From Prediction, Precaution, and Prevention to … Preemption?
Elihu D Richter with Alex Barnea and Yael Stein
Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 in Iran, its leaders, starting with Ayatollah Khomeini, have been explicitly calling for the destruction of Israel, to incite followers and sensitize bystanders. Since October 2005 and the election of Mahmud Ahmadinejad, its leaders have ratcheted up the frequency and intensity of their incitement and hate language. Iran’s genocidal policy and posture has four prongs. These are:
(1) Use of dehumanizing hate language and incitement of Mein Kampf directed against “Israel”, “Zionism”;
(2) Secret and illegal program to develop nuclear capacity and long distance missile delivery systems capable of delivering nuclear warheads;
(3) Direction support, supplying, and training of terror proxies, notably Hezbollah and Hamas, themselves explicitly committed to Israel’s destruction;
(4) Increasingly brutal persecution and suppression of dissidents, religious minorities, and so called sexual offenders, notably since the apparently fraudulent election which returned Ahmadinejad to power in June 2009.
Since 1979, Iran has become the epicenter of a world-wide axis of genocidal Islamist antisemitic terror and incitement to terror. Iran’s allies comprise an Axis for Genocide which includes its suppliers, North Korea and Russian terror proxies and allies-- Syria, Sudan, Hezbollah and Hamas, and elements in the Palestinian Authority, Its sympathizers include millions in the Islamic world, and its enablers, suppliers and protectors include the leaders of China and Russia.
The power of Iran’s leadership derives from the world’s extreme dependence on its massive oil reserves, its ability to play off world power blocs against each other, and its manipulation and exploitation of endemic genocidal antisemitism in the Islamic world.
So far, three UN resolutions through 2006-2008 condemning Iran and calling for sanctions against its secret pursuit of nuclear enrichment do not appear to have deterred Iran. There also has been a US Congressional Resolution (HConRes21) calling for indictment of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for incitement to genocide, and most recently, a US Senate Resolution condemning Iran for its human rights abuses. But Iran, backed by China, has been more or less successful in defying these resolutions. So far the outside world does not appear to have been able or willing to stop Iran’s leadership in progressing towards nuclear capacity and developing missile delivery systems, as Iran continues to exploit Great Power rivalries and Third World resentments against the West, Capitalism, and the US. Ahmadinejad in his travels around the world has attempted to position himself as a leader of the downtrodden and an opponent of capitalism. His recent visits have included India and Brazil, two large powerful democracies where he was greeted with expressions of warmth.
Iranian leaders’ repeated incitement to genocide against Israel’s Jewish population includes the use of crude antisemitic motifs of dehumanization, demonization, delegitimization, disinformation and Holocaust denial. This incitement dates back to 1979, but it sharply escalated in 2005, when Ahmadinejad was elected. During 2008 and 2009, Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders have referred to Israel as a “terrorist and criminal state” (June 13 2008), and called for “annihilate[ing] this false regime" (June 14 2008). He has used the language of Nazi propaganda since Hitler’s Mein Kampf to engage in dehumanization, e.g. “vermin”, “a cancerous growth” (22 Aug 2003), “black and filthy microbe” (Feb 23 2008), “stinking corpse” (June 13 2008), “germ of corruption” (Sept 23 2008), to demonize “Zionists [as] few in number but dominating financial and monetary positions”, “caught in the clutches of Jewish power, “acquisitive and invasive minority” (Dec 2006) that “Zionism is root cause of insecurity and wars”(Sept 25 2008), and to incite—e.g. “Iran will support Hamas until the destruction of Israel” (Nov 26 2008).
Genocide scholars (Charny, Stanton, and Gordon) have demonstrated that state-sanctioned hate language and incitement are early warning signs of genocidal intentions.
Our published timeline suggests that incitement and hate language of Iranian leaders decreased following international outrage in response to Ahmadinejad’s first statements, but then increased following the US National Intelligence Estimate’s erroneous claim that Iran abandoned its activities in enrichment (Nov 2007). In late 2007-early 2008, after Ahmadinejad was welcomed by journalists, diplomats, universities, and TV talk shows and the outrage subsided, Iran’s leaders sharply increased the frequency and intensity of their hate language. Ahmadinejad prompted a rare walk-out at the United Nations racism summit in April 2009, when he called Israel a "cruel and repressive racist regime" and told the conference on the same day that Jewish communities commemorate the Holocaust that "Following WWII they [the Jews] resorted to military aggressions to make an entire nation homeless under the pretext of Jewish suffering". Washington decried Ahmadinejad's speech as "vile and hateful," while the Vatican called it "extremist and unacceptable." Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, called the address both "unsavory" and "obnoxious". Following the massive public uprisings and brutal crackdowns of all opposition inside Iran in June 2009, and a less welcoming atmosphere in the West, the frequency and intensity of Iranian incitement and hate language broadcast to the outside world appeared to have fallen off.
However, in early 2010 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad resumed his threats against Israel and the Western world. Ahmadinejad promised that his nation will deliver a harsh blow to the "global arrogance" to mark the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. At a press conference with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in Damascus on February 25, 2010, Ahmadinejad said: "A Middle East without Zionism is a divine promise. Time is on the side of the peoples of the region. The Zionist entity is nearing the threshold of nonexistence. On February 27, 2010 he delivered a speech at a Tehran conference in support of the Palestinians saying that, "With God's grace and thanks to the Palestinian resistance the occupying Zionist regime has lost its raison d'être", summing up "This microbe of corruption is no longer feasible for its masters to keep. The European and American people are opposed to Zionism and want an end to the Zionist thoughts".
Public interest in Iran’s nuclear programs and missile delivery systems should not divert attention away from its arming Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria with advanced weaponry, long range rockets, and missile silos for use against Israel’s population centers.
Iran’s Genocidal Agenda: Comparisons with Nazi Germany
The evidence suggests that by 2005, and certainly thereafter, Iran has already gone far beyond Nazi Germany in the 1930’s in advancing its genocidal agenda against Israel with its explicit calls for its destruction and a program of Holocaust denial. This alarming and ominous fact holds, even if its own Jewish community of 25,000 whose origins date back to the exile following the destruction of the First Temple, lives in a status of protected dhimmitude so far appearing to be less endangered than German Jews during the late 1930’s. Most researchers agree that evidence is not available to indicate that Nazi Germany ever publicly declared its genocidal intentions explicitly, and after the world protest and outrage which followed Kristalnacht, went to great extremes to conceal its concentration camps by locating them in Eastern Europe which was far away from Western eyes and whose local populations were largely hostile to Jews. Its use of euphemisms (e.g. “Final Solution”, and "Aktions") and code words ["Operation Reinhard"] were central to this policy of concealment of its intentions in period before and during World War II. Concealment greatly delayed discovery and recognition of the “Final Solution,” even as Nazi genocidal rhetoric fed the crazed mindsets of the architects, supervisors and perpetrators of the crematoria.
Iran’s leaders and its terror proxies—Hamas and Hezbollah do not appear to be inhibited by the need for concealment. Iran’s leaders are able to tap into a huge hinterland of endemic hate fomented by Islamists in the Muslim world (current population: 1.2 billion), even if the leaders of many of the countries in this world fear and distrust Iran. It is quite probable that the breadth and depth of this hatred is similar to or perhaps exceeds that of antisemitism in the western world in the run up to World War II. Nazi Germany’s allies were Austria, which it annexed, and the puppet leaders of nations it conquered, e.g. Quisling of Norway. Its major ally, Japan, opposed the Nuremburg laws and allowed Jews to survive in Shanghai. We have already noted Iran's allies, enablers, and protectors.
Nazi Germany was an industrial superpower with enormous human resources and technological capacity and know-how. Iran is rich in oil and gas reserves and also has a well-educated determined elite of scientists and technologists who have, with outside help, made enormous strides in building its military capacity. Even so, Iran’s population and health indices remain relatively poor.
Most importantly, Iran’s regime, like all the authoritarian dictatorships of the Mideast, has shown remarkable resilience. So far, it has ruled 30 years, as compared with the 12 year life span of Nazi Germany. Note that had the US not been forced to go war, it is not certain that Nazi Germany would have been destroyed.
Tipping Points and "What ifs":
In retrospect, there have been many critical tipping points in the story of Iran’s pursuit of its genocidal agenda. Under President Jimmy Carter, the US did nothing to back the Shah of Iran against the takeover by Ayatollah Khomeini. The US’s bungled attempt to rescue its Embassy personnel was another tipping point, as was its failure to use force in response to Iranian proxies' bombing the US base in Beirut [Oct 1983] and other terror activities, notably the bombings of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires [March 1992] and the Amia Jewish community Center [July 1994]. During the 1980’s and early 1990’s the world ignored repeated Iranian incitement and hate language by powerful clerics and Revolutionary Guard Leaders, considering it part of normal “background noise” of Muslim extremist political rhetoric.
During the US invasion of Iraq, Iran’s leadership temporarily suspended its secret enrichment program, and moderated its public inflammatory rhetoric. As noted, in 2007, the NIE estimate which erroneously stated that Iran did not renew its enrichment was an especially critical tipping point, following which Iran’s leaders renewed and stepped up their genocidal incitement and hate language, nuclear enrichment, and their support for terror groups, not only in the Mideast, and became ever more brazen.
As the year 2010 progresses, the world community has yet not taken effective action to deter Iran’s leaders and stop their explicit calls for Israel’s destruction, their incitement to genocide, their support for terror groups, their nuclear program, and their brutal suppression of political opposition. Such inaction bespeaks the sad fact that much of the world now appears to have developed a degree of tolerance for such explicit incitement and direct support for genocidal terror, not only from Iran, but from other sources as well, notably Saudi Arabia and Palestinian terror groups. Deterrence has been weak and so far appears to have been ineffective.
The continued unrest in Iran following its disputed election in June 2009 appears to have been the most critical tipping point to date, creating both dangers and opportunities for applying brakes on Iran’s rush to enrichment, its incitement and support for terror and its internal suppression of human rights. It is quite possible that the threats to the legitimacy of those now in power in Iran posed by the unrest can be expected to encourage its leaders to pursue “a go for broke” policy as they increase internal suppression and repression, support for terror proxies, and step up the race to nuclear capacity. On the other hand, there is some possibility that a combination of internal and external pressures may further weaken this leadership, thereby deterring it from further pursuit of its genocidal agenda
What Can Be Done?
Genocide results from human choice and bystander indifference. A pronged strategy of deterrence requires use of existing tools of international law (the UN Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court) to indict and prosecute Iran’s leaders for their incitement to genocide. Simultaneously, the case is compelling for urgent sanctions and economic pressures against the leadership of Iran’s nuclear program, its terror proxies, and their brutal suppression of human rights inside Iran. The International Criminal Tribunal- Rwanda’s prosecutions and convictions of Rwandan political leaders and journalists set a precedent for such indictments.
In the case of Iran, such prosecutions would advance the temporal locus of intervention to predict and prevent, from proof of intent after the event, in keeping with public health models based on the Precautionary Principle. The Cotler Responsibility to Prevent Petition enlists all the legal tools needed to pursue such directed action. World action against the Iranian leadership’s arbitrary and summary imprisonment, torturing and executions of dissidents, stoning of women, public hangings of persons accused of sexual crimes and other brutal acts of suppression state the case for forging an alliance for protection of human life and human dignity. Such action needs to be directed against the Iranian leadership and other members, enablers, proxies, and complicit bystanders in the world wide Axis of Genocide. In parallel, there is a need for an urgent energy policy which will prepare the free world for Iranian energy blackmail in the event of threats to carry it out. Paradoxically, the success of sanctions short of the use of armed force to deter Iran from acquiring nuclear capacity may rest on the credibility of threats to use such armed force should sanctions fail.
Failure to apply the foregoing policy may leave those endangered by Iran’s genocidal axis no choice but to adopt preemptive measures against an ever more aggressive and repressive regime. There has been no precedent for a regime threatening genocide to be on verge of acquiring nuclear capacity to implement it. Nazi Germany and Japan fell only because the world went to war to destroy them after the repeated failures of appeasement. Similarly, the Serbian and Rwandan genocidal regimes also fell in response to the use of armed force, but only after hundreds of thousand perished.
Will the failures of engagement lead to a war?
Will past failures in Prediction, Precaution and Prevention lead to the need for Preemption? The clock is ticking.
The authors wish to acknowledge the critical reviewing and comments by Joel Fishman PhD and assistance of Marc Sherman MLS in research and editing.
Professor Elihu D Richter MD MPH is Editor of GPN, Director of the World Genocide Situation Room and Associate Director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem. He is Head of the Genocide Prevention Program at Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine and former head of the Unit of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. He has published and lectured on the use of public health models for the prediction and prevention of genocide.
Alex Barnea, MSc in Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict is Research Assistant and Project Manager of the World Genocide Situation Room section of GPN, the website of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem. He acted as project manager for UK relief work in Tsunami-affected Thailand and later as consultant to a Cambodian NGO - orphanage.
Yael Stein MD is a researcher-team member of the World Genocide Situation Room, the website of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem of GPN. She has experience in Occupational Medicine, Epidemiology and Hospital Administration and is currently studying towards a PhD degree in Public Health at the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Public Health and Community Medicine. Yael describes herself as a ”goal-oriented, idealistic entrepreneur, seeking spiritual and ethical fulfillment” in her work; “I focus on making a difference.”
