Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

There are hopes that Iran will resume talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on 24 August, for the first time since 8 June.  There are also hopes that Iran will offer some concessions as the meeting comes ahead of the next IAEA safeguards report on Iran’s nuclear activities, due to be presented to the IAEA governing board at their September meeting.  But a significant breakthrough appears highly unlikely.  Iran has continued to step up its anti-Israel rhetoric and continues to dismiss the threats of an Israeli military strike as bluster.  Bluster or not, Israel, on the other hand, is continuing to send signals of increasing preparedness to attack.

The past week has seen three significant verbal assaults on Israel from Iranian leaders.  On 17 August President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad marked international al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day by calling for the elimination of the “insult to all humanity” that is Israel.  And at the end of the al-Quds Day rallies in Tehran a statement was issued “on behalf of the Iranian nation” which called for “the obliteration of the Zionist regime, the Zionists’ withdrawal from the occupied lands, and the return of all Palestinian refugees from around the world to their homeland”.  This was followed two days later by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei calling Israel “the Zionist cancerous tumour in the heart of the Islamic world”.

Naturally, these statements have been seized upon in Israel as irrefutable evidence that a nuclear-armed Iran would seek the destruction of Israel.  And, indeed, even before these latest blood-curdling threats from Iran, the new civil defence minister Avraham Dichter said at the changeover ceremony with his predecessor Matan Vilnai that Israel faced an existential threat for the first time since the founding of the state.  Dichter was appointed on 14 August in order to support the hawkish views of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak, and he has duly obliged, saying: “Our enemies have built attack capabilities against Israel.  There are those that represent a strategic threat from Lebanon, from Gaza, and from Syria, and an existential threat from Iran for the first time since the establishment of the State of Israel.”  He added, however, that the “era where Israelis are killed only because they are Jews is over.”

For us what is interesting is that despite the best efforts of Netanyahu, Barak, Dichter, and the other Israeli hawks, it would appear that Iran does not believe that Israel will attack it, or that if it does it will be defeated.  For instance, on 20 August, Iran’s defence minister, Ahmad Vahidi, said about threats of an Israeli attack: “Officials of the Zionist regime are having serious political disagreements and these remarks bear no value.”  On 21 August, hard-line Keyhan said: “Israeli threats are just psychological manoeuvring”.

Also on 21 August, Evaz Heydarpur, a member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, said that Iran has “no doubts that the Zionists’ claim on attacking Iran is nothing but a psychological warfare.”  However, he added, if Israel does attack “Iran will not accept any ceasefire request by that regime’s allies and will attack the occupied lands by missiles until all the Zionists die or surrender.”

Elaborating further, Heydarpur said: “Iran’s defence capabilities will not allow the Zionist regime’s missiles to hit their targets and their fighter jets won’t be able to be present in Iran’s air space.  In addition, the Zionist regime’s military bases will be completely destroyed during the early days of the war by the Iranian missiles.  We predict that after the Zionists’ defence gets destroyed by Iranian missiles on the first day, the Iranian army and IRGC jets will be flying across Israel on the second day.”

Chillingly, he added: “Before the Zionists make a mistake, Iran announces that if they attack there would be no guarantee for even one Zionist to stay alive in the occupied lands...”

Many Western observers share this scepticism about Israel’s capabilities and intentions.  Our own sources do not believe Israel is bluffing, and in the past week it has been interesting to see efforts by the Israeli government to rebut two of the main objections to an attack.

On 15 August, Israel’s ambassador to the US Michael Oren argued in a speech in Washington that gaining a delay in the Iranian nuclear programme was a worthwhile goal, even if total destruction were not possible.  He said: “One, two, three, four years are a long time in the Middle East – look what’s happened in the last year.”  Sources in Jerusalem say this is very much the view of Netanyahu.

There have also been reports this week that Netanyahu has been countering those who say an Israeli attack on Iran would only consolidate the regime by arguing that the 1976 Entebbe raid did not have that effect on public support for Idi Amin.  It may not sound like a strong argument, but it is what Netanyahu is saying.

So the points that need emphasizing from the past week’s developments are these: Iran is continuing to give Israel every reason to believe that it poses an existential risk and thus cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons; Iran appears to be sceptical about Israel’s ability or willingness to attack, while having confidence in its own retaliatory capabilities should this judgement be proved wrong; and, thirdly, Netanyahu is continuing to make the case (greatly aided by Iran itself) for an early strike even if Washington cannot be persuaded to participate.  It could hardly be a more volatile mix.