TORONTO — Ze’ev Maghen is an expert on Iran, but unlike many other observers of the Islamic state, he doesn’t believe the country’s leaders would risk a nuclear apocalypse just for the chance to destroy Israel.
Ze’ev Maghen
The Iranian leadership certainly does seek Israel’s destruction, but they“care if Israel destroys Tehran. They don’t mind martyrdom, but why do that if everything is going so well?” he said.
Maghen, chair of the department of Middle East studies at Bar-Ilan University, was in Toronto last week as scholar-in-residence at Beth Sholom Synagogue. He flew to Toronto from the United States, where he met with intelligence officials eager to broaden their sources of information about the region.
Iranian leaders believe their influence is spreading throughout the Middle East – into Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, he said. They believe they are succeeding in their long-term goals of regional hegemony and international influence. Why mess with a winning formula?
“Iran’s goal is not merely to attack Tel Aviv. Their goal is much grander. They want to eradicate Israel as a state, but that’s only a first step.” Eliminating Israel would remove what the Iranians see as a “western outpost” and create a “beachhead into Europe,” he said.
The conflict would continued there based on “demography and kulturkampf [culture war]”, while a nuclear-armed Iran would possess “another tool in the arsenal of the Islamists to increase their influence in the world.” Maghen gave his evaluation just days after Iran test-launched a missile with a 2,500-kilometre range, able to hit European targets.
A senior fellow at the Shalem Center think-tank in Jerusalem, Maghen said the policy-making echelon of the U. S. government requires “people with vision who want to take the country in [a particular] direction.” Otherwise, U.S. policy will be reactive and adversarial.
He suggested that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran “are the initiative-takers in world politics, and you see the West, the United States, Israel and Europe reacting and trying to adjust policies according to what Ahmadinejad and his cohorts are doing.”
As for the United States under President Barack Obama, “I don’t think they have a Mideast policy. I think it’s clear to everybody that Obama and all his good intentions is feeling his way and making it up as he goes along. Relying on whatever idealistic vision he had is bumping up to the reality of people who don’t share his progressive view of the world.”
The U.S. president has created a problem for himself by reversing longstanding American policy of not talking to Iran as long as it continues to enrich nuclear material. Maghen, who reads the Persian media, said Iranian newspapers are “laughing” at the United States, believing they have the upper hand. The United States is seen as truckling to Iran and “Obama has elected Ahmadinejad by coming to the table,” he said, referring to Iran’s June 12 presidential election.
Obama has linked progress in the peace process with mobilization of the region against Iranian ambitions, but Maghen, who consults for the Israeli defence ministry, said “he’ll probably end up hitting his head against the Palestinian brick wall like everybody else.”
In the meantime, Iran will continue to pursue its goal of a nuclear weapon, which it will use as “another tool in the arsenal of the Islamists to increase their influence in the world.”
Referring to instability in nuclear-armed Pakistan, Maghen suggested that country, a Sunni nation, could fall to Islamic forces.
“Some believe Israel has to live with MAD [mutual assured destruction – a Cold War-era doctrine of deterrence]” vis-a-vis its Islamic neighbours.
But if Israel does bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, “you send a warning that we won’t tolerate being threatened. That’s the likely scenario,” he said.
