By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO—Middle East analyst, author and columnist Barry Rubin, a former U.S. Senate aide who founded an international affairs research institute in Herzliya, sometimes engages in “what happens the day after” speculation.
What happens the day after Iran gets a nuclear bomb? he pondered during his visit to San Diego County this weekend—a visit that included a Thursday evening speech to the San Diego Israel Coalition in La Jolla, and an Erev Shabbat talk at Temple Solel in Cardiff by the Sea.
And what happens the day after the Palestinians achieve an independent state? mulled Rubin, who once worked on Capitol Hill as a foreign policy advisor for Democratic Senator Gary Hart of Colorado and for shorter periods in his career assisted Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Senator John Glenn of Ohio.
After making aliyah about 20 years ago, Rubin is today a professor at Israel’s private Inter-Disciplinary Center, editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs, and a consultant who instructs Israelis about the United States and Americans (and others) about Israel. An indefatigable researcher and writer, he felt comfortable speculating on both the Iranian and Palestinian questions over lunch with host Bruce Kesler and me at the Guadalajara Grill in Old Town.
“The way I look at Iranian nuclear weapons, I call it ‘the defensive umbrella for aggression’—in other words, I think the main reason that Iran wants nuclear weapons is that once it has them it can do whatever it wants; no one will interfere with them,” he said. “They don’t actually have to fire off nuclear weapons.
“What is going to happen? All the Arab states are going to appease Iran, the European states aren’t going to want to get into a conflict with Iran,” he predicted. “No Arab state will support a peace process with Israel openly because the Iranians don’t want it. They will not fight the Iranians too openly on the oil prices, which the Iranians want to push upwards, and they won’t go too far supporting the U.S. because Iran doesn’t want that.”
A pause, a bite of his chicken mole, and Rubin continued: “Most importantly of all, hundreds of thousands of Muslims will join revolutionary groups because they will see Islam as the wave of the future. They won’t say that Iran is a repressive state with economic problems; they will say that Iran is a strong state with nuclear weapons.
“How does this affect Israel?” he asked rhetorically. “Well the fact is they (Iranians) are already doing everything they can against Israel. It will lead to instability in a lot of Arabic-speaking countries and increased terrorism in the Arab-speaking Middle East and in Europe, and to some extent North America. As people become more radicalized they will look to Iran as a wave of the future. That is devastating to U.S.interests—even more devastating to U.S. interests than to Israel’s interests. Because if the Arab states are focused on dealing with Iran, they are going to be even less willing to get into a conflict with Israel.”
Rubin predicted that Israel would refrain from attacking Iran as the latter builds up to a nuclear capacity, concentrating instead on the ability to knock out that capacity at such time hard intelligence ever suggested Iran is preparing to use its nuclear arsenal against Israel.
He said that while Iran builds to a nuclear capability, Israel simultaneously is developing its ability to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, while at the same time installing a multi-layer anti-missile defense.
After an interlude during which a mariachi vocalist sang several songs for the diners at the next table, Rubin turned to the question of what happens after Palestinian statehood.
“How do we know that within one month there won’t be cross-border attacks on Israel from the State of Palestine, and the (Palestinian) government would say ‘there is nothing we can do about it’? What is Israel to do?—Go to the U.S. and say ‘you promised us something?’” Or, he continued, “What happens if Hamas or radical forces within Fatah should take over the government –and then they would say ‘we’re starting phase two of the war.’ Alternative Three: What happens if the government of Palestine—now a sovereign state – invites an Iranian or Syrian army?”
Questions such as these cause Israel grave concern, Rubin said. “Israel does not want a peace agreement in which it would be worse off than it is now after making concessions and taking risks,” he said. “This is never reported in the Western mass media … No one talks about this. I have been following the American media on this story for years – especially AP (the Associated Press) – and I have never seen any mention of these future issues, and I have never seen any mention of what Israel wants in a peace agreement.”
Rubin said there are big differences between the American “narrative” about what is going on in the Middle East and reality.
From the standpoint of Americans, “logically the situation should look like this: Israel has won all the wars, Israel controls the territory, Israel has a higher living standard, the Palestinians are poor underdogs. Now by American logic, western logic, ‘therefore they (the Palestinians) should be eager for a resolution of the issue and to get a state of their own. This isn’t happening. Why isn’t it happening? Because it is Israel’s fault. Israel is doing well, the Palestinians are miserable; miserable people want change.’ That is the narrative.”
The trouble with that narrative, suggested the columnist and professor. is that it is not true. He explained: “The Palestinian leadership wants total victory. So they say ‘we would rather wait decades and suffer casualties and be materially deprived because what is most important to us is to win and wipe Israel off the map.’
“That is not the way Americans think,” Rubin continued. “Americans think pragmatically and materially, so it is hard for people to understand that. The evidence shows that. The Palestinian Authority has refused to negotiate for almost two years. They sat out a nine-month long (construction) freeze… They are in no hurry to make a deal because they don’t want to make peace.”
It is the nature of human beings that we can contemplate nuclear standoffs and conventional warfare, all the while enjoying a lunch in pleasant surroundings. And when I bade Kesler and Rubin farewell, they were headed to Balboa Park, especially to see the Model Railroad Museum. Rubin, a hobbyist, recalled enjoying the museum on a previous visit to San Diego.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World
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