Alan Dershowitz finally woke up - Oppose the deal on Iran, he says

At Heston Aerodrome on  September 30,1938, Neville Chamberlain said:

The settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem, which has now been achieved is, in my view, only the prelude to a larger settlement in which all Europe may find peace. This morning I had another talk with the German Chancellor, Herr Hitler, and here is the paper which bears his name upon it as well as mine. Some of you, perhaps, have already heard what it contains but I would just like to read it to you: ' ... We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.'


Oppose the deal on Iran

All reasonable, thinking people - liberals, conservatives, Americans and their allies, the pro-Israel community (ignoring J Street) - must unite against a 'Chamberlain moment' bad deal on Iran with no Iranian quid pro quo.

By Alan M. Dershowitz  Nov. 12, 2013 | 7:45 PM

Diplomacy is better than war but bad diplomacy can cause bad wars. The U.S. is leading the noble efforts, stalled for the moment, to achieve a diplomatic breakthrough in our determination to prevent Iran from developing, or having the capacity to develop, nuclear weapons. There is little dispute about this essential goal: Virtually everyone agrees that a nuclear armed Iran would pose unacceptably grave dangers to the United States and its allies.

Nor is there much controversy over the preference for "jaw jaw" over "war war" as Winston Churchill once put it. But the understandable concern, expressed by Israeli, French, Saudi and some other leaders, is that the Iranian leadership is playing for time—that they want to make insignificant concessions in exchange for significant reductions in the sanctions that are crippling their economy. Their goal is to have their yellow cake and eat good food at the same time. These leaders, and many experienced nuclear and diplomatic experts, fear that a bad deal, such as the one that Secretary Kerry seemed ready to accept, would allow the Iranians to inch closer to nuclear weapons capacity while strengthening their faltering economy. The net result would be a more powerful Iran with the ability to deploy a nuclear arsenal quickly and surreptitiously.

Were this to occur, we would be witnessing a recurrence of the failed efforts to prevent a nuclear North Korea but in a far more volatile and dangerous neighborhood of the globe. Were Iran to use the current diplomatic efforts as a cover to buy time to make a preventive military attack unrealistic, this would indeed be our “Chamberlain moment”, a replication of the time three-quarters of a century ago, when the idealistic but naive British prime minister made a bad deal with the Nazis in a desperate but futile effort to avoid deploying the military option against Hitler’s growing power.

Winston Churchill, despite his preference for jaw, railed against Chamberlain’s concession, describing it as a defeat without a war. The war, of course, soon came and the allies were in a weaker position, having ceded the industrially and militarily critical Sudetenland to Germany while at the same time giving it more time to enhance its military power. The result was tens of millions of deaths that might have been avoided if the British and French had engaged in a preventive war instead of giving dangerous concessions to the Nazis when they were still weak.

The immediate choice for the world today is not between diplomacy and preventive war, as it may have been in 1938. We have a third option: To maintain or even increase the sanctions while keeping the military option on the table. It was this powerful combination that brought a weakened and frightened Iran to the bargaining table in the first place. It is this combination that will pressure them to abandon their unnecessary quest for nuclear weapons, if anything will. To weaken the sanction regime now, in exchange for a promise to maintain the status quo, would be bad diplomacy, poor negotiation and a show of weakness precisely when a show of strength is called for.

The leadership of the pro-Israel community, both in the United States and Israel, have shown rare unity around the issue of not weakening the sanctions merely in exchange for the promise of a nuclear standstill from the Iranians. Liberals and conservatives, doves and hawks, all seem to realize that the best way to avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of a nuclear Iran or a military attack is to maintain the tough sanctions while diplomacy continues.

As usual, the only outlier seems to be J Street, whose claim to be “pro-Israel” grows less credible by the day. Previously, J Street claimed to support tough sanctions as an alternative to the military option and drumbeating. But now that Israel and its supporters insist that sanctions be maintained, J Street seems to be supporting the Neville Chamberlain approach to diplomacy: Make substantial concessions in exchange for hollow promises, thereby weakening our negotiating position and increasing the chances that the United States will be forced to take military action as the only means of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

This is the time when the entire pro-Israel community must stand together in opposition to the deal being offered the Iranians—a deal which is bad for the United States, for the West, and for Israel. The Israeli people seem united in opposition to this bad deal. The American Congress is doubtful about the deal. This is not a liberal/conservative issue. Liberals who view military action as a last resort should oppose this deal, and conservatives who fear a nuclear Iran above all else should oppose this deal.

Indeed all reasonable, thinking people should understand that weakening the sanctions against Iran without demanding that they dismantle their nuclear weapons program is a prescription for disaster. Have we learned nothing from North Korea and Neville Chamberlain?

Alan M. Dershowitz, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard, is a practicing criminal and constitutional lawyer and the author of The Trials of Zion. His autobiography, “Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law”, was published last month.

Op-Ed: A Study in Betrayal

Published: Thursday, October 23, 2008 12:31 AM

The Mahdi, Dershowitz and Colin Powell.

Mladen Andrijasevic

Mladen Andrijasevic is a software developer based in Be'er Sheva, Israel.

►More from this writer

What do Alan Dershowitz and Colin Powell have in common? Apparently, neither of them know much about the Mahdi , the hidden Twelfth Imam whose return will be triggered, the mullahs are convinced, by the destruction of the Jews through a nuclear war. This is the very reason why Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not like Stalin, Khruschev, Brezhnev or Mao; he harbors a cataclysmic fantasy. It is the same reason why Iran will very likely become a nuclear suicide bomber once it gets The Bomb. And let's be clear, it is not only Ahmadinejad.

Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani said on December 14, 2001: "If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in its possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate, because application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel, but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world."

In a recent article, Amil Imani wrote that Ahmadinejad "believes that this earthly life is passing and worthless in comparison to the afterlife awaiting a devoted and faithful believer. Hence, he holds to the old belief that if a faithful [Muslim] kills an infidel, he goes to Allah's paradise; and, if the faithful gets killed in the process of serving the faith, again he goes to Allah's paradise. Hence, it is a win-win proposition for the faithful."

Alan Dershowitz says that Barack Obama is a strong supporter of Israel, despite the fact that Mr. Dershowitz strongly denounces former President Jimmy Carter on his Israel policies while Zbigniew Brzezinski, who is Obama's advisor, defends Carter and his policies on Israel. Since Dershowitz himself has been a strong supporter of Israel, how can he say the same of someone who takes an advisorwhose policies on Israel Dershowitz completely disagrees with?

Does this mean, by implication, that Dershowitz's revulsion over the Republicans takes precedence over his concern for the safety and security of Israel - and of America?

Colin Powell says that Obama is a "transformational" figure who would "electrify our country... [and] the world."

Does he mean by permitting Ahmadinejad to start a nuclear war with Israel? For that is bound to happen if Obama comes to power and Israel does not destroy the Iranian nuclear sites in time.

John McCain understands that talking to Iran now is pointless, just like talking to Hitler at Munich was. Obama does not get it. So why did Colin Powell throw his support behind a person he knows has much less of the experience needed to handle Iran than McCain has? Race first.

Personally, I am disappointed with both men. To be ignorant of the real fundamentalist Iranian threat is not an option in the world theater. Yet, these men of extraordinary insight and experience choose ignorance of the Iranian threat to obfuscate their own better judgment, in a matter that has life or death consequences. Ignoring the religious rhetoric and absolute beliefs of Islam exposes the true priorities of Powell and Dershowitz; ideology and race trump the well-being of their country and countrymen.