Israel is committing suicide, and Washington is paying for it

Sketch: TBS

How do you characterise this war between the United States and Iran?

Sachs: This is a war, and thousands are being killed. Israel and the United States are carpet-bombing Tehran, and the dead include schoolgirls. It is a bloodbath, and it was a war of choice. Benjamin Netanyahu called it the fulfilment of a 40-year dream. It is not a war caused by Israel alone. It is a joint US-Israel madness: the United States wants to rule the world, Israel wants to rule its region, and the two partner together. This is not something one side imposed on the other. It is a partnership, and it goes back decades, from Libya to Iran, with many countries left desolate in between.

Where does it actually begin?

Sachs: The current war traces directly to 2018, when Donald Trump tore up a valid nuclear agreement. Under that treaty, ratified by the UN Security Council, the Strait of Hormuz was open, enrichment was held below three per cent, and inspectors had full access. Trump destroyed it because Netanyahu told him to. It was never really about the nuclear file. It has always been about overthrowing the Iranian government, which has been Netanyahu's dream for decades.

And the economic fallout?

Sachs: The economic consequences are now arriving. The world economy is heading into one of the gravest crises of the modern period, driven by the collapse of oil and gas supplies from the Gulf. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. The release of 400 million barrels from strategic reserves amounts to roughly 20 days of normal flow, which is unimpressive for what could be a long and deadly disaster, because production itself is shutting down and the physical facilities are being destroyed one after another. People can do arithmetic, however many officials try to talk calmly to the markets. The world will pay a fearsome price for this delusion, and people will know where it came from.

You call Israel a rogue state. On what basis?

Sachs: Israel is a rogue state, and it is committing a genocide before our eyes. Two million people in Gaza are being starved. The intent is not even hidden. Unlike the crimes the Nazis kept secret, these are broadcast proudly. Israel is perpetually at war because it makes the most maximalist demands it can. Its governing doctrine, set out in the Likud charter of 1977, is that Israeli sovereignty will extend over all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. When the chant "from the river to the sea" is condemned in the United States as anti-Israel, people forget that it is, almost word for word, the platform of the governing party.

That doctrine leaves only two futures: an apartheid state ruling over a Palestinian population as large as the Jewish one, or the periodic mass killing that Israeli officials have called 'mowing the lawn'. What is being demanded of the Palestinians today is a state on 22 per cent of historic Palestine, and Israel says no, not even that. It demands everything. That is why the region is in non-stop war.

And its own nuclear weapons?

Sachs: Israel also reserves rights it grants no one else. It holds nuclear weapons outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty, with no constraints or controls, while insisting it will kill anyone who comes near such a capability, even states that deny wanting one. It claims the right to assassinate anyone in the region it judges as a supporter of the Palestinian cause. This is what is meant by Greater Israel, and it is a form of fascism, a term that Israel's own Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, uses of himself.

None of this works without Washington. Why? 

Sachs: None of this is possible without the United States. Israel cannot continue for a single day without three kinds of American support: military, financial and diplomatic. Washington arms Israel, finances it, and vetoes every Security Council resolution that would bring it back within international law. Israel became emboldened precisely because, every time it broke international law, the United States did not stop it. There are famous clips of Netanyahu explaining the arrangement: we own the Senate, we own the Congress, we can get the United States to do what we want.

Why the United States submits to this agenda is, after decades of watching it, still partly a mystery. The familiar answers, the lobby, the campaign money, and the 45 to 50 million evangelical voters who read foreign policy through biblical prophecy, are each partly true. What is no longer in doubt is that the American people have moved on. They now side with the Palestinians by roughly two to one. The political class still clings to a give-Netanyahu-anything posture, but the rest of the world has gone the other way.

You have called this "suicide" rather than "homicide". Why?

Sachs: I have called what Israel is doing suicide rather than homicide, because it is destroying whatever sympathy it once held in the United States and across the world. For decades, American sympathy ran 60 to 70 per cent for Israel; now it is reversed. Israel could lose its statehood altogether, with the likeliest endpoint a single bi-national democratic state. What it counts on instead is perpetual American backing. It misunderstands two things: the United States is not all-powerful, and cannot defeat Iran on acceptable terms; and it will no longer give unconditional support. That is the truth, whether Israel hears it or not.

Is there a way out?

Sachs: There is a way out, and it is within reach. The United States should tell Israel plainly: you have borders, and they are those of 4 June 1967. Live within them. A Palestinian state will be created in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and admitted to the United Nations as its 194th member. Militant groups will disarm, because the entire region and the Security Council will insist on it once a Palestinian state exists. Normalisation between Israel and its neighbours will follow; I have met leaders across the Islamic world who are ready for it. The single obstacle is the American veto.

Who leads that, if not Washington?

Sachs: So the lead should pass to others. Saudi Arabia and France, as co-conveners of the two-state process, should declare the occupation of Gaza unacceptable. The Arab League should put forward a practical, operational plan, covering security, humanitarian relief, and the release of the thousands of Palestinians held in administrative detention, and take responsibility for Gaza in support of the Palestinian Authority. Condemnation is not enough; what is missing is a specific sequence of actions, week by week.

And the United States itself?

Sachs: And the United States should do the one thing within its power: cut off military and financial aid, and stop serving as Israel's shield. Regimes that do terrible things can stop when they no longer have the backing to do them. The risk of continuing is not abstract. Israel is at greater risk now than at any time in its history, and so is the United States, because the ultimate danger here is nuclear war, and every refusal to weigh the other side's security pushes the world closer to it.