That hardly seems fair since that Martian observer (if they observed the same basic understanding of politics and power relations) could just as easily decide that the nuclear nations would have a vested interest in preventing non-nuclear nations from rising to the same status, especially considering the success of strikes in Syria (2007) and Iraq (in the 1980s). There may be good reasons to avoid it if possible but the situation is not black and white.

Note: No Iranian is pro-American, but they are anti-Ahmadinejad

April 22, 2008

Clinton further displayed tough talk in an interview airing on "Good Morning America" Tuesday. ABC News' Chris Cuomo asked Clinton what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons.

"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said.

"In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

It seems remarkable that given the extensive discussion regarding a possible attack on Iran that no one in the MSM ever discusses the potential US military losses should such an attack should occur.

On various sites, several posters with military-technology knowledge have indicated that Iran possesses anti-ship missiles for which the US Navy HAS NO DEFENCE and if that is correct, then the US getting a carrier group out of harm's way in the Persian Gulf (a "pond" in terms of anti-ship weapons) would be essential as a prelude to an attack that would involve Iranian retaliation. Even with the carrier groups removed, all US ships in the Gulf, naval or civilian, would face destruction and the massive loss of lives, perhaps into the thousands.

For anyone doubting the deadliness of anti-ship missiles, please be reminded of the necessity of the British navy having to withdraw from the coast of Argentina when they were struck by missiles for which they had no defence - the Argentinians had a few Exocets and sank two ships - the Iranians have thousands of them.

As this appears to be the definitive article re the Iranian anti-ship missile capability, I recommend it for its careful analysis:

http://www.rense.com/general59/theSunburniransawesome.htm

The Iranians can't compete with the US or Israeli military in the air, so they have focused their resources where they can do the most damage, i.e. anti-ship missiles, and that damage in the Gulf could exceed the casualties of Iraq and Afghanistan combined if a carrier group was trapped in the Gulf - there are 7000 seamen on a carrier.

The Pentagon always mentions its "reservations" about an Israeli attack, but the details of the loss of life and vessel destruction are never spelled out definitively

From National Review Online
February 10, 2012

Iran’s Final Solution for Israel

Persian Shiite anti-Semitism is deep-seated and points to genocide.

By Andrew Bostom

Reza Khalili (pseudonym), a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, has reported the latest restatement of the Iranian Shiite theocracy’s Jew-annihilationist jihadism:

Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a ‘jurisprudential justification’ to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”

The article, written by Alireza Forghani, an analyst and a strategy specialist in Khamenei’s camp, now is being run on most state-owned sites, including the Revolutionary Guards’ Fars News Agency, showing that the regime endorses this doctrine.

Putatively (and perversely), these genocidal pronouncements are a “response” to Israel’s own planned efforts to thwart Iran’s longstanding, repeatedly expressed desire to destroy the Jewish state and “Zionists” (i.e., non-dhimmi Jews) in general. Shiite Iran’s obsessive calls for the destruction of Israel and the mass murder of Jews are driven by a deeply rooted theological Islamic anti-Semitism.

Past As Prologue

The Mujtahids [authoritative interpreters of Islamic law] and Mulla are a great force in Persia and concern themselves with every department of human activity from the minutest detail of personal purification to the largest issues of politics.

The Persianophilic scholar E. G. Browne wrote those words in the 1920s about the entire pre-Pahlavi period of Shiite theocratic rule, from the ascension of the first Safavid shah, Ismail I, at the outset of the 16th century through Reza Shah Pahlavi’s installation in 1925, at the end of the Qajar dynasty. These Shiite clerics emphasized the notion of the ritual uncleanliness (najis) of Jews in particular, but also of Christians, Zoroastrians, and others, as the cornerstone of relations toward non-Muslims. The impact of this najis conception was already apparent to European visitors to Persia during the reign of Ismail I. The Portuguese traveler Tome Pires observed (between 1512 and 1515) that “Sheikh Ismail . . . never spares the life of any Jew,” while another European travelogue notes “the great hatred [Ismail I] bears against the Jews.”

The writings and career of Mohammad Baqer al-Majlisi elucidate the imposition of Islamic law (Sharia) on non-Muslims in Shiite Iran. Al-Majlisi (d. 1699) was perhaps the most influential cleric of the Safavid Shiite theocracy in Persia. For six years at the end of the 17th century, he functioned as the de facto ruler of Iran, making him the Ayatollah Khomeini of his era. By design, he wrote many works in Persian to disseminate key aspects of the Shia ethos among ordinary persons. In his Persian treatise “Lightning Bolts Against the Jews,” Al-Majlisi describes the standard humiliating requisites for non-Muslims living under sharia, first and foremost the blood-ransom jizya, or poll-tax, based on Koran 9:29.

He then enumerates six other restrictions relating to worship, housing, dress, transportation, and weapons, before outlining the unique Shiite impurity or najis regulations. It is these latter najis prohibitions which lead anthropology professor Laurence Loeb — who studied and lived within the Jewish community of Southern Iran in the early 1970s — to observe, “Fear of pollution by Jews led to great excesses and peculiar behavior by Muslims.” According to Al-Majlisi:

And, that they should not enter the pool while a Muslim is bathing at the public baths . . . If something can be purified, such as clothes, if they are dry, they can be accepted, they are clean. But if they [the dhimmis] had come into contact with those cloths in moisture they should be rinsed with water after being obtained. . . . It would also be better if the ruler of the Muslims would establish that all infidels could not move out of their homes on days when it rains or snows because they would make Muslims impure.

The dehumanizing character of these popularized “impurity” regulations fomented recurring Muslim anti-Jewish violence, including pogroms and forced conversions throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, which rendered areas of Iran Judenrein — free of Jews. For example, the preeminent modern historian of Iranian Jewry, Walter Fischel, provides these observations based on the 19th-century narrative of Rabbi David d’Beth Hillel and additional eyewitness accounts:

Due to the persecution [by] their Moslem neighbors, many once flourishing communities entirely disappeared. Maragha, for example, ceased to be the seat of a Jewish community around 1800, when the Jews were driven out. . . . Similarly, Tabriz, where over 50 Jewish families are supposed to have lived, became Judenrein towards the end of the 18th century through similar circumstances. The peak of the forced elimination of Jewish communities occurred under Shah Mahmud (1834?48), during whose rule the Jewish population in Meshed, in eastern Persia, was forcibly converted, an event which not only remained unchallenged by Persian authorities, but also remained unknown and unnoticed by European Jews.

The Khomeini “Revival”

The so-called “Khomeini revolution,” which in 1979 deposed the secular, Western-oriented regime of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, was in reality a mere return in full (including najis regulations, etc.) to oppressive Shiite theocratic rule, the predominant form of Iranian governance during four centuries. Conditions for all non-Muslim religious minorities, particularly Jews, rapidly deteriorated. Historian David Littman recounts the Jews’ immediate plight:

In the months preceding the Shah’s departure on 16 January 1979, the religious minorities . . . were already beginning to feel insecure . . . Twenty thousand Jews left the country before the triumphant return of the Ayatollah Khomeini on 1 February . . . On 16 March, the honorary president of the Iranian Jewish community, Habib Elghanian, a wealthy businessman, was arrested and charged by an Islamic revolutionary tribunal with “corruption” and “contacts with Israel and Zionism”; he was shot on 8 May.

Indeed, the demographic decline of Iranian Jewry after the creation of Israel was dramatic even before the revolution — from nearly 120,000 in 1948 to roughly 70,000 in 1978. The current Jewish population is perhaps 10,000, or less.

Ayatollah Khomeini’s views were the most influential in shaping the ideology of the revitalized Shiite theocracy, and his attitudes towards Jews — both before and after he assumed power — were particularly negative. Khomeini’s speeches and writings invoked a panoply of Judenhass motifs, including orthodox interpretations of sacralized Muslim texts, and the Shiite conception of najis. More ominously, Khomeini’s rhetoric blurred the distinction between Jews and Israelis, reiterated paranoid conspiracy theories about Jews (both within Iran and beyond), and endorsed the annihilation of the Jewish state. The pillars of this continuous modern campaign of annihilationist anti-Semitism are the motifs from traditional Islamic Jew-hatred, including Islamic eschatology, grafted seamlessly to jihadism. These deep-seated Islamic theological motifs are further conjoined to Holocaust denial and the development of a nuclear-weapons program intended expressly for Israel’s eradication.

The writings and speeches of the most influential religious ideologues of this restored Shiite theocracy — including Khomeini himself — make apparent their seamless connection to the oppressive doctrines of their forebears in the Safavid and Qajar dynasties. For example, consider the “Islamic perspective” on the U.N.’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, written in the mid-1960s by Sultanhussein Tabandeh, the Iranian Shiite leader of a prominent Sufi order. According to Professor Eliz Sanasarian’s important study of religious minorities in the Islamic Republic, Tabandeh’s tract became “the core ideological work upon which the [post-revolution] Iranian government . . . based its non-Muslim policy.” Tabandeh begins his discussion by lauding as a champion “of the oppressed” Shah Ismail I, the repressive and bigoted founder of the Safavid dynasty, who, as per contemporary accounts, “bore hatred against the Jews and ordered their eyes to be gouged out if they happened to be found in his vicinity.” It is critical to understand that Tabandeh’s key views on non-Muslims were implemented “almost verbatim in the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

In essence, Tabandeh simply reaffirms the sacralized inequality of non-Muslims relative to Muslims under sharia:

Since Islam regards non-Muslims as on a lower level of belief and conviction, if a Muslim kills a non-Muslim . . . then his punishment must not be the retaliatory death, since the faith and conviction he possesses is loftier than that of the man slain . . . the penalties of a non-Muslim guilty of fornication with a Muslim woman are augmented because, in addition to the crime against morality, social duty and religion, he has committed sacrilege, in that he has disgraced a Muslim and thereby cast scorn upon the Muslims in general, and so must be executed. . . .

The conception of najis or ritual uncleanliness of the non-Muslim has also been reaffirmed. Ayatollah Khomeini stated explicitly: “Non-Muslims of any religion or creed are najis.” Khomeini elaborated his views on najis and non-Muslims, with a specific reference to Jews:

Eleven things are unclean: urine, excrement, sperm, blood, a dog, a pig, bones, a non-Muslim man and woman, wine, beer, perspiration of a camel that eats filth. . . . The whole body of a non-Muslim is unclean, even his hair, his nails, and all the secretions of his body . . . The body, saliva, nasal secretions, and perspiration of a non-Muslim man or woman who converts to Islam automatically become pure. As for the garments, if they were in contact with the sweat of the body before conversion, they will remain unclean. . . . It is not strictly prohibited for a Muslim to work in an establishment run by a Muslim who employs Jews, if the products do not aid Israel in one way or another. However it is shameful [for a Muslim] to be under the orders of a Jewish departmental head.

Ayatollah Khomeini’s 1942 speech “Islam Is Not a Religion of Pacifists” is a modern vision of classical, authoritative formulations on the uniquely Islamic institution of jihad. It states plainly:

Those who study jihad will understand why Islam wants to conquer the whole world. All the countries conquered by Islam or to be conquered in the future will be marked for everlasting salvation. For they shall live under [Allah’s law; the Sharia]. . . . Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those [who say this] are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you all! Does this mean that Muslims should sit back until they are devoured by [the unbelievers]? Islam says: Kill them [the non-Muslims], put them to the sword and scatter [their armies]. Does this mean sitting back until [non-Muslims] overcome us? Islam says: Kill in the service of Allah those who may want to kill you! Does this mean that we should surrender [to the enemy]? Islam says: Whatever good there is exists thanks to the sword and in the shadow of the sword! People cannot be made obedient except with the sword! The sword is the key to paradise, which can be opened only for holy warriors! There are hundreds of other [Koranic] psalms and hadiths [sayings of the prophet] urging Muslims to value war and to fight. Does all that mean that Islam is a religion that prevents men from waging war? I spit upon those foolish souls who make such a claim.

And among non-believers, Iranian Shiite theology reserves a special hatred for Jews. Besides returning the small remnant of the Iranian Jewish community to a state of obsequious dhimmitude through execution and intimidation, Khomeini’s Iran has embraced jihad “as a central pillar of faith and action,” seen most notably in its unending campaign of vilification and proxy violence against the “Zionist entity,” Israel. For current Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the destruction of Israel is an openly avowed policy driven by his eschatological beliefs. Mohammad Hassan Rahimian, a representative of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, summarized this annihilationist eschatology, redolent with Koranic Jew-hatred, in 2006:

The Jew is the most obstinate enemy (Koran 5:82) of the devout. And the main war will determine the destiny of mankind. . . . The reappearance of the Twelfth Imam will lead to a war between Israel and the Shia.

As characterized in the canonical hadith (collections of Mohammed’s words and deeds), Sunni and Shiite eschatology highlight the Jews’ purported supreme hostility to Islam. Jews are described as adherents of the Dajjal, the Muslim equivalent of the Antichrist. Other traditions state that the Dajjal is Jewish himself, and that at his appearance, he will be accompanied by 70,000 Jews from Isfahan wrapped in robes and armed with polished sabers, their heads covered with a sort of veil. When the Dajjal is defeated, his Jewish companions will be slaughtered — even rocks and trees (except for the so-called gharkad tree) will deliver them up. Thus, according to a canonical hadith (Sahih Muslim, Book 40, Number 6985), if a Jew seeks refuge under a tree or a stone, these objects will be able to speak to tell a Muslim: “There is a Jew behind me; come and kill him!” And the notion of jihad “ransom” extends even into Islamic eschatology: On the day of resurrection, the vanquished Jews will be consigned to hellfire, which will expiate Muslims who have sinned, sparing them from this fate.

Professor Moshe Sharon recently provided a very lucid summary of the unique features of Shiite eschatology, its key point of consistency with Sunni understandings of this doctrine, and Iranian president Ahmadinejad’s deep personal attachment to “mahdism.”

Since the late ninth century, the Shiites have been expecting the emergence of the hidden imam-mahdi, armed with divine power and followed by thousands of martyrdom-seeking warriors. He is expected to conquer the world and establish Shiism as its supreme religion and system of rule. His appearance would involve terrible war and unusual bloodshed. Ahmadinejad, as mayor of Teheran, built a spectacular boulevard through which the mahdi would enter into the capital. There is no question that Ahmadinejad believes he has been chosen to be the herald of the mahdi. Shi’ite Islam differs from Sunni Islam regarding the identity of the mahdi. The Sunni mahdi is essentially an anonymous figure; the Shiite mahdi is a divinely inspired person with a real identity. However both Shiites and Sunnis share one particular detail about “the coming of the hour” and the dawning of messianic times: The Jews must all suffer a violent death, to the last one. Both Shi’ites and Sunnis quote the famous hadith (Sahih Muslim, Book 40, Number 6985) attributed to Muhammad.

Averting the Ayatollah’s Final Solution

The much ballyhooed “Green Revolution” demonstrations on the streets of Iran in the summer of 2009 were predominantly a fight between two ugly options — the Rafsanjani/Mousavi faction and their mullahs versus the Ahmadinejad/Khameini faction and their mullahs. Both favor Iranian nukes and the jihad genocide of the Jewish state of Israel. Unless there were a civil war between these two dominant jihadist factions that debilitated each enough for some truly secular and Western faction to emerge from the power vacuum, Iran will remain what it has largely remained since 1502 (barring the period of more secular Western leaning, albeit rather brutal rule, from 1925 to 1979 under the Pahlavis) — an oppressive Shiite theocracy.

Iranians as a whole — let alone the Mousavi versus Ahmadinejad factionalists — are very far removed from honestly addressing the conundrum posed by the Iranian secularist and historian Reza Afshari, a decade ago, regarding whether official Islamic authorities reflect the views of the Iranian people:

Who is more culturally and religiously authentic than the Ayatollahs? Who is more credible to say what relevance Shiite culture has or does not have for the major issues of our time? The issue is not Islam as a private faith of individuals. It is about what state officials claiming Islamic authority might have to say about the state’s treatment of citizens. . . . In Iran, liberal Muslims or any other new interpreters of Islam did not come to power. When and if they do, we will have their record to examine. What we have from liberal Muslims today are only ideological claims punctuated by expressed good intentions.

Given the ad nauseam expressed genocidal intentions of the current ruling Iranian theocracy, Israel — with U.S. assent, if not direct assistance — must destroy Iran’s nuclear arms production facilities by whatever means necessary.

— Andrew Bostom is the author of The Legacy of Jihad (2005) and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism (2008), and the forthcoming Sharia Versus Freedom, with a foreword by Andrew C. McCarthy.

© National Review Online 2012. All Rights Reserved.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/290715/iran-s-final-solution-israel-andrew-bostom

Guys stop with the Israel loves genocide and Iran wants to kill us because we are free. Both camps here are at an idealistic extreme. If you didn't grow up in the US but in Israel or Iran you would fit right in with the fraction of population that is nuts. We got plenty of those here too from our perceived right and left.

Walt is just trying to frame the argument. Nation states are rational if they are irrational they get their faces stomped in by the rest of the world. Even if Iran called it out tomorrow that they have nukes. What has changed? 2 nukes? A nuke has a blast radius of about what 2-4 miles? Iran is so crazy that they will trade a US city for their country getting turned into a giant parking lot? Heck I'd volunteer to paint lines. We are a super power, we do not need to remind every stupid 4th world country that we are.

To an Iran warhawk they are the only fight in town so lets police them. In the other camp Iran is a weak country thats all talk, trying to find their place. China used to be the same way, now they have non proliferation treaties and work inside the international community. We get ipads for cheap now.

Stop corrupting the argument, or getting caught up in the analogy.

Like anyone who has stood behind a bad thesis, Walt now find himself reduced to chicanery to maintain his position:

"The U.S. and Israel together spend more than $700 billion each year on their national security establishments; Iran spends about $10 billion"

Walt lumps the Israeli and US budget into one number to make Iran seem paltry in comparison.

in fact, Israel spends an estimated $16 billion a year, not much more then Iran. The remaining $684 billion is the US.

That information would be pertinent to our Martian visitor, no?

The false comparisons continue throughout the article.

On the left side of the ledger, Walt tells us that the US has "bombed, invaded or occupied a half dozen countries in that period". As for Israel, it has "occupied much of Lebanon from 1982 to 1999, and its armed forces pummeled Lebanon (2006)".

Oddly, in the right side of ledger he does not fill in any of Iran's bloody, naked aggression or power-grabs in Lebanon, Syria and every other Muslim country that has 10 or more Shiite. Not to mention it's treatment of it's own dissidents
.

Beyond this, Walt's displays his usual inability (or unwillingness) to even bother differentiating US or Israeli actions (about which one could debate the wisdom) with Iran's actions (about which no sane person would debate).

Israel invaded Lebanon to establish a buffer zone after years of shelling. They returned in 2006 following a cross border raid.

What brought Iran/Hezbollah to Lebanon?

Well, again, our Martian friend won't get any answers reading this buffoonish article.

More to the point, given Walt's obfuscations, our Martian friend would not even know to ask the questions in the first place.

Which, I suspect, is how Walt would like it for both Martians and those of us dwelling on earth.

Walt,

It would NOT elude a Martian that:

(1) the "Russian Mob" (think International Organized Criminals who are staunch Zionists) running Israel (not Jews, but the State pretending to have anything to do with Judaism as a scapegoat for its crimes) is the same one that committed 9/11 with high-level insiders (Bush et. al.), Chertoff, Silverstein, Lieberman, AIPAC, (9/11 taped BY Israel as indisputable fact), etc.;

(2) the root of all funding for wars and industries of death and commercial despair trace back to this "invisible group" - the conspiracy is vast and wide, that they have established a safe haven in the Colonial State of Israel (Irgun gang -> Likud);

(3) they have 300 plus nuclear warheads and are blackmailing us into another spoonfed war on behalf of Israel. That we have forgotten we were taken into Iraq the first time based on a PROVEN FAKE Iraqi soldiers pulling Kuwaiti babies out of incubators story, and the second time through lies about WMDs following a highly suspicious "Gulf of Tonkin" like incident; and,

(4) That after a political assassination in our State, the motivations for that assassination were thereafter realized in the form of LBJ and ever President then on. JFK sought to return us to a silver backed currency and to create a true peace. Yes, he banged interns. But as far as I can tell, Jesus loved prostitutes, but sure as hell did not like the money changers.

So whatever it is us "tin foil hat" people seem to be educated yet think -- I bet the martians would think the same thing because it is simply the truth.

A Martian would surely recognise this pre-conflict activity as in line with the ancient Greek paean, the clashing of legionary shields, Gallic battle cries, native Indian war dances, and the pre-match display of New Zealand rugby teams, all performed to raise enthusiasm for forthcoming conflict and focus determination upon victory. The absence of reason would not surprise them at all since reason is anti-conflict and its introduction would be entirely counter productive. What would more likely raise Martian eyebrows are the persistent efforts of some to manoeuvre such things into the glass slipper of reason.

Wonderful use of an observer that has no stake in the argument. Makes all of us who do have a stake feel like fools. The heated inflammatory rhetoric within the United States makes all of us Americans feel like the problem rather than the solution.
I would the say the Iranians are much like North Koreans, an isolated and "bluffing," saber-rattling country that acts out for attention or concessions. Perhaps the vocal nuclear threats are to protect itself against Israel, which it views as an existential threat?
I deplore what the people of Iran have to suffer through, being a pawn in that regime's schemes.
If that is so, then all of America and Israel's military might threatening little old Iran seems a bit of an exaggeration.

A hypothetical question of a hypothetical observer? Wow, that's really grounded.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Not since Ariel Sharon marched his troops into Beirut in 1982 has anybody accused Israel of being too rational in its war-making. Irrationalism and hysteria have always worked for Israel -- especially when it comes to getting Washington to support its every stupid move. Why would they ever change that behaviour?

I suspect Mr. Stephen Walt that you do not really believe that the Iranian president is a buffoon. In your heart you realise the he is a highly educated and intelligent man and a very distinguished scientist. You are probably including the desparaging remarks so as to demonstrate some sort of balance in your article.

I'm assuming the purpose of discussing a Martian's viewpoint of potential conflict with US and Iran is attempting to remain as objective as possible in our analysis. However, Stephen Walt's article is built upon many assumptions that reflect certain historical experiences as well as spatial assumptions.

Walt first discusses the "sensible Martian". How can a Martian be sensible or rationale if it is a Martian and has no idea what international relations or conflict is. What Walt is really referring to is "sensible" in terms of largely the West.

Walt then assumes the Martian can observe "two states". How will the Martian know what a state is if it has never been to Earth. In my view, the state is essentially an imagined concept; its is not constituted by the institutions, the armies, the bombs etc. its is constituted by everyone believing that the state exists and participating in the practices consistent with these beliefs e.g. respecting sovereignty etc.

Walt then goes on to highlight the disparity in military spending, military capabilities, nuclear capability etc. between the US/Israel and Iran. Walt assumes that this disparity is reason enough to dismiss the threat of Iran.

The purpose of Walt's article is to add scientific rigor to his analysis of potential conflict and international relations more generally by attempting to remain objective (the use of the Martian). However, Walt's objective analysis is very much subjective. Walt's realist assumptions are based certain historical experiences and spatial assumptions that do not reflect the international to any large extent. Walt's assumptions over military power are a throw back to Cold War thinking; they fail to address the majority of security concerns in the modern world.

That Stephen Walt is Professor of International Affairs says a lot about the state of the discipline in the US and more generally. The most respected institutions are generally realist in character, and serve to reflect and reproduce the tripe in this article. IR really is in a sad state of affairs when one views in this light. I wonder how the sensible Martian might see it?!

Of the triad of nations being looked at, Iran, Israel, and the US, which one has issued the most obvious and directly belligerent threats against the others? The Martian would have to acknowledge that Iran's statements about ending Israel's existence were clearly the cause of concern, and not to be ignored as Mr. Walt does. Heck, he'd probably raise a green eyebrow about Iran's insistence on not referring to Israel by name, but rather 'the Zionist Regime'.

And if the Martian walked around for a while on the streets of Tehran, would he/she/it ignore the flagrant anti-US propaganda found on the streets and from official sources?

The Martian may be aware that the US' had involvement in the establishment of a regime there which ended over thirty years ago, but how relevant is that to Iran's very youthful population? Would the Martian consider that important to current differences?

There is no doubt Iran isn't going to build a nuclear weapon, after their years of denying they are even trying to if they did produce one now it would be game over, as it would prove they have been lying to the world for all this time. Put simply, their own statements mean they can't make a nuclear weapon. But to be fair, the martian should be exposed to more information then Mr. walt suggests.

I find this viewpoint slightly spurious and a bit of a red herring. Realists tend to pride themselves on the supposed 'objectivity' of their work. Their research and analysis e.g. Walt's 'balance of threat theory' adhere to the ontological assumptions of realism. It therefore becomes very difficult for realist dominated institutions such as Harvard and scholars such as Walt to formulate theory and analysis influenced by supposed Saudi bungs.

I think the reasons for such respected institutions for privileging certain viewpoints and analysis are deeply rooted and complex. Harvard simply reflect the US/European view of the world; a world constituted by great powers. In this world, Walt's views make sense.
However, this conception of global politics is especially narrow and reductionist and is at best, a terrible framework in which to 'do international relations'. Walt and more widely Harvard's scholarship might appear influenced by Saudi bungs but in reality it reflects a narrow conception of global politics.