Jacob Goldberg, adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, spoke at a Jan. 29 program at the Highland Park Conservative Temple-Congregation Anshe Emeth.
February 05, 2008
Israel’s response to the Iranian threat is complicated by conflicting information, according to an adviser to former Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
Jacob Goldberg told a Highland Park audience that assessing Iran’s nuclear ambitions is made more difficult by intelligence estimates that predict the development of an Iranian bomb anywhere from six months to eight years.
“You can’t make a decision unless you know,” said Jacob Goldberg during a Jan. 29 program at Highland Park Conservative Temple-Congregation Anshe Emeth.
“Therefore, when Israeli intelligence says one thing, German another and American another….”
Even if it is determined that an Iranian nuclear threat is imminent, he said, Israel must weigh whether a preemptive attack would be backed militarily by the Americans, the impact of a retaliatory strike on Israel, and whether other governments — including moderate Arab countries — would move to rein in Iran before such an attack takes place.
“We all know Iran wants to be a superpower,” said Goldberg. But given the Iranian leadership’s radicalism since the Islamic Revolution, the prospect of Iran using its weapons only as a deterrent, as other nuclear nations have done, is far from assured.
“Why does Iran build intercontinental ballistic missiles, and Pakistan and India, which are also nuclear powers, don’t have intercontinental missiles?” asked Goldberg. “They only have medium-range missiles to hit the other country.”
The Iranians, however, have the capability to strike not only Israel, but Western Europe as well.
“This is not the old Iran of the shah and Book of Esther,” said Goldberg, warning that the number one goal of the country is “to export Islam.”
Iran’s going nuclear could be part of “an end-of-days apocalyptic vision that’s very scary,” he said.
Retaliatory strike
But, Goldberg said, launching a nuclear strike against Israel would also invite a retaliatory strike on the Iranian people.
“As we used to say about Iranian leaders, ‘They may be crazy, but they’re not stupid,’” he said. “Iran must know it will be hit by Israel if it attacks. It can’t have a real victory if it will also be hit.”
Still, Iran has 70 million people and has virtually doubled its population since the 1979 revolution. Israel has just seven million. Iranian leaders may well reason they could take such a hit and survive. Israel, Goldberg pointed out, very likely could not.
The prospect of a nuclear Iran alone would exact a cost on Israel — even without the weapons being used.
“All they need to do is possess them,” he explained. “How many young families will want to come to Israel and raise children in the shadow of a nuclear Iran? How many tourists would want to come?”
Iran may also be hoping to acquire some of the oil resources of other Western-leaning Middle Eastern countries such as Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, thus further solidifying its superpower status. These countries, while economically strong, are militarily weak.
“Two-thirds of all oil on Earth is located in this area,” said Goldberg. He issued a warning for those already complaining about skyrocketing gas and heating costs if Iran were to gain control of much of the world’s fuel supply.
“A hundred dollars a barrel will be a part of memory,” he said.
A nuclear Iran could also touch off a wave of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East by countries threatened by Iran.
But Iran has other problems that may sidetrack its nuclear program. The revolution, the goal of which was to improve the lives of poverty-stricken Iranians, has been a failure in that regard, with 90 percent of all Iranians — more than under the shah — now living in economic distress.
Program chair Ted Stahl said he found Goldberg’s talk to be “an extraordinarily compelling assessment of the frightening and complicated problem facing both Israel and the world.”