TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Sunday denigrated the value of so-called soft power, insisting to an audience at the Munich Security Conference that the chaos and instability in the Middle East today is a result of leaders who lacked "political determination" and opted for softer, non-kinetic means of diplomacy.
"It's clear today that we suffer in the last period from lack of political determination," said Liberman. "The results of soft power we see today in the Middle East, and not only with regard to Iran."
According to Liberman, dialogue and incentives did nothing to prevent North Korea from pursuing its nuclear weapons program or the long-range ballistic missile delivery vehicles to threaten nations well beyond East Asia. The same, he maintained, will apply to Iran, regardless of the temporary respite afforded by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action negotiated between world powers and Tehran.
"The Iranian deal is 'copy/paste' of what we had with North Korea … No doubt, if you ask every man and woman in the Middle East, they'll say Iran will be another example of the North Korean deal," Liberman said.
A hawkish politician who has assumed a relatively pragmatic line in the otherwise hard right, nationalist coalition government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Liberman insisted that the top three security challenges are: "Iran, Iran and Iran."
He spoke in ominous terms of Iran's unabated nuclear ambitions, it's accelerating ballistic missile program and what he decried as "the smuggling of very sophisticated weapons to every problematic place in the Middle East."
Moreover, Liberman cited Iran's "pattern of behavior" in creating proxies throughout the region and beyond. "In Lebanon, we have Hizbollah; in the Gaza Strip, we have Islamic Jihad and Hamas; we have the Houti militias in Yemen; the Shiite militias in Iraq, etc., etc.,… and all this activity falls under the umbrella of the biggest and most powerful, sophisticated and brutal terror organization of the world: the Iranian Revolutionary Guards under the control of terrorist number one in the world, Qassem Soleimani."
When pressed by Liz Doucet, chief national correspondent for the BBC, if Liberman was calling for more sanctions and military pressure on Iran, the Israeli Defense Minister said he supported "a combination of economic pressure and a very tough policy" combined with clear enforcement of existing UN Security Council resolutions.
Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman with Liz Doucet, senior national correspondent for the BBC.
Photo Credit: Barbara Opall-Rome/Staff
Liberman did not acknowledge — nor did Doucet clarify — that UN Security Council Resolution 2231 does not explicitly prohibit Tehran's ballistic missile testing, but rather merely "calls on" Iran not to test, noted Joe Cirincione, president of the Washington-based Ploughshares Fund.
As for Liberman's prescription for dealing with the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Israeli official echoed Netanyahu's so-called "outside in" approach whereby like-minded, moderate Sunni Gulf states would leverage the Palestinian leadership into an agreement acceptable to Israel.
"The problem is that the Palestinians don't have a capacity to sign a long-term and final status agreement with Israel. That will be possible only as part of a regional solution; not incrementally, but simultaneously. We must plan simultaneously for a regional solution with the Arab world and the Palestinians," he said.
When asked if Liberman — like US President Donald Trump — was ambivalent regarding a one- or two-state solution to the conflict, the Israeli defense minister said he favored a two-state peace deal. However, Liberman quickly caveated the formula by insisting that any future agreement would have to involve significant swaps of land and population.
"In my vision, the end game, no doubt, is the two-state solution," Liberman said. "But it must be a Jewish state."
Liberman said his "biggest problem" regarding prospects for a two-state deal as envisioned under successive US presidents dating back to Bill Clinton is the notion that a future Palestine would include no Jews while Israel would continue to be a binational state with more than 20 percent of its population Palestinian Arabs.
But "I think the basic principle or solution must include exchange of land and population. It doesn't make sense to create one homogeneous Palestinian state and a binational state for Israel."
At a Feb. 15 White House press conference with the visiting Israeli premier, Trump said he was looking at "two-state and one-state, and I like the one that both parties like… I can live with either one."
At his cabinet meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu hailed his meeting with Trump as historic and quoted the US president as saying relations between Israel and the US were entering "a new day."
According to a Feb. 19 statement released by Netanyahu's office, the Israeli leader said bilateral ties will be stronger under a Trump administration, not only due to their personal relationship going back years, but to their shared view of the Iranian threat.
"The two of us see eye to eye on the main — and growing — threat from Iran and the need to stand against Iranian aggression in the various spheres."
As for the Israel-Palestinian issue, Netanyahu told cabinet ministers that he and Trump had decided to pursue a regional path to achieving peace. "We see the possibility of trying to provide a basis for the growing regional interests that are forming between Israel, the US and countries of the region, both to rebuff Iran and to develop other opportunities and normalization. In the end we hope to achieve peace…
"This is a fundamental change and, I would say, has accompanied all of our discussions and has formed the infrastructure of all the agreements between us," Netanyahu said of the regional-based approach he aims to pursue with the new US administration.
Twitter: @opallrome
Opall-Rome is Israel bureau chief for Defense News. She has been covering U.S.-Israel strategic cooperation, Mideast security and missile defense since May 1988. She lives north of Tel Aviv. Visit her website at www.opall-rome.com.
