Benny Morris Justifies Israel's Coming Attack on Iran

On Friday July 18 the New York Times published an op-ed by the Israeli historian Benny Morris. It is entitled "Using Bombs to Stave Off War." Morris chose this American venue to announce that Israel would "almost surely" attack Iran some time in the next few months. And he indicated that America would be well advised to support the attack.

The reputation of Benny Morris is founded on unquestioned scholarly achievement and a far more dubious political stance. As one of Israel's "new historians," he recovered the record of harassment, murder, and expulsion of the Palestinians in the war of independence -- a finding that largely discredits the Israeli myth that the inhabitants fled from their own timidity, or because they were told to flee by Arab governments.

But speaking as an Israeli citizen, more recently, Morris has declared his view that the mistake of Ben-Gurion and the leadership of 1948 was that they did not carry the expulsion of the Palestinians all the way. Morris sees Israel in 2008 as a state under perpetual siege and the focus of a clash of civilizations; he sees Palestinians -- and to a degree, all Arabs; and Iranians, too -- as a species of animals not yet inducted into full humanity. Thus in a well-known interview
with Ari Shavit, published in Haaretz on January 5, 2004, Morris described the Israeli problem with the Palestinians:

"Something like a cage has to be built for them. I know that sounds terrible. It is really cruel. But there is no choice. There is a wild animal there that has to be locked up in one way or another."

In the years since Benny Morris spoke those words, the construction of the Israeli wall in the West Bank, and the blockade of Gaza by land, sea, and air have created the cage he believed was necessary.

Now, writing from Israel for the American newspaper of record, Morris offers his advice concerning the proper treatment of Iran and Iranians. Since Iran is five years from being able to make a nuclear bomb (Morris says one-to-four years), Israel is compelled to bomb Iran "in the next four to seven months."

One may notice that the Israeli attack goes on a much faster schedule than the Iranian pace of research and discovery. Why the haste for destruction? Could it have something to do with the American presidential election of 2008 (which comes at Morris's four-month lower limit), or something to do with the inauguration of a new president in 2009 (thirty days before his upper limit of seven months)? Morris does not say. He writes, he says, because people need to realize that the success of Israel's coming "conventional assault" on Iran will be good for Israel, for the United States, and even for Iran. If, on the other hand, this conventional assault fails, Israel will some day launch a nuclear attack; and that will be less good.

The choice, Morris concludes, lies with the rest of the world, and especially with the United States. If Iran does not submit rapidly to the next round of international pressure, the world had better support Israel and hope for the success of its first aerial assault against Iran.

Morris confesses, or implies, one reservation. It would better if the United States could launch the attack. But, being realistic, he remarks the lack of enthusiasm among Americans "for wars in the Islamic lands."

"Which leaves," says Morris, "only Israel."

There is an irritant driving this article, a motive more deeply lodged than Morris is willing to avow. For he suspects Israel alone cannot do the job well enough. So having first dismissed the U.S. and the American public as faint-hearted and unequipped for "wars in Islamic lands," and having then come half way to ask again, Morris at last accuses the United States. If we do not soon intervene, and attack Iran as he counsels, the result will be further nuclear progress by Iran. This will be terminated eventually with a nuclear attack by Israel against Iran.

A nuclear attack on a nation of seventy million people (a great many of them innocent of the desire to wipe Israel off the map) is morally indefensible. How can Morris defend it? He can because he knows -- not believes but metaphysically knows -- that the moment that Iran comes into possession of its first weapon, the leaders of Iran will commit national suicide in order to obtain the pleasure of destroying Israel.

Morris alludes to his ulterior knowledge in two sentences so full of blandness, abstract jargon, and bureaucratic euphemism that their meaning is not initially clear; but if one reads with care, one sees that the message is never in doubt:

"Given the fundamentalist, self-sacrificing mindset of the mullahs who run Iran, Israel knows that deterrence may not work as well as it did with the comparatively rational men who ran the Kremlin and the White House during the cold war. They are likely to use any bomb they build."

Iran will use a nuclear bomb, Morris is sure, as soon as it has one, even knowing that to do so means the destruction of Iran. The Mullahs will do it because that is the kind of people they are.

Here then is the way around the charge that Israel, in attacking Iran some time before March 2009, will be committing a crime. By Morris's logic the attack by Israel will be an act of self-defense. Indeed, it will be preemptive -- hardly more than common sense -- given the knowledge that Benny Morris possesses of the "fundamentalist, self-sacrificing" nature of the leaders of Iran. No evidence for his intuition is ever offered -- evidence from (say) the history of Iranian foreign policy over the past fifty years, or 200; evidence founded on actions rather than words. What if Iran's words since 1979 have been wilder than its deeds? What if Israel's actions since 2002 have been wilder than its words (wilder, even, than Benny Morris's words of 2004)? These findings could not possibly touch the argument. Morris writes as a man in possession of a racial and religious knowledge that is superior to evidence.

Of course, he hopes that Israel will not be forced to go all the way (though he has deplored Ben-Gurion's failure to go all the way with expulsion of the Palestinians). He imagines most Iranians would prefer not to see "Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland." Morris has thus given the readers of the New York Times a vision of a hellish future, but then atoned for the extravagance by suggesting that, if things fall out so, it will be the fault of Iran and the United States. Israel will have done the best it could with a monstrous and implacable enemy and a reluctant ally.

All circumstances taken together, this New York Times op-ed by Benny Morris is at once the most overt and the most peculiar intervention we Americans have witnessed thus far, by an Israeli attempting to influence U.S. policy in the Middle East. The article is weakly founded on partial facts and conjectural truths. It passes without transition from mock-prudential calculations to a tyrannical threat to destroy a civilization for the good of the world. Yet, though unpersuasive, it acquires significance when published between a recent visit to the U.S. by the Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and the current visit by the defense minister Ehud Barak. Morris's article is meant to be read in the context of such recent assurances as Olmert's, for example, that President Bush "understands the severity of the Iranian threat and the need to vanquish it, and
intends to act on that matter before the end of his term in the White House."

But let us return for a last look at Benny Morris.

No person into whose mind had entered the idea that an Iranian may be a human being--and that there are millions of innocent Iranians -- could have generated with such casual facility the image of Iran as a "nuclear wasteland." Yet this was the image of Iran that the Israeli Benny Morris decided to conjure up for American readers in the New York Times.

In the Haaretz interview of January 5, 2004, the following exchange occurred between the interviewer Ari Shavit and Benny Morris:

"Would you describe yourself as an apocalyptic person?"

"The whole Zionist project is apocalyptic. It exists within hostile surroundings and in a certain sense its existence is unreasonable. It wasn't reasonable for it to succeed in 1881 and it wasn't reasonable for it to succeed in 1948 and it's not reasonable that it will succeed now. Nevertheless, it has come this far. In a certain way it is miraculous. I live the events of 1948, and 1948 projects itself on what could happen here. Yes, I think of Armageddon. It's possible. Within the next 20 years there could be an atomic war here."

This apocalyptic danger Morris may conceive himself to have put off a few more years by writing an editorial on behalf of Israel's coming attack. But whether the attack on Iran comes sooner or later, whether it is executed by Israel or the U.S. or both, and whether carried out with conventional or nuclear weapons, Morris has no doubt of one thing. It will have served the "apocalyptic" vision of the "whole Zionist project," and it will coincide with the highest values of
humanity properly defined.

Comments

[Precisionist]

(Part 1 of 2)

One fallacy with the argument of how Israel will be mortally threatened once Iran has nukes is that there is already a fairly radical Muslim country, controlled in parts by fanatics, with nukes - Pakistan. If it were so easy to attack Israel, or as one of Israel's defenders on this blog avers - "hand off a nuke to Hezbollah which sends a suicide bomber into Israel ", then that scenario would have already played out. And, by the way, while both Pakistan and Iran are predominantly Muslim countries, neither are Arabic, as many on this blog have been confused about.

The other fallacy with the Iran argument is that even if you could completely eliminate nukes from Iran, it does not change the Pakistan dynamic in any way. What would prevent some fanatic from Pakistan to hand off a nuclear device to some other terrorist organization to do mayhem in Israel? The answer is nothing - unless the entire premise of this fear mongering is wrong.

[GZLives]

Pakistan's regime has a completely different mindset when it comes to Israel. In fact to a degree Israel and Pakistan cooperate on various levels.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been propagandizing and spewing anti Jewish hate for decades. Nothing like it exists in Pakistan and its just silly to compare current Pakistan with the Islamic Republic of Iran

[NitaNitaBoNita]

The mainstream media has spent a week, instructing me that some highbrow snark on the cover of The New Yorker is going to convince America's Stupids that Barack Obama is a stealth terrorist, married to Angela Davis.



Therefore, by the same logic, won't the publication of Morris' war criminal screed serve as an imprimatur on such action, by the Paper of Record (whose record? And who the hell ever decided this, officially? Some ad geek on Mad Avenue, in the Fifties?)



The Times uses the right wing "liberal" epithet as fire cover for what they do: they are the p.r. asset of the neocons (further exploration of their, shall we say, publishing heritage would get anyone banned from any blog forum run by anyone larger than a guy in his bathrobe and a computer).



I ask you:



Do you really think it possible that Judith Miller could have been the conduit she was for the PNAC warmongers, for as long as she was... and the ownership of the Times could NOT have been part and parcel of that agenda?



The publication of this garbage was irresponsible and inconceivable.

[Nooneyouknow]

I have to agree, but the Sulzbergers have been tools of rightwingers and corporatists for a long, long time. Google "the Mighty Wurlitzer." It slays me when someone characterizes the NY Times as "liberal." On the most important subjects, it's hand in hand with Bushco.

[BubbaC33]

The NYT kept the Whitewater story alive when every bit of truth proved it to be wrong. The NYT attacked the Clintons time and time again with nothing but dishonest and selective reporting. It is not liberal.

[arvay]

Like all bigots, and in spite of his reputation as a historian, Morris deludes himself about the "inferiority" of other peoples. 



The Persians had a great empire when the Jews were a little kingdom of tribes wedged uncomfortably between the great kingdoms of antiquity. The Persians, an advanced people, actually granted the Jews they overran freedom and returned them to their land. But this idiot imagines their Iranian descendants as barbarians.



The Arabs also had great cultural accomplishments, inventing algebra and some of the world's great architecture, among other things. They've fallen on hard times, and again this idiot imagines them as inferior.



The Romans saw the Germans as inferior, undisciplined barbarians living in mud huts, but Germany grew to be a great power with enormous cultural and scientific accomplishments. Then Hitler persuaded many of them that they were superior, and history taught the Germans a stinging lesson.



Will Jews and Israelis such as this so-called historian learn anything from history? Or will they be misled like the Germans were and suffer the terrible consequences?

[gregjones]

Another great post.

Greg J.
B4B

[bluestatelib]

Excellent post. Bravo.

[ApolloSpeaks]

IRAN'S COLLECTIVE GUILT

Many Iranians are innocent of what, Mr. Bromwich? Of wiping Israel off the map? Polls taken inside Iran tell a completely different tale.Six out of ten Iranians back the gov'ts arming, training and funding of Hezbollah and Hamas-both dedicated to Israel's total destruction. There is a good case for collective guilt here. But a nuclear strike by Israel on Iran will only come as long as the US is tied down in Iraq and does nothing.

OUT OF IRAQ AND INTO IRAN

To save the Iranian people from a possible holocaust.

[arvay]

If we send our army into Iran, it will be our soldier's graveyard.

If Israel attacks, it will set in morion a series of events that will include the atomic destruction of Israel. The Iranians will certainly obtain and use nuclear weapons after they are attacked. Iran has "attacked" Israel with words, which the last time anyone checked, is not a reason for a military action.

Once this insane series of events begins, be sure no matter how many millions are killed, it will be unstoppable, and Israel will not survive. This idiot Morris should contemplate that. Or perhaps he owns a villa in Switzerland.

[mosh]

Or he'll be joining bush and dick in their lavish underground bunker in Arizona. Anyone who thinks bush will leave office without a bang hasn't been listening. Just one look at his contorted face during what passes as a press conference these days says it all. Forget about impeached - this mental defective should be committed. Talk about a danger to self and/or others - and he's got his hot little thumb on the trigger.

The American government is set to declare martial law and go underground. Think Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

[swoosie1]

Oh sure...I am sure there is lots of "polling" in Iran. Come on.

[guntotinganglion]

The old kill em to save em routine...very classy And who's going to pay for this next war of choice? Oh ya...the Chinese...and our great great grandchildren.

And what polls? Collective guilt? Are you as stupid as you sound? Even if this "poll" is correct, which I don't believe, the 40% you indicate do not want Israel wiped off the map will die in a nuclear war. With a population over 70 million, that means that you would happily kill 30 million innocent people to punish the "guilty" in Iran. You kill that many people, you go to hell...the deepest part, right under the back end of the devil himself, for eternity!

To casually discuss nuclear first strike against a non-nuclear state is to discuss mass murder on a scale that this world has never seen (Hiroshima and Nagasaki being tiny in comparison). Governments (like ours) never represent the common people, and conventional wars murder far more innocent people than guilty (in Iraq that's a solid 96% innocent victims, based on the most conservative figures provided by the Iraq Body Count...the less conservative sources clearly indicate over 99%). That's the way it ALWAYS works in "modern" war, aka modern butchery.

[guntotinganglion]

This bloodless discussion of so much bloodshed is disgusting. Rather than discussing our common needs, idiots like Morris only discuss the differences, and reveal their own racism and mindless bias in favor of mass murder. I try to imagine, say, with the Cold War, if we had engaged our "enemy" rather than confront, finding common ground from which life can proceed, rather than holding the promise of death to millions over the world. Which is crazier, engagement for commonality, or mass murder. Capitalists of course will always opt for mass murder, because in this, there is a LOT of money to be made. And that's the nature of all of this...follow the money and you'll find ALL of the motivations. They don't care who, or how many they kill, as long as their's a profit in it.

[ApolloSpeaks]

There are no converging interests between the United States and the mullah regime. A theocratic Islamic state that is seen by its rulers as a model for humanity and the only solution to its manifold problems has nothing in common with liberal democracy-which the mullahs see as an evil system that needs to be expunged.

[Suzie813]

First use of a nuclear weapon is an abomination.

[syllepsis]

That we have sunk to the point where it has to be said is an abomination itself.
It shows our leaders are more fit for war-crimes tribunals than high offices of State.

[avance]

I agree with the general tone of Bromwich's post: Benny Morris is both able historian and thug. I take issue with the tendency of so many who write on the subject of Iran's nuclear program to assume that its true end is to production of nuclear weapons. Bromwich writes "Since Iran is five years from being able to make a nuclear bomb (Morris says one-to-four years). . ." That has no more meaning than saying that Bromwich is 30 years from being able to travel through time. No one has been able to demonstrate that Iran intends to produce nuclear weapons in any time frame. The most competent authorities, including the IAEA, have declare time and time again that there is no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Iran is conforming to all the international agreements, including the NPT, to which it is a party. So why is the US governing class doing the bidding of Israeli warmongers in ginning up a war on Iran, and why are writers contributing to the selling of the falsehoods that must precede such a war of aggression? And, in response Arianna's Sunday post, the US representative at the Tehran talks was there, not to negotiate as if George Bush had had a change of heart, but to keep the Europeans on message and to issue an ultimatum to the Iranians.

[mosh]

We all know why bush, ordered by the almighty himself to usher in the second coming, welcomes rhetoric like Morris's - it is a pretext for the ultimate holy war - but what does Israel have to gain, rationally, from this inflammatory rhetoric? Or is this some zionist 'end of days' scenario as well? Unless you are some kind of end of days religious fanatic or have a well stocked bunker waiting in Arizona (think bush and dick) what possible 'good' can come of a war with Iran by Israel and the US? And, with diplomacy and sanctions, a lot can change over a four year timeframe, so the political time frame is clearly driving this.

What Benny Morris contemplates is nearly unthinkable let alone unspeakable. He should never have been given a forum in a respectable American newspaper.

Meanwhile one can only conclude that the nyt is no longer a respectable American newspaper. It is merely a mouthpiece for western extremists under the guise of rational dialogue. Horrendous.

[freshnotbitter]

I did not read the above post because I have been reading stuff on the middle east for 50 years and it never goes anywhere.

I think it would be better if Iran had atomic weaponry for the following reasons:

1) Israel would be more serious about seeking a comprehensive solution to the middle east mess instead of taking a tack that aims to gain small incremental advantages by keeping the pot boiling

2) the usa could get out of the area and use its resources to gain energy self sufficiency instead.

Unfortunately the enemies of the American people are likely to fool the public into staying inthe area for no discernible advantage and spending the entire American surplus of wealth on following paupers around in the desert with bayonets. Whooopeee!

[GZLives]

Memories ...

Benny Morris is the Israeli historian most responsible for the vindication of the Palestinian narrative of 1948. The lives of about 700,000 people were shattered as they were driven from their homes by the Jewish militia (and, later, the Israeli army) between December 1947 and early 1950. Morris went through Israeli archives and wrote the day by day account of this expulsion, documenting every "ethnically cleansed" village and every recorded act of violence, and placing each in the context of the military goals and perceptions of the cleansers.

Israel's apologists tried in vain to attack Morris' professional credibility. From the opposite direction, since he maintained that the expulsion was not "by design," he was also accused of drawing excessively narrow conclusions from the documents and of being too naive a reader of dissimulating statements. Despite these limitations, Morris' "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugees Problem, 1947-1949" is an authoritative record of the expulsion.

[Mogamboguru]

Well -

it's never to late to mend to the worse, methinks...

Mr. Morris shouldn't publish anymore before he has received psychological help from an experienced psychiatrist. He shows signs of a deep-rooted mental disorder in the form of a persecution complex, whch makes his rational conscience fall victim to his own, personal worst nightmares of persistent siege and total destruction.

[BubbaC33]

The 700,000 figure is not accurate.

[CaptainVideo]

"Have you ever seen rank Jew hatred - the sort that describes Jews as sub humans and/or animals?"

How does this differ from Morris's view that he"sees Palestinians -- and to a degree, all Arabs; and Iranians, too -- as a species of animals not yet inducted into full humanity."

You have bigotry on both sides. The just and rational policy for the United States to follow in the middle east is to conduct a truly even-handed policy designed to keep both sides from attacking and killing each other and to achieve a peacful solution, or at least stalemate, with a two state solution based on essentially the pre-1967 borders with some mutually agreed to boundary swapping.

[JLee]

I cried when I read the "cage" comment. It never stops, does it. It's not about Germany or Israel or the Palestinians or Iran or anything else, it's about humanity and our inherent ability to dehumanize other humans.

[GZLives]

"I cried when I read the "cage" comment."

Yes sadly when there was no "cage" suicide bombing was a weekly event with hundreds of Israelis - Jew and Arab, murdered in discos, pizza joints, buses etc.

Once a "cage" was put in place, the bombing essentially ended - down by about 80%.

When you have a crazed animal at your throat you can kill it or cage it.
The Russians killed it as they did in Chechniya.
The Chinese did so in Tibet.
The Israelis chose to contain it and caged it.

[Northernview]

Actually, I believe it's the UN's role to mediate in these situations, not the USA.

Has the US learned nothing from their disastrous, swaggering intervention into the affairs of sovereign nations? Are the thousands of lives sacrificed in the Iraq conflict alone destined to become meaningless? Maybe if you continue to loudly rattle your sabers, looking for the one fight that will restore your self image of the Greatest Nation on Earth, perhaps you won't have to deal with the staggering debt that threatens to crush the american economy.

Bush shamelessly dismissed the UN, and in doing so, undermined the credibility of the one organisation that has the legitimacy to mediate world conflicts. Rather than continually look for need to

[jackstpaul]

Sorry, but you're an apologist for the Israeli/Jewish genocide and military aggression in 1948.

Why 1967? Whatever justification you attempt to give for the 1967 borders, then it applies to 1948 as well.

The status quo ante at the time was the attempt to resolve things to be the Partition borders. Israel simply erased that debate by attacking Egypt and stealing more land.

As one who believes in the rule of law, I accept as legitimate the Partition as the “law” of the Un. I can easily see why the Palestinians would reject the Partition—again—as illegitimate. And so would anyone who understands what the terms and circumstances were then.

1967?

That still leaves the Palestinians in a status of great victim hood.

That situation will not bring final stability to Israel, Arabs, Jews, Christians, or Muslims.

[mosh]

Captain Video simply suggests that going forward the US apply even handedness to the Iranian/Israeli impasse (which would be a sea change in our foreign policy and therefore is unlikely).

Suggesting the US remain neutral in this and broker some kind of rational settlement between Israel and Iran - a dialogue and not a nuclear holocaust - hardly makes one an apologist for Israel. If so, I hope we all become apologists very, very quickly.

I think a pre-1967 border solution would be welcome by most Palestinians and is not an extreme position to voice given the severity of the situation. Unfortunately, Israel will never agree even to this. Therefore, the United States should foster dialogue between Israel and Iran before it is too late. That should be the signal sent. Instead we have bush and (even clinton) threatening to obliterate Iran. What do you call them?

Where is Saudi Arabia and the rest of the middle east in all this? Surely they do not want a nuclear holocaust in their own backyard.

[BubbaC33]

Israel did not start the 1967 war, it started with the Egyptian assault on the Straits of Tiran. All Israel did was to end the war in six days.

[CaptainVideo]

"It would better if the United States could launch the attack. But, being realistic, he remarks the lack of enthusiasm among Americans "for wars in the Islamic lands."

There is a commendable lack of enthusiasm on the part of the American people to fight wars that do not promote the vital interests of the United States in the middle east. Iran is a threat to Israel, but not a threat for the Unites States. We need to concentrate on our real enemy, the real Al Quaida, which is located in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They are the ones who were responsible for 9/11 and other attacks on U.S. targets, like the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Iran supported us when we first invaded Afghanistan. Al Quaida are Sunnis and the enemies of the Iranians, who are Shiites. Iran does not have to be our enemy.

[Bergen]

Thank you for writing this.

[Torus34]

I am still seeking a rational discussion of a couple of basic questions.

1. What are the 'rights', under international law, for any nation to develop a vertical neuclear power program?

2. What is Iran's response to a legitimate proposal from a neutral entity to monitor Iran's nuclear program and ensure that it does not lead to the making of an atomic bomb?

Unfortunately, almost all that is said and written these days fails even to reference these areas. I have the strange feeling that I've started watching the last 2 minutes of an intricate movie.

[Mogamboguru]

In 2003 Iran passed the so-called "Swiss Memo" via the Swiss Embassy to the USA, which contained a full catalogue of measures to a: Terminate enrichment in Iran, in exchange for B. american security-guarantees towards Iran.

In 2003, the USA bluntly rebuffed this Iranian Memo, because the USA didn't want to negotiate with, but wanted to simply subdue Iran by brute force, threads and blackmail.

BTW: Iran has ALL THE RIGHTS IN THE WORLD under the NPT, to enrich AS MUCH URANIUM FOR PEACEFULL USE IN NUCLEAR POWERSTATIONS, AS THEY POSITIVELY WANT!

QED.

[ApolloSpeaks]

Why would the US grant such guarantees when Iran is the world's powerhouse and central banking source of international terrorism? And when it has a history of treachery and breaking its agreements and treaties-the NPT for example. The memo if it existed was a ploy to continue with impunity their subversive and deadly activities in the Middle East and their covert nuke program -the reason for purchasing underground boring equipment from Italy & Germany. The memo was pure trickery, part of a peace offensive to protect their murderous revolution and nuke program. Bush did well to ignore it.

[toadicux]

1) The International Atomic Energy Agency protocol expressly allows its signatories to develop nuclear power for energy. Iran is a signatory, Israel which has nuclear weapons is not.

2)Iran has allowed multiple and unannounced inspections from the IAEA and have been found in compliance.

Since China, Russia, and Pakistan HAVE nuclear weapons and could simply airlift some into Iran, and might have already done so, these questions are pretty much moot.

[surg88]

The Bible... the gift that keeps on giving...

[politicky]

lol

[WoodyCPM]

Excellent!

[MuseScavenger]

Benny Morris appears to be as crazy as George Bush. Indeed, nearly as crazy and dangerous as the perceived enemies they imagine they understand. Maybe the US could help by locking them up together.

[BubbaC33]

When Iran has a nuclear capability it will use it to either attack Israel directly or to attempt to leverage Israel into a position of surrender. If Iran did nuke Israel the Jewish state would be destroyed and what nation would respond? The US/ With words and a UN resolution, but not much more. No nation in Europe would punish Iran foir its nuclear adventurism. IN short, if Iran were to nuke Israel a rresponse from Jerusalem would be all but impossible.
A lot of the protests attacking Israel for thinking of ending Iran's nuclear ambitions is similar to the attacks on Israel following the destruction of the nuclear facility in Iraq. How many people now believe Israel acted in a bad manner at that time? Not very many.
The point Morris makes and the one that makes sense is Israel is under seige by her Arab neighbors. And if her Persian neighbor acquires a nuclear capability the future of Israel will be in danger. And no one writing in defense of Iran seems to be able to understand this simple fact.

[sfhand]

Wow, with your ability to predict the future I'm surprised you aren't winning at the track and the daily lottery...

[BubbaC33]

And with your ability to spin and distort I'm surprised you aren;t working for Fox News.