Stephen Walt

In remarks made at a foreign policy conference at the University of Virginia, Philip Zelikow says that Iraq is more of a threat to Israel than to the US and that protecting Israel would be a major motive for a US-Iraq war. Zelikow’s speech goes unreported at the time but will come to light in a 2004 article. Zelikow says: “Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990—it’s the threat against Israel.… And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.” Zelikow is at the time a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), and will later serve as the executive director to the 9/11 Commission. [Asia Times Online, 3/31/2004] John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt will later use Zelikow’s statement in their controversial paper “The Israel Lobby” as evidence that the Iraq War was launched in part to advance Israel’s security. [London Review of Books, 3/23/2006; London Review of Books, 4/25/2006; London Review of Books, 4/25/2006]