Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Israel recruits gay community in PR campaign against Iran - Haaretz - Israel News

 

Israel recruits gay community in PR campaign against Iran

By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent

Tags: public relations, iran

Israel is stepping up its public relations effort to discredit Iran within the international community, and part of its new campaign focuses on Tehran's abuse of human rights and sponsorship of terrorism.
"We have to lay the foundation in the world, and particularly in Europe, in order to be able to take harsher steps against Iran, especially in the economic sector," said one senior political source in Jerusalem.
The new campaign, to be overseen by the Foreign Ministry, aims to appeal to people who are less concerned with Iran's nuclear aspirations and more fearful of its human rights abuses and mistreatment of minorities, including the gay and lesbian community.

The campaign plans to recruit the international gay community, which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed in 2007 when he said there were no homosexuals living in his country.
The campaign will also reach out to Jewish groups who want to bring more attention to Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial and some members of the Iranian regime's anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist views.
About NIS 8 million have already been budgeted for the new campaign, which also includes increased briefings for foreign journalists on the Iranian nuclear program and greater use of the Internet and sites such as YouTube.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman want to broaden the PR campaign on the subject of Iran in the wake of increasing international willingness to negotiate with Tehran over its nuclear program. One political source said there appear to be greater expectations in the U.S. and in Europe that diplomacy will solve the nuclear dispute.
However, the assumption in Israel is that dialogue will not lead to fundamental change in Tehran's stance and that the regime will not relinquish its nuclear aspirations, even in exchange for an incentives package from the international community.
The senior political source in Jerusalem said it is necessary to lay the groundwork now for the possible diplomatic failure. Despite talk of a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, the current campaign focuses more on harsh economic sanctions against Tehran.

Israel recruits gay community in PR campaign against Iran - Haaretz - Israel News

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Oil-Rich Arab State Pushes Nuclear Bid With U.S. Help - WSJ.com

 

ABU DHABI -- The mating of the words "nuclear" and "Persian Gulf" normally sets off alarm bells in Washington. Yet this oil-rich Arab state just across the gulf from Iran is on a crash course to develop nuclear power with U.S. backing.

Dozens of American engineers, lawyers and businessmen have converged on Abu Dhabi in recent months to help the United Arab Emirates get the Arab world's first nuclear-power program running by 2017. "I don't know anyone else who has rolled out a nuclear program of this magnitude this fast," says Jeffrey Benjamin, an American engineer who in October was named project manager for Emirates Nuclear Energy Corp., which oversees Abu Dhabi's nuclear program.

View Interactive

World Nuclear Energy Production

See details on countries' nuclear energy capacity in an interactive map.

Even as the U.S. remains determined to block Iran from developing nuclear weapons, President Barack Obama sees the U.A.E. program as a "model for the world," according to a senior White House official, and by mid-April could move to present a bilateral nuclear-cooperation treaty to Congress for approval. The ability to make electricity through nuclear power is a long way from the ability to build weapons -- and, proponents say, the agreement could make bomb-making harder.

The treaty, signed by former President George W. Bush during his last week in office, would allow American firms to engage in nuclear trade with the U.A.E. To build support, the U.A.E. is agreeing to buy approved nuclear fuel on the international market, rather than enriching uranium or reprocessing plutonium, both of which can be made into weapons-grade material. It will also open its facilities to random international inspections.

The U.A.E.'s push represents a test for nuclear-power advocates who want countries across the globe to go nuclear -- so long as they play by the rules. The U.S. and United Nations officials are championing the U.A.E. as a role model for other developing countries and as a counterexample to Iran. Tehran has repeatedly rebuffed international inspectors, while amassing large quantities of materials that can be used to build bombs. A spokesman at the Iranian mission to the U.N. says Iran's nuclear program is purely for civilian purposes, and says Tehran believes "peaceful nuclear programs" are the right of all signatures to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

[power surge]

Some U.S. lawmakers have threatened to block the U.A.E. deal, saying the risks of letting that country split the atom are too large. They cite the U.A.E.'s history as a transit point for sensitive military technologies to Iran, Iraq and Libya. They also make the slippery-slope argument: If one Arab country has nuclear power, others may pile in, and perhaps down the road, seek nuclear weapons as well. Both Saudi Arabia and Egypt have recently announced their desire to develop nuclear-power programs with U.S. assistance.

Western and Asian companies are already salivating at the chance for lucrative contracts with the U.A.E., which has set the end of April as the rough deadline for bids. General Electric Co. and Westinghouse Electric Co. are among the U.S. firms interested in the initial $20 billion in reactor work, say officials familiar with the bidding process. GE and Westinghouse declined to comment.

Facing ambitious timelines set by officials bent on growth, Mr. Benjamin, the American engineer, and his colleagues rarely get far from the Emirates Nuclear Energy headquarters in downtown Abu Dhabi. Many live in an apartment building next to the office and exercise at the same gym. Mr. Benjamin lives three floors above his office.

Surge in Demand

The U.A.E. began exploring nuclear power three years ago as it faced a surge in electricity demand, say Emirati officials. The Persian Gulf country is a federation of seven states, among them Abu Dhabi, the capital, and Dubai. It has among the largest oil reserves in the world. But it's short of the natural gas that is used to fuel power and water-desalination plants, and imports most of its gas from neighboring Qatar.

[Arab Summit] Reuters

Qatari Emir Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, right, receives United Arab Emirates President Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan at Doha international airport on Sunday. Leaders of the 22-member Arab League gathered in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar for a two-day summit meeting.

Abu Dhabi's ruler, Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan, commissioned a white paper that concluded the country's electricity demand would reach 40,000 megawatts by 2020 from around 16,000 megawatts currently. Nonnuclear options, such as coal-fired plants, solar energy or alternative fuels, were seen either as insufficient to meet demand, too expensive or harmful to the environment.

"Nuclear power was seen both as practical and clean," says Hussain al Nowais, an Abu Dhabi industrialist who took part in the study.

The U.A.E.'s foreign minister announced Abu Dhabi's intentions to pursue nuclear power last May. Officials here say they believe the global economic downturn is temporary and are sticking to ambitious growth plans that assume rising electricity demand.

Bush Initiative

The Bush administration quickly emerged as a powerful partner. Former Bush officials say they wanted to tout the U.A.E.'s nuclear approach to developing nations and to pressure Iran to follow suit. Some former officials say they believed nuclear power was inevitably going to spread farther into the Middle East. A deal with Abu Dhabi could also set a precedent by binding a key economic powerhouse to U.S. technologies and international standards.

"This is the kind of counterexample to Iran we need to actively support," says Jackie Wolcott, a former U.S. envoy who helped negotiate the pact Mr. Bush signed in January.

David Scott is one of the Americans helping to build the nuclear program in the U.A.E. Mr. Scott served as the National Security Council's director for the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa during President Bush's first term. In 2006, he became the director of economic affairs for Abu Dhabi's Executive Affairs Authority, which is run by the crown prince.

Frenzied Growth

On a recent morning, Mr. Scott was in a helicopter over Abu Dhabi, pointing out the frenzied growth of skyscrapers and apartment blocks that he hopes will soon be powered by nuclear energy. Mr. Scott, a graduate of Utah's Brigham Young University, has worked for the U.S. military, the State Department and Occidental Petroleum Corp. On weekends, he and his family ride wakeboards on Abu Dhabi's turquoise waters.

Also in the helicopter was Mohamed al Hammadi, the chief executive of the Emirati nuclear company. Mr. Hammadi was tracking the flight path using the global-positioning system on his cellphone. The 33-year-old, a graduate of the Florida Institute of Technology and a native of Abu Dhabi, said he hardly recognized the town he grew up in.

"Most of this was just desert," said Mr. Hammadi. The Louvre and Guggenheim museums are building branches on an island next to Abu Dhabi's downtown waterfront. A Formula One racetrack built on another nearby island will stage its first event later this year. Farther away from the city, one of the world's largest aluminum smelters is under construction.

Mr. Hammadi's job includes choosing sites for the reactors that are in secure locations and away from population centers, but still close to desalination plants and the power grid. He'll also decide which designs the U.A.E. adopts. Plants must withstand sandstorms and summer heat that can reach 120 degrees.

Following the Western model, the U.A.E. has established an independent regulator to monitor nuclear safety. The regulator's first director general is set to be William Travers, a 58-year-old Florida native. In the 1980s, he was dispatched by the U.S.'s Nuclear Regulatory Commission to help clean up America's worst nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.

Mr. Travers oversees a staff of 30 American, Emirati and European officials that's expected to grow to more than 100 by 2013. The regulatory office is seeking to put in place licensing requirements so the U.A.E. can begin importing components for its nuclear reactors. Mr. Travers says he plans to retain his independence, which is one reason his offices have been literally walled off from the nuclear-energy company, even though they share the same floor. "What they want from me is a safety call," Mr. Travers says from his spartan office.

Emirati officials say they've started developing homegrown talent to run and maintain the reactors. Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi's largest technical school, is teaming up with European and U.S. colleges to create nuclear science and engineering degrees. The government is offering to retrain engineers already working in the nation's petroleum sector.

'Serve My Country'

"I want to see myself in a stronger position so that I can serve my country," said 30-year-old Fahad al Rumaithi, who's preparing for a degree in nuclear engineering after working for the Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Co. in Malaysia and South Korea. He said he spends his spare time reading engineering books on thermodynamics.

Most critics of the program, including some U.S. lawmakers and nonproliferation experts, believe the U.A.E. is unlikely to turn to nuclear weapons. But they have reservations about the country's past role in the flow of sensitive military technologies. The rogue Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan used the port of Dubai to transfer centrifuge technologies to countries like Libya, according to American and U.N. officials. Mr. Khan's network grew to include nuclear sales to North Korea and Iran, before American and international investigators shut him down in 2003.

Iran has allegedly obtained materials for its missile program from front companies based in Dubai. Iran and the U.A.E. are trading partners, exchanging more than $5.5 billion in goods in 2007, according to the European Union.

Some American lawmakers have said they want to block the U.S.-U.A.E. deal on the grounds that the U.A.E. hasn't done enough to combat the flow of funds and technology into Iran.

"If this is to be the model for future nuclear cooperation agreements, don't we want to get this right the first time?" asks Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the Republican vice chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Ms. Ros-Lehtinen wants more assurances that the U.A.E. will support U.S. efforts to confront Iran and that it won't pursue nuclear weapons.

U.A.E. officials say in the past they have been lax in monitoring the flow of sensitive technologies through the ports. But they say they have stepped up enforcement of U.N. sanctions against Iran and tightened business-license regulations for Iranian nationals. They have also signed on to U.S.-led efforts to track air and sea shipments to Iran.

Iranian Crackdown

Over the past three years, U.A.E. officials say, they have shut down 40 Iranian companies operating in Dubai over either export-control violations or lack of proper licenses. In the past six months, Emirati authorities have also blocked more then 10 shipments of goods for potential military use heading to Iran through Dubai, largely from Asia. "We will not allow anyone to use our territory to harm anybody else," said Yacub al-Hosani, a Foreign Ministry official.

The U.A.E. points to Iran's stepped-up rhetoric over Persian Gulf islands that are in dispute between Abu Dhabi and Tehran as evidence that its harder stance isn't going unnoticed.

Emirati officials say their nuclear program won't be derailed by international pressure. The country has already signed a nuclear-cooperation agreement with France, and has tentative deals with Japan and Britain. Companies such as France's Areva SA and Korea Electric Power Co. are preparing to make bids for contracts that could ultimately top $40 billion.

Write to Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com and Margaret Coker at margaret.coker@wsj.com

Oil-Rich Arab State Pushes Nuclear Bid With U.S. Help - WSJ.com

FT.com / UK - US may cede to Iran's nuclear ambition

 

By Daniel Dombey in Washington

Published: April 4 2009 03:00 | Last updated: April 4 2009 03:00

US officials are considering whether to accept Iran's pursuit of uranium enrichment, which has been outlawed by the United Nations and remains at the heart of fears that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons capability.

As part of a policy review commissioned by President Barack Obama, diplomats are discussing whether the US will eventually have to accept Iran's insistence on carrying out the process, which can produce both nuclear fuel and weapons- grade material.

"There's a fundamental impasse between the western demand for no enrichment and the Iranian dem-and to continue enrichment," says Mark Fitzpat-rick, a former state depart-- --ment expert now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "There's no obvious compromise bet-ween those two positions."

The US has insisted that Iran stop enrichment, although Mr Fitzpatrick notes that international offers put to Tehran during George W. Bush's second term as president left the door open to the possible resumption of enrichment.

"There is a growing recognition in [Washington] that the zero [enrichment] solution, though still favoured, simply is unfeasible," says Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council. "The US may still have zero as its opening position, while recognising it may not be where things stand at the end of a potential agreement."

Yesterday, Mr Obama summarised the US message to Iran as, "Don't develop a nuclear weapon" - a form of words that would not rule out a deal accepting Iranian enrichment. Mr Bush was much more specific in calling Iran to halt enrichment.

A series of UN Security Council resolutions since 2006 has forbidden Iran from enriching uranium, with the European Union, Russia and China backing US calls for Tehran to halt the process.

But Iran has sped up its programme during that time and has installed more than 5,500 centrifuges to enrich uranium and has amassed a stockpile of more than 1,000kg of low-enriched uranium - enough, if it were enriched to higher levels, to produce fissile material for one bomb. "Across the political spectrum in Iran, enrichment as a right has become a non-negotiable position," Mr Parsi said.

Asked last month whether the administration was considering allowing Iran to keep a limited enrichment capability, Robert Wood, a state department spokesman, said: "I don't know . . . Let's let the review be completed and then we can spell out our policies."

Some analysts say priority should be given to winning greater access for UN inspectors, to acquire more information about Iran's enrichment plant in Natanz and fill in gaps in knowledge on Iran's nuclear-related activities across the country.

That could provide warning of any move to enrich uranium to weapons grade levels at Natanz and ease fears of clandestine facilities.

Privately both US and Israeli officials say that even the current, more limited inspection regime at Natanz would provide sufficient warning of any "breakout" towards a nuclear bomb. Outside Natanz, by contrast, information on Iran's programme is diminishing.

The US line that Iran is seeking the capability to develop nuclear weapons - but not necessarily such weapons themselves - contrasts with Mr Bush's insistence while in office that it sought nuclear weapons.

Iranian regime insiders have said they would expect a compromise by the US on enrichment to be reciprocated.

FT.com / UK - US may cede to Iran's nuclear ambition

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Netanyahu to Obama: Stop Iran—Or I Will - The Atlantic (March 31, 2009)

 

In an interview conducted shortly before he was sworn in today as prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—and quickly—or an imperiled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself.

“The Obama presidency has two great missions: fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told me. He said the Iranian nuclear challenge represents a “hinge of history” and added that “Western civilization” will have failed if Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

In unusually blunt language, Netanyahu said of the Iranian leadership, “You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”

History teaches Jews that threats against their collective existence should be taken seriously, and, if possible, preempted, he suggested. In recent years, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has regularly called for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” and the supreme Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, this month called Israel a “cancerous tumor.”

But Netanyahu also said that Iran threatens many other countries apart from Israel, and so his mission over the next several months is to convince the world of the broad danger posed by Iran. One of his chief security advisers, Moshe Ya’alon, told me that a nuclear Iran could mean the end of American influence in the Middle East. “This is an existential threat for Israel, but it will be a blow for American interests, especially on the energy front. Who will dominate the oil in the region—Washington or Tehran?”

Netanyahu said he would support President Obama’s decision to engage Iran, so long as negotiations brought about a quick end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “How you achieve this goal is less important than achieving it,” he said, but he added that he was skeptical that Iran would respond positively to Obama’s appeals. In an hour-long conversation, held in the Knesset, Netanyahu tempered his aggressive rhetoric with an acknowledgement that nonmilitary pressure could yet work. “I think the Iranian economy is very weak, which makes Iran susceptible to sanctions that can be ratcheted up by a variety of means.” When I suggested that this statement contradicted his assertion that Iran, by its fanatic nature, is immune to pressure, Netanyahu smiled thinly and said, “Iran is a composite leadership, but in that composite leadership there are elements of wide-eyed fanaticism that do not exist right now in any other would-be nuclear power in the world. That’s what makes them so dangerous.”

He went on, “Since the dawn of the nuclear age, we have not had a fanatic regime that might put its zealotry above its self-interest. People say that they’ll behave like any other nuclear power. Can you take the risk? Can you assume that?”

Netanyahu offered Iran’s behavior during its eight-year war with Iraq as proof of Tehran’s penchant for irrational behavior. Iran “wasted over a million lives without batting an eyelash … It didn’t sear a terrible wound into the Iranian consciousness. It wasn’t Britain after World War I, lapsing into pacifism because of the great tragedy of a loss of a generation. You see nothing of the kind.”

He continued: “You see a country that glorifies blood and death, including its own self-immolation.” I asked Netanyahu if he believed Iran would risk its own nuclear annihilation at the hands of Israel or America. “I’m not going to get into that,” he said.

Neither Netanyahu nor his principal military advisers would suggest a deadline for American progress on the Iran nuclear program, though one aide said pointedly that Israeli time lines are now drawn in months, “not years.” These same military advisers told me that they believe Iran’s defenses remain penetrable, and that Israel would not necessarily need American approval to launch an attack. “The problem is not military capability, the problem is whether you have the stomach, the political will, to take action,” one of his advisers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told me.

Both Israeli and American intelligence officials agree that Iran is moving forward in developing a nuclear-weapons capability. The chief of Israeli military intelligence, Major General Amos Yadlin, said earlier this month that Iran has already “crossed the technological threshold,” and that nuclear military capability could soon be a fact: “Iran is continuing to amass hundreds of kilograms of low-enriched uranium, and it hopes to exploit the dialogue with the West and Washington to advance toward the production of an atomic bomb.”

American officials argue that Iran has not crossed the “technological threshold”; the director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, said recently that Israel and the U.S. are working with the same set of facts, but are interpreting it differently. “The Israelis are far more concerned about it, and they take more of a worst-case approach to these things from their point of view,” he said. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Michael Mullen, recently warned that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would undermine stability in the Middle East and endanger the lives of Americans in the Persian Gulf.

The Obama administration agrees with Israel that Iran’s nuclear program is a threat to Middle East stability, but it also wants Israel to focus on the Palestinian question. Netanyahu, for his part, promises to move forward on negotiations with the Palestinians, but he made it clear in our conversation that he believes a comprehensive peace will be difficult to achieve if Iran continues to threaten Israel, and he cited Iran’s sponsorship of such Islamist groups as Hezbollah and Hamas as a stumbling block.

Ya’alon, a former army chief of staff who is slated to serve as Netanyahu’s minister for strategic threats, dismissed the possibility of a revitalized peace process, telling me that “jihadists” interpret compromise as weakness. He cited the reaction to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza four years ago. “The mistake of disengagement from Gaza was that we thought like Westerners, that compromise would defuse a problem—but it just encouraged the problem,” he said. “The jihadists saw withdrawal as a defeat of the West … Now, what do you signal to them if you are ready to divide Jerusalem, or if you’re ready to withdraw to the 1967 lines? In this kind of conflict, your ability to stand and be determined is more important than your firepower.”

American administration sources tell me that President Obama won’t shy from pressuring Netanyahu on the Palestinian issue during his first visit to Washington as prime minister, which is scheduled for early May. But Netanyahu suggested that he and Obama already see eye-to-eye on such crucial issues as the threat posed by Hamas. “The Obama administration has recently said that Hamas has to first recognize Israel and cease the support of terror. That’s a very good definition. It says you have to cease being Hamas.”

When I noted that many in Washington doubt his commitment to curtailing Jewish settlement on the West Bank, he said, in reference to his previous term as prime minister, from 1996 to 1999, “I can only point to what I did as prime minister in the first round. I certainly didn’t build new settlements.”

Netanyahu will manage Israel’s relationship with Washington personally—his foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, of the anti-Arab Israel Beiteinu party, is deeply unpopular in Washington—and I asked him if he could foresee agreeing on a “grand bargain” with Obama, in which he would move forward on talks with the Palestinians in exchange for a robust American response to Iran’s nuclear program. He said: “We intend to move on the Palestinian track independent of what happens with Iran, and I hope the U.S. moves to stop Iran from gaining nuclear weapons regardless of what happens on the Palestinian track.”

In our conversation, Netanyahu gave his fullest public explication yet of why he believes President Obama must consider Iran’s nuclear ambitions to be his preeminent overseas challenge. “Why is this a hinge of history? Several bad results would emanate from this single development. First, Iran’s militant proxies would be able to fire rockets and engage in other terror activities while enjoying a nuclear umbrella. This raises the stakes of any confrontation that they’d force on Israel. Instead of being a local event, however painful, it becomes a global one. Second, this development would embolden Islamic militants far and wide, on many continents, who would believe that this is a providential sign, that this fanaticism is on the ultimate road to triumph.

“Third, they would be able to pose a real and credible threat to the supply of oil, to the overwhelming part of the world’s oil supply. Fourth, they may threaten to use these weapons or to give them to terrorist proxies of their own, or fabricate terror proxies. Finally, you’d create a great sea change in the balance of power in our area—nearly all the Arab regimes are dead-set opposed to Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. They fervently hope, even if they don’t say it, that the U.S. will act to prevent this, that it will use its political, economic, and, if necessary, military power to prevent this from happening.”

If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, Netanyahu asserted, Washington’s Arab allies would drift into Iran’s orbit. “The only way I can explain what will happen to such regimes is to give you an example from the past of what happened to one staunch ally of the United States, and a great champion of peace, when another aggressive power loomed large. I’m referring to the late King Hussein [of Jordan] … who was an unequalled champion of peace. The same King Hussein in many ways subordinated his country to Saddam Hussein when Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990. Saddam seemed all-powerful, unchallenged by the United States, and until the U.S. extracted Kuwait from Saddam’s gullet, King Hussein was very much in Iraq’s orbit. The minute that changed, the minute Saddam was defeated, King Hussein came back to the Western camp.”

One of Iran’s goals, Netanyahu said, is to convince the moderate Arab countries not to enter peace treaties with Israel. Finally, he said, several countries in Iran’s neighborhood might try to develop nuclear weapons of their own. “Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons could spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. The Middle East is incendiary enough, but with a nuclear arms race it will become a tinderbox,” he said.

Few in Netanyahu’s inner circle believe that Iran has any short-term plans to drop a nuclear weapon on Tel Aviv, should it find a means to deliver it. The first-stage Iranian goal, in the understanding of Netanyahu and his advisers, is to frighten Israel’s most talented citizens into leaving their country.  “The idea is to keep attacking the Israelis on a daily basis, to weaken the willingness of the Jewish people to hold on to their homeland,” Moshe Ya’alon said. “The idea is to make a place that is supposed to be a safe haven for Jews unattractive for them. They are waging a war of attrition.”

The Israeli threat to strike Iran militarily if the West fails to stop the nuclear program may, of course, be a tremendous bluff. After all, such threats may just be aimed at motivating President Obama and others to grapple urgently with the problem. But Netanyahu and his advisers seem to believe sincerely that Israel would have difficulty surviving in a Middle East dominated by a nuclear Iran. And they are men predisposed to action; many, like Netanyahu, are former commandos.

As I waited in the Knesset cafeteria to see Netanyahu, I opened a book he edited of his late brother’s letters. Yoni Netanyahu, a commando leader, was killed in 1976 during the Israeli raid on Entebbe, and his family organized his letters in a book they titled Self-Portrait of a Hero. In one letter, Yoni wrote to his teenage brother, then living in America, who had apparently been in a fight after someone directed an anti-Semitic remark at him. “I see … that you had to release the surplus energy you stored up during the summer,” Yoni wrote. “There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s too bad you sprained a finger in the process. In my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with a good fist fight; on the contrary, if you’re young and you’re not seriously hurt, it won’t do you real harm. Remember what I told you? He who delivers the first blow, wins.”

Netanyahu to Obama: Stop Iran—Or I Will - The Atlantic (March 31, 2009)