Tikkun Magazine, January/February 2008

Iran With No Nukes 

by Michael Lerner

So the cat got out of the bag. Actually, it was let out. At some point we'll learn the story of the courageous people inside the various intelligence agencies who had the integrity to tell the world once again that the American emperor had no clothes, that there is no secret program by Iran to develop nuclear weapons.

One can argue that the motivation of some of those involved must have been to restore respect to their own agencies, which had capitulated to the implicit (possibly explicit) demands of the Bush Administration to "cook the data" about the Iraq war and claim that there was a nuclear threat. Some may have imagined how much further their credibility would have sunk if President Bush were to continue claiming, as he had been doing until December 4, 2007, that the best intelligence made it clear that there was an Iranian secret program to develop nuclear weapons, a fantasy that Iranian President Ahmadinejad was able to use to scare Israel since he had no actual nuclear weapons to use. All the more dangerous to the CIA's credibility if agency loyalists knew that revelations about destroying CIA video tapes of torture were imminent.

But we imagine that there were others in the intelligence agencies, principled people who followed the path of Daniel Ellsberg. During the Vietnam War, Ellsburg leaked insider documents from the Defense Department that proved that the Johnson and Nixon Administrations had knowingly and systematically lied to the American public. Ellsberg faced jail, the end of his career, and threats to his life, but he accepted the risks once he understood fully the immorality of the Vietnam War and the lies that were being told to justify it. At least some of the people in the CIA and other intelligence agencies probably had thoughts similar to Ellsberg's: protecting the United States from yet another crazy, self-destructive, and immoral war was worth the personal risks. Though we doubt that intelligence personnel will ever tell us the real dynamics that led to this disclosure, it's clear that if even one person had decided that he or she would go public with the information that the agencies concluded years ago that Iran posed no real nuclear threat, the other intellegence agencies would have had to decide whether to try to kill or jail that person, or create new data to justify what Bush/Cheney wanted justified. Instead, they decided to reveal the truth and thereby challenge the White House.

Our point is that it would have only taken one courageous person to shake that intelligence establishment. And this is one of the great reasons to be hopeful. No matter how powerful the corporate machines of global capital, no matter how invincible its military force, no matter how seductively the media disempowers us and convinces us that we live in a world in which people are only motivated by self-interest, the weak point in all these systems of domination is that they depend on human beings to run them, and these human beings, no matter how far gone from ethical considerations they sometimes appear to be from a distance, have never fully let go of their own ethical and spiritual core, and at some moments that core can be accessed and mobilized for the sake of humanity rather that for destroying it.

If you can see the world that way, you are a spiritual progressive, and you've found your way home—here to Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives. Welcome home!

Meanwhile, to return to Iran, there are two other points to be made. One is that the willingness of the president to pursue the same path of confrontation with Iran even after the new intelligence report showed that there is no current nuclear threat, on the speculation that at some future time they might develop a secret program, has been used by many as final confirmation not only that the President should be impeached (in the debate among the Democratic party candidates on December 4th in preparation for the Iowa caucus, Congressman Dennis Kucinich made clear that warmonger Dick Cheney should be impeached first so that he did not become the next president when Bush gets impeached), but also suggests that Bush seems to be in such a state of denial about the reality facing him as to warrant the country demanding a mandatory psychological assessment of the president and the vice president.

What is not crazy or irrational in any way is to be very disturbed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the politics of the mullahs who run that society. It was hard to speak forcefully on that topic when such words might have been used to justify military intervention. But now that such intervention seems increasingly implausible (though we should never underestimate the criminality of the Bush Administration and the lack of backbone of the Democrats, who previously had refused to pass a requirement that Bush get Congressional approval before any military strike), it's time for those of us in the progressive world to say clearly what we said before this language seemed to be a cry of support for the war-makers: the Iranian regime is disgustingly oppressive to its own people; its sexism and homophobia rival those of Saudi Arabia and the most vicious elements of Al Qaeda and other Muslim extremists; its anti-Semitism goes far beyond any legitimate critique of Israel and has roots in a xenophobia and Islamic chauvinism that is just as hateful as the worst elements in Christian and Jewish chauvinism; and its control over an ancient and noble civilization, and its distortions of the wisdom and goodness in Islam, deserve to be remedied by revolutionary overthrow from within Iranian society. While we cannot support those elements of the Iranian revolutionary underground who are willing to use violence or who have made alliances with the Bush Administration and de facto have encouraged armed intervention by the United States, we do support all those within Iran who seek a nonviolent path to overthrowing the current regime, and reestablishing real democracy (which would require freedom of the press, assembly, organization of alternative parties, and freedom for women and equal rights in all matters of family, economic, and political life). While we still vigorously oppose U.S. intervention in any form, we do support those who non-violently resist this regime and seek instead a society that embodies the wisdom, sensitivity, and human decency that has characterized most Iranians throughout their history. Just as we seek a non-violent change of regime in the United States and Israel, so we seek a non-violent change of regime in Iran—in each case affirming the fundamental decency of the vast majority of the population, and refusing to blame them for the sins of those whose control of media and the economy have given them the ability to manipulate and distort the life of their societies.

Luckily, in the United States we have a democratic mechanism to make such changes, if people can be weaned from the fear of being seen as "unrealistic" and instead stay true to their own highest values, and demand political leadership that articulates those values and concretizes them in specific economic and political programs. That's what we've done with our Spiritual Covenant with America and our Global Marshall Plan (GMP) (which can be read at www.spiritualprogressives.org), and that's what we are urging you to do by endorsing the GMP on our website, and by using the Voter's Guide (between pages 16 and 17 and downloadable at our website) to challenge all candidates and all parties to respond to this vision.

Lerner, Michael. 2008. Iran with no nukes. Tikkun 23(1):11-12.