While the rhetoric between Iran and its
enemies has reached new heights - with Iran's
defense minister reportedly threatening the use of
"hidden capabilities which are kept for rainy
days" in response to a foreign attack - the
diplomatic front is also busier than ever. A great
deal of expectation is placed on the meeting
between United States President Barack Obama and
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next
Monday, just as a great deal of attention is
focused on Israel's preparations to strike the
Iranian nuclear program.
Yet while Israel
is one of the noisiest participants in the
stand-off, it is by far not the only important
player to watch. From a long rostrum of powers
with heavy stakes (Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and China
immediately come to mind), Russia seems to be
driving a particularly hard bargain with the US
and its allies. Though not
much is known about
these secret negotiations, what seems apparent is
that the fates of Iran and Syria are intricately
linked.
To be sure, the exchange of
high-ranking American and Israeli officials has
grown into a "parade" over the last month, to
borrow the description of the Jerusalem Post.
According to reports in the Israeli press, some
kind of a grand bargain on Iran is shaping up
between the two allies, to be concluded - ideally
- during the visit of Netanyahu and the Israeli
president, Shimon Peres, to Washington in about a
week. (The influential Israeli defense minister,
Ehud Barak, is currently there; the formal
occasion for the upcoming visit of Peres and
Netanyahu is the annual conference of the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee.)
Despite
last week's report by the International Atomic
Energy Agency, according to which Iran's uranium
enrichment has expanded significantly, [1] and
despite the urgency which Israeli officials have
sounded, there is increased talk about postponing
the strike against the Islamic Republic until
after the American elections in November. To be
more precise, there are increased indications of
massive American pressure on Israel to desist from
attacking for now. "For the Americans, the
upcoming summit reportedly has only one main aim:
Receiving a Netanyahu pledge that Israel will not
be striking Iran in the near future," writes the
Israeli news site Ynet. [2]
The Israelis
bring their own demands: according to the same
article, "Netanyahu wants the statement to include
an American declaration that Washington will
further tighten the sanctions against Tehran." Yet
it is doubtful that this would be enough for the
Israeli prime minister to forego the military
option he has built up at enormous expense over
the last years, and which he professes to believe
may soon be the only way left to ensure his
country's survival.
According to a recent
report in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz:
The Netanyahu-Obama meeting … will
be definitive. If the US president wants to
prevent a disaster, he must give Netanyahu
iron-clad guarantees that the United States will
stop Iran in any way necessary and at any price,
after the 2012 elections. If Obama doesn't do
this, he will obligate Netanyahu to act before
the 2012 elections. [3]
Moreover, a
former Israeli official told Newsweek that
"Obama's refusal to provide that assurance has
helped shape Israel's posture: a refusal to
promise restraint, or even to give the United
States advance notice."
The article offers
a fascinating account of how Israeli officials
were imposed an informational "blackout" on their
American counterparts from June through October
last year, which, in retrospect, may have
motivated the intense
traffic that we see at present. It also recounts
the visit of the head of Israel's Mossad spy
agency in Washington last month:
According to an American official
who was involved, Tamir Pardo wanted to take the
pulse of the Obama administration and determine
what the consequences would be if Israel bombed
Iranian nuclear sites over American objections.
Pardo raised many questions, according to this
source: "What is our posture on Iran? Are we
ready to bomb? Would we [do so later]? What does
it mean if [Israel] does it anyway?" As it is,
Israel has stopped sharing a significant amount
of information with Washington regarding its own
military preparations. [4]
There are
countless theories about what an Israeli attack on
Iran would look like, most including some
combination of conventional air strikes with
in-flight refueling, drone strikes, electronic
warfare, and other methods, some bordering on
science fiction. Medium range ballistic missiles
(Jericho II) carrying specially designed high
explosives, sea-borne (perhaps submarine-borne)
cruise missiles, and special ground forces have
all been suggested as possibilities; even large
tungsten "rods from god" [5] mounted on the
Jericho III intercontinental ballistic missiles
Israel is believed to possess are not out of
question.
There are two main schools of
thought with respect to what a strike would aim to
accomplish. According to an NBC report:
Israel would not try to take out
every Iranian nuclear facility but instead would
target certain facilities it considers critical,
hoping to set the program back. US officials
believe an attack could put the program back two
to four years, Israelis estimate more like three
to five. One official said the Israelis are
prepared to "do the same in two to four years"
if the Iranian program recovers.
[6]
Others, however, argue that Israel
would choose to attack not only a larger number of
additional nuclear objects, but also most of
Iran's medium range ballistic missiles which can
be used to strike back. (This would still leave
Iran's capability to block the Strait of Hormuz
intact, as well as the ability to attack US bases
in the Persian Gulf.)
Assuming that Israel
is set on attacking, a lot of the specifics would
depend on what the Americans are saying behind
closed doors, which is far from certain. One
argument goes that Obama would rather Israel
attacked without his explicit knowledge, and as minimally as possible, so that
he could deny involvement and try to deescalate
the crisis following a limited Israeli strike.
However, in this scenario it would be
ultimately up to Iran to decide whether or not the
US was involved (and whether or not to hit back),
and it is unlikely that many in the American
administration would be comfortable with trusting
the Iranians. The opposite argument seems to fit
better the current events: that the American
president is eager to know every Israeli move, in
order to prevent an attack.
The
international community - countries as diverse as
Russia, Japan and the European powers - ostensibly
backs the American pressure on Israel. The main
reason for this is illustrated in the NBC report
cited above:
The price would spike immediately,
going from around $100 a barrel now to "between
$200 and pick-a-number," said one oil trader.
How quickly it would revert to lower levels
would depend on how quickly the situation
stabilized and how and where Iran would respond.
An attack on Saudi Arabia, for instance, would
place the price target at close to that
"pick-a-number" scenario, the trader said.
Even a $25 a barrel increase would have
serious consequences for the recoveries in the
US, European and East Asian economies,
particularly Japan. "It would be a game
changer," for the US economy and the political
season, said a US official.
One way
Obama might persuade Israel to hold off from
attacking Iran without committing to strike
himself could be to "lead from behind" in Syria.
(This would imply a Libya-style overt or covert
intervention, spearheaded by "allied" forces.) The
argument would be that taking out Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad would weaken greatly the Iranian
deterrent against Israel; we could think of it as
a kind of carrot offered to Netanyahu to wait and
to hope that the Syrian threat to start a war with
Israel if cornered is just a bluff.
It might take some time to depose Assad, but there are already unconfirmed reports of Turkish and Qatari special forces on the ground.
While Syria deserves a separate analysis,
it is important to note that, according to recent
statements by a wide variety of officials, the
fate of the two countries is linked beyond the
obvious (they are close allies and Iran is reportedly helping Assad repress his domestic opponents). Take, for example,
the following quote which Ha'aretz attributes to
US National Security Advisor Tom Donilon: "America
will not allow Iran to act aggressively and
ruthlessly exploit the Arab Spring, ‘which is
proposing ideological alternatives to Iran's
Islamic Revolution,' suggested Donilon." [7]
This statement would ring less odd, and
suggestive, if, practically at the same time,
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood lawmakers weren't
predicting that the Arab Spring would
spread to Iran. [8] Add to this the cryptic
comments by yet another American official, Anthony
Blinken, that American policy vis-a-vis Iran is
targeted at "buying time and continuing to move
this problem into the future, and if you can do
that - strange things can happen in the interim."
[9]
Russian analysts, on the other
hand, have long maintained that the Arab Spring
was a "color revolution", a tool either invented
or adapted by the West to advance its interests.
Not that Russia's hands - or motives - are clean.
In Syria, Russia is concerned mainly with its
naval base in Tartus, its weapons sales, and its
influence in the Arab world. The Syrian rebels
have reportedly offered to be flexible on the
first issue. As concerns the second, a source
close to the Russian analyst community suggested
that once it has completed the deals, the Kremlin
may be eager to demonstrate the capabilities of
its arms. (Among other things, this could boost
sales to other countries.)
With respect to
Iran, Russia seems to balancing between two
different fears. On the one hand, the same source
suggested, the Russians are afraid that if the
United States accomplishes regime change
in Tehran, the American missile defense shield
would arrive at Russia's doorstep from that direction.
On the other hand, the current Iranian regime
armed with nuclear missiles is far from the ideal
neighbor, either (separated from Russia by the
Caspian Sea).
Moreover, if Iran’s regime suffers a limited defeat, but is left standing, it will likely be desperate for more Russian weapons.
Thus, while the Kremlin is
officially a key ally of both Syria and Iran,
crucial to supporting both regimes diplomatically
and with military technology, in reality it is
ready to play both sides at once, if it isn't
doing that already. It may be more amenable to
some scenarios than to others - for example, it
might, under some conditions, accept point strikes
in Iran, or a regime change in Syria that does not
threaten its interests.
While neither the Russians nor any other player is likely to have its full agenda in the Middle East
fulfilled, the bargaining that is undoubtedly
raging in secret will seal the fate of the region,
at least for the near future.
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