Michael Berenbaum’s July 22, 2015 “Geneva is Not Munich, and President Obama is not Neville Chamberlain,” is written with characteristic knowledge and insight. His concerns about polarization in the Jewish community are worth heeding, as is his reminder that we have to work together the morning after. The problem of Iran’s nuclear program must transcend politics.
But speaking as a younger Jew, I am not convinced that we should worry about whether our approach to this problem might alienate younger Jews. Whatever one’s general views on poll-driven leadership, it is least fitting in matters concerning nuclear bombs. Jews and other Americans of all ages should stand for the position that they believe best protects Americans, Israelis, and all people from nuclear incineration.
Turning to the substance of historical comparisons, Berenbaum is a leading Holocaust scholar whose knowledge of the issue is entitled to great respect, and there are indeed a host of differences that could be enumerated between the ayatollah and Hitler. But it is not saying that the two are the same to note a salient similarity: both announced their intentions concerning Jews and liberal democracy before they finished acquiring the means to carry them out.
The evidence shows that the ayatollah means it when he says “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” We know that those aren’t mere angry slogans because Iran has been putting them into practice. Just in the last decade, Iran has helped its proxies in Iraq kill American soldiers and has helped its proxies in Lebanon kill Israeli soldiers and civilians. And its efforts stretch back before that, including the devastating bombings of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994 and the American Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. That is why we all agree Iran should not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons.
Returning to the question of historical comparisons, the article proffers that Reagan, not Chamberlain, is the better fit for the President’s approach to Iran, because the proposed deal is reminiscent of Reagan’s invocation of “trust but verify” in discussing the nuclear arms reduction treaty with the Soviets. But taking account of relevant differences requires noting that at the time of the START negotiations, both sides already had sufficient nuclear arsenals and delivery mechanisms to wipe each other out entirely. Here, Iran doesn’t yet have the bomb. If the deal is honored fully, it postpones the full development of certain aspects of Iran’s enrichment capability by 10 or 15 years, although it allows improvements to enrichment technology during that time and allows Iran to acquire and develop ballistic missiles.
The article also invokes the Soviet analogy with the argument that “Israel has second-strike capacity and that anyone who contemplates a nuclear attack on Israel must take into account Israel’s retaliatory capacity, its ability to attack its attackers and to deliver its own weapons of mass destruction.” Again, it is important to recall relevant differences. The stability of the U.S.-Soviet nuclear standoff was grounded on the fact that a nuclear exchange would totally destroy both parties. And unlike the Iranian regime, the Soviet regime did not profess a strong faith in the afterlife. Iran is 636,372 square miles in size. Israel is 8,019. Iran’s population is 77 million. Israel’s is 8 million. Could an Israeli second strike, assuming it got through the improved Russian air defenses Iran will install, assure the same level of devastation that a few Iranian nuclear-armed ballistic missiles would have on Israel? What is the Iranian regime’s assessment of that question? If an Iranian bomb destroys Tel-Aviv and kills 500,000 people, how many Iranian civilians should Israel incinerate in response? Should we rely on a strategy that requires answers to these questions?
Another difference between Munich 1938 and Geneva 2015 is that in 1938, England and France were driven by fear of Germany’s military prowess and willingness. But Berenbaum notes that “[t]he United States is unbelievably far more powerful than England and France were in the 1930s. Israel is also far more powerful, and Iran is a long way off from achieving such power.” Have we exhausted the options that our relative power provides to avoid having to rely on the awful specter of second-strike nuclear war with a regime, that, in the President’s words, is an “authoritarian theocracy . . . that is anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic, sponsors terrorism”?
So, I agree that we must indeed “judge this agreement on its merits or lack thereof, not on fallacious historical analogies.” I add that we must not judge the agreement based on our political affiliations, our age group, or the polls. As Churchill said on October 5, 1938, in words that resonate beyond their particular circumstances, “this is certainly not the time when it is worth anyone’s while to court political popularity.” Stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program–a goal agreed upon by Americans young and old, religious and secular, Democrat and Republican–is far too important for that.
