WarSclerotic

On the face of it, the United States and Iran are at loggerheads. The Obama administration has pledged to use all options at its disposal to stop Iran’s race to the bomb. Likewise, Tehran appears to be totally invested in confronting Washington, while accelerating its march toward nuclear weapons. But in reality this picture is misleading, obscuring a “tango” that both the mullahs and the Obama administration are “dancing” in order to thwart Israel.

Recent information indicating the Netanyahu government was readying a preemptive attack on Iran’s nuclear sites quickly yielded a full-bore effort by Washington to block the planned operation. Jerusalem’s new activism was undoubtedly also a factor in the imposition of the so-called “biting” economic sanctions against Iran that Washington recently devised to buy it more time and to slow Israel down.

Note that the Obama administration’s strong push to impose the new penalties on Iran did not come as a response to Tehran’s nuclear progress or even the damning IAEA report of November 2011, which exposed the military dimensions of the Iranian project. After all, key administration officials have publicly insisted Iran was “years away” from a “weaponized” nuclear capacity. Instead, Washington went into diplomatic high gear when some in Israel intimated that Mr. Netanyahu and others in his cabinet had had enough of international impotence, and, given Iran’s nuclear progress, were seriously considering an attack.

Worse yet, the Israeli leaks about the pending military undertaking may well have led Iran to accelerate its program. Specifically, there are reports that the transfer of centrifuges to the “impenetrable” Fordo enrichment facility near Qom has been speeded up.

In a word, assuming it is seriously contemplating an attack, the Netanyahu government’s handling of the plan has been utterly counterproductive. Instead of stopping Iran, it hastened the mullahs’ nuclear program, while at the same time triggering extra international pressure to rein in Israel. In fact, it put Washington and Tehran in the same trench of acting to foil an Israeli military action.

To boot, the mullahs were astute enough to signal their sudden interest in resuming negotiations with the 5 +1 group (the Security Council’s permanent members, plus Germany ) about the “outstanding” nuclear issues vexing the international community. Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, wrote in a February 14 letter to Europe’s foreign policy head, Catherine Ashton, that Iran seeks direct negotiations about its nuclear program at the “earliest possibility” – never mind that Ashton’s offer to resume talks was delivered to Tehran last October. For her part, Hillary Clinton, the U.S. secretary of state, was quick to announce the Iranian gesture was “the one we have been waiting for.”

In effect, Tehran is now aiding the Obama administration in devising a diplomatic leash for Israel, to restrain it from launching an attack. Both Tehran and Washington, it seems, are in agreement: The leadership threatening world peace resides in … Jerusalem!

As if this was not enough, Iran has been rattling its sabers too. By threatening to close the Straits of Hormuz and cutting off the oil-shipping lanes there, and by suspending its oil exports to certain European countries, Tehran hopes to affect an appreciable and hike in the price of oil. The idea is first to generate larger oil revenues for Iran to compensate for the losses caused by the recent economic sanctions. Tehran is also signaling to the White House its capacity to inflict havoc on the world economy, and to derail the budding economic recovery in the United States. Such a scenario, which could unfold in the aftermath of an Israeli attack, would be unhealthy to Obama’s reelection prospects.

In short, Tehran is manipulating world oil prices to further spur Obama’s efforts to restrain Israel and strike some sort of a deal to ensure calm, and thus his political well-being. Using a comprehensive carrot-and-stick strategy, Iran seeks to goad Washington into advancing its sinister agenda. (In fact, the mullahs could be forgiven, if in light of Obama’s efforts to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, they had concluded he was preferable to a Republican occupying the White House. )

Israel and the Obama administration are on different timetables. This is not because of the debate over whether there is or isn’t a “zone of invulnerability” that Iran would enter soon after it dispersed and hardened its nuclear sites, so as to make the actual timing of a decision to build the bomb extraneous. The real timetable is political. For Israel the period before the U.S. elections provides a window of opportunity for a military undertaking, as the political campaign in the United States would likely blunt the expected backlash from Washington. Mr. Obama will hesitate to punish Israel harshly and risk the Jewish and pro-Israel vote if he judges such a reaction would endanger his chances for a second term. However, the same elections clock also indicates Mr. Obama has no intention of taking military action against Iran, at least for the duration.

There is little doubt Tehran understands these realities as well. By its clock, this is the right time to push for the bomb without fear of an American military sanction. Further that, for Iran, now is the time to help Mr. Obama restrain Israel and in effect to enlist the American president to pave the way for Iran getting the bomb.

Avigdor Haselkorn is the author of “The Continuing Storm: Iraq, Poisonous Weapons and Deterrence” (Yale University Press ).