![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/Ehud-Barak.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/a>Spencer Ackerman at Danger Room reports<\/a> Barak, in a press statement with US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, said Iran needs to be “coerced” into giving up its ambitions to build a nuclear weapon.<\/p>\n\u201cOf course, we would love to see some heavenly intervention that will stop them, to wake up some morning and learn that they\u2019ve given up on their nuclear intentions,\u201d Barak told reporters at the Pentagon Thursday during a joint press conference with Leon Panetta, his American counterpart. \u201cYou cannot build a strategy based on these wishes or prayers. Sanctions are working and they are more hurting than anything I remember from the past vis-a-vis Iran, but I don\u2019t believe these kinds of sanctions will bring the ayatollahs to a moment of truth where they sit around a table, look into each other\u2019s eyes and decide that the game is over.\u201d<\/p>\n
…\u201cDuring the coming year and hopefully before they reach what I have called a \u2018zone of immunity\u2019\u201d \u2014 a point at which Israeli airstrike\u00a0couldn\u2019t meaningfully hinder Iranian nuclear work<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 Iran \u201cwill be coerced into putting an end to it this way or another way,\u201d Barak said. \u201cThe physical attack option is an option that should be there, should remain on the table, never be removed.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Barak is basically saying that Iran is determined to get nuclear weapons, has not yet been deterred from this goal, and needs to be coerced in order to end its quest. But when\u00a0UN reports and Israeli intelligence\u00a0confirmed<\/a>\u00a0that Iran irreversibly diverted large portions of its enriched uranium towards peaceful medical research – a clear indication that it’s intentions are not to weaponize – Barak said this set back Iran\u2019s nuclear enrichment program almost a year.<\/p>\n
And no less than three months ago, Barak acknowledged that Iran’s leadership has not made the decision to develop nuclear weapons and that it’s nuclear posture is defensive in nature. He told CNN in August:<\/p>\n
[Iran’s Ayatollah Khameini] believes that he is penetrated through our intelligence and he strongly feels that if he tries to order [development of a nuclear weapon], we will know it, we and you and some other intelligence services will know about it and it might end up with a physical action against it.<\/p>\n
So he prefers to, first of all, make sure that through redundancy, through an accumulation of more lowly enriched uranium, more medium level enriched uranium and more centrifuges and more sites, better protection, that he can reach a point, which I call the zone of immunity, beyond which Israel might not be technically capable of launching a surgical operation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So Iran is refraining from building nuclear weapons, while responding to the threat environment imposed by the US and Israel by expanding their available low and medium enriched uranium so as to deter aerial bombardments or invasion. As renowned international relations theorist Kenneth N. Waltz recently wrote in\u00a0Foreign Affairs<\/em><\/a>, \u201cSuch a breakout capability might satisfy the domestic political needs of Iran\u2019s rulers by assuring hard-liners that they can enjoy all the benefits of having a bomb (such as greater security) without the downsides (such as international isolation and condemnation).\u201d\u00a0As I wrote at the time<\/a> of Barak’s statement:<\/p>\n
Here it is admitted that Iran is thinking rationally and defensively. The real concern, Barak says, is allowing Iran to enter a \u201czone of immunity\u201d wherein it can deter attack or invasion. How dare the ayatollahs deprive Washington and Tel Aviv of the right to attack a weak and defensive Iran!<\/p>\n
The whole story about how \u2018we need to attack an aggressive Iran determined to get nuclear weapons\u2019 falls apart under Barak\u2019s admission above. First, if Iran has no nuclear weapons program (something admitted widely in US and Israeli officialdom), then there is no conceivable imminent threat and thus no attack is justified. If Iran is demonstrably intimidated by the threats from the US and Israel \u2013 that is, if it is acting defensively vis-a-vis its nuclear program \u2013 then current US\/Israeli capabilities are proving sufficient to deter an Iranian attack whether it has a bomb or not (As Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess, director of the\u00a0Defense Intelligence Agency,\u00a0told the Senate<\/a>\u00a0in February:\u00a0Iran \u201cis unlikely to initiate or intentionally provoke a conflict or launch a preemptive attack\u201d), and thus an attack is not justified.<\/p>\n
Finally, what the pro-war crowd\u00a0can\u2019t seem to grasp is that an attack on Iran would be\u00a0most likely<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0push them towards reconstituting<\/a>\u00a0their nuclear weapons program.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Even on his way out of politics, Barak can’t resist making public comments he knows to be misleading. But then again, that is what the bulk of the Iran debate has been about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak says he’s retiring. But on his way out, he has determined to make hysterical statements about a war on Iran which are totally divorced from reality and which contradict previous statements he’s made regarding Iran’s nuclear program. Spencer Ackerman at Danger Room reports Barak, in a press statement with US […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-17289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17289"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17292,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17289\/revisions\/17292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17289"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=17289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}