But the [Roman] Legate Lentulus said, “That for the purpose of saving the country no proposition
ought to be rejected…the defense of their country was always good…”. For where the very safety
of the country depends upon the resolution to be taken… putting all other considerations aside,
the only question should be, What course will save the life and liberty of the country?
—Machiavelli, Discourses, III, xli
It is painful, and deeply saddening, to realize that the U.S.’s Iran-nuclear Deal has placed Israel in the unthinkable existential position—unthinkable, that is, before Obama’s radical pro-Iranian policy shift—of having to decide, alone, whether to strike Iran’s threatening nuclear establishment.
The clearly American-dominated “5+1”-negotiated Deal allows Iran (naively–or cynically–assuming full Iranian compliance) to retain its basic enrichment facilities and centrifuge research, in return for postponing achievement of a nuclear device for a period of years and the meager gain of extending nuclear break-out time from several months to a year. More: it releases $150 billion in sequestered funds, dismantles the sanctions regime, allows resumed oil sales and Western investment, and approves phased acquisition of heavy weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Russia and China are already negotiating military and oil-supply deals with Iran, and France, Germany and major American concerns, eager to invest, are not far behind,
Despite the repeated mantra of “nothing is off the table”, it became clear after 2012-13 that Obama would not resort to decisive military action to ensure that Iran not move towards a bomb. As elements of the coming US-Iran deal leaked out of Geneva, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu took the radical step of accepting an invitation (from the Republican opposition) to speak against the Deal from the well of the U.S. Congress. (He had, earlier on, spoken out from the rostrum of the U.N., holding up his famous ticking time-bomb nuclear graphic and urging the U.S. and the West to deter Iran.)
While it is certain that by the prescribed September 17, 2015 end-of-debate time-limit Congress will reject the Deal, it is unclear whether it can then achieve the 2/3 majority votes needed to override Obama’s equally certain veto (he needs only 37 [Democratic] Senate votes to block final disapproval). At the moment, most informed opinion feels the President will get his votes, and begin implementing the Deal, despite the negative national consensus represented by both the large Congressional negative majority, and public-opinion polls consistently indicating that a two-thirds majority of the American public directly opposes to it.
This is not the place to speculate on why Obama and Kerry have rushed, despite such Congressional and public opposition, and the evident effectiveness of international sanctions (after all, why did Tehran come to the table in the first place?), to serve up this counter-factual agreement. It may well be a function of Obama’s “legacy” fixation, of sheer political-diplomatic incompetence, or, as some are now arguing, of the deal as an in fact subordinate part of a much larger, ill-considered American-Iranian deal. This radical Middle East realignment would restructure the hitherto dominant U.S.-Israel-Saudi Arabia [Sunni] framework) with a new U.S.-Iranian [Shiite] axis, supposedly creating a stabilizing balance-of-power facilitating a de facto American withdrawal from the region.
But this is the place to ask what follows the implementation of the Deal. The working assumption is that Netanyahu’s consistent repetition of the fact that a nuclear-capable Iran is a dire existential threat to Israel (something shared across the board politically in Israel) is not bluster, but a serious and settled view. If so, the question then is, when and how will Netanyahu and Israel make good on their conviction that the Deal–economically, militarily, politically and, ultimately, in terms of nuclear capacity—radically strengthens, not weakens, a genocidal and terrorist-supporting Islamist Iran.
(“How” is a military question, involving bringing the requisite force to bear on Iran in such a way as either to destroy or severely to set back, its nuclear capacity. The logistics of long-distance air attacks and refueling, of available ordinance, ballistic missile attacks from pre-positioned submarines, possible landing and extraction of commandos, the amount of time required and precautionary defensive tactics involved, and so on, are beyond the purview of this article. It is, however, safe to say that the very capable Israel Defense Force, one of the world’s leading militaries, has been refining, and rehearsing, such an attack for some years now, and while certainly not as obviously and awesomely capable as the U.S. military, is nevertheless quite capable of successfully carrying out the interdictive mission.)
Assuming, then, that the “how” is feasible, and that there will be an attack, what remains to be examined is when such an attack will come.
Given President Obama’s central role, evident almost as soon as he was elected in 2008, in re-orienting American Middle Eastern foreign policy away from Israel, it would seem to make sense for Israel to await the results of the coming 2016 Presidential election. Why act precipitously when it is quite possible a decidedly more pro-Israel, and anti-Deal, President (as several Republican candidates have indicated) might well initiate either a re-negotiated Deal, or a subsequent military strike, or support an Israeli unilateral attack.
The risk, of course, is that the Democratic candidate could win the election. If that means Hillary Clinton, or, now, Joe Biden (both of whom, as Secretary of State and Vice-President, respectively, under Obama, and the former now as a Presidential candidate, have endorsed Obama’s M.E. and Iranian policies), it would constrain any Israeli action, complicating the strategic, as well as tactical, situation for Jerusalem.
A Democratic victory, then, means that Israel might decide it has to bide its time, waiting either for the Deal or Khamenei’s mullah regime to fall apart—neither of which prospects currently seem very likely. If waiting on the result of the November, 2016 elections seems not be in Israel’s interest, then, as the Romans put it, necessitas non habet legem, Necessity knows no law, and Israel may well decide it must act before the November election result.
Striking in the midst of the Presidential campaign, as both parties still seek the Jewish vote and are mindful of overwhelming public support for Israel and rejection of the Obama Deal as such, can insulate the attack from an negative Obama-led American response. The Republican candidate would likely support the Israeli move, while the still-Democratic lame-duck President probably would—fearing that a negative response might engender a popular backlash hurting his Democratic party’s candidate—at best temporize, rather than take immediate anti-Israel action, either directly or through the UN. Security Council.
In the region, the Sunni States—Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the Gulf states—would support Israel (the Saudis presumably allowing necessary over-flights and refueling). Hamas and Hezbollah, Iranian clients, might, if prodded by their Iranian patron, attack Israel. But Hamas, grievously wounded in the last Gaza war and preoccupied by Egyptian pressure, might, like the already-overextended Hezbollah in Syria, choose to sit it out. (And part of any Israeli action strategy would, clearly, be to warn, isolate and deter both of them, threatening an immediate, massive response should they intervene.)
Iran itself, a distant land power with a weak navy and air force, can only respond with missile attacks; but, [thankfully!] carrying at this time only relatively small conventional warheads, such a riposte can largely be turned away by Israeli anti-missile missiles. And in any case an Iranian response risks eliciting a broader Israeli air and missile assault, one which could be aimed at regime change. And in any case, Tehran already has its hands full in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, and certainly wouldn’t want—by attacking Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, let alone American bases and the Persian Gulf fleet–to broaden the already-demanding situations it faces in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.
Insofar as the European Union and the UN are concerned, they would, of course, condemn the Israeli action, but could do little concretely to alter it; the Europeans (and the US) also have their hands full, in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya (not to mention the Ukraine and, further afield, with China and the South China Sea); punitive General Assembly resolutions are toothless, and while Security Council condemnations might quickly be moved, they might well be vetoed by a Democratic Administration with, again, an eye on the looming domestic election.
Such an Israeli preemptive attack would be quick and precise, focusing on destroying Iranian air and missile defenses, surgically taking out key Iranian nuclear facilities, and minimizing civilian casualties. It needn’t totally destroy all nuclear sites, just those key to research and enrichment (and it will probably target Iranian intercontinental missile production, storage and launch facilities). Nor need it achieve its goals in just one strike—anything missed or only partially destroyed can quickly be hit again, either in immediate, or postponed, sequence.
(Notions that Iranian nuclear production can easily be rebuilt within two or three years after an Israeli strike radically underestimate the effectiveness of Israel’s military power and the fact that anything rebuilt can, once again, be degraded.)
To recapitulate: it is quite possible that Israel will not allow Iran to continue its march toward nuclear capacity under the illusory cover of the Obama-Kerry Deal. Time is not on Israel’s side: the longer the Deal obtains, the stronger Iran becomes, fiscally, politically and militarily in the region, and in terms of nuclear capability and [surprise] weapon break-out capacity. Given that Israel’s very existence is threatened, temporizing as Iran moves steadily ahead is neither politically, nor militarily, advisable, or advantageous.
Hence it is possible that we will see an Israeli strike sometime during the 2016 Presidential campaign, after the primaries and the respective summer 2016 nominating conventions are over, and before the November 8, 2016 election. (Of course, there is nothing automatic about such a possibility–when push comes to shove, Israel may well decide otherwise, calculating either that the deal may well prove inoperable and fall through or that the Republican candidate will indeed be elected, and choosing to err on the side of caution. As the Italians say, Chi vivra, verra—he who lives long enough, will see.)
But one thing is clear. Obama’s Deal, and behind it his reversal of America’s long-standing alignment with democratic Israel, has forced the Jewish state into the present precarious situation. The American Humpty-Dumpty has had a great fall, and whether it can be put together again after 2016 remains to be seen. Now, small and inter-mediate regional states like Israel (and Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and Jordan) must take their fates (including, unfortunately, their nuclear fates) into their own hands, despite the U.S. (and at least until there is a Republican Administration).
It may well have fallen to Israel, given the abject failure of American and West European leadership, to prevent Shiite ran, a “crazy state” openly dedicated to its destruction (and that of the Sunni “infidels” and the “Great Satan, the U.S.) , from becoming nuclear-capable. That tiny Israel must do this largely alone, while democratic America, the world’s greatest military super-power, not only sits idly after having endangered Israel, but also actively seeks even now to constrain it, is one of the greatest paradoxes of modern history. It is also a bitter lesson in the central political role of leadership: Who could have imagined this profound Munich-like diplomatic, political, and moral, reversal a scant seven years ago?
As the Jewish New Year and Day of Atonement, fraught with danger not only for Israel and the Jewish People, but for the Western world, approach, it is the deep moral responsibility of all Jews and Jewish institutions, and of decent men and women everywhere, to do everything they can to support the Jewish state as it faces the greatest existential threat, and decision, since its founding in May, 1948.
(Frederick Krantz, Director of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research and Editor of its
Daily Isranet Briefing, is Professor of History in Liberal Arts College, Concordia University, Montreal)
