Peace

by Jeff Nesbit

  “I am here to tell you that the United States will build the infrastructure for that new Palestinian homeland, and that we will guarantee its security,” he said. “We will make sure that every refugee, in every camp in the region, is given an opportunity to come home at last from exile.

  “I am here to tell you that I now believe that Jerusalem can be partitioned fairly, in such a way that Jews and Muslims alike can worship.

  “I am here to tell you that, in return for your vow to end your nuclear weapons program, the United States and Russia will build whatever you ask to fulfill your energy needs—including whatever you need to operate a civilian nuclear program.

  “And, finally, I am here to tell you that the United States will personally assure your own national security—and your economic prosperity. We will lift all sanctions immediately.”

  “And in return?” Shahidi asked.

  Camara had considered raising the issue of releasing both Razavi and student and opposition leaders like Majid Sanjani, who’d been so instrumental in getting both parties to this table. But that would have to wait for another time and place as the peace talks between the U.S. and Iran progressed.

  “You must publicly and permanently recognize Israel’s right to exist,” Camara said. “Beyond the end of your nuclear weapons program, you must agree to submit to regular inspection of your civilian nuclear facilities. But—and this is more important than all the others—you must permanently end your support of all proxies at Israel’s borders. That includes Hezbollah, Hamas, and Syria.”

  “So, is that all?” Shahidi asked, his face still an impassive mask.

  “Yes, that’s all,” Camara said, smiling for the first time since he’d arrived in Iran.

  “Then I will take your proposed terms of a peace agreement under advisement and consult with the Guardian Council,” Shahidi said, nodding once toward the American president. Iran’s Supreme Leader rose to leave the negotiating table.

  DJ marveled that Shahidi had never once presented his own opinions. And, yet, he’d achieved what he’d hoped for—simply by waiting patiently. For the second time, in as many days, DJ was suitably impressed.

  EPILOGUE

  BAQA’A REFUGEE CAMP

  JORDAN

  One person can do the impossible.

  The phrase had been repeated so often in the past twenty-four hours, the television commentators and journalists—still struggling to grasp the meaning of the tense, historic meetings in both Pyongyang and Tehran—had begun to state it simply as a fact.

  The young American president had, in fact, done the impossible, with half the planet watching. He’d formally ended a Korean War that should have ended in 1953 but hadn’t. A peace treaty between North Korea and the United States was, even now, being drafted and circulated to both nations and the U.N. Security Council.

  It was long overdue, the world press had concluded. The outlines of a peace between North Korea and the United States had been in place for a generation. Several past American presidents had come close to a nearly identical peace agreement but had fallen just short.

  It was curious. The press had moved to the nearly unanimous belief that peace on the Korean Peninsula was something that had been largely inevitable. All it had taken, they’d concluded, was a willingness to communicate.

  History remembered those who crossed the finish line, the commentators said—not those who came close.

  The United States had already begun to draw up plans to withdraw its troops from the Korean Peninsula, as promised. Russia and China were making plans to visit the nuclear test facility in the mountains of North Korea.

  The KPA leadership was, grudgingly, making plans to begin the process of dismantling its nuclear arsenal. It had refused, however, to even acknowledge the presence of its prison camps, or consider any inspection of facilities beyond its civilian and military nuclear sites. North Korea’s conventional national security measures were its own business—not the world’s.

  The outlines of a second peace treaty—infinitely more difficult to imagine—was also beginning to circulate at the UN and elsewhere. Like the Korean peace, this plan was based on the outlines of an agreement that had first been proposed more than a generation ago.

  The White House had framed the proposed peace accord between Iran and Israel—based loosely on key parts of the original Palestinian homeland plan before the United Nations in 1947 at the close of the Second World War, like the inclusion of Beersheba in a new Arab state—as a plan that could unite both Shi’a and Sunni factions that controlled various nations.

  It would not appease stateless terror groups such as Al Qaeda. But, for nations and leaders who needed to operate under the rule of law, it was a very good place to begin.

  The United States had already opened discussions with leaders in both Jordan and Egypt. Reactions in both were muted but favorable. Because both nations would surround, and largely enforce, a new Palestinian homeland in what was now southern Israel, their support was critical. It was, they’d acknowledged, a radical plan—but the only sort of plan that could ever succeed.

  That 1947 plan would have created a real Palestinian homeland alongside the new state of Israel. What was needed now was a place that could attract Palestinian refugees spread across a handful of nations surrounding Israel, the United States argued.

  As part of the proposed peace between Iran and Israel, the White House had also included a new plan to permanently partition Jerusalem that would grant both Jews and Muslims the opportunity to worship at sites that included the Dome of the Rock and the true location of the First and Second Jewish Temples.

  It was based on the conclusive scientific evidence—now beginning to circulate widely outside Israel—that the First and Second Temples of Israel had never been located on what was now the holy Dome of the Rock. That had come as quite a shock to many.

  What was worse—for Jews—was the news that the Western Wall was most likely a wall remaining from the Roman temple of Jupiter built by Hadrian, not from the original Jewish Temple, as many believed.

  Israel and Iran had both agreed to a temporary ceasefire while the proposed peace agreement began to circulate. No one, of course, could predict how long the ceasefire would last, or whether something new might cause hostilities to start again. But it was a beginning. There was much work to be done. The Eilat-Ashkelon oil pipeline—once a fifty-fifty joint venture between Iran and Israel—was now back on the table for discussion. While the peace talks were underway, Israel had shelved plans to retaliate against Tehran with nuclear weapons.

  Oil prices had begun to fall on the news that hostilities had ended in the Persian Gulf. The world economy had begun to stabilize. Russia was still engaged north of Iran, near the Baku pipeline, but most chose to focus on the end of the immediate conflict in the Strait of Hormuz as oil traffic was set to begin again.

  Elizabeth Thompson had to smile. There was no real TV in Baqa’a—just an Internet connection to YouTube that served as the refugee camp’s television station—but the outdoor café she stopped at every morning for her first cup of coffee had become the center of the camp.

  Because it was one of the few establishments in the camp with an Internet connection—which the proprietor had paid for in order to get access to international soccer matches—the people of the camp had descended on his café in the past two days to watch the worldwide broadcasts that had been available via both Internet and regular TV.

  Every chair and table in the café had been overflowing for the past two days. No one wanted to return to their homes, for fear of missing some new development. Elizabeth, too, had remained close to the café to keep track of the world events. It was compelling stuff—and had a direct bearing on her life’s work at the Palestinian refugee camps.

  Now, with the news that perhaps there might be a new Palestinian homeland just across the Jordanian border in southern Israel, Elizabeth had seen real joy on people’s faces for the first time in all the years World Without
Borders had been ministering in the refugee camps at Baqa’a and elsewhere.

  A friend at a nearby table in the café—a young man she’d grown to know over the years who was always on the edge of the knife, torn between radicalism and the hope for a better life for his new family—turned to her.

  “Is it real, Dr. Thompson?” he asked. “Will there be a real homeland for my people soon?”

  “I hope so,” she answered truthfully.

  “So Israel will let us live in peace and create a home?” he asked.

  “For you, for your family, I will believe,” she answered. “With God, all things are possible. All conflicts end, one way or another.”

  “So let us hope that ours has ended, and that we will soon see our homeland,” the man said, smiling. “For my family and for my people.”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said. “We can always hope.”

  THE MIDDLE EAST

  Q & A WITH JEFF NESBIT

  Q1—IS CAMP 16 REAL?

  A. While North Korea denies its existence, it is quite real. By all public accounts, Camp 16 is the secret, heavily fortified prison compound in the northern mountains of North Korea where the military sends exiled government officials, their family members, and others it considers to be “enemies of the state.” Camp 16 is located near two nuclear testing sites and facilities, and there have been reports that prisoners at Camp 16 have been forced to take part against their will in nuclear tests. Publicly available satellite images clearly show the outlines of Camp 16, including structures that serve as barracks. The Washington Post even published an interactive map showing the location of North Korea’s secret prison camps, based on satellite pictures and unclassified intelligence reports.

  Q2—IS A FISSION-FUSION-FISSION DOOMSDAY BOMB—LIKE THE ONE IN THE NOVEL BUILT BY NORTH KOREA—REALLY POSSIBLE?

  A. Unfortunately, it is possible. Physicist Leo Szilard once described the possibility of a cobalt-laced nuclear bomb that could send highly radioactive cobalt-60 airborne particles to earth as a “doomsday device,” because it was theoretically capable of wiping out life on earth. A fission-fusion bomb containing cobalt would release a large amount of cobalt-60 into the environment—creating long-lasting radioactive fallout that would have a devastating impact on life on the planet. Such a device could theoretically be devised as the ultimate bluff, or threat, in a last-stand political standoff. The United States and the former Soviet Union abandoned research on such a nuclear doomsday device in the 1950s, because such a weapon served no useful military purpose.

  Q3—IS IRAN, IN FACT, BUILDING SECRET URANIUM-ENRICHMENT FACILITIES INSIDE REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS’ COMPOUNDS THROUGHOUT IRAN?

  A. Yes, in at least one instance—and, perhaps, in several other locations. As I was developing PEACE, I wrote about an unmanned U.S. drone equipped with a quantum cascade laser array system that detected uranium hexafluoride levels in the atmosphere above a previously unidentified Revolutionary Guards’ weapons compound, triggering Israel’s decision to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. Two months after I’d written these chapters—which were based on reports in the open literature of decisions by the IRGC to consolidate all nuclear weapons testing and research at their closely guarded complexes—world leaders announced that, in fact, Iran had secretly built uranium-enrichment facilities inside an IRGC compound at Qom. The speculation is that Iran has built—and hidden—similar uranium-enrichment facilities in other IRGC locations.

  Q4—IS IT TRUE THAT THE FIRST AND SECOND TEMPLES IN JERUSALEM WERE NOT, IN FACT, EVER BUILT ABOVE THE ROCK FORMATION THAT’S IN THE DOME OF THE ROCK?

  A. Despite nearly two thousand years of tradition, it now does appear as if the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem were never built on or around the Dome of the Rock—one of the most holy shrines in Islam. Both ancient Jewish Temples were almost certainly built south of the Dome of the Rock, in an area that is much closer to the original city of David in antiquity and is located in a section without any current structures. What’s more, it’s also likely that the Western Wall (previously known as the Wailing Wall), revered by Jews worldwide as the last remnant of the old Jewish Temples, was never part of the ancient Temples but was more likely part of the replica of the Roman temple of Jupiter built on the Temple Mount after the destruction of the Second Jewish Temple. A prominent Israeli architect, Tuvia Sagiv, has conducted his own private research over the years and has built a highly credible scientific case behind the premise that the First and Second Jewish Temples were not built in the area under the Dome of the Rock. A fourth-century commentary by Jerome would also seem to indicate that a statue of Hadrian within the temple of Jupiter complex in Jerusalem may have been built precisely over the Holy of Holies. “So when you see standing in the holy place the abomination that causes desolation: or the statue of the mounted Hadrian, which stands to this very day on the site of the Holy of Holies” (Jerome, Commentaries on Isaiah 2.8; Matthew 24.15). Based on this commentary and another temple of Jupiter found in Lebanon that has similar dimensions, it is highly plausible that the Holy of Holies was directly below the Roman emperor’s equestrian statue—in an area that is now the El Kas fountain.

  Q5—WOULD THE F-117 STEALTH FIGHTER, IN FACT, BE A “SILVER BULLET” FOR ISRAEL IF IT CHOSE TO ATTACK IRAN IN AN EFFORT TO DISABLE ITS NUCLEAR WEAPONS CAPABILITIES?

  A. The F-117—the world’s first Stealth attack fighter—was unceremoniously retired to the Tonopah airfield in Nevada in 2009. The Bandits who fly the aircraft have said publicly that the aircraft is still more than capable of carrying out Stealth missions. The newer F-22 Raptors, which also use Stealth technology, have largely replaced the F-117’s mission capabilities, rendering the F-117s obsolete. But the F-117 Stealth attack fighters have successfully patrolled skies in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East for the past quarter of a century—and could, conceivably, do so again. Retired U.S. military officials have said publicly that they’re glad the F-117s have been mothballed in a place where they could be brought back, if needed. The F-117—a single-seat aircraft with a black, angular shape and radar-evading technology—was designed to fly into heavily defended areas and drop payloads with surgical precision. Not a single F-117 Stealth fighter was hit during Desert Storm in Iraq in 1991. The U.S. has permanently pledged to maintain Israel’s air superiority in the Middle East, and Israeli defense analysts have begun to argue that the F-117 would be an adequate temporary solution for that pledge until export versions of the F-22 and F-35 are made available to Israel, Japan, and other U.S. allies. Israel currently does not have the Stealth attack technology to defeat Iran’s air-defense systems in one continuous mission. The F-117 (and successors) could, possibly, change that equation.

  Q6—DOES IRAN POSSESS AN ATTACK FIGHTER COMPARABLE TO THE MODIFIED F-15S ANDF-16S IN THE ISRAELI AIR FORCE, AND WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR IRAN’S ABILITY AS A REGIONAL MILITARY POWER?

  A. There have been recent, published reports that China has offered to sell export versions of its powerful, new J-10 aircraft to Iran. Military analysts believe the J-10 is comparable to the American-built F-15s and F-16s, which make up the bulk of the IAF arsenal. If the reports are true, it means that Iran would have the ability to strike, or retaliate against, Israel with this aircraft. In short, it would remove the qualitative edge that Israel has always possessed related to air power in the region. The irony, of course, is that China likely developed the J-10 with considerable technology assistance from the defunct Israeli Lavi project, which itself was based on the American-built F-16 fighter.

  Q7—WOULD ISRAEL REALLY CONSIDER THE USE OF TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS TO DESTROY IRAN’S NUCLEAR WEAPONS PLANTS BUNKERED INSIDE IRAN’S REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS’ COMPOUNDS?

  A. According to published reports in The Times of London and elsewhere, Israel has drawn up plans to use tactical nuclear weapons to destroy Iran’s uranium-enrichment facilities. While Israel has never commented on the extent of its nuclear weapons capabilities, it is widely known to possess multiple platforms to
deliver nuclear weapons—including precision, targeted, tactical nuclear weapons from attack aircraft. Citing Israeli military sources, for instance, The Times reported that IAF squadrons have developed the ability to deliver low-yield nuclear “bunker-busting” payloads. Conventional, laser-guided bombs would create a path, and tactical nuclear bombs would follow in behind and explode deep underground, minimizing the radioactive fallout. The question is whether IAF aircraft carrying such payloads could successfully navigate through Iran’s air-defense system. According to The Times, Israel has drawn up such secret plans only in the event that it decided to act unilaterally—without U.S. assistance—and after ruling out a conventional attack as insufficient to complete the mission. U.S. authorities have told the Israeli government on several occasions that it would never sanction the use of tactical nuclear weapons against IRGC nuclear facilities, according to published reports.

  Q8—HAS THE U.S. MILITARY, IN FACT, DEVELOPED A WEAPON THAT CAN KNOCK OUT THE GUIDANCE SYSTEMS ON ANTI-SHIP CRUISE MISSILES LIKE THE SUNBURN?

  A. While there is nothing in the open literature to confirm that such a capability exists, the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons laboratories began research 20 years ago on an aerial bomb that could generate high-power microwaves over a wide area, according to reports of congressional testimony in American newspapers. At the time, the research was focused on the ability to destroy electronic guidance equipment controlling ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles in the former Soviet Union. So, the possibility exists that research has advanced to the point where such technology can be used to counter anti-ship cruise missiles in flight.

  Q9—IS THE TYPE OF TERRORIST ATTACK WITH DIRTY CESIUM-137 BOMBS IN URBAN CITIES IN THE UNITED STATES POSSIBLE?

  A. In short, yes, it is possible. Security experts have been concerned for years that terrorist organizations might consider the use of such dirty bombs in urban settings in the United States and elsewhere. In fact, some published reports have quoted Hezbollah leaders openly declaring their intention to carry out such attacks. A Hezbollah leader in Iran once said that they have thousands of volunteers in place and that they were prepared to launch “Judgment Day” scale attacks around the globe if provoked. In addition, according to published newspaper reports, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has visited Iran more than a half-dozen times in the past decade to meet with Iran’s leadership, and Iran’s president has likewise visited Caracas on several occasions. Economic ties between Venezuela and Iran are deep, and extensive. In 2008 Turkey stopped an Iranian shipment on its way to Venezuela with nearly two dozen containers labeled as “tractor parts”—but which, in fact, contained equipment designed to set up an explosives lab, according to published wire service reports.