On 8 November last year, Iran’s supreme leader sent a Tweet. It read as follows: This barbaric, wolflike & infanticidal regime of #Israel which spares no crime has no cure but to be annihilated. 7/23/14 #HandsOffAlAqsa.
There could be no doubt over the translation. Like most of the Tweets from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s account, it was written in English, a fact that precluded the squabbles of a decade ago. Then, Iran’s defenders had argued that former president Mahmoud Ahmadinjad’s threat to “wipe Israel off the map” was a mistranslation. (A case not made by Iranian officials themselves, incidentally.)
The November Tweet was brought up by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week in Washington DC. Addressing U.S. Congress, Netanyahu cited it as evidence that Iran threatens “the survival of my country and the future of my people”. He expressed astonishment that such a blood-curling message could be delivered via social media. Netanyahu said the U.S. should also be worried; it was branded the “Great Satan” by Iranians, he said, who shouted “death to America”.
Yet the November Tweet was not a standalone message. The following day, Khamenei’s Twitter feed had detailed exactly how Israel should be annihilated. “Of course, the elimination of Israel does not mean the massacre of the Jewish people in this region,” it explained. The Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank must continue their armed struggle, but there should be no grand military coalition against Israel. Instead, a referendum should bring a new government to power in Palestine. After that, “migrated Jews” might even be permitted to stay. Another Tweet a few days later said that using “nukes” was an “unforgivable sin”.
As was probably Iran’s intention, the Tweets divided opinion. Clearly, it was not unreasonable for Israel to take a threat of “annihilation” seriously. This is particularly true in respect of a leader who openly supports Hezbollah and Hamas and who, some analysts argue, already has a nuclear weapons capability. For Netanyahu, further Jewish migration to Israel is so vital as to be worth offending the French. The mere specter of Iranian warheads could do much to deter European Jews from aliyah, threatening his country’s demographic future.
Nor, however, was it unreasonable to see Khamenei’s choice of verb as a sort of unpleasant joke—as little more than rhetorical grandstanding for an international audience. This attitude implies the existence of a kind of Believability Scale. By this logic, some countries—Iran, North Korea—are so far down the ranking that even their most venomous statements are to be shrugged off.
From this perspective, the United States should take Iran’s “annihilation” threat no more seriously than North Korea’s threats to “annihilate” the U.S. this week. On March 2, a piece in North Korea’s official KCNA news agency, which quoted the country’s general staff, said that the Korean peninsula is “again inching close to the brink of war” and that the North “will further bolster up weapons to annihilate the enemies”, with the U.S. and South Korea foremost among them.
This threat came from a state that is proven to have nuclear weapons, and that has launched sneak military attacks on South Korea within the past five years. A day earlier the North had fired two missiles into the sea as a response to annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises in the area. In the past, KCNA even threatened to launch nuclear missiles at the U.S. mainland. Yet the debate in Washington about North Korea is less contentious, less militarized, and less frequent than that surrounding Iran. The North sits even lower on the Believability Scale than does the Islamic Republic, at least in U.S. eyes.
Sitting at the opposite end of the spectrum is China. The words of Chinese officials are scrutinized for any shade of hostile intent or shifting strategic posture, although usually without success. An exception came last week. Qu Xing, the Chinese ambassador to Belgium, said the West should “take the real security concerns of Russia into consideration”. These comments related to the war in Ukraine and, although carefully expressed by Beijing’s man in Brussels, generated global headlines along the lines of “Top Chinese diplomat backs Putin”.
Calibrating exactly where a nation sits on the Believability Scale has become pivotal to peace and war. Clearly, Israel’s government locates Iran at a different point on the scale than does the current U.S. administration. Netanyahu is attempting to persuade his allies to attach more weight to Iran’s words. He is not proposing a general rule that countries that threaten to “annihilate” others—North Korea, for instance—be treated with equal gravity. He is arguing that one country’s threats be taken more seriously than they currently are.
Saddam Hussein’s position on the Believability Scale defined the attitude of NATO members towards the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Those who situated Saddam towards the bottom end of the spectrum, with the U.S. and its intelligence agencies near the top, were willing to join President George W Bush’s coalition. Those who placed Washington and Baghdad closer to the middle of the scale—at least when it came to the disposal or otherwise of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction—refused to participate.
In an age of big data, search algorithms, ministerial press briefings, and web crawlers, it may even be possible to render the Believability Scale as more than just a notional concept. Verifying the truth of official claims against actual events would provide a benchmark for the general accuracy of official statements. Iran’s ministries, for instance, have a tendency to announce trade deals that never materialize. KCNA frequently reports foreigners showering praise on its national leader Kim Jong Un. Such instances can be checked and logged.
At the moment, our only yardstick is the tale of the Boy Who Cried Wolf; a vague idea of how often a state’s bark is worse than its bite. Analysts argue over the true meaning of words through the prisms of their own biases. A more rigorous approach to official reliability might go some way to settling nerves. Identifying whether governments mean what they say is an exercise quite distinct from understanding whether they are capable of delivering on their threats. In Iran’s case, it could be that neither its threats nor its nuclear promises are credible, and policy should be undertaken with that in mind.
James Brazier is a writer, researcher, and analyst. He was previously Head of Political Risk at IHS, editor at Intelligence Research, and a parliamentary defence researcher for the UK’s Conservative party during the 2003 Iraq War. He is currently researching a book for the peace activist Vijay Mehta.
a global affairs media network
States Who Cry Wolf
March 6, 2015
On 8 November last year, Iran’s supreme leader sent a Tweet. It read as follows: This barbaric, wolflike & infanticidal regime of #Israel which spares no crime has no cure but to be annihilated. 7/23/14 #HandsOffAlAqsa.
There could be no doubt over the translation. Like most of the Tweets from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s account, it was written in English, a fact that precluded the squabbles of a decade ago. Then, Iran’s defenders had argued that former president Mahmoud Ahmadinjad’s threat to “wipe Israel off the map” was a mistranslation. (A case not made by Iranian officials themselves, incidentally.)
The November Tweet was brought up by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week in Washington DC. Addressing U.S. Congress, Netanyahu cited it as evidence that Iran threatens “the survival of my country and the future of my people”. He expressed astonishment that such a blood-curling message could be delivered via social media. Netanyahu said the U.S. should also be worried; it was branded the “Great Satan” by Iranians, he said, who shouted “death to America”.
Yet the November Tweet was not a standalone message. The following day, Khamenei’s Twitter feed had detailed exactly how Israel should be annihilated. “Of course, the elimination of Israel does not mean the massacre of the Jewish people in this region,” it explained. The Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank must continue their armed struggle, but there should be no grand military coalition against Israel. Instead, a referendum should bring a new government to power in Palestine. After that, “migrated Jews” might even be permitted to stay. Another Tweet a few days later said that using “nukes” was an “unforgivable sin”.
As was probably Iran’s intention, the Tweets divided opinion. Clearly, it was not unreasonable for Israel to take a threat of “annihilation” seriously. This is particularly true in respect of a leader who openly supports Hezbollah and Hamas and who, some analysts argue, already has a nuclear weapons capability. For Netanyahu, further Jewish migration to Israel is so vital as to be worth offending the French. The mere specter of Iranian warheads could do much to deter European Jews from aliyah, threatening his country’s demographic future.
Nor, however, was it unreasonable to see Khamenei’s choice of verb as a sort of unpleasant joke—as little more than rhetorical grandstanding for an international audience. This attitude implies the existence of a kind of Believability Scale. By this logic, some countries—Iran, North Korea—are so far down the ranking that even their most venomous statements are to be shrugged off.
From this perspective, the United States should take Iran’s “annihilation” threat no more seriously than North Korea’s threats to “annihilate” the U.S. this week. On March 2, a piece in North Korea’s official KCNA news agency, which quoted the country’s general staff, said that the Korean peninsula is “again inching close to the brink of war” and that the North “will further bolster up weapons to annihilate the enemies”, with the U.S. and South Korea foremost among them.
This threat came from a state that is proven to have nuclear weapons, and that has launched sneak military attacks on South Korea within the past five years. A day earlier the North had fired two missiles into the sea as a response to annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises in the area. In the past, KCNA even threatened to launch nuclear missiles at the U.S. mainland. Yet the debate in Washington about North Korea is less contentious, less militarized, and less frequent than that surrounding Iran. The North sits even lower on the Believability Scale than does the Islamic Republic, at least in U.S. eyes.
Sitting at the opposite end of the spectrum is China. The words of Chinese officials are scrutinized for any shade of hostile intent or shifting strategic posture, although usually without success. An exception came last week. Qu Xing, the Chinese ambassador to Belgium, said the West should “take the real security concerns of Russia into consideration”. These comments related to the war in Ukraine and, although carefully expressed by Beijing’s man in Brussels, generated global headlines along the lines of “Top Chinese diplomat backs Putin”.
Calibrating exactly where a nation sits on the Believability Scale has become pivotal to peace and war. Clearly, Israel’s government locates Iran at a different point on the scale than does the current U.S. administration. Netanyahu is attempting to persuade his allies to attach more weight to Iran’s words. He is not proposing a general rule that countries that threaten to “annihilate” others—North Korea, for instance—be treated with equal gravity. He is arguing that one country’s threats be taken more seriously than they currently are.
Saddam Hussein’s position on the Believability Scale defined the attitude of NATO members towards the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Those who situated Saddam towards the bottom end of the spectrum, with the U.S. and its intelligence agencies near the top, were willing to join President George W Bush’s coalition. Those who placed Washington and Baghdad closer to the middle of the scale—at least when it came to the disposal or otherwise of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction—refused to participate.
In an age of big data, search algorithms, ministerial press briefings, and web crawlers, it may even be possible to render the Believability Scale as more than just a notional concept. Verifying the truth of official claims against actual events would provide a benchmark for the general accuracy of official statements. Iran’s ministries, for instance, have a tendency to announce trade deals that never materialize. KCNA frequently reports foreigners showering praise on its national leader Kim Jong Un. Such instances can be checked and logged.
At the moment, our only yardstick is the tale of the Boy Who Cried Wolf; a vague idea of how often a state’s bark is worse than its bite. Analysts argue over the true meaning of words through the prisms of their own biases. A more rigorous approach to official reliability might go some way to settling nerves. Identifying whether governments mean what they say is an exercise quite distinct from understanding whether they are capable of delivering on their threats. In Iran’s case, it could be that neither its threats nor its nuclear promises are credible, and policy should be undertaken with that in mind.
James Brazier is a writer, researcher, and analyst. He was previously Head of Political Risk at IHS, editor at Intelligence Research, and a parliamentary defence researcher for the UK’s Conservative party during the 2003 Iraq War. He is currently researching a book for the peace activist Vijay Mehta.
