Israel's 'auto-pilot' policy on
Iran By Trita Parsi
WASHINGTON - The US National Intelligence
Estimate's (NIE) assertion that Iran currently
does not have a nuclear weapons program has caused
much frustration in Israel. Deputy Defense
Minister Ephraim Sneh referred to the report as a
lie at a recent breakfast in New York, and
Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer
reportedly "doesn't buy" its findings.
Though the report aggravates Israel's
effort to compel Washington to pursue an
increasingly harsh line against Tehran, all is not
lost for Israel. In fact, despite these initial
knee-jerk reactions, the NIE
may
very well end up being a blessing in disguise for
the Jewish state by pulling Israel out of its
paralysis with regard to Iran.
Israel has
long been at odds with Washington's intelligence
agencies. It started sounding the alarm bells on
Iran's nuclear program back in 1991, arguing that
in the post-Cold War world, Iran and Shiite
fundamentalism were emerging as the new strategic
threat to the Middle East.
The Israeli
warnings were met with great skepticism and
surprise within the Beltway. After all, only a few
years earlier - at a time when Iran's
revolutionary fervor was still riding high - the
Israelis had gone to great lengths to bring Iran
and the US back on talking terms, dismissing all
notions that Iran was a threat.
But Israel
stuck to its guns and ever since 1992, the Jewish
state has employed a bellicose rhetoric against
Tehran (echoing the Islamic Republic's venomous
verbal attacks on Israel) and maintained that Iran
is just a few years away from the bomb.
"Remember, the Iranians are always five to
seven years from the bomb," Shlomo Brom, deputy
national security adviser under former prime
minister Ehud Barak, told this analyst
sarcastically during an interview for a book on
Israeli-Iranian relations. "Time passes, but
they're always five to seven years from the bomb."
But Israel's new and aggressive Iran
policy didn't lack critics. An internal government
committee concluded in the mid-1990s that Israel's
harsh public position on Iran had backfired,
caused Israel to unnecessarily make itself a
target of Iran and made Tehran's nuclear ambitions
appear as an Israeli problem, rather than being a
concern of the entire international community. The
Rabin-Peres government countered that its
aggressive stance had pushed Washington to take on
Tehran instead of striking a deal with the Iranian
clergy, an argument that was well received even by
the Labor government's critics.
This is
precisely why NIE is so problematic for Israel's
current strategy on Iran. On the one hand, Israel
fears US-Iran negotiations since an accommodation
between Washington and Tehran most likely would
entail a small-scale enrichment program on Iranian
soil. Such a development would significantly shift
the balance of power against Israel. Furthermore,
Iran's interest in the region would increasingly
be viewed as legitimate by Washington, which in
turn would exacerbate the problems with the new
balance.
On the other hand, to prevent
such a scenario from arising in the first place,
Israel has felt the need to ring the alarm bells,
create political obstacles to a US-Iran dialogue
and pressure Washington to keep all options open -
without making itself appear as being on the
frontline against Iran.
The NIE has pulled
the rug out from under Israel's feet and caused
Israel to fail on both counts. The likelihood of
US-Iran diplomacy has grown significantly while
Israel appears increasingly alone in the world,
toeing a hawkish and excessive line on Iran.
But the uncompromising line on Iran was
doomed to fail regardless. First, Iran has in the
past two years walked through all of Israel's red
lines on the nuclear issue - without facing a
robust Israeli response. Instead, the Israeli
strategy has been to revise its red lines every
time Iran crossed them. This has eroded Israel's
credibility.
Secondly, the pressure on
Iran was increasingly likely leading to either an
Iranian nuclear fait accompli through negotiations
with Washington or a military confrontation with
Tehran, with unpredictable consequences for
Israel. The dangers of war have become
increasingly clear to the Jewish state. In the
end, all three previous military confrontations in
the region - Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon - have
surprisingly ended up benefiting Iran rather than
Israel.
A growing number of people in
Israel have recognized the folly of its Iran
policy. The chessboard has changed but Israel has
not adjusted its policy to the new realities.
Israel is on auto-pilot, pursuing a policy which
ignores the new strategic fundamentals -
Hezbollah's military success last year, the US's
quagmire in Iraq and Iran's irreversible nuclear
advances.
Israeli decision-makers have
been in a state of strategic paralysis, incapable
of recognizing the new chessboard and the
necessary adjustments they need to make. They have
feared recognizing publicly that Iran is a
rational actor and that even a nuclear Iran
wouldn't be an existential threat to the Jewish
state, out of fear that such admissions would take
pressure off of Washington to act firmly against
Iran - the same argument Peres and Rabin used in
the mid-1990s.
Politically, this is
understandable. No Israeli leader wishes to be the
one to declare to the Israeli public that a
critical step in the strategic rivalry with Iran
has been lost, even though it was never really
winnable.
But some past politicians and
decision-makers have started to speak up, arguably
to end the strategic paralysis and cut Israel's
losses. Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel's former foreign
minister, publicly argues that a US-Iran dialogue
could benefit Israel. Ephraim Halevi, the former
head of the Mossad, echoed in the Washington Post
what he told this analyst last year - Iran is
rational, it is not suicidal, it can be deterred,
Israel can handle even a nuclear Iran and a
dialogue is now needed between the Jewish State
and the Islamic Republic.
Noted Israeli
military historian Martin van Creveld even told
Newsmax last week that he "cannot think of even
one case since 1980 and the Iranian Islamic
Revolution that this country has behaved
irrationally".
The NIE has given these
voices of reason in Israel a great boost, helping
them turn off the auto-pilot and ending Israel's
strategic paralysis. By adjusting its Iran policy
to the new strategic realities and putting its
weight behind US-Iran negotiations, Israel can
still avoid both an Iranian nuclear weapon and a
disastrous war with Iran.
Trita
Parsi, author of the newly released
Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of
Israel, Iran, and the US (Yale), is president
of the National Iranian American Council.
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
