 |
| Yaakov Amidror |
Could the prospect of US elections prompt Israel to
attack?
The year 2020 has seen
significant changes in the handling of the Iran’s malevolent behavior by the US
and Israel. From the American targeted assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the
brains of the Iranian Revolutionary
Guards Quds Force, along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis the leader of the most
significant Iranian-controlled Shi’ite militia in Iraq (Kataib Hezbollah), to
the mysterious explosions throughout Iran’s infrastructure including sensitive
locations for Iran’s nuclear weapons industrial complex, to Israel’s increased
attacks on Iranian assets in Syria, this year may well be decisive in
determining if a northern regional war is on the horizon.
In response to the
escalating situation, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley flew to Israel
this summer to speak to Israel’s military, security and intelligence
leadership. As Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy
and Security said, “The strike on Soleimani warns Iran
that the option for expanded US use of force against Iran is on the table.” But
make no mistake about it, Iran is a sophisticated enemy who has made a
strategic decision to accelerate its nuclear program in coordination with its
increased activity in Lebanon and Syria. It has directed Hezbollah to act more
provocatively from both Lebanon and Syria, while pursuing its never-ending
transfer of precision guided missile technology, which threatens all of Israel.
It continues to challenge Israel by further entrenching itself in Israel’s
neighbors, moving into southern Syria opposite the Israeli Golan to fortify its
new frontier from the northeast.
In response, Israel
not only continues its relentless strikes on Iranian infrastructure in Syria
but has allegedly been behind the attacks within Iran proper that have unnerved
its revolutionary leadership. A “pandemically” dazed world has hardly taken
notice of the significant geopolitical changes happening in the region.
Not since the Stutnex
cyberattack more than 10 years ago has the Iranian nuclear weapons
infrastructure been so significantly damaged, at least publicly. Of course,
Israel’s legendary heist of Iran’s nuclear plans in 2018 should have reminded
the world that despite Iranian promises and the ayatollahs alleged fatwa
against nuclear weapons, the West remains oblivious to its practice of
taddiyah, religiously sanctioned dissimulation i.e. lying, for the greater good
of Iran’s Twelver Shia Islamist project.
The most important
take-away lesson from all of these reported attacks is that Iran remains
vulnerable to both cyber and conventional sabotage at its most guarded sites in
Iran, as well as conventional attacks of its forces and assets in Syria, Iraq
and Lebanon.
So the question is, if
Israel has shown that it can delay Iran’s march to nuclear weapons
capabilities, why does it still contemplate a complex air and missile attack in
the Iranian homeland, knowing all the political risks and inevitable
international fallout?
The answer is that
there is only so much that clandestine espionage and advanced computer attacks
can do, even with Israel’s impressive intelligence capabilities. Sooner or
later Israel will have to make a monumental choice regarding preemptive strikes
on targets in Iran, if it concludes that Iran is getting too close to
possessing nuclear weapons, an existential threat that no Israeli leader across
its political spectrum could countenance. Every year Iran’s “zone of immunity”
increases, where their “nuclear infrastructure becomes so well-protected or
dispersed that an attack would be futile.” The Iranian regime is extremely
patient, and its vision to destroy the Jewish state is not necessarily in one
blow. Its goal is to demoralize Israeli society over time with the constant
fear of missiles being indiscriminately sent into its population’s centers,
hoping over time that the Jews will abandon their homeland and with-it Zionism.
Iran began this
project decades ago in Lebanon with Hezbollah, then turned to Gaza with Hamas
and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, then turned to Syria making Assad dependent on
its militias, with its next goal a revolution in Jordan and the West Bank, with
the emergence of an Islamist leadership there under Iran’s thumb or at least in
cahoots with it.
Now add to this puzzle
a Joe Biden presidency and a Democratic victory in Congress this November, with
the promised reversal from US President Donald Trump’s approach that withdrew
from the nuclear deal and imposed maximal sanctions. The stakes may never be
higher for an Israeli decision to prevent Iran from crossing the threshold as
an established nuclear power with all of its perilous consequences. It is
possible this is Israel’s last realistic chance to strike, but that ship may
have already sailed.
Biden is not alone in
wanting to reengage with Iran. Trump, despite withdrawing from the Iran
agreement (JCPOA), in part due to his administration’s assessment that the deal
undermined long-term American interests, has said he too wants to renegotiate a
grand deal if reelected, and it’s not too far-fetched to believe that the
Iranians may decide that they cannot survive another four years of the maximum
pressure campaign without risking a popular rebellion.
The stark difference
is that Biden is willing to re-enter the Obama-era nuclear deal and ease
sanctions before renegotiating significant outstanding issues, while Trump has
said he will not end any sanctions until a deal is concluded. Some fig-leaf
concessions from Iran before re-joining the JCPOA will be attempted by a Biden
administration to camouflage what is really going on. Giving away the store
first with the hope for reciprocity is always a losing strategy in the Middle
East, perceived as a sign of weakness. As Biden said, “I would rejoin the
agreement and use our renewed commitment to diplomacy to work with our allies
to strengthen and extend it.” This spring, Biden’s top foreign policy adviser
Tony Blinken said that if Iran came back into full compliance of its
obligations to the JCPOA, Biden “would come back into compliance as well.” If
this is true, and there is no reason to believe otherwise, all of the maximum
sanctions leverage would disappear, which would also mean according to the
deal’s provisions, allowing Iran to buy an unlimited number of conventional
weapons, as the sunset provision for arms sales to Iran expires October 2020.
Knowing that a Biden
victory is a strong possibility, Israel may decide to act in its national
interest and attack Iran’s nuclear infrastructure sooner rather than later,
before Biden could be in office to stop it. Although Trump has said in the past
that he would back an Israeli strike, there is no guarantee he would give
Israel a green light if he believes it would drag America into a Middle East
war.
Americans have been
hearing about the threat of a nuclear Iran for three decades with still no
bomb. For much of the US foreign policy establishment, Israel is like the boy
who cries wolf, threatening to strike but never acting. It should be recalled
that Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Ehud Barak, were in favor of
attacking Iran, but were thwarted in 2010 by then-IDF chief Gabi Ashkenazi.
Then in 2011, the security cabinet, heeding the advice of intelligence
agencies, voted against a strike.
Iran has now breached
the nuclear limits of the JCPOA by enriching past the 3.67% limit, shortening
the breakout time from a year to just a few months to cross the uranium
enrichment threshold, so counting on cyber and small clandestine targeted
strikes will likely not be enough. Just as signal intelligence cannot
completely replace human intelligence, there is only so much cyber-terrorism
can do.
The JCPOA mistakenly
or deliberately allowed Iran to continue research and development on advanced
centrifuges, increasing the chance for a quick breakout to just a month or two,
way too late for Israel to act. That clearly means that a coordinated attack to
select sites throughout Iran that could cripple its breakout capacity for years
is already being considered.
Even proponents of the
JCPOA have to acknowledge that the restrictions of the Iran deal, modest as
they are, will all sunset over time, and barring a regime change, the Islamic
Republic will also then have the international community’s seal of approval for
its terrorist state to possess nuclear weapons.
All of this may be a
house of cards, as the West only looks at Iran’s declared nuclear program. The
JCPOA did not allow IAEA inspections of military sites for suspected nuclear
development, and believing that they are not actively working at military sites
requires the willing suspension of disbelief. Based on Israel’s outing of
Iran’s past nuclear work two years ago, the IAEA finally requested permission
to inspect two undeclared Iranian sites.
Is Israel’s alleged
activity this summer against Iranian nuclear facilities a harbinger of a
large-scale attack? According to John Hannah at the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies, “Between an exclusive reliance on additional sanctions and a
dangerous military strike, there may still be room for coercive diplomacy to
play an important role. Specifically, the United States, Israel, or preferably
both could communicate to Iran a set of red lines regarding its current nuclear
expansion that, if crossed, would dramatically increase the likelihood of a forceful
response.” Unfortunately this won’t work with the Europeans, who have little
problem pretending they don’t see what Iran is doing, so long as they can make
money dealing with the regime. As an example, in July 2020 Josep Borrell – the
EU high representative for foreign affairs and security policy in charge of the
JCPOA – said, “Owing to the unprecedented level of access... IAEA was able to
confirm... Iran had met all its obligations under the deal.” Yet just a month
earlier, according to The Wall Street Journal, “Member states from the United
Nations atomic agency board voted to condemn Iran for failing to cooperate with
its probe of Tehran’s nuclear activities.” This is because inspections for
clandestine work at military sites was not included in either the JCPOA or UNSC
2231.
Until the Iranian
people overthrow their repressive regime, Iran’s current leadership will not
change its spots, and Tehran will want nuclear weapons if only for the immunity
it provides against offensive attacks. Which brings us back to the possibility
of a strike on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure to kick the can much farther down
the road than cyber-terrorism, assassinations, or sabotage can do, assuming the
zone of immunity has not already been reached.
If an Israeli attack
is possible, knowing Iran will never negotiate honestly, it seems inevitable
that Israel will have to decide at some point whether it can live with the
possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon protected by a non-foolproof missile
defense. Then Israel would live with the hope that mutually assured
destruction, as the US and Soviet Union did during the Cold War, would restrain
Iran. That could be a miscalculation of the highest order.
How should Israel
approach the future? According to Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Yaakov Amidror of the
Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, “a nuclear Iran could pose an
existential threat to Israel in the future, or at least launch a very
aggressive policy against it, under a nuclear umbrella... Preventing Iran’s
military nuclearization is Israel’s biggest challenge.” Yet he cautions Israel
to “navigate its path based on the assumption that it cannot... fundamentally
change the situation in the Middle East, neither by political agreements nor by
using military force.” Knowing there are no easy answers with the stakes so
high, the question is, would a Biden or Trump presidency increase the chance
that Israel would choose to act sooner rather than later. We have been down
this road before, but one day it may become a reality.
The writer is the
director of MEPIN (Middle East Political Information Network), and regularly
briefs members of Congress and their foreign policy aides, as well White House
advisers.
