An exploration of Critical Discourse: The Iranian Nuclear Debate

On December 14 2005 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahamadinejad declared to audiences around the world that “Israel should be wiped off the map” and that the world must bring an end to its “Zionist regime”. Since this virulent utterance of hate, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has responded with an equally benevolent discourse on the emergence of Iran’s nuclear program, and has coopted innumerable Security Experts, both from within and outside of Israel’s Security-Intelligence apparatus, to construct an extensive community of Dominant actors around the need to confront the greatest “existential threat” facing both “State of Israel and the rest of the world”. The response within Israeli civil society has defied past junctures in both its immediate and distant past, in the simultaneous emergence of a community of Dissenting actors which have looked to contest and resist the Prime Minister’s qualification of Iran as the most pressing existential threat facing the Jewish nation to date. This Master’s Research Paper analyzes both discourses between the dates of January 2011-November 2012 to reveal the role of discourse and framing within the “unprecedented” level of public debate and contestation that has ensued, concerning an issue intimately related to Israel’s security. It puts forth the argument supported by the theoretical precepts of Critical Security Studies that what is being witnessed within the “Iranian nuclear debate” renders a prime example of the “shifting of an issue” out of the realm of exception, unease and emergency, and into the realm of normal political dialogue