As things stand, Iran has amassed both the technical knowhow and the materials required to make a nuclear weapon. Second, the Israelis and the Americans have failed to deprive Iran of these resources in their latest salvo. In fact the airstrikes against Iran from June 13 cast Tehran as the victim of foreign aggression and increased the premium on its option to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) without significant international censure.
…
While Tehran’s refusal to cooperate with the IAEA is suggestive, it hasn’t explicitly articulated that it will pursue nuclear weapons. … But the presence of large quantities of HEU in the stockpile is intriguing. From a purely technical standpoint, the HEU can still be diverted for non-military applications…
… such as R&D for naval applications and downconversion to less enriched reactor fuel. But these are niche use cases. In fact while it’s possible to downconvert a stockpile of uranium enriched to 60% to that enriched to 19.75%, 5% or 3% without using centrifuges, it’s also possible to do this by mixing uranium enriched to 20% with natural or depleted feedstock.
If anything, the highly enriched uranium stockpile [which Iran went to some lengths to protect from American bombing], the technical knowhow in the country, the absence of a nuclear warhead per se, and the sympathy created by the bombing allow Tehran a perfect bargaining chip: to simultaneously be in a state of pre-breakout readiness while being able to claim in earnest that it is interested in nuclear energy for peace.
Russia began its full scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. On March 8, a poll conducted by independent survey organisations in Russia among a randomly selected cohort of 1,640 people reported around 46% supported the war, 13% supported it somewhat, 23% opposed it, and the rest were undecided or didn’t answer. But also by March 9, the Vladimir Putin government detained more than 13,000 anti-war protestors, with police brutally assaulting many of them and even persecuting some of their children.
In October 2023, Israel began its ongoing reprisal against Hamas by launching what quickly became the deadliest conflict in the history of Palestine. The Hindu reported on April 9 that surveys in Israel have found fewer than half of all Israelis support the Benjamin Netanyahu government’s military actions.
Both Russia’s and Israel’s wars have been asymmetric, protracted, and met with accusations of human-rights violations. They also highlight an issue with the instruments available for other countries to pressure them into drawing down.
Following Russia’s invasion, more than 4,000 scientists and science journalists in the country addressed a letter to Putin asking him to reconsider:
“Having unleashed the war, Russia has doomed itself to international isolation. … This means that we … will no longer be able to do our job in a normal way because conducting scientific research is unthinkable without cooperation and trust with colleagues from other countries. The isolation of Russia from the world means cultural and technological degradation of our country with a complete lack of positive prospects.”
Countries that don’t clearly and routinely demarcate their military and civilian enterprises — especially in research as well as in inchoate ‘sunrise’ sectors like spaceflight — are more liable to experience the consequences of their military aggression across both domains. Thus, Tel Aviv University has been criticised for helping develop defence technologies deployed by the IDF in Palestine and the Radzyner School of Law for helping develop legal justifications for Israel’s military excesses, so their international reputation is lower than that typically reserved for academic centres.
In another example, misplaced suspicions of an absence of demarcation prompted the US to impose an embargo on ISRO under the Missile Technology Control Regime in the 1980s when the organisation received a tranche of cryogenic engines from the Soviet Union. The action was perceived to be meritless and radicalised public opinion so much so that, as former ISRO chairman UR Rao wrote, “even voluntary organisations, private individuals and newspapers started expressing their outrage.”
The incident is recognised as an early impetus for Indian self-sufficiency in space technologies. While it’s behind us, industry leaders and policymakers have liked to cite the incident as an example of what India risks as long as it isn’t self-sufficient. Just as well, similar sanctions by foreign governments against the civilian populations of Israel or Russia could sow public resentment and this may either weaken domestic opposition to war — or it could lead to democratic dissent that forces the government to withdraw from the conflict.
But Putin is an absolutist in all but name and has responded to opposition to his foreign policies by curtailing civil rights and using physical violence. In Israel, as journalist Gidi Weitz has written, “It will soon be five years since the 11-0 court decision that allowed Netanyahu to be prime minister despite his criminal trial — and Netanyahu is closer than ever to overpowering the state that put him on trial.” If a state is no longer swayed by public opinion, no matter how overwhelming, and in fact threatens debilitating violence against dissidents, is it worth reconsidering what sanctioning non-combatants can be expected to achieve?
In mid-April I tried to argue that the answer is ‘yes’. But I’ve since changed my mind to ‘no’. The text that follows is my attempt to argue the ‘yes’, concluding with an explanation of what changed.
Shortly after Russia’s invasion, some science journals stopped accepting papers authored or co-authored by Russian scholars. One editor of a journal that instituted a temporary ban had said:
“Let me insist, the decision is not directed to Russian scientists … but to Russian institutions, which support (and are funded by) the Russian government. Besides, the Russian Academy of Science has not given any official message in support of the innocent victims nor against the violation of international law by the Russian government.”
The vast majority of scientific research in the world is funded by governments. Is this sufficient reason to censor research institutions in the event one of them goes to war?
The European Broadcasting Union said “the inclusion of a Russian entry in [Eurovision] would bring the competition into disrepute.” The Royal Opera House in London cancelled the summer season of the Bolshoi Ballet while all the major Hollywood studios suspended the release of their films in Russian cinemas. The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) suspended Russia’s ‘observer’ status and said it would cooperate with international sanctions against the country.
Similarly, Jhumpa Lahiri, Arundhati Roy, and many other authors have pledged to boycott Israeli cultural institutions while many scientists and social scientists have called for their peers to desist from collaborating with their counterparts in Israeli research institutes. Maldives said Israelis are banned from visiting the archipelago.
Israel has resisted almost all forms of intervention available to foreign states to tame its hand even as its aggression in West Asia scaled deplorable new heights (with considerable support from the US, of course). As a result, in 2005, Palestinian civil society organisations called upon their counterparts worldwide “to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel,” i.e. to declare their stance against institutions believed to be complicit in state violence and force a reckoning on their part, and to render reputational and/or economic damage to the state and force it to change policy.
Yet the question of defining complicity under an autocratic regime remains, as does the risk of further alienating these organisations’ natural allies within the country — e.g. pro-Palestine students and activists who already lack political power — and stinting academic collaboration.
Russia’s and Israel’s leaders are obviously aware of the contributions of various human enterprises, including culture, sports, and research, to the construction and maintenance of national identity and pride. As scholarly publishing commentator Joseph Esposito asked in 2022, “What is the meaning of academic freedom when the academy is itself put to work for the benefit of an imperial power…?” Yet it is an important detail because what a de facto total war response to these two unilateral aggressors achieves is unclear.
What changed?
As I wrote the post, I spoke to a bunch of people to understand the value of the boycott, divest, sanction (BDS) movement. Two of them made arguments I couldn’t ignore.
One, my friend R, said they couldn’t “dissociate the ethics from the value of these institutions”. They were right in a sense. In my foregoing arguments I was concerned about how BDS would affect the people that Netanyahu and Putin didn’t give two hoots about anyway but R indicated that it had to be that those people also had to speak up against Israel’s and Russia’s actions in Palestine and Ukraine. They couldn’t be in favour of their aggressor-governments’ actions and also enjoy the benefit of doubts as to their safety.
Another friend, S, who is also I think better informed in this matter, advocated for what they called “smart sanctions”, which helped me understand R’s conditionality argument better. Here’s what they said in full, shared with their permission:
We need smart sanctions. I am against fools who target, say, an Anna Netrebko or a David Shulman. In any case during apartheid, nobody boycotted Alan Paton, Joe Slovo or Nadine Gordimer. BDS will work — which is why Trump and Germany will make it a crime to advocate it. Starmer, too. Israel is petrified of it. But it has to be smart. One can’t say “oh, let’s boycott Amazon.”
Let’s boycott all direct Israeli products and institutions and apologists of genocide but not Israelis who oppose the genocide. Shulman’s and Netrebko’s cases are black and white. No one should sign agreements or MoUs with Israeli universities, but Shulman should not be boycotted even if he teaches at Bar Ilan or Hebrew University. I would not accept a speaking invite at an Israeli university today. But if Haaretz or +972 magazine run a seminar I would attend.
Let’s take a grey case. X isn’t vocally anti-genocide but not pro either. Is boycotting X okay? I would do some research before I decide. Of course the media can’t do the boycotting. The media can say ‘we will not run defences of genocide or racism’. But if the Israeli ambassador agrees to give an interview then the media would have to really put him through his paces, Karan Thapar-style.
“How would you decide in X’s case if they’re noncommittal down the middle?,” I asked.
I will probably avoid having anything to do with them.
“The Hindu recently did a data story on an independent survey in Israel finding around 60% of people were against its war in Palestine,” I said. “This government isn’t swayed by public opinion and those who oppose/disagree are met with police violence. My misgivings about BDS arose in this context.”
Yes, so smart boycotting is needed. BDS as a blunt instrument is pointless. Let’s use an analogy: the world should find a way to boycott Hindutva — but obviously not Hindus!
Featured image: At a protest against Israel’s Gaza blockade and an attack on a humanitarian flotilla in Melbourne, June 5, 2010. Credit: Takver/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA.
Paris Marx’s recent experience on the Canadaland podcast alerted me to the importance of an oft-misunderstood part of journalism in practice. When Paris Marx and his host Justin Ling were recording the podcast, Marx said something about Israel conducting a genocide in Gaza. After the show was recorded, the publisher of Canadaland, a fellow named Jesse Brown, edited that bit out. When Marx as well as Ling complained, Brown reinstated the comment by having Marx re-record it to attribute that claim to some specific sources. Now, following Marx’s newsletter and Ling’s statement about Brown’s actions, Brown has been saying on X that Marx’s initial comment, that many people have been saying Israel is conducting a genocide in Gaza, wasn’t specific enough and that it needed to have specific sources.
Different publications have different places where they draw the line on how much they’d like their content to be attributed. And frankly, there’s nothing wrong, unfair or unethical about this. As the commentary and narratives around Israel’s violence in West Asia have alerted us, the facts as we consider them are often not set in stone even when they have very clear definitions. We’re seeing in an obnoxious way (from our perspective) many people disputing the claim that Israel is conducting a genocide and contesting whether Israel’s actions can be constituted a genocide is a fact. Depending on the community to and for which you are being a journalist, it becomes okay for some things to be attributed to no one and just generally considered true, and for others not so much.
This is fundamentally because each one of us has a different level of access to all the relevant information as well as because the existence of facts other than those that we can experience through our senses (i.e. empirically) is controlled by some social determinants as well.
This whole Canadaland episode alerted me the people trying to repudiate the allegation that Israel is conducting a genocide — especially many who are journalists by vocation — by purporting to scrutinise the claims they are being presented with. Now, scrutiny in and of itself is a good thing; it’s one of the cornerstones of scepticism, especially a reasonable exercise of scepticism. But what they’re scrutinising also matters, and which is a subjective call. I use the word ‘subjective’ with deliberate intent. Scrutiny in journalism is a good thing (I’m treating Canadaland as a journalistic outlet here), yet it’s important to cultivate a good sense of what can and ought to be scrutinised versus a scrutiny of something that only suggests the scrutiniser is being obstinate or intends to waste time.
Many, if not all, journalists would have started off being told it’s important to be alert, to be aware of scrutinising all the claims they encounter. Many journalists also cultivate this sense over time, and the process by which they do so allows subjective considerations to seep in — and that is not in and of itself a bad thing. In fact it’s good. I have often come across editors who have predicted a particular story’s popularity where others only saw a dud based solely on their news sense. This is not a clinical scientific technique, it’s by all means a sense. Informing this sense are, among other things, the pulse of the people to whom you’re trying to appeal, the things they value, the things they used to value but don’t any more, and so forth. In other words this sense or pulse has an important socio-cultural component to it, and it is within this milieu that scrutiny happens.
Scrutinising something in and of itself is not always a virtue for this reason: in the process of scrutinising something, it’s possible for you to end up appealing to things that people don’t consider virtues or, worse, which they could interpret to mean you’re vouching for something they consider antithetical to their spirit as a people.
This Marx-Ling-Brown incident is illustrative to the extent that it spotlights the many journalists waking up to a barrage of statements, claims, and assertions both on and off the internet that Israel is conducting a genocide in Gaza. These claims are stinging them, cutting at the heart of something they value, something they hold close to their hearts as a community. So they’re responding by subjecting these claims to some tough scrutiny. Many of us have spent many years applying the same sort of tests to many, many other claims. For example, science journalists had to wade through a lot of bullshit before we could surmount the tide of climate denialism and climate pacifism to get to where we are today.
However, now we’re seeing these other people, including journalists, subjecting of all things the claim that Israel is conducting a genocide in Gaza to especial scrutiny. I think they’re waking up to the importance of scepticism and scrutiny through this particular news incident. Many of us woke up before, and many of us will wake up in future, through specific incidents that are close to us, that we know more keenly than most others will have a sort of very bad effect on society. These incidents are a sort of catalyst but they are also more than that — a kind of awakening.
You learn how to scrutinise things in journalism school, you understand the theory of it very quickly. It’s very simple. But in practice, it’s a different beast. They say you need to fact check every claim in a reporter’s copy. But over time, what you do is you draw the line somewhere and say, “Beyond this point, I’m not going to fact check this copy because the author is a very good reporter and my experience has been that they don’t make any statements or claims that don’t stand up to scrutiny beyond a particular level.” You develop and accrue these habits of journalism in practice because you have to. There are time constraints and mental bandwidth constraints, so you come up with some shortcuts. This is a good thing, but acknowledging this is also important and valuable rather than sweeping it under the rug and pretending you don’t do it.
If you want to be a good journalist, you have to cultivate for yourself the right conduits of awakening — and by “right” I mean those conduits that will awaken you to the pulses of the people and the beats you’re responsible for rather than serve some counterproductive purpose. These conduits should specifically do two things. One: they should awaken you as quickly and with as much clarity as possible to what it means to fact check or scrutinise something. It should teach you the purpose of it, why you do it. It should teach you what good scrutiny looks like and where the line is between scrutiny and nitpicking or pedantry. Two: it should alert you to, or alert others about, your personal sense of right and wrong, good and bad. That’s why it’s a virtue to cultivate as many conduits as possible, that is to have diverse interests.
When we’re interested in many things about the world, about the communities and the societies that we live in, we are over time awakened again and again. We learn how to subject different claims to different levels of scrutiny because that experience empirically teaches us what, when, and how to scrutinise and, importantly, why. Today we’re seeing many of these people wake up and subject the tests that we’ve administered to climate denialism, the anti-vaccine movement, and various other pseudo-scientific movements to the claim that Israel is conducting a genocide. When we look at them we see stubborn people who won’t admit simple details that are staring us in the face. This disparity arises because of how we construct our facts, the virtues to which we would like to appeal, and the position of the line beyond which we say no further attribution is necessary.
Obviously there is no such thing as the view from nowhere, and I’m clear that I’m almost always appealing to the people who are not right-wingers. So from where I’m standing it seems more often than not as if the tests being administered to, say, the anti-vaccine movement are more valid instances of their use than the tests being administered against claims that Israel is conducting a genocide.
Such divisions arise when we don’t cultivate ourselves as individuals, when we don’t nurture ourselves and the things that we’re interested in. Simply, it speaks to the importance of having diverse interests. It’s like traveling the world, meeting many people, experiencing many cultures. Such experiences teach us about multiculturalism and why it’s valuable, and they teach us the precise ways in which xenophobia, authoritarianism, and nationalism effect their baleful consequences. In a very similar way, diverse interests are good teachers about the moral landscape we all share and its normative standards that we co-define. They can quickly teach you about how far you stand from where you might really like to be.
In fact, it’s entirely possible for a right-winger to read this post and take away the idea that where they stand is right. As I said, there is no view from nowhere. Right and wrong depend on your vantage point, in most cases at least. I wanted to put these thoughts down because it seemed like people who may not have many interests or who have very limited interests are people also more likely to disengage from social issues earlier than others. Disengagement is the fundamental problem, the root cause. There are many reasons for why it arises in the first place, but getting rid of it is entirely possible, and importantly something we need to do. And a good way to do it is to cultivate many interests, to be interested in many problems, so that over time our experiences navigating those interests inevitably lead to a good sense of what we should and what we needn’t have to scrutinise. It will teach us why some particular points of an argument are ill-founded. And if we’re looking for it, it will give us a chance to fix that and even light the way.
