Trita Parsi Rebuts Arguments of the Inevitability of an Israeli Strike on Iran

Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic ignited a vigorous debate in the media about the likelihood of an Israeli strike on Iran with his recent article "The Point of No Return."  Dr. Trita Parsi, President of the National Iranian American Council and a Ploughshares grantee, took to the pages of Salon to rebut Goldberg's assessment that an Israeli strike on Iran is inevitable.

Parsi takes on Goldberg for what he believes is a failure to take apart “The most critical assumption that Israeli officials have presented publicly for the past 18 years -- long before the firebrand Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stepped on the scene -- is that the Iranian government is irrational and that Iran constitutes an existential threat to Israel.”

“…But if judged by its actions rather than its rhetoric, a very different image emerges -- one that shows an astute Israeli appreciation for the complexity of Iran's security calculations and decision-making processes, and a recognition that conventional arguments are insufficient to convince Washington to view Iran from an Israeli lens.”

Parsi, currently a Woodrow Wilson Scholar, argues that Goldberg’s article serves to create a false narrative “that claims that the two failed meetings held between the U.S. and Iran last October constitute an exhaustion of diplomacy, that deems the Obama administration’s crippling, indiscriminate sanctions on Iran a failure only weeks after they've been imposed, and that then leaves only one option remaining on the table: an American or Israeli military strike.”