by Israel should be deeply disturbing for all those wishing for stability, peace, and justice in the Middle East. Silence in such a context amounts to complicity in unlawful threats to engage in aggressive use of force with grave implications for regional peace and security.  

Concluding Observation

It is way past time for the West to get over its distress about the outcome of the Iranian revolution that brought the popular movement headed by Ayatollah Khomeini to power in early 1979. In 2015 the JCPOA seemed a step in that direction, soon to be spoiled by the disruptive Trump behavior. With a new president the U.S. Government was positioned to take the initiative in reinvigorating the JCPOA, acting in ways that that would engender hopes of a new dawn of peaceful relations in the Middle East, an end to the prolonged misery of the Afghan, Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian and Palestinian people. Unfortunately, assuming my analysis is correct, this desirable course of action now seems extremely unlikely. The Biden administration seems disinclined to accept any U.S. responsibility for the breakdown of the 2015 agreement, and unreasonably expects Iran to start from a premise of co-responsibility, or worse, without taking account of the fact that JCPOA worked well until the U.S. withdrew. Israel remains defiant. And as for the Palestinians, who have been wrongly treated as disinterested bystanders, already disappointed by Biden’s decision to go along with several of the most blatantly partisan moves in favor of Israel during the Trump presidency. It is foolish to expect anything more from Biden than a more moderate style of pro-Israeli solidarity, and few course corrections as to the way Trump faciliated unlawful Israeli expansionism. In relation to both Iran, Israel, and Palestine, the essential message sent by the new leadership is continuity when it comes to substance combined with a resumption of the pre-Trump pretension of equi-distance diplomacy when it comes to the search for a sustainable peace. 

[*] Richard Falk is Professsor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University; Chair of Global Law, Queen MaryUniversity London; author of Public Intellectual: The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim (Clarity Press, 2001).

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