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[Report by Andras Szigetvari: "Threats of War Coming From Lecture Hall"]

Vienna - The most remarkable statement of the evening was made somewhat incidentally. Israeli historian Benny Morris presented a gloomy scenario, saying that the sanctions against Iran had failed and that Tehran was not even deterred by the Israeli nuclear arsenal. As a result, there was only one option left: Israel had to launch a preemptive strike against the Iranian nuclear programme. "Using conventional weapons. And if that does not suffice, unconventional ones." In other words, it would be a preemptive nuclear strike. "Many innocent people would die," Morris said. But that would still preferable to a nuclear holocaust in Israel.

On Saturday [ 3 April], Morris was one of the speakers to open the two-day conference entitled The Iranian Threat held in Vienna's university. The conference organized in a lecture hall by the "Stop the Bomb" platform was not undisputed. Critics have called it an anti-Iran campaign.

It started with considerable turmoil, because a journalist of the Iranian news agency Irna was refused admittance. The organizers gave as reason for the restriction of the freedom of the press that the news agency was a state-run institution and, therefore, part of the criminal regime. In addition, it was necessary to protect the Iranians in exile participating in the conference. However, a video recording of the conference would be made and published on the Internet.

Sitting together with Morris on the rostrum were Yossi Melman of the [Israeli] daily Haaretz, Paulo Casaca, Social Democratic Member of the European Parliament, and Patrick Clawson of the Washington-based Institute for Near East Policy.

No Sympathy

They were all agreed that Iran was striving to have nuclear weapons and that that had to be prevented. Clawson argued that "irrespective of whether we find this ridiculous or not, the Iranian leadership is, indeed, convinced that it is able to destroy the West." The regime in Tehran was propelled by a religious and a revolutionary (Marxist) agenda. Since the Islamic revolution of 1979, Iran had pursued a terrorist programme. It targeted political opponents at home and, at the moment, Israel and the US troops in Iraq abroad. Melman than outlined the history of the Iranian nuclear programme.

During the reign of the shah already, Iran had tried to develop a military nuclear programme. After the Islamic revolution, the project was put on hold, but reactivated in the late 1980s. One reason was that Iran felt let down during the war against Iraq. "Iraq used chemical weapons, which is banned. Yet no one in the world expressed any sympathy for Tehran," Melman pointed out. Criticism was voiced with regard to the business deals of OMV with Tehran and the policy of "appeasement" [previous word published in English] pursued by the Europeans.

Morris then argued that even a US security guarantee for Israel would not dissuade Iran from using its nuclear weapons. A US counterstrike following an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel was not realistic: "Israel would already be destroyed, so what would be the purpose of a second strike? Would Obama or Clinton really press the button?" But an Iranian bomb would be fateful, even without it ever being used. No Arab state would dare to make peace with Israel then.

Source: Der Standard website, Vienna, in German 5 May 08