Over the years, Adbusters has repeatedly floated the “Nuclear Free Middle East” meme without gaining much traction. Now, as negotiations between Iran and the West reach their climax in Geneva this week, we felt it would be an opportune moment to give it another go.
The idea that Israel can continue maintaining its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East is one-sided thinking of the most dangerous kind. Even more than settlement building in the West Bank, this nuclear monopoly distorts Arab/Israeli politics in ways that can only foster antagonism, distrust, anger and, eventually, catastrophic warfare.
Why did Bashar al-Assad assemble a stockpile of chemical weapons in the first place? Because he wanted Syria to have some military parity against Israeli nukes.
And how can Iran with its 60 million people and four thousand year history in the region (and with the legacy of the CIA overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh and installation of the Shah in 1953 still fresh in their minds) tolerate living under constant US-Israeli military threat? You cannot continue humiliating a nation forever. Blowback is certain. The current regime in Iran is not pretty, that’s for sure, but the settlement activity in the West Bank is part-and-parcel of an equally fanatical enterprise. One sure way to tone down the tensions, and to move towards a lasting peace, is to remove the nuclear bait from the equation. Neither of these nations, or any nation for that matter, can be trusted with nukes.
Probably the most effective way to launch the “Nuclear Free Middle East” meme into the geopolitical consciousness is to confront Obama or Kerry at a nationally televised press conference with the question, “why isn’t a #NUKEFREE option on the table?’ Their answers may resonate with billions of people around the world.
But we can’t stop there. A concurrent tactic to make this meme go viral is to confront the reporters and journalists – everybody from Wendy Mesley at the CBC, to Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer at CNN, to Charlie Rose, Tom Friedman and David Brooks & Isabel Kershner at The New York Times – and ask why they never ask their political guests this simple question: “Why a nuclear monopoly … why not a nuclear free Middle East?”
So long as systematically distorted reporting continues, you can be assured that the possibility of a final big bang explosion of biblical proportions looms in the Middle East. After all, there’s no way that 100’s of millions of fiercely proud people living in the lands surrounding Israel will accept much longer to live indefinitely under the shadow of Israeli nukes.
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