Netanyahu mulls a Six-Day War
surprise By Victor Kotsev
The fog of war has fallen so densely over
Iran and the Middle East that it is hard to say
for certain whether the latest developments are a
sign that one is imminent (in the form of an
Israeli strike in the next two months) or that the
timetable for a confrontation has been pushed back
until the spring and summer of 2013.
In the latter case, it is still possible that
negotiations would eventually prevail, but this is
far from guaranteed or even likely.
All of
a sudden, the government of Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu is dropping hints left and
right that it is willing to postpone action
against the Iranian nuclear program. On Tuesday,
it announced a number of new high-level military
appointments which had previously been delayed
amid the war preparations. As a prominent Israeli
analyst put it, "You don't appoint a brand new
operations chief when
you're about to go to war." [1]
On Monday,
moreover, Netanyahu said that "the clearer the red
line drawn before Iran by the international
community, the smaller the chance of a conflict".
He made this statement in the context of a New
York Times report that United States President
Barack Obama was considering making public his
proverbial red line on Iran and authorizing a
whole new range of secret operations in an effort
to assuage the Israelis, [2] and his words were
widely interpreted as willingness to back down.
Under massive pressure both at home and
abroad - the daily Ha'aretz reported last week
that even German Chancellor Angela Merkel phoned
Netanyahu recently to discuss this - it is
conceivable that the Israeli prime minister and
his influential defense minister, Ehud Barak, have
changed their minds about the urgency of a
military operation. In another highly symbolic
move, the man who headed the Israeli inquiry into
the disastrous 2006 war in Lebanon - former
Supreme Court Justice Eliyahu Winograd whose
report cost the careers of several top politicians
and army men - joined the chorus of critics of
Netanyahu and Barak days ago.
The Israeli
military analyst Ron Ben-Yishai offers a number of
reasons why "now is not the time to strike Iran":
The fighting in Syria is weakening the army
and the regime in Damascus, thus reducing the
likelihood that Syria would want or be able to
take part in any Iranian response to an Israeli
strike....
Moreover, the IDF has also been improving its
long range capabilities. Therefore, it is safe to
assume that if we wait, Iran's "immunity zone"
will shrink as a result of Israel's enhanced
military capabilities. Only economic sanctions can
achieve these objectives. This is why we mustn't
give the international community an excuse to
soften the sanctions.
The best way to stop Iran's nuclear program is
to overthrow the regime in Tehran or force it to
change its policy due to pressure from the masses.
…
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there
is no consensus within the Israeli public in
support of a military strike. [3]
Some
sort of a deal on the issue may be about to emerge
from the "poker game" (to borrow a metaphor from
another Ha'aretz article) between the US and
Israel. Netanyahu is rumored to be preparing a
major speech at the United Nations General
Assembly in New York later this month, and perhaps
also a meeting with Obama which many analysts
speculate may provide him with an opportunity to
start de-escalating his rhetoric. Whether and what
kind of a guarantee the US president might offer
the Israelis that he will stop the Iranian nuclear
program by force if necessary, as they have
requested, remains uncertain.
The tough
talk this week, with the chairman of the US Joint
Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, saying
that he did not want to be "complicit" in an
Israeli strike on Iran and Time Magazine
publishing a report that the US was scaling down a
military exercise with Israel next month in an
apparent effort to undermine the Israeli war
preparations [4] - can be interpreted in the same
vein. In the run-up to a deal, both Obama and
Netanyahu could be expected to bluff very hard in
order to pressure the other into concessions.
However, it is hard to trust either man's intentions. According to a report
in the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, which the Americans subsequently denied, Obama recently passed a
message to Tehran through European mediators
renouncing any Israeli attack and requesting that
Iran not retaliate against American military bases
in the Middle East. (The Iranian response came
from their close Lebanese ally Hezbollah, whose
leader said on Monday that "If Israel targets
Iran, America bears responsibility.")
Despite all the signs to the contrary, an
Israeli operation is hardly off the table - and as
Ben-Yishai hinted, it may not be off the table
next year, either. The Israeli military doctrine
emphasizes the element of surprise, and in the
past the Jewish State has been able to achieve it
even in situations where war has been long in the
making. In this way, at least, the situation prior
to the Six-Day War in 1967 paralleled the one
today, while the Israelis could perhaps afford to
make a new appointment or two if this would soften
the watchfulness of their enemies.
It
seems unlikely, moreover, that Tehran will give
its nuclear program up at this stage, despite the
fact that the sanctions have taken a heavy toll on
the Iranian economy. The Iranian regime is
reportedly very suspicious of the West - with good
reason given that Western proponents of regime
change there have become increasingly vocal in the
last years - and a nuclear weapon or capability is
among the few things that could give it a measure
of reassurance. Also, the militant rhetoric of the
ayatollahs has backed them into a corner of their
own; amid much social discontent at home it would
not be easy for them to save face and de-escalate.
Not to mention that the Iranian nuclear
program is quite advanced and advancing rapidly, as documented by the
latest report by the International Atomic Energy
Agency which came out last week. "Despite the
intensified dialogue between the Agency and Iran
since January 2012," the report states, "efforts
to resolve all outstanding substantive issues have
achieved no concrete results…. [5]"
Among
other things, Iran stands accused of installing
1,000 new uranium enrichment centrifuges at the
underground facility at Fordo, continuing to
enrich uranium elsewhere, failure to cooperate
with weapons inspections, and a cover-up at the
military site at Parchin where alleged experiments
related to the development of a nuclear warhead
took place in the past. It also continued to build
a heavy-water reactor at Arak, which could be used
for the production of the most commonly used
alternative to enriched uranium for nuclear
weapons, plutonium-239.
According to a
separate report published by the Wall Street
Journal, a top Iranian scientist and Islamic
Revolutionary Guard officer, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh
(dubbed the father of the Iranian nuclear weapons
program), resumed work recently [6]. Fakhrizadeh
had been sidelined several years ago, when the
Iranian nuclear weapons program was reportedly
halted, and his reappearance would suggest that
the Iran is again steaming ahead towards a bomb.
In the absence of a breakthrough in the negotiations - which some analysts speculate could come after the US presidential elections - a military conflict over the Iranian nuclear program seems all but inevitable. War could start even without either side truly wanting it, given the military buildup in the Persian Gulf and the possibility of an accidental provocation.
At the same time, it seems that Israel is on the verge of agreeing not to attack Iran this fall. Still, even this is far from certain - and even less so is the price it would extract from the US in return. There are roughly two months to go before the US elections and unfavorable weather conditions more or less rule out a war this year, and two months can be a very long time in Middle Eastern politics.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
