The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John J. Mearsheimer & Stephen M. Walt

Author:John J. Mearsheimer & Stephen M. Walt
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2007-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

JERUSALEM AND DAMASCUS AFTER SEPTEMBER 11

From the outset, Prime Minister Sharon and his lieutenants made it clear to the Bush administration that they viewed Syria as a dangerous threat to the United States as well as Israel.43 They did not push Washington to focus on Syria before March 2003, however, mainly because they were more concerned about Iran, and they were pushing for war against Iraq and did not want Washington to get distracted by other problems. As soon as Baghdad fell in mid-April 2003, Israeli leaders began urging the United States to concentrate on Damascus and to use its unmatched power to change the regime’s behavior, or perhaps the regime itself.44

Sharon laid out his demands in a high-profile interview on April 15, 2003. In YediothAhronoth, the prime minister said that Syrian President Assad “is dangerous. His judgment is impaired,” and he claimed that Assad had allowed Saddam to move military equipment into Syria just before the Iraq war began. Sharon called for the United States to put “very heavy” pressure on Syria, in order to force Assad to end its support for Hamas and Islamic Jihad, push Iran’s Revolutionary Guards out of the Bekka valley in Lebanon, cease cooperating with Iran, remove Hezbollah from the Israeli-Lebanese border and replace it with the Lebanese army, and eliminate Hezbollah’s missiles aimed at Israel.45 On seeing this remarkably bold request, one highranking Israeli diplomat warned that Sharon should adopt a lower profile with regard to offering his advice about relations between Damascus and Washington.46

But Sharon was not the only high-level Israeli official asking the Bush administration to get tough with Syria. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told Ma’ariv on April 14, “We have a long list of issues that we are thinking of demanding of the Syrians and it is appropriate that it should be done through the Americans.”47 Specifically, he wanted Syria to stop all assistance to Hamas and Islamic Jihad and to dismantle Hezbollah. Two weeks later, Sharon’s national security adviser, Ephraim Halevy, came to Washington and encouraged U.S. officials to take what the Forward reporter Ori Nir termed “decisive action” against Syria. In addition to warning about Syria’s weapons of mass destruction, Halevy reportedly described Assad as “irresponsible” and “brash.”48 Addressing a WINEP conference on May 3, he said Assad was “prone to bad influence” and warned that he “cannot be left to his old tricks.” Instead, Halevy emphasized, “There are many measures short of war that can be employed to draw the fangs of the young, arrogant, and inexperienced president of Syria.”49

With Saddam gone, Israel was trying to convince the Bush administration that Syria was at least as dangerous as Iraq, maybe even more so. The claim is absurd if one looks even briefly at Syria’s capabilities—it is, after all, a country with fewer than nineteen million people and a defense budget that is 1/300th that of the United States. Yet the Israeli strategist Yossi Alpher now warned that, from Israel’s perspective, “Syria could do a lot of damage, a lot more than Iraq.

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