Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

In a ‘pointer’ in last week’s issue we reported that Israel was stepping up its attempts to keep Iran’s nuclear programme high on the international agenda, and the past week has indeed seen a significant increase in official Israeli rhetoric, and media coverage, of the Iranian threat. 

The latest escalation in rhetoric follows on from the claim on 11 July by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) that Iran was developing a secret nuclear site in tunnels near the town of Damavand for the production of plutonium.  Israel has also claimed in recent days that the new centrifuges Iran is installing mean it can now jump straight from 3.5% uranium enrichment to the 90% enrichment needed to make a nuclear bomb. 

On 14 July, Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that Iran was approaching the red line he had set out at the UN last September.  He also said: “There are many important issues that we have to deal with [in the Middle East], and I have a sense that there is no sense of urgency on Iran and yet Iran is the most urgent matter of all.”

Netanyahu’s demands are that Iran “cease all enrichment…remove from the country all the enriched uranium, and…close the illegal [underground] nuclear facility at Qom”.

The problem for Israel now is threefold.  First, as Netanyahu intimated, with so much uncertainty and unrest in the Middle East, for the United States a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities is more problematic than ever.  There would never be a good time, but Washington thinks now would be the very worst time. 

Second, international support for an Israeli attack has been reduced further still by the feeling that Iran’s supposedly moderate president-elect, Hassan Rowhani, needs to be given time to develop a new policy.  Netanyahu’s response to this, in an interview broadcast by CBS on 14 July, is to argue: “His strategy is to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  Smile and build a bomb.”

Thirdly, this will be the fourth summer in a row that Netanyahu has ratcheted up the rhetoric about the possibility of an attack, without taking action.  Iran has long stated publicly that it doesn’t believe in Israel’s threats, and this belief can only have been reinforced by the gap in recent years between Israeli rhetoric and Israeli action.  When Netanyahu says once again, as he did on 14 July, that “it is important to…present Iran with a credible military option”, there is no indication that Iran is inclined to take this seriously.  At the very least it is likely that Iran believes it will remain in the clear until the spring of 2014. 

But if it is true, as we believe it is, that Iran believes Netanyahu is bluffing; and if it is also true, as we believe it is, that Netanyahu will eventually act if no one else does, then that is the worst of all possible worlds.