On June 13, Israel launched an unprovoked war against Iran. The surprise attack began just after 3 a.m. on Friday, the start of the weekend in the Middle East. As missiles rained on Iranian cities, destroying entire residential blocks and killing scores of civilians, a video message from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was posted on social media platforms. Like something out of an Orwellian nightmare, the man who is on the International Criminal Court’s wanted list for crimes against humanity in Gaza stared into the camera and spoke of making the world “a much safer place.”
Only the most hopelessly gullible would put any stock in Netanyahu’s claim that Iran was on the verge of perpetrating a “nuclear Holocaust” against Israel. Both the International Atomic Energy Agency and the U.S. intelligence community recently concluded that Iran does not currently have a program to build nuclear weapons.
But Netanyahu has made a career out of crying wolf. In 1992, alleging that Iran was three to five years from the atomic bomb, he urged the U.S. to help end Iran’s nuclear program. In 2012, he said an Iranian bomb was six to seven months away. By 2015, it was supposedly a matter of weeks.
Though he has now convinced U.S. President Donald Trump to join Israel in fighting the big bad Iranian wolf, Netanyahu can’t pull the wool over everyone’s eyes. For almost two years, the world has witnessed a genocide unfold in Gaza. We have also heard Israeli cabinet ministers talk of dropping atomic bombs on Gaza’s besieged and starved population. The negative global public opinion toward Israel — as indicated in a recent Pew Research Center report — should come as no surprise. In Korea, no less than 60 percent of those surveyed see Israel in a negative light.
Despite facing accusations from international organizations, including an independent U.N. Commission, of committing war crimes in Gaza, Israel still enjoys undeterred U.S. support. On June 22, with Trump’s announcement of U.S. strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities, the war officially became a joint Israeli-American adventure. The Israeli press had already reported that the initial Israel strikes had been coordinated closely with Washington, and that the monthslong U.S. nuclear negotiations with Iran were part of a “deception campaign” aimed at lulling Iran into a “false sense of security.”
While they may not always see eye to eye, the U.S. and Israel share the goal of fundamentally altering the balance of power in the Middle East. For Washington, this means reasserting dominance in the oil-rich region at a time when American hegemony is challenged by reemerging powers such as China and Russia. For Tel Aviv, it means establishing regional supremacy through the country’s nuclear advantage. Israel is the only country in the Middle East to possess nuclear weapons, and one of the very few countries in the world to have never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
To preserve its nuclear advantage, Israel has gone to great lengths; from covert operations against Egypt’s nuclear program in the early 1960s, to airstrikes against Iraqi and Syrian nuclear facilities in the 1980s and the 2000s. Since 2010, Israel has assassinated several nuclear scientists and carried out cyberattacks on nuclear facilities in Iran.
Israel also launched a lobbying campaign in Washington against a 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers, which allowed Iran to maintain low-level uranium enrichment under international monitoring. In 2018, Washington withdrew from that agreement, setting the scene for the current confrontation.
Beyond his stated goal of destroying Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities, Netanyahu also hopes for what he calls “regime change” in Tehran. In his June 13 video address, he said the attack on Iran gave Iranians an opportunity to secure their “liberation” from the “brutal dictatorship” of the Islamic Republic. His choice of words was a nod to another Israeli slogan used to justify its recent actions: In Gaza, Israel is helping to free Palestinians from Hamas.
To say that many Iranians are fed up with their rulers is an understatement. Social and political repression, combined with an abysmal economic condition aggravated by suffocating U.S.-imposed sanctions, have engendered deep grievances. Several nationwide protest movements in recent years have put the state’s crisis of legitimacy on full display. But Iranians, having once experienced the horrors of war, know that bombs and missiles bring neither freedom nor prosperity — only death and destruction.
Similar anxieties prevail throughout the Middle East. Iran’s Persian Gulf neighbors worry about being caught in the crossfire or impacted by possible environmental and nuclear contamination resulting from attacks on Iranian oil and nuclear facilities.
There are other concerns as well. Already in Israel, there is talk of Turkey being the next nemesis. And who after Turkey? Israel’s nuclear arsenal makes all other regional actors jittery. In a joint statement condemning Israel’s aggression, 21 Muslim-majority countries also called for nuclear disarmament “without selectivity” — a reference to the Western double-standard when it comes to Israel’s nuclear weapons. The double-standard may backfire in the end, compelling more countries in the region to seek nuclear weapons.
For Korea, which is determined to expand strategic partnerships in the Middle East, the current situation cannot be taken lightly. Already, the country imports more than 70 percent of its crude oil from the Middle East, operates a nuclear power plant in the United Arab Emirates and is in talks with Saudi Arabia and Turkey over other potential nuclear power plant deals. Contrary to what many Koreans may think, the Middle East is not a faraway land. The reverberations of Israel’s latest war might be felt here sooner rather than later.
Siavash Saffari is associate professor of West Asian Studies at Seoul National University. The views expressed in this article are his own.
원문: The US-Israeli war machine goes to Iran – The Korea Times