Dennis Ross on Iran: decoding the Zionist-speak

Dennis Ross, a member of the pro-Israeli front Washington Institute for Near East Policy, had written an article on nuclear negotiations with Iran.

Even though the piece is a bit dated, it is still relevant in light of the fact that  the former representative of the Clinton Administration to the Palestinian-Israeli talks, is reportedly a foreign policy advisor to Obama and potential future Secretary of State. It is also interesting as an example of Zionist-speak that can be deconstructed to show its true meaning.

In this article, Ross agrees that preconditions on talks with Iran should be dropped since the current policy has failed to stop Iran's nuclear program and direct negotiations are likely to happen anyway, if only as a pretense to lay the groundwork for the use of force:

Either Clinton or Obama will likely try negotiations as a primary strategy in order to see if there is a way through incentives and disincentives to stop the Iranian nuclear program. Even McCain knows that there is no way he can employ force to set back the Iranian nuclear program without showing the American public (and the world) that he genuinely tried direct negotiations to resolve the issue first.

But he calls for additional sanctions --supposedly as a form of leverage over Iran during the negotiations process -- to get Iran to acquiesce to Ross' desired outcome of any such negotiations:

Iran must see what it can gain from the talks (civil nuclear power, economic benefits, security assurances, and regional acceptance) but also what it must give up (nuclear weapons, the use of terror and subversion, material support for the Hezbollah and the Hamas militias, and opposition to peace with Israel) in order to get it. If there is no pressure, Iran will read negotiations as acquiescence.Laying extensive groundwork for the almost inevitable negotiations that lay ahead with Iran may not guarantee success, particularly if Iran is determined to have nuclear weapons.

And this is where we get to the heart of the Zionist-speak.

What's Zionist-speak? Here's an example: when they demand the recognition of the "Right of Israel to Exist as a Jewish State" -- what they really mean is the right of Israel to ethnically-cleanse and suppress Palestinians in order for a self-identified ethnic minority to maintain dominance over a majority through force of arms. But "Right to Ethnically Cleanse" is not good PR, so instead they spin it as a "Right to Exist".

Similarly, one can spot the Zionist-speak in Ross' proscriptions: when he says that Iran must give up "nuclear weapons" he means that Iran has to give up enrichment. "Civilian nuclear power" means that Iran has to import uranium. The "use of terror and subversion" and "support for Hamas and Hezbollah" means that Iran has to accept Israeli regional domination.

So in short, once you cut through the Zionist-speak, this is what Dennis Ross is saying:

We have to at least make a pretense of talking to Iran, in order to at least make going to war more palatable with public opinion. These negotiations must be accompanied by greater economic pressure on Iran through sanctions, in order to force Iran to give up its enrichment program and accept Israeli regional domination. If the Iranians do not buckle, we can then claim that they have proven to want nuclear weapons, and then we can proceed with attacking Iran.

In short, Dennis Ross is suggesting the continuation of essentially the same policy as the Bush administration, whose aims are exactly what the Israelis desire: a cowed and subjugated Iran that accepts Israeli regional domination and lacking independent nuclear fuel source, or a US war on Iran. And notice how none of this actually has anything to do with whether Iran actually has a nuclear weapons program or not -- which again proves that that's just a pretext for Israel.