Israel sticks to its guns on
Iran By Victor Kotsev
The diplomatic and political pirouettes
related to the Iranian nuclear crisis continue at
full speed in Washington, Jerusalem, Tehran and
other world capitals. The Israeli expectation that
the United States draw a "clear red line" -
essentially issue an ultimatum to Iran backed by a
credible military threat - is meeting stiff
opposition: as US Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton said on Sunday in a radio interview,
"We're not setting deadlines." Shortly afterward,
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that the
bargaining continued. Netanyahu has hinted
recently that he might be willing to postpone an
Israeli air strike on the Islamic Republic, and a
tentative consensus seems to be emerging among
analysts that the danger this year has passed.
"August 2012 will be one of those periods that
will be dissected by historians in generations
to come, each day
analyzed," wrote in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz
journalist Anshel Pfeffer. "Piecing together
events in Jerusalem and Washington, Tel Aviv and
Tehran, they will try to understand how Benjamin
Netanyahu took his country to the brink of war,
looked down into the abyss, took a deep breath and
was yanked back."
It would appear that
Netanyahu and his influential defense minister,
Ehud Barak, are just as, if not more, isolated in
their threats of war as are Iran's leaders in
their determination to continue with their nuclear
program. The Israeli leaders - not unlike the
Iranians, despite the obvious differences - face
domestic as well as international pressures. Even
the Canadian move to cut diplomatic relations with
Tehran last week can be seen as an incentive for
Israel not to attack (and to give diplomacy a
chance) rather than the other way round.
So can Republican presidential hopeful
Mitt Romney's recent attack on US President Barack
Obama's cautious approach to the crisis. "Perhaps
[Obama's] biggest failure is as it relates to the
greatest threat that America faces and the world
faces, which is a nuclear Iran," Romney told NBC's
"Meet the Press" on Sunday.
The United
States and the European powers, while slapping
Tehran with ever-tougher sanctions - just a couple
of days ago, European Union officials announced
they were considering a new round - have also
leaned hard on Jerusalem to wait.
Russia
and China, on the other hand, already think that
the sanctions have gone too far. On Saturday,
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov slammed
them, saying after a meeting with Clinton that
"Unilateral US sanctions against Syria and Iran
increasingly take on an extraterritorial
character, directly affecting the interests of
Russian business, in particular banks."
The two countries, which do not always see
eye-to-eye on foreign policy, are motivated by
major geopolitical considerations on top of the
financial ones, and are unlikely to budge. Israeli
journalist Herb Keinon perhaps best summarized an
argument that has appeared in different versions
elsewhere in the past:
The Chinese and the Russians -
especially the Russians - fear that the collapse
of Iran, Syria and Hezbollah would lead to
complete American domination of the Mideast and
its oil flow. America, in this view, already has
close allies in the Persian Gulf, in Turkey, in
Israel. The collapse of Iran and Syria could
possibly send those states as well into the US
camp, leaving Moscow and Beijing without any
foothold in the strategically critical region.
[1]
The Israeli strike option is not
without its supporters, both at home and abroad -
many of the Arab countries, specifically in the
Persian Gulf, are reportedly quiet members of the
latter camp. However, the concluding statement of
the 16th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement last
month, which was supportive of Iran's nuclear
program and was adopted despite a number of
inaccuracies, [2] demonstrates the kind of
discourse which is likely to gain prominence in
the aftermath of a unilateral Israeli operation.
Still the speculation continues. More
fanciful takes such as that of a recent Sunday
Times report go as far as to claim that Israel is
preparing an electromagnetic pulse attack to
destroy the Iranian power grid with a
high-altitude nuclear explosion. [3] (This idea
may be based in part on past reports that the
Iranian power grid may be vulnerable to a more
simple cyber attack and that Israel may take
advantage of that in a conflict.)
More
somber voices warn either that Netanyahu is too
genuinely scared by the Iranian nuclear threat to
hold back indefinitely an Israeli (conventional)
pre-emptive attack, or that his and his
associates' thinking, many of them former
commandos, is too rigid and militaristic. "It's a
certain fraternity that for many years has managed
to place security as the central issue in the
country," Yael Dayan, daughter of the famous
Israeli statesman and military leader Moshe Dayan,
told the Associated Press recently. "They need a
war to justify their own existence." [4]
Most analysts, in fact, agree that absent
another resolution to the crisis, Israel would
eventually strike. Many of Netanyahu's domestic
critics also support an operation as an option of
last resort, but disagree with their prime
minister's timetable. Timing, therefore, is key:
while November marks the closing of an important
tactical window of opportunity, Israel has allowed
other self-imposed deadlines to pass without its
military option expiring. Next year may not be too
late either - especially if the Americans agree to
set a tougher tone now. It is also possible that
the Israeli leaders will spring a surprise despite
all odds, as has happened in the past.
These probabilities are reflected in an
important new report titled "Analyzing the Impact
of Preventative Strikes Against Iran's Nuclear
Facilities" that came out last week. The 98-page
document,
compiled by Anthony Cordesman and Abdullah Toukan
at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies in Washington, summarizes much of what has
been published on the issue in the last years,
offering many specific military details.
The authors consider several scenarios,
including, interestingly, an Israeli tactical
nuclear strike (though not a high-altitude EMP
attack, which would arguably damage the power
grids of other neighboring countries as well).
They conclude that "The US would not allow any
other country, even a strong ally such as Israel,
to use [nuclear weapons], unless another country
had used nuclear weapons against the US and its
allies."
The main possibility the report
examines, in fact, is that of an American
operation. To prevent damage from the expected
Iranian retaliatory strike, the US has been
developing a multi-tier missile defense shield in
its Gulf allies, and is reportedly working on
increasing the coordination between the different
systems in the different countries. This move is
motivated by the assessment that "Iran sees its
missile capabilities as a way to compensate for
its shortcomings in conventional forces, as well
as a means to strike at high-value targets with
little warning, such as population centers, and
Western and Western-backed forces in the region,
including US bases in the Gulf."
The
report analyzes a sample air operation, setting
the mission parameters as 75% or more damage "for
each target, nuclear and missile, resulting in a
delay of at least 5 to 10 years in Iran's nuclear
program, and substantially weakening Iran's
ballistic missile retaliatory capability." The
targets are set as five main nuclear facilities
(Fordow, Arak, Esfahan, Natanz and Parchin), eight
missile bases (Bakhtaran, Abu Musa Island, Bandar
Abbas, Imam Ali, Kuhestak, Mahsad, Semnan and
Tabriz), 15 missile production facilities, and 22
assumed mobile launchers "in various locations".
The authors argue that a total of around
100 advanced airplanes would be needed, including
10 B-2 stealth strategic bombers each carrying two
30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker
busters, as well as 90 F-18s, F-15Es and F-16Cs.
Various other supporting aircraft such as escort
fighters, electronic warfare and advanced warning
and control systems (AWACS) would also presumably
take part.
A conventional Israeli strike
would most likely require a similar number of
aircraft, or "over 25% of the high end combat
aircraft of Israeli Airforce and 100% of the
Tankers". Three main routes are suggested: the
Northern Route (optimal) along the border between
Turkey and Syria, the Central Route between Syria
and Jordan and through Iraq, and the Southern
Route through Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
The
report, however, cautions that a military
operation - especially a unilateral Israeli strike
- would have grave repercussions on Middle Eastern
geopolitcs and world economy. Among other
insights, it demonstrates that the spare pipeline
capacity of the Arab countries in the Persian
Gulf, which could be used to bypass an Iranian
blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, is at best 4.3
million barrels/day, or 25% of the total carried
through the strait each day. A prolonged closure
of the narrow passage, on the other hand, would
hurt the troubled global economy badly.
In
order to counter the latter threat - and to
increase the credibility of the American military
option, thus reassuring the Israelis - the US has
been conducting a massive military exercise in the
Persian Gulf. The drill simulates clearing naval
mines and neutralizing Iranian attacks on
shipping, and is expected to continue a total of
12 days.
On the other hand, even those who
advocate diplomacy admit that it will likely take
time - some push the timetable as far back as June
2013, after the Iranian presidential elections
have taken place. It is unclear whether there is
so much time on the clock.
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