Test your Jewishness: How hopeful are you about Iran?

In my weekend column, printed today, I was dealing with the cautious optimism now surrounding the handling of Iran. The chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Tom Lantos (Democrat, California), this week offered a Washingtonian version of a possible toughening of the sanctions on Iran. The talk of war, he said, is premature, and not smart. In any event, the American public does not support a military confrontation with Iran, and a great deal more can be achieved by economic means. He suggested that restrictions be imposed on companies that invest in Iran's energy industry.

In the meantime, while he and his colleagues were discussing the sanctions the United States could impose, members of the United Nations Security Council were trying politely to reach agreement on the type of international sanctions that would be applied against Iran. There were differences of opinion, but also unanimity on one thing: The time has come to send another message to the Tehran regime. "Make no mistake", Said Sean McCormack of the State Department today. "We are going to get a resolution and we're working on getting one as soon as we can."

But will it be soon enough and effective enough? A while ago, I wrote about the "It is 1938, Iran is Germany" alarmist routine of Binyamin Netanyahu. "What should the warned citizens do with this information", I asked, "and what will the American Jews who love Israel to whom Netanyahu spoke do? Where will they take this fear?"

My colleague and friend Aluf Benn (separated from me this week - we usually write together on the weekends), conducted an interview with Netanyahu. And guess what? The message has somewhat softened: "The situation is identical to 1938, in that an extreme ideology is present that is arming itself with weapons, with the declared attempt of destroying a significant portion of the Jewish people. The situation is different, in that there is a State of Israel that can and must elicit international pressure, and also because there is [now] a historic perspective."

Haaretz' Amiram Barkat, in his Members of the Tribe, wrote on the same Netanyahu speech but from a different perspective. He writes about American Jews, preferring to "deal with the genocide of another nation" (Darfur) and not with Iran. David Elcott of the Israel Policy Forum gives him this somewhat strange explanation for this: "American Jews are simply smarter than Israeli politicians. He says that Netanyahu's apocalyptic rhetoric is not acceptable from the standpoint of Jewish theology; the Jews, he notes, have always spoken of hope, and the language of despair is foreign to Jewish tradition."

Which brings me back to where I started - my weekend column: The undersecretary of state for political affairs, Nicholas Burns, who is the administration official most deeply involved with the Iranian issue, this week testified before Congress in an optimistic vein. 'Just a few months ago', he said, "Iran appeared to be riding high". But now, the strategy pursued by the United States "appears to have sparked a divisive debate in Iranian ruling circles about whether to continue a confrontational course or agree to negotiations."

Here's a 'Jewish tradition of hope' from an unexpected source (or maybe Burns should have his background rechecked?).