Obama’s ‘end-of-war’ declaration to boost Iran, frighten Israel
On 1 May, during a flying visit to Afghanistan, US President Barak Obama declared that “the time of war” is over. There is no doubt that a period of extended peace is what Obama most fervently hopes for and is the goal to which all US policy is now geared. It is that overwhelming desire that was behind the past week’s barrage of public comment by former Israeli security officials and others opposing the possibility of a unilateral Israeli military strike against Iran. However, Obama’s declaration of ‘peace in our time’ will have had the unintended side effect of increasing Israeli concerns and Iranian confidence.
At least one well-placed source has indicated to us that the very public intervention against an attack by former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin, who was supported to one degree or another by former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, former IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, and by former prime minister Ehud Olmert, was because Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is getting very close to ordering an attack if the outcome of the 23 May talks in Baghdad is not completely satisfactory. The US administration, however, is doing everything in its power to ensure that there is no escalation ahead of the November presidential election, including (no doubt) priming former Israeli security officials to make their opposition public.
But these efforts are precisely why Netanyahu is so fearful of Iran progressing its nuclear programme to a stage where it would be invulnerable to an Israeli attack and Israel would therefore be dependent on the US. As one former Israeli intelligence official put it this week: “While Israel’s semi-official red line is quite clear, and Iran is liable to cross it soon, the US red line is very blurry and hard to distinguish, but it conforms to US policy which seeks to postpone the day of reckoning, at least until after the November elections”. But even the assumption that things will change after November is now considered optimistic by many in Israel. Obama didn’t declare that the “time of war is over, but just until I’m re-elected”.
A key point about the president’s 1 May speech was that he was not just referring to combat in Afghanistan when he declared “the time of war” to be coming to an end. His declaration was much broader than that. He said:
“I recognize that many Americans are tired of war. As President, nothing is more wrenching than signing a letter to a family of the fallen, or looking into the eyes of a child who will grow up without a mother or father. I will not keep Americans in harm’s way a single day longer than is absolutely required for our national security...We’ve travelled through more than a decade under the dark cloud of war. Yet here, in the pre-dawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of a new day on the horizon. The Iraq war is over. The number of our troops in harm’s way has been cut in half, and more will soon be coming home...As we emerge from a decade of conflict abroad and economic crisis at home, it’s time to renew America...This time of war began in Afghanistan and this is where it will end.”
There seems little doubt that in Jerusalem, as well as in Tehran, this will be interpreted as a sign of weakness.
Netanyahu has already expressed his frustration at the delay between the initial 13-14 April talks with Iran in Istanbul and the next round in Baghdad, saying after the conclusion of the Istanbul meeting: "My initial impression is that Iran has been given a freebie. It’s got five weeks to continue enrichment without any limitation, any inhibition." Now he is concerned that the US will agree to something that is less than satisfactory for Israel on the back of a promise of ultimate American military support that will now seem, from Jerusalem’s perspective, rather more flaky than before.
For Netanyahu, an unacceptable deal would be one that allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium up to 5%, that would allow Iran to keep most of the uranium it has already enriched, and that would not limit the number of centrifuges and enrichment sites that Iran operated. For Israel, it is also essential that Iran is no longer able to continue to harden its sites against possible military attack. Intelligence officials say that Israel is looking for a deal that removes most of Iran’s enriched uranium from the country, closes the underground facility at Fordow, and entails the most intrusive of inspection programmes.
We know that Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak believe that a satisfactory outcome of the Istanbul talks, on the lines outlined above, is highly unlikely. On Monday this week (30 April) Barak said he was not filled “with confidence” and that “Israel cannot afford to be duped”. It is certain that they have been moving their plans forward on this pessimistic assumption, and there seems little doubt that this is what prompted (no doubt with some prodding from Washington) the intervention by Diskin and his supporters in the past week.
If that is correct, then the big question now is has their intervention had the effect they desired? Have they made it impossible for Netanyahu to act against Iran unilaterally? From what we are hearing, the answer is no. Here are the facts:
- There is unanimous agreement in Israel that Iran must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons.
- There is also a consensus that the US and Israel are working to different timetables. Because the US has far greater military capabilities, it can afford to wait longer before resorting to force than can Israel.
- There is a strong, but not necessarily unanimous, agreement that Israel should not allow itself to drift into a position where it has to rely upon the United States for its survival, and this feeling can only have been reinforced by President Obama’s pronouncement that “the time of war” is over.
- Although divided, the Israeli public are marginally more in favour of a unilateral strike, if deemed necessary, than against. In the latest test of opinion, 45% said they would back a unilateral Israeli strike while 40% said they were opposed. 15% are undecided. The number in favour of an international military strike is a very high 72%, with 14% opposed and 14% undecided.
Netanyahu is also in strong position politically. According to the latest polls, in an early election Likud would win 31 seats, followed by Labour and Israel Beiteinu with 15, Kadima 13, Yair Lapid's new Atid Party 11, Shas eight, United Torah Judaism six, National Union four, and Habayit Hayehudi and Meretz three. The three Arab parties together would win 11 mandates. Altogether, the Right-Centre bloc would win 67 seats and the Left-Centre bloc 53, slightly better for the government than the current 65-55 split.
The key players in any decision to attack Iran are not the retired security officials much quoted in the past week, but those currently in post and the politicians they report to. We know that Netanyahu and Barak are in favour of military action. The other key players are IDF chief of staff Lt-Gen Benny Gantz; the deputy chief of staff Yair Naveh; and the new commander of the Israel Air Force (from 14 May) Amir Eshel. Of these, Gantz is the most important, and last week he was much quoted, following an interview with an Israeli newspaper, as being in the camp against military action. We believe his comments were misunderstood, or at least only partially understood.
For the general media, the highlights of his 25 April interview with Haaretz were his comments that Iran’s leaders were rational and unlikely to take the final steps towards nuclear-weapons status. But, for us, far more important was Gantz’s remark that if Iran’s supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wants, he will move to acquire of a nuclear bomb, and that decision will be taken “if Khamenei judges that he is invulnerable to a response". In other words, Gantz, no less than Barak and Netanyahu, is focused on the question of Iran moving into the “zone of immunity”.
Gantz also fully understands that the strategic squeeze faced by Israel as Egypt continues its post-Mubarak drift away from Camp David in, it seems, ever-closer alliance with also hostile Turkey. He has described 2012 as a “year of readiness”.
In the meantime, former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin has clarified his opposition to a military strike. Stripping away his essentially political comments that Netanyahu and Barak were guided by “messianic” impulses, his opposition comes down to capabilities.
Diskin’s central point is as follows: “Netanyahu and Barak are giving the sense that if Israel doesn’t act, Iran will have nuclear weapons. This part of the sentence apparently has an element of truth. But in the second part of the sentence, they...[say] if Israel acts, there won’t be an Iranian nuclear programme. And that’s the incorrect part of the sentence.”
Barak accepts there are risks and uncertainties, but his counter-argument, made in a speech marking Independence Day on 26 April, is that “the confrontation with the very same challenge a few years down the line, after the ayatollahs' regime is allowed to attain a military nuclear capability, will be infinitely more complicated, infinitely more dangerous, and infinitely more expensive in terms of human lives and financial resources.”
In the same speech, Barak also once again made it clear that Israel is able and willing to act unilaterally. He said: “The US administration knows that Israel is capable of defending itself by itself and taking care of issues concerning the foundations of its security and its future...Israel and its government alone must make decisions and shoulder the responsibility. Both Israel and the United States have been saying that no option can be taken off the table, and we both mean it.”
Everything that has happened over the past week suggests that the US understands that Netanyahu and Barak “mean it” and that Washington is doing everything in its power to rein them in.
Almost all now depends on the outcome of the 23 May talks with Iran in Baghdad. The trouble is that Tehran will have been bolstered in its belief that it can continue to prevaricate with impunity both by the obvious pressure being put on Israel not to act and by Obama’s ‘peace in our time’ declaration in Afghanistan. JdeC.