During his address at last month's Likud Central Committee meeting, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said repeatedly that the Likud must accept its role as the ruling party and act with national responsibility.

The odd thing about Sharon's insistent assertion is that it is he, through his policies since the start of his first term as prime minister in 2001, who has done more than anyone to prevent the Likud from exerting national leadership that befits the national ruling party.

It was Sharon, in collusion with Shimon Peres who prevented general elections from taking place in 2001 for the sole purpose of blocking Binyamin Netanyahu's return to the Prime Minister's Office. Using a legally dubious interpretation of the elections law as it stood at the time, Sharon and Peres connived to prevent general elections to the Knesset, keeping the fractured 1999 Knesset, in which the Likud had in place only 19 MKs versus Labor's 26, and enabling the public to vote only for the prime minister.

This Sharon did despite the fact that opinion polls from December 2000 projected that Likud stood to win more than 40 Knesset seats while Labor would be decimated, dropping to a mere 15 seats. The devolution of the Oslo process into the Oslo War had brought about a complete rejection of Labor with this appeasement based ideology by voters and a clarion call for national leadership by the Likud.

Yet Sharon refused to listen. What interested him was being prime minister and this he could do only by preventing voters from exercising their right to choose their representatives in the Knesset.

So Sharon's first government, with Shimon Peres serving as foreign minister and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer as defense minister was completely non-representative of the public will. The public wanted a government reflective of its sentiments - that is a right-wing government led by the Likud. Instead it had a left-wing government led by Sharon.

When, in 2003, the public showed that its sentiment had not waned and the Likud won 38 Knesset seats to Labor's 19, it was clear again that the public had asked Likud to take on the mantle of national leadership and move forward with its anti-appeasement, pro-Israel agenda. But Sharon again balked.

RATHER THAN leading the country on the basis of his platform, within a year he was in open warfare with his own party as he first accepted the Quartet's so-called road map, the most anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian document ever brought before the Israeli government for approval, and then adopted the Labor's election-losing platform of unilateral surrender of territory to Palestinian terrorists that had just months before been completely rejected by Israeli voters.

In an effort to silence criticism of his policies, Sharon has repeatedly stated that "what you see from here [the prime minister's chair] you can't see from there." The meaning here is obvious: As prime minister, I am privy to information that you - mere citizens of Israel, members of the Likud, members of Knesset and government ministers don't know. And therefore, you can't question my judgment because of my unique perspective.

Sharon's protestation of special knowledge which delivers him from the need to debate and defend his policies is matched by his insistence of viewing any opposition to his policies as a personal attack. By dismissing all opponents as either "self-serving hacks" or "extremists," Sharon delegitimizes not simply the notion of policy debate, but also the idea that people can have political and even moral convictions that outweigh their loyalty to the head of their party. So it is that every government minister who opposes Sharon's policies is criticized by Sharon and his allies as subversive, untrustworthy, self-serving and disloyal.

In so doing Sharon has dumbed-down public discourse to the point where the virtues of politicians rather than the virtues of policies that will impact the lives of every Israeli for years to come has become the only acceptable focus of discussion.

In behaving as he has for the past three and a half years, Sharon has harmed not only his party - which he has systematically demonized - he has harmed Israeli democracy.

It is not just that on every significant political and military issue he has ignored the advice of his party members, MKs and government ministers, preferring Labor policies instead. It is that in his assertion that it is all about him, and not his policies, he has served to undermine the legitimacy of the very notion that democratic governments' policies must reflect the wishes of the voters as they made them clear on election day, not those of the politicians who serve at their consent.

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post's Yom Kippur supplement.

Iran this week summarily rejected the latest call by the International Atomic Energy Agency to cease all its uranium enrichment programs. Speaking at a military parade on Tuesday, where Iran's surface-to-surface Shihab-3 ballistic missiles earmarked "Jerusalem" were on prominent display, Iranian President Muhammad Khatami defied the IAEA, saying: "We will continue along our path [of uranium enrichment] even if it leads to an end to international supervision."

US and European sources involved in tracking the Iranian nuclear program have made clear in recent weeks that Iran is between four and six months away from nuclear "break-out" capacity. This means that in the next four to six months Iran will have the nuclear fuel cycle complete, and will be able to independently construct nuclear bombs whenever it wishes. More conservative estimates have spoken of 12-24 months.

Given the seeming inevitability of Iran attaining nuclear weapons capabilities, a new received wisdom seems to be coalescing in Washington. This view is that it is not possible today, given US preoccupation with Iraq, either to change the Iranian regime and therefore moderate the threat posed by a nuclear Iran, or to engage the mullahs in negotiations that would appease them into giving up their nuclear ambitions. Therefore, it is being said, a new "middle road" policy must be constructed.

The most serious voice weighing in on the "middle road" option to date is Henry Sokolski. Sokolski, who now heads the Washington-based Non-proliferation Policy Education Center, was a US arms control negotiator in the first Bush administration and has held senior positions on arms-control-related issues in Congress and in the US intelligence community. Last week, the NPEC published a report, partially funded by the Pentagon, on the Iranian nuclear program, entitled "Restraining a Nuclear-Ready Iran: Seven Levers." (http://www.npec-web.org/projects/Iran/2004-09-13SevenLevers.pdf)

Given Sokolski's own hard-won credibility in non-proliferation affairs, and the fact that the Pentagon partially funded his report, it is important to analyze the study and its conclusions.

The study asserts at its outset that it will be impossible to target Iran's nuclear sites militarily. This assertion arises from intelligence reports which have shown that Iran has up to 15 separate and disperse nuclear sites, many of which are hardened and underground. Aside from this, the report and its precursor, "Checking Iran's Nuclear Ambitions," asserts that Iran already possesses the scientific knowledge base necessary to reconstitute any sites that are destroyed or damaged by air strikes.

Similarly, the study asserts that engaging Iran on its nuclear program is an exercise in futility, given Iran's current and past duplicity on the subject.

Disturbingly, while Sokolski accuses officials presently working on the Iran issue of being "in denial" about the inevitability of Iran acquiring nuclear capabilities, he himself is in denial about the threat that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose. Sokolski enumerates three dangers that he views as likely to emanate from a nuclear Iran.

First, he says that Iranian nuclearization will act as a catalyst for neighboring countries to attempt to gain nuclear capabilities, citing Saudi Arabia, Syria, Egypt, Algeria and Turkey as likely candidates for adopting such a policy.

Second, the report argues that nuclear capabilities will embolden Iran to take action to reduce world oil shipments by attacking tankers in the Straits of Hormuz or Saudi and Iraqi oil installations and pipelines, leading to a dramatic increase in oil prices.

Finally, a nuclear armed Iran would feel free to increase its support for terror strikes against the US and its allies. Such strikes would lead to a diminishment of US influence in the Middle East and throughout the world.

In truth, all of the threats that Sokolski's report argues will arise if Iran becomes nuclear capable already exist. Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Algeria are all already seeking to gain nuclear capabilities, as the report itself acknowledges. As well, Iran has been linked to much of the terrorism against oil-related targets in Saudi Arabia over the past year-and-a-half, and to most of the sabotage attacks against Iraqi oil installations since the US-led invasion. Indeed, Teheran is already the main cause of the recent surge in global oil prices. Furthermore, Iran today is the world's primary sponsor of terrorism. Its links to al-Qaida have been copiously documented. Its primary sponsorship of Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas and Fatah is also unquestionable.

Yet, while labeling already existing threats emanating from Iran as future ones, Sokolski ignores the main new threat that would exist were Iran to become equipped with nuclear bombs – the use of those bombs to destroy Israel or its neighbors and rivals in the Persian Gulf, or the transfer of nuclear weapons to a terrorist group deployed as Iran's proxy.

Given that Sokolski fails to acknowledge this threat, it is not surprising that his policy recommendations for checking Iran's nuclear ambitions read like an instruction manual for US arms negotiators facing the Soviets during the era of detente in the 1970s. They are all based on the assumption that, like the Soviet Union, Iran is a status-quo power that will respect some mutually acceptable game rules.

Some of Sokolski's recommendations are interesting, but irrelevant to the matter at hand. He talks of the need to strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty by amending it to extend automatic nuclear blacklisting and other sanctions on any state that vacates its signature to the treaty. This may be a good idea, but what possible effect could it have if Iran has independent nuclear capabilities?

Other such recommendations are variations on ideas that have been tried in the past and failed. For instance, Sokolski calls for the US to achieve Russian cooperation in checking Iran's nuclear aspirations by offering the Russians a long-sought-for and lucrative nuclear cooperation deal. In the 1990s, the US offered Russia a near partnership in much of its space program. It often threatened that it would curtail its space cooperation if Russia did not stop assisting Iran in its ballistic missile program, but it never followed through. US sanctions on Russia for its cooperation in the Iranian ballistic missile programs were limited to sanctions on specific Russian entities that were directly involved in the enterprise, and the Russian government never flinched.

Most significantly – and egregiously – Sokolski recommends that in an effort to check Iranian nuclear capabilities, "Israel should announce how much weapons usable material it has produced and that it will unilaterally mothball (but not yet dismantle) Dimona, and place the reactor's mothballing under IAEA monitoring. Israel should announce that it will dismantle Dimona and place the special nuclear material it has produced in 'escrow' in Israel with a third trusted declared nuclear state, e.g., the US." That is, the primary target of Teheran's nuclear arsenal should respond to the emerging threat by disarming itself.

If this recommendation were made by a European or an Arab, one could simply laugh it off. But given the respectability of the source, it is necessary to engage it. Adopting such a course would be devastating for three main reasons:

First, it ignores the real danger of Iran using nuclear weapons to destroy Israel, as it has threatened.

Second, it ignores the rationale behind Israel's nuclear program: deterring the threat of physical destruction by both conventional and non-conventional enemy forces. It is not simply a deterrent against nuclear attack. To discuss nuclear transparency for Israel without calling for conventional disarmament of, say Egypt, whose conventional armed forces alone constitute a strategic threat for Israel, is to ignore Israel's strategic vulnerabilities.

Finally, the recommendation makes no distinction between a nuclear-armed, stable democracy and a nuclear-armed, terror-supporting theocracy. Comparing a nuclear Israel and a nuclear Iran is like comparing a housewife in the kitchen wielding a butcher's knife to a murderer in a dark alleyway wielding a butcher's knife. It is both morally obtuse and strategically blind.

Sokolski states at the outset that the option of a military strike against Iran must be dismissed because Iran's program is too far flung and its sites are too hardened. That is, since it may well be impossible to hit every nuclear target, it is not worth hitting any of them. As well, Iranian leaders daily threaten that any military action taken against Iran will be responded to in a devastating manner.

Yet, were an air strike on Iran to take out say, only 10 of 15 sites, it would still severely retard the Iranian nuclear effort, buying the West time to formulate and enact either a policy of engagement from a position of strength, or a policy of regime change with the requisite credibility among regime opponents that such a strike would inspire.

As to the threat of Iranian retaliation, it can be mitigated by taking certain steps. Hizbullah leadership, as well as its rocket and missile depots and launchers, can be preemptively destroyed or disabled in Lebanon. Saudi oil installations can be secured by Western Special Forces. A naval flotilla can be deployed to the Persian and Oman Gulfs, ready to secure the Strait of Hormuz for oil tankers.

In addition, immediately following a military strike on Iran's nuclear installations, allied governments could launch a massive information warfare campaign, flooding Iran with radio and satellite television broadcasts explaining the need for the strike and offering assistance to Iranian reformers.

In short, while calling for a "middle ground" – looking askance at naive formulations of engagement with no deterrent credibility, or regime change with no operational credibility – may seem like an attractive option, in reality, given the hostility and radicalism of the Iranian regime, Sokolski's report provides no real new option.

A more formidable middle road that could be used to develop options for either regime change or engagement must necessarily be predicated on a comprehensive military option supporting limited air or commando strikes at Iran's nuclear facilities.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

In the wake of Operation Defensive Shield in the spring of 2002, well-known left-wing activists sent letters to IDF commanders alleging that they were "war criminals" and threatening to report them to the International Criminal Court for carrying out their duties.

Other left-wing activists have produced pamphlets, which they have tried to force the Education Ministry to distribute in high schools, that encourage students to refuse to serve in the IDF. And, with the support of the media, the Left has made repeated attempts to transform a handful of radicals who refuse to serve in the territories into a national movement and a tool for libeling IDF counter-terror operations in the international press.

Left-wing politicians like Roman Bronfman from Yossi Beilin's Yahad Party have claimed that Israelis who live beyond the 1949 armistice lines are war criminals. Today we have a 28-year-old Israeli woman by the name of Tali Fahima in administrative detention. Her association with Fatah terrorist commander Zakariya Zubeidi, still at large in Jenin, led to her initial arrest on suspicion of involvement in terror attacks against Israel. Left-wing protesters calling for Fahima's release from jail hold signs which say "Sharon has murdered more than Zubeidi."

What we see in the left-wing radicalism is a definition of the rules of the political game in which no safeguard of Israeli security, democracy or social unity is sacred. Teenagers are urged to refuse to serve in the IDF. IDF officers come under personal threat for carrying out lawful operations aimed at protecting Israeli citizens from murder. Our leaders are demonized as murderers and Israelis on the other side of the political divide are criminalized rather than engaged in constructive debate. Israeli traitors are defended as "peace activists" and their terror minders are forgiven for killing the protesters' countrymen.

Disturbingly, today in the now fully engaged political battle surrounding Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to forcibly remove some 8,500 Israelis from their communities in Gaza and in Northern Samaria, we see images from the Right that bear a striking resemblance to their political and ideological adversaries on the Left.

Respected right-wing voices such as former Prime Minister's Office chiefs of staff Yossi Ben-Aharon and Uri Elitzur, as well as Prof. Benzion Netanyahu and Dr. Ido Netanyahu, have signed a petition urging IDF soldiers and policemen to refuse to participate in the expulsion of Israeli communities from Gaza and Northern Samaria. Right-wing activists are claiming that the expulsion of citizens of a country by their government is a war crime. Reports have abounded in the media of citizens harassing IDF commanders who live in the Israeli communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza warning them not to participate in any acts of forcible removal of Israelis from their communities.
 
And Yonatan Bassi, who was appointed to head the office in charge of resettlement of Israelis from their homes, has reportedly received death threats and calls have been made to refuse to pray with him in synagogue.

The gutter culture of Israeli politics that was instigated and nurtured by the Left has now spread to the Right. The misplacement of responsibility for acts by the government onto loyal officers, young soldiers and policemen, and the derogation of the authority of the state over its citizens and office holders, is troubling. One cannot place on the back of a soldier the responsibilities that are held by the prime minister and the defense minister and maintain that one is acting morally, for acting thus is an abdication of moral responsibility of citizens in a democracy to petition their government to change policies they oppose.

Eleven years ago this week, the Labor Party, under the leadership of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, forced the reality of the Oslo Process on the Israeli electorate. In negotiating with the PLO, Rabin did more than simply break his explicit pledge to voters in the 1992 general election not to recognize the PLO. He broke with what had been the consensus of the Israeli body politic since the establishment of the PLO by Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1964, that the PLO is an implacable enemy and a terrorist organization that cannot be dealt with.

And Rabin broke with the consensus without any prior debate in the public and without any warning, achieving the agreement in secret with residents of Tunis at the same time that he had a delegation of negotiators sitting in Washington meeting with Palestinians who actually live in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

Rabin refused to acknowledge that what he had done was somehow anti-democratic in spite of the fact that he didn't even have a majority of support for the plan in the Knesset. With the knee-jerk backing of the press, Rabin refused to engage in debate of the substance of his policies, preferring instead to castigate his political opponents as "enemies of peace." As terror attacks increased precipitously, Rabin and Peres ignored all calls from all quarters for a reassessment of the Oslo process, even those coming from then-president Ezer Weizman.

And then, when Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, the Left, again with the active support of the media, blamed the three million Israelis who opposed Oslo, and specifically the one million Israelis who participated in demonstrations against Oslo, of responsibility for the murder. Never mind that all the lawyers in the State Attorney's Office, with unlimited financial resources, were unable to indict even one leader of the right-wing opposition for incitement or anything that would link any of them in any way to Amir. "We won't forget and we won't forgive" was the leading slogan of the Left. The object of their hatred was not Amir, it was every Israeli who rejected Oslo.

Sharon's plan for Gaza and Northern Samaria follows in the footsteps of Oslo for three principal reasons. Like Rabin, Sharon was elected on a platform completely contrary to what he is now presenting as his policy. The national consensus, until he tore it to shreds last February with the retreat plan, as enunciated by Sharon himself as well as by the commanders of the army, the police and the intelligence services, was that Israel cannot retreat from any territory until after the war has been won. And with no prior warning, based on no tangible change in the status of the war, Sharon declared that we must do now what just before he had repeatedly stated we must never do.

Finally, Sharon, like Rabin, prefers to castigate his opponents, whether they are Likud members, Likud MKs or leaders of the Jewish communities in the territories, rather than engage in any substantive debate on his plan. Instead of discussing why we will be better off out of Gaza – even as Hizbullah takes hold of Gaza and Egypt does nothing to secure the border from weapons smugglers – Sharon announces artificial deadlines for evacuation which, like his plan, are not based on any perceivable strategic or diplomatic rationale.

Happily this week, two important political forces stepped into the public descent into irrationality and puerile gutter debate, and have asserted responsible leadership at a critical juncture. First on Sunday night, at the mass rally in Jerusalem's Zion Square, the heads of the Israeli communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza defined the course and direction of the struggle against Sharon's evacuation plans. Rather than smother the democratic process, they called for its reinvigoration through a general election or, alternatively, a national referendum.

Picking up on this call, Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Monday embraced the idea of a referendum. His call was rapidly joined by Education Minister Limor Livnat and Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom.

A referendum has certain clear advantages over a general election. As opposed to a general election, which is not simply a vote on Sharon's plan, a referendum is solely about the plan itself. In Knesset deliberations regarding such a referendum, vital issues such as what type of majority is needed to pass the plan can finally and belatedly be engaged.

While Shimon Peres remorselessly claims that Oslo is not dead, the rest of us, including Prime Minister Sharon, must learn at least some of the lessons of Oslo. It is not reasonable – indeed it is destructive to a democratic society – for a leader to change courses as dramatically as Sharon has without receiving some mandate from voters. Sharon has tried to evade this by calling for votes in his party which he has lost overwhelmingly. He can no longer evade it.

Equally, it is time that the rest of us also learn some basic lessons. Demonization of political opponents in public discourse is both unconvincing and detrimental to society. Just because the Left does it doesn't mean the Right should. Our soldiers and officers in the IDF are the only guarantors of our survival and we must never view them as part of the political debate. This demands that they also remain outside of the political debate.

We have a democracy and we need to understand that the answer to our disputes should be dealt with by strengthening our democratic and representative institutions. Our politicians must prove through their actions that our institutions can serve us. Our internal political disputes are great and dire, but we must respect ourselves enough to understand that, in spite of what divides us, and like it or not, at the end of the day we are in this together.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

Israel was the first state to offer assistance to Russia in caring for the wounded and traumatized victims from Middle School Number One in Beslan. Israel can be helpful. Not only are our health and mental care workers more experienced than all their counterparts in the world in dealing with terror victims, but many of our professionals are native Russian speakers. Yet according to the Health and Foreign Ministries, Russia still has not responded to our friendly proposal.

It is possible that no one could have done anything to save the children, teachers, and parents of Beslan from the Islamic terrorists who placed bombs in basketball hoops, forced small children to act as trip wires for their explosives, and shot at children trying to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water. But it is also obvious, from the outcome of both the Beslan atrocity and the hostage crisis last winter in the Moscow theater, that the Russian military is in dire need of assistance in counter-terror operations.

Its negotiators at the scenes of both massacres were clearly out of their league. Their equipment, crowd-control methods, and ability to gain control of the perimeters of the operation once alerted, were reminiscent of German fecklessness during the 1972 massacre of the Israeli athletes by the PLO at the Munich Olympics. Their doctrine is antiquated and their abilities are pitifully limited. The Russians need help.

So it wasn't much of a surprise that while our doctors and social workers are still awaiting the call, during his visit to Israel this week Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov willingly accepted Israel's offer to assist Russia in counter-terrorism operations. Russia needs help. And Israel has expertise and experience that can be of assistance.

But Israel also needs help. So while our offer to assist Russia in combating terrorism was not conditioned on anything, we did ask Russia for assistance in three specific areas. We asked Russia to help us deal with the threat of Iran's nuclear weapons program, which according to the Iranians is being pursued in order to annihilate Israel. We asked Russia to pressure Syria to stop supporting terrorism. And we asked Russia not to support the PLO's plan to have the International Court of Justice's anti-Israel opinion regarding the security fence form the basis of a call for UN members to levy sanctions on Israel. And while Israel will indeed help Russia in fighting Islamic terrorism, Lavrov suspended diplomatic niceties when refusing each and every one of Israel's requests.

He referred to Israel's concerns regarding Iran as "sloganeering" by the government and demanded that Israel show him proof that Iran is building nuclear weapons. He discounted the threat emanating from Syria and alleged that most Lebanese want to remain under Syrian occupation. As for the Palestinians, Lavrov refused to acknowledge that Palestinian terrorism is the same as the terrorism from which Russia suffers. Lavrov drew distinctions between Chechnya – which belongs to Russia – and Judea, Samaria, and Gaza Strip – which he said everyone knows belong to the Palestinians.

Last week, a delegation of Turkish Parliament members from the ruling Justice and Development Party visited Israel. Their visit was organized in order to soothe Israel in the aftermath of a series of diplomatic crises instigated by Ankara this past spring. First was Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's hostile reaction to Israel's killing of Hamas leaders Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Erdogan accused Israel of "state-sponsored terrorism" and temporarily recalled his ambassador.

Then came Turkey's refusal to allow Israeli security guards on Israeli flights to fly to Turkey armed. El Al was forced to suspend all flights to Turkey for a week until he relented.

Finally, there were his hints – made while jetting between Teheran and Damascus – that Turkey would suspend its military ties with Israel.

While the visiting Turkish parliamentarians assured their Israeli interlocutors that Turkey still considers Israel an ally and that Turkey has not suspended defense contracts with Israeli suppliers, they were clear, in the words of MP Saban Disli, that "the criticism will continue."

The Turks were here for the double suicide bombing in Beersheba. Yet after perfunctorily condemning the slaughter, MP Omer Cevik said, "We view the use of violence in the name of war on terrorism,... assassinations by the state, the construction of walls, and unilateral withdrawals, as obstacles to creating a peaceful environment."

In short, then, like the Russians, our friends the Turks believe that Israel has no right to take any measures to defend itself.

While we have known for a long time that the Europeans share this view, this week it became clear that the Americans do as well. In an unbelievable display of willful blindness and moral equivalence, US Secretary of State Colin Powell referred to the IAF strike on Hamas terrorists in the midst of training for terrorist missions in a terrorist training camp, as unhelpful. In his words, "I don't think they [military attacks on terrorists in training] are helpful. Retaliation is not a solution to the problems that we face in the region." Powell apparently adheres to the "cycle of violence" theory that is based on the proposition that there is no difference between terrorist and counter-terrorist operations. It couldn't be that Israel is doing what it can to pursue its war on Palestinian terrorists and takes action when opportunity arises.

In his remarks, Powell called on the Palestinian Authority to fight terrorism. The PA's response to Powell's call came, not surprisingly, from PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei. He called for more bombings of Israeli civilians by Hamas. In his words, "No crime goes unpunished. For sure there will be retaliation [to the IAF bombing of terrorists in training] and the retaliation will be justified if it happens."

How did the State Department respond to this self-evident kick in the shins? Did it admit finally that the PA – including its "reform-minded" prime minister – is the problem, not the solution to Palestinian terrorism? Of course not.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher professed shock, shock, that the PA prime minister supports suicide bombings. "If he did indeed say this, then we would certainly find those kinds of comments unacceptable," Boucher told reporters.

But Qurei did say it. And, rather than accepting that the PA is a terrorist entity, the State Department continues to criticize Israel's actions in self defense as "unhelpful."

ONE OF the central recommendations of every American panel convened to study the lessons of the September 11 attacks has been that there must be better coordination between the US intelligence services. In the past two weeks, we have seen superb coordination of those intelligence services – acting hand-in-glove with the State Department. Unfortunately, the target has not been terrorist cells or terror-supporting regimes. Rather, this unprecedented coordination has targeted the US alliance with Israel.

This past week it became known that in advancing its investigation of American Jews who hold high-level positions in the Defense Department and the White House as well as the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, the FBI has enlisted the services of one Stephen Green. Green, a former UN employee, has made a name for himself over the past 20 years by spinning conspiracy theories on how Jews are taking over the US government in order to serve Israel. His books on the Middle East have received warm and enthusiastic receptions from the Institute for Historical Review, which came to prominence through its Holocaust denial.

The CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency have been promoting their anonymous attacks against the administration Jews by leaking unsubstantiated allegations of Israeli conspiracies through the good offices of retired DIA official, Col. W. Patrick Lang. Lang, it works out, is a registered foreign agent employed by the Lebanese Government.

The bottom line of the increasingly bigoted AIPAC "spy probe" that has enjoyed this unprecedented level of coordination (yet has led to no indictments or arrests), is that the goal of the intelligence community – with the firm backing of the State Department – is to make it more difficult, and in fact criminal, for US policymakers to work with Israel, a steadfast US ally and frontline state in the war on Islamic terrorism. That is, rather than enhancing US war-fighting capabilities, the aim seems to be to leave the US with little choice other than to appease its enemies.
 

Russian President Vladimir Putin's immediate reaction to the massacre in Beslan was to rally the Russian people behind the government's intention to wage a "total war" against Islamic terrorism – in Chechnya and throughout the world. After rallying the Russian people behind him, Putin then moved to castigating Washington and the EU for suggesting that Russia negotiate with Chechen "baby killers."

Putin, for all his faults and misdeeds both in Chechnya and in Russia itself, has the right idea here. He'll take assistance where he can get it and fight the war he needs to win for Russia. It may take some time, and some help from Israel and others, but in Russia, the battle lines have unmistakably been drawn and Putin intends to win.

In Israel, we have rejected this course of clarity in the hopes that by being vague about our interests and intentions that others will support us when they discover that the Palestinian war on Israel is simply part of the global Islamic war against everyone who is not an Islamist. But as the assaults on our right to self defense, on our allies, and on the very notion that we have enemies, over the past week show quite clearly – no one is going to fight for us. Assistance and support, if they come at all, will come grudgingly. The course of action that stands open to us remains what it has always been, and what the heart and soul of Zionism has always been based upon: self-respect and self-reliance.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

From what has been reported over the past week on the FBI's spy probe into the activities of senior AIPAC lobbyists, Israeli diplomats, and a mid-level Iran analyst named Larry Franklin who hails from the neoconservative stronghold of Douglas Feith's policy shop in the Pentagon, it is hard to escape the impression that the story is more of a smear campaign than an espionage investigation.

It is true that it is still early and perhaps the press-crazed FBI will seek indictments of one or more of the suspected bad guys on some charge or another before this story is quietly filed away like the loud and groundless investigations of CIA employee Adam Ciralsky and US Army civilian engineer David Tenebaum in the late 1990s. Both men, who were accused of spying for Israel, are currently suing the US government for discrimination, claiming they were placed under investigation simply because they are Jews.

But even if nothing comes from the story, the obvious target of the leak has been hit. That target is not specifically AIPAC. Nor is it Douglas Feith or Paul Wolfowitz. And the target is also not the Israeli Embassy or Israel per se. The target of the leak is a policy direction, and the leaked story, regardless of its as-yet-amorphous legal grounding, has dealt that policy direction a below-the-belt punch.

In Washington today, the central issue of debate in policy circles is Iran. Iran, which, with its documented ties to al-Qaida and its sponsorship of Hizbullah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah, as well as Muqtada al-Sadr and his forces in Iraq and other terrorist militias in Afghanistan, is today the epicenter of global terrorism. And Iran, with its now all-but-declared pursuit of nuclear weapons, its proven ballistic missile capabilities, and its long suspected chemical and biological weapons arsenal, is both an active enemy and a looming threat to US national security and of course to the physical existence of Israel, which is a major non-NATO ally of the US.

And yet, as a US government source involved in the policy debate on Iran told The New York Times on Thursday, "We [the US] have an ad hoc policy [on Iran] that we're making up as we go along."

Which is why policy directions become so important. The Pentagon, along with Israel and AIPAC, is the leading proponent of a view that says Iran cannot be contained and cannot be appeased. On the other side, the CIA, the State Department, and the Democratic Party, as well as Germany, France and Britain, believe that it can be contained and appeased.

The most recent attempt to articulate the US's policy toward Iran was made on August 17 by Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton in an address at the Hudson Institute. After spelling out specifically why the US believes that Iran is actively pursuing nuclear weapons, Bolton explained that the US believes that it is necessary to isolate rather than engage Iran. As a result, the US is working to convince the EU and members of the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of directors to refer the issue of the Iranian nuclear program to the UN Security Council.

There are only two problems with the so-enunciated US policy on Iran. First, the US has almost no chance of success in moving the issue to the Security Council. Second, even if it were successful in moving the Iranian nuclear program to the Security Council, it is quite certain that the Council would take no action that would in any way dissuade Iran or prevent it from continuing its nuclear weapons program.

In the wake of the US campaign in recent weeks to have the Iranian nuclear program referred to the Security Council, IAEA spokespeople and German, French and British officials engaged in the issue have all claimed that there is no reason to do so. In Amman this past Sunday, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said Germany, France and Britain were working to reach an understanding with the Iranians whereby in exchange for nuclear energy technology the Iranians would agree to cease their uranium enrichment activities. The same plan is also being touted by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. It cannot have escaped the Iranians' attention that North Korea exploited a similar deal to develop its own nuclear arsenal.

And in the unlikely event that the US is successful in having the Iranian nuclear program referred to the Security Council, why should there be any expectation that Iran would come under sanctions? Russia built the nuclear reactor at Bushehr. China has reportedly supplied Iran with nuclear technologies through the Pakistanis. France, Britain and Germany, as well as Japan and China, are all actively courting the Iranians for oil contracts and business opportunities. Indeed, three years of attempts to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat through diplomatic means have not brought the international community even a half-step closer to taking issue with Iran's nuclear program or, for that matter, its active support for international terrorism.

In the meantime, the Iranian government has in recent months taken to issuing apocalyptic threats of nuclear destruction against Israel on almost a daily basis. The Iranians have begun to issue similar threats against the US mainland and against US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In just one recent example, a newspaper associated with Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei published an editorial on July 6 threatening, "The White House's 80 years of exclusive rule are likely to become 80 seconds of hell that will burn to ashes. That very day, those who resist [Iran] will be struck from directions they never expected. The heartbeat of the crisis is undoubtedly [dictated by] the hand of Iran."

And on the ground, the latest IAEA report states that Iran plans to conduct a test of a plant that converts raw uranium into nuclear fuel. Nuclear experts have claimed that the amount of raw uranium that Iran plans to enrich will be sufficient to make five nuclear bombs.

The Times quotes a former Bush administration official who claims that all discussion of a military option against Iran had proved sterile. In his words, "There's no military option." This statement leads to the inevitable question of why? Given Iran's refusal to reach any accommodation on either its support for international terrorism or its nuclear program, why hasn't a directive been given to the responsible authorities to put together a plan for action against Iran's nuclear installations?

No doubt, with US forces now bordering Iran in both Iraq and Afghanistan, there is no military option because no one has been given instructions or even permission to develop one.

And now, in the aftermath of the leak of the spy probe that has reportedly been going on for two years and has led thus far to zero indictments, chances of developing such options are even smaller than they were last Thursday before the story was leaked. After all, a victory for the Pentagon (which now stands officially accused of working for Israel) on the issue of Iran policy would make the job of those claiming that the US policy is dictated from Jerusalem all the easier.

It is hard to shake the impression that leaking or making groundless allegations against administration hawks through their foreign counterparts has become the tactic of choice by their opponents in the policy debate. The spy probe story calls to mind similar allegations against another Pentagon favorite, Ahmed Chalabi.

On Wednesday, at the same time as the Israeli spy probe began fizzling out, counterfeiting charges against Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, were dropped. Murder charges against his nephew Salam Chalabi, who is building the war crimes case against Saddam Hussein, were also dropped.

The arrest warrants for the Chalabis, which were issued with great fanfare by US-appointed judge Zuhair al-Maliky last month, were viewed by many as a further attempt by Chalabi's enemies in the CIA and State Department to discredit a man known to all as the Iraqi point man for the Pentagon's hawks. The initial attempt was made in early June when Chalabi was accused of spying for Iran. Those charges, which like the allegations against Franklin made little sense to begin with, have never been substantiated. But in the meantime, the allegations themselves, like the arrest warrants, have worked to discredit Chalabi and his Pentagon associates in the eyes of the American public and the media.

It may be that given the damage now wrought on the reputations of apparently the only forces in Washington who may be willing to admit that the US non-policy towards Iran, in all its permutations, is a colossal failure, means that the US will not take any action against Iran's nuclear installations. If this is the case, Israel may quite simply be forced into a position of having to ignore America for now and do what needs to be done.

If, as a result of the prominence of the appeasers in US policy circles and their fast and dirty tactics, the US is no longer able to take military action against threats to its national security that happen to constitute even larger threats to Israel's national security, then going it alone, and as quickly as possible, may be Israel's only option. Israel can simply not afford to be paralyzed by American policies on Iran that have already failed or by spy scandals that make no sense.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.