An Iran 180 demonstrater stands outside the Warwick Hotel on 24 September 2012 in New York to protest the Warwick and its guest, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (Photo: AFP - Timothy A. Clary)
In the midst of Israel’s on-again-off-again call for military action against Iran, US magazine The Onion’s satirical spin provides much welcomed perspective, clarity and comic relief. “Iran worried US might be building 8,500th nuclear weapon,” headlined a recent Onion front page and the article quoted “Iranian intelligence experts” who “also warned of the very real, and very frightening, possibility of the US providing weapons to a rogue third party state, such as Israel.” Current Israel-Iran tensions have thrown up a dizzying array of expert argot and sound-bite simplicities; talk of enrichment thresholds, zones of immunity, red lines, green lights and windows of opportunity have rendered the emerging crisis all the more uncertain, and ominous.
When US President Obama telephoned Jerusalem earlier this month to be lectured by Israeli PM Netanyahu on the necessity of a “red line” for Iran’s nuclear program it was seen by some as a ratcheting down of Netanyahu’s more bellicose rhetoric to date. But afterward to CBC TV Canada, Netanyahu said, “The sooner we establish a clear red line, the greater the chances that there won’t be a need for other types of action.” The menacing implication that chances of other types of action will be necessary is apparent, and Obama’s call to Netanyahu was occasioned by the latter’s claim that “the US had no moral right to restrain Israel if it refused to put limits on Iran.”
When US President Obama telephoned Jerusalem earlier this month to be lectured by Israeli PM Netanyahu on the necessity of a “red line” for Iran’s nuclear program it was seen by some as a ratcheting down of Netanyahu’s more bellicose rhetoric to date. But afterward to CBC TV Canada, Netanyahu said, “The sooner we establish a clear red line, the greater the chances that there won’t be a need for other types of action.” The menacing implication that chances of other types of action will be necessary is apparent, and Obama’s call to Netanyahu was occasioned by the latter’s claim that “the US had no moral right to restrain Israel if it refused to put limits on Iran.”
It’s almost a law of historical physics that when an American election is imminent it’s no time for a key US strategic ally to go off-piste. All bets are off on an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites until after the November elections, goes the thinking, and if history provides any sort of lesson for Israel-US relations on this score it’s best remembered in the Suez crisis of 1956 when Israel was forced to withdraw from the Sinai by an enraged, newly elected Eisenhower. Of course, 1967 nostalgia for the dazzling success of the pre-emptive strike must also affect Israeli military planning, much as the lesson of complacency in 1973 figures into present calculations on Iran. Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak said, “Any [Israeli] decision to strike pre-emptively is very far off.” Reassuring, except this was in January and now any ambiguity about American views as to an Israeli pre-emptive attack could green-light Israeli action on Iran, just as US fuzziness helped launch the Six-Day War; just as American mixed messages encouraged Iraq, fatefully, to invade Kuwait in 1990.
Still, Barak Obama hasn’t lacked assertiveness in the flush of a new mandate – more recent history reminds us that the day after he was sworn into office he ordered drone strikes on Pakistan, which have continued relentlessly ever since. Israel’s preference naturally and practically is for the US to knock out Iran’s nuclear facilities, but according to a senior US official speaking on condition of anonymity to the New York Times, “President Obama is unwilling to agree on any specific action....We have a red line which is a nuclear weapon – we’re committed to that red line.”
The US won’t allow itself to be boxed in by Israeli conditions, and in mid-September Israeli Deputy PM Dan Meridor said on Israel Radio, “the US shouldn’t wait for Iran to decide on building a nuclear weapon before it considers military action against Iran.” It’s evident that Israel and the US are talking about two very different red lines. Israel’s cuts deeper, stopping, according to Ehud Barak, at the “zone of immunity,” beyond which Iran will have crossed an enrichment threshold, possessing sufficient weapons grade uranium for a nuclear weapon secured in facilities as deep as 80 metres underground. The window of opportunity to destroy or seriously disrupt Iran’s nuclear program will have been missed. From Iran’s point of view the contrast in these allies’ red lines paints a passively pink picture, rendering a precise Israeli pre-emptive casus belli difficult to determine. In effect, if Israel and the US can’t agree on a red line, why should threats about crossing it be taken seriously? Benjamin Netanyahu has pointed out more than once that Israel is in a “tough neighborhood” – what sort of regional street cred’ can Israel hope to retain if it’s all tough talk and no action?
Still, egging on its superpower ally this way would lead anybody to speculate about when and not if Israel will unilaterally strike Iran. Such speculation amongst Israeli civilians has been fuelled to the point of near hysteria since June by the government’s frantic distribution of “personal protection kits,” including gas masks. In a doom-laden and detailed analysis of the conflict in US magazine The Atlantic two years ago, Jeffrey Goldberg concluded from talking to nearly 40 past and present Israeli decision-makers that “there is a better than 50 percent chance that Israel will launch an attack by July of next year [2011].” Goldberg suggested such an attack would involve up to a hundred Israeli fighter jets hitting uranium enrichment facilities and reactor sites in Natanz, Qom, Isfahan and elsewhere. Others, such as Emily Landau of a Tel Aviv University security think tank and Professor Ali Ansari at the Iranian institute at St Andrews University in the UK, suggest that Iran could sustain an Israeli attack and that repeated strikes would be needed to keep Iran in line, something American military strategists call “mowing the lawn.”
Israel on its own might only be able to temporarily halt but not end Iranian nuclear development. And “in retaliation Iran would be very powerful,” notes former Iranian diplomat Seyed Hossein Mousavian. Estimates vary, but Iranian backed Hezbollah in Lebanon possesses 45,000 to 60,000 rockets, to cite just one instance of Iran’s retaliatory potential. Small wonder Israel would rather the US take on Iran. However, if The Onion is any guide, Israel’s got little to worry about on that front; reporting on the Israel-Lebanon war in August 2006, the magazine revealed, “With a series of heavy bombing attacks, Israel has successfully eradicated all anti-Semitism from its northern neighbor,” and quoted Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah: “Israel has really turned us around on that whole Jew-hating thing.”
Christopher Duggan is a Canadian freelance writer and high school history teacher living in London.
The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect Al-Akhbar's editorial policy.
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