>> Meanwhile, let's discuss the evidence of what Iran has been doing lately.
Let's not. Let's stick to the topic of discussion, instead. What is your response to the statements by Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel's former foreign minister, Ephraim Halevi, the former head of the Mossad, and Martin van Creveld, an Israeli military historian?
Here is the passage again:
Israeli decision-makers have been in a state of strategic paralysis, incapable of recognizing the new chessboard and the necessary adjustments they need to make. They have feared recognizing publicly that Iran is a rational actor and that even a nuclear Iran wouldn't be an existential threat to the Jewish state, out of fear that such admissions would take pressure off of Washington to act firmly against Iran - the same argument Peres and Rabin used in the mid-1990s.
Politically, this is understandable. No Israeli leader wishes to be the one to declare to the Israeli public that a critical step in the strategic rivalry with Iran has been lost, even though it was never really winnable.
But some past politicians and decision-makers have started to speak up, arguably to end the strategic paralysis and cut Israel's losses. Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel's former foreign minister, publicly argues that a US-Iran dialogue could benefit Israel. Ephraim Halevi, the former head of the Mossad, echoed in the Washington Post what he told this analyst last year - Iran is rational, it is not suicidal, it can be deterred, Israel can handle even a nuclear Iran and a dialogue is now needed between the Jewish State and the Islamic Republic.
Noted Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld even told Newsmax last week that he "cannot think of even one case since 1980 and the Iranian Islamic Revolution that this country has behaved irrationally". |
