WarSclerotic

Tom Allon: Is This Threat Different From All Other Threats?.

When my parents were teenagers in Eastern Europe, the steady drumbeat of Jewish persecution in Europe was making its way to their hometowns.

“Why didn’t your family flee before the Nazis came?” I often asked them when I was a youngster in the 1960s, trying to understand the passivity and ultimate tragedy of their family’s decision.

My parents lost their parents, their brothers and sisters, and many other relatives to the Nazi onslaught. My parents were fortunate survivors, who came to America to start life anew. But some of their surviving relatives went to Israel to start their lives over in the new land of milk and honey.

As we approach Passover this week, it is a fitting time to put today’s existential threat from Iran into a broader historical context. Let’s not forget that Iran is not just a threat to Israel, but the whole world (including specifically the U.S.) as we have seen its ability to arm proxy terrorist organizations in recent years.

Jews have been vilified and persecuted through the ages, dating back to the long period of bondage in Egypt. Some lowlights in history include the evil Haman and his plot to kill the Jews of Persia (whose failure was celebrated last month on Purim), the Spanish Inquisition, the Russian pogroms, and the most evil and unthinkable period, the Holocaust of the 1940s, which killed six million Jews, and dozens of my immediate family.

Out of the ashes of Europe, the State of Israel arose phoenix-like in 1948 as a safe haven to Jews not just in the Middle East, but worldwide. As my father often pointed out to me as a child: “As long as we have Israel, we have a place to flee in case anti-Semitism rears its ugly head again.”

To my father and his generation of Holocaust survivors, Israel represented the only vindication for the horrors they suffered; any threat to Israel’s existence, and there have been many in the last 64 years, was a threat to all of world Jewry.

I am about to go to Israel for Passover with two of my children. I do so with the full knowledge that sitting not far from Israel’s borders is a country, Iran, whose leaders have vowed to destroy it if it could.

Israel has been warning the world about Iran for 15 years and some countries have just recently woken up to this threat and imposed sanctions that may be too little, too late.

This is not the first time that Israel’s many foes have vowed to wipe it off the map and out of existence. First, came the 1948 War of Independence, then the 1956 Suez conflict, the 1967 Six-Day War, the 1973 October War and the Intifada of the 1990s. All these conflicts proved that Israel is basically a good country in a hostile neighborhood, as my father liked to characterize it.

In 1981, the summer after my freshman year in college, I went to Israel for the summer as a young idealist seeking a simpler life on a kibbutz. While there, in June, Israel surgically attacked Iraq’s nuclear power plant and destroyed it without any lives being lost.

As I watched President Ronald Reagan on television that night wag his finger at Israel for this attack, I heard the wise words of my Israeli aunt say to me: “The Americans are angry with us now, but in 10 years they will thank us.”

She was prophetic. A decade later, the Gulf War would have turned out differently, of course, if Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapon.

A few years ago, Israel pulled off another tactical strike to prevent Syria from getting a nuclear weapon. The instability in that country today could be much worse if President Assad had nuclear capabilities.

The new existential threat to Israel is Iran’s seeming rush to develop a nuclear weapon. Israel soon may be at the point where not preemptively destroying Iran’s capabilities could endanger its future.

Sometimes, the events of recent history can lead to the wrong lessons. America’s rush to attack Iraq over WMDs that didn’t exist has made many wary of a rush to presume nuclear weapons are being created. The failed intelligence of the Bush administration that led to the attack in Iraq has led some to question Israel and America’s presumption that Iran is close to nuclear weapon capabilities.

This complex issue does not necessarily have a right or wrong answer. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an old-school politician whose main mission is to preserve Israel’s existence and keep his citizens safe, has a very difficult decision to make. The upcoming American election this November may affect the Israeli timetable for addressing this. No one can actually know how heavy the crown weighs on Netanyahu’s head.

This Friday, I will be sitting at a seder in Tel Aviv, celebrating an exodus from Egypt thousands of years ago that has inspired generations of Jews to appreciate their freedom. I will ask my Israeli relatives about the Iranian dilemma as well as the occupation of the West Bank. I will travel across the country and listen to divergent points of view about where Israel should go from here.

But most of all, I will pray at the Western Wall, that the Iranian threat is different from all other threats. That in the coming year, through strong sanctions and reason, this threat will dissipate and not require a military strike from Israel.

But if this strategy does not work, I will hear my late father’s words about the Holocaust reverberate in my head: “Never again.”

Tom Allon is a N.Y. Liberal Party and Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City in 2013.

Obama Administration: Existential Threat to Israel | Israel Right Side News.

Four senior American diplomats — most likely in the State Department — as well as senior intelligence officers appear to have leaked a key military relationship between Azerbaijan and Israel.

RED ALERT: Former Marine Strike Planner on Obama’s Azerbaijan Leak: “Start viewing this administration as an existential threat to Israel”

A highly knowledgeable Democratic friend emails Ron Ben-Yishai’s YnetNews report “US thwarting Israeli strike on Iran.” The report asserts that the Obama administration is leaking information to the media in order to avert an Israeli strike in Iran. Ben-Yishai observes that in recent weeks the administration has “shifted from persuasion efforts vis-à-vis decision-makers and Israel’s public opinion to a practical, targeted assassination of potential Israeli operations in Iran.” My friend comments succinctly on the report: “Wow. Ron Ben-Yishai is considered to be one of the most serious Israeli defense correspondents.”

Ben-Yishai gives few examples of the Obama administration’s efforts to thwart an Israeli strike on Iran, but the news this week provides what seems to be a case study supporting his thesis. Foreign Policy reports that, according to “four senior diplomats and military intelligence officers,” Azerbaijan has granted the Israelis access to airbases in that country. Such access would dramatically mitigate the difficulty of an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

This leak destroyed any capability of a surprise attack by Israel using these bases. And it came from Obama administration officials.

“Bill”, a former Marine Corps strike planner, weighed in on the implications of this leak Friday on The Mark Levin Show. Read every word.

I just want to comment on this revelation by the State Department regarding this Israel-Azerbaijan connection. A few years ago, I was writing an article and studying how Israel might go about attacking Iran with the assets we knew they had…

I’ve got experience as a Marine F-4 Phantom Radar Interceptor Officer. I’ve planned strike missions. I’ve got a thousand hours in the Phantom. So I’m familiar with the problems strike planners have in attacking a target or multiple targets like Iran. And as I looked at the map, I thought: ‘Boy, oh, boy, if the Israelis had an alliance with Azerbaijan, that would be the perfect place to launch a strike.

They’ve got this beautiful, 10,000-foot concrete runway in Baku. You take off, you come right out over the Caspian Sea. The pilots flip on their radar altimeters, drop down 25-feet off the deck, and they just race in a straight line.

They pop up over some hills, and they’re in Tehran before the Iranians even know what hit them. They could then go hit the other targets. It reduces the distance for this strike by, oh, six, seven hundred miles. It might alleviate the need for tankers. Or, if they do need tanker support, you could put them over the Caspian Sea…

…The beauty of Baku is that the Caspian Sea is right at the end of the runway. It’s a straight shot, maybe 300 miles, from that base to Tehran. A good radar altimeter will get an F-4, F-16, F-15 strike fighter maybe 25 feet off the water. Going in at that altitude, you’re not going to be picked up by radar.

But there’s something even more important here. The Iranians are not expecting an attack from the north. Now, with the revelation of this relationship, they are. And that has a lot of implications beyond the tactical.

Think of it this way. Prior to this revelation, the Iranians — although they noticed some connections between Israel and Azerbaijan — didn’t know how deep that connection was.

Now the Iranians can start bullying the Azerbaijanis. They can send a diplomat up to Baku and say, basically, ‘if any Israeli plane hits us from the north, when we get our nuke, we are going to test it on Baku. Of course that will all happen behind the scenes, but the threat will be made.

Now, I want you to consider this: there are many ways to attack Iran. You can go for the nuke sites. Or you can go for a decapitation strike. A decapitation strike is a much easier operation if you’re coming from Azerbaijan.

Think of it this way: every once in a while, the Iranians have a little get-together. They bring all of the Mullahs together in one place... Why not? They’d be doing us and the world a tremendous favor if they did that.

And it’s not going to happen now.

I can guarantee that all of those new Soviet anti-aircraft missiles that the Iranians bought are all going up north now, pointed and waiting for something there. In fact, they’ll probably put radars on the Caspian from the mountaintops there, just to see if there’s anything come up off the water.

Strategic, tactical surprise: gone.

You have to ask for the motivation behind the leak. I mean, if the Israelis can do this operation, it’s to our benefit! From a diplomatic standpoint, if you wanted to tell the Iranians that the Israelis did this, it’s without our permission. And then try to butter up the Iranians after the strike, so they don’t close the Strait of Hormuz, that’s one thing.

But giving away all of the secrets of an ally? When you’re doing that, you have to ask whether we still have Israel as an ally. We are not acting like an ally. In fact, if you ask me, based on the amount of time I expect the Israelis put in this relationship with Azerbaijan, I would start viewing this administration as an existential threat to Israel.

This administration is not going to do anything to stop the Iranian terror state from acquiring nuclear weapons. They are actively working against America’s closest allies to prevent a strike against Iran. They are, under Obama’s orders, leaking highly classified information to America’s enemies through the media.

Who leaked this information? And when are we going to prosecute them?

Where is the House Foreign Affairs Committee? Do we still have one?

I urge you to contact Chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen at (202) 225-5021 and ask the committee what it is doing to find the sources of these leaks.

The Cutting Edge News.

Michele Bachman

As millions around the world begin to celebrate the feast of Passover at sundown on Friday, April 6, it is important to remember why this celebration exemplifies God’s mercy on His people. When the children of Israel cried out to the Lord because of their great suffering at the hands of the Egyptians, we know “God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them (Exodus 2:25).”God responded with 10 plagues sent to do unimaginable damage on Egypt in order to deliver His people. When the first nine plagues did not soften the heart of Pharaoh, the Lord sent his tenth and final plague: the slaughter of the first-born males in each family. By believing and obeying specific instructions from the Lord, the Israelites were spared this horrific plague and ultimately the destruction led to their freedom from Egyptian tyranny. God foretold the liberation of the children of Israel when he told Moses “I am the Lord; I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, I will rescue you from their bondage (Exodus 6:6).”

These promises to the ancient Israelites were near to my heart as I grew up, which is why I took the first opportunity to go to Israel when I was a young woman. The day after I graduated from high school in 1974, I took a flight to Israel. I went to work for the summer on Kibbutz Be’eri near Beer Sheva. Aside from the beauty of the country and deep cultural and spiritual appreciation of the Jewish people, the experience gave me a clear realization: Israel is under a constant external threat. During my time, we worked on the kibbutz from four in the morning until noon, and at all times we were accompanied by soldiers carrying machine guns. While we were working, they were making sure there were no land mines in the fields. As a recent high school graduate, I knew very little of the complex geopolitical threat that Israel faced from all sides of its borders. Today, Israel still faces those threats and more. For this reason, the United States must declare, in no uncertain terms, that it is our policy to utilize all military strength to support and defend our strongest ally in the Middle East, Israel.

On March 4 of this year, President Obama made the case that diplomatic sanctions are working in Iran. His words, “Now is the time to let our increased pressure sink in, and to sustain the broad international coalition we have built,”point to the need to let diplomacy take its course. These are powerful words and I certainly commend both the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration for the increasing economic sanctions on Iran. However, has any evidence surfaced that these sanctions are hindering the development of a nuclear weapon? If Iran had years instead of months, sanctions would certainly be advisable under the circumstances. Unfortunately, report after report seems to lend credence to the fact that Iran is growing dangerously close to having nuclear capability.Furthermore, there are those that wrongly believe that Iran can be contained or that Iran is strictly Israel’s problem. Make no mistake; a nuclear Iran threatens the safety and security of a region that directly affects the interests of the United States. If Iran were to obtain a nuclear weapon, many surrounding Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and Jordan, will most likely do everything in their power to obtain one that begins a deadly nuclear arms race. Additionally, Iran has made clear through their intrusion into our own hemisphere that they will not only provide support to rogue nations south of our border, they could also provide secrets of nuclear capability. Just imagine the devastation of a nuclear Cuba or Venezuela.

To Israel, the threat is real and very close. Just over 950 miles away from Jerusalem (roughly the distance by air from Washington D.C. to Miami) is Tehran and their fanatical leadership. The chilling escalation of tensions between Israel and Iran leaves the United States with but two choices: stand with our long time democratic ally or marginalize their position leaving them even more vulnerable to attack. I write this not to express the obvious, but to urge the American public to stand up and demand that our elected officials clearly explain their policies on stopping a nuclear Iran.

The President mentioned “too much loose talk of war”in his March 4 speech. I recognize some may wrongly see this as a call for military action against Iran. Nothing could be further from the truth. Military action should only be utilized when all diplomatic means have been exhausted. However, even with rapid implementation of sanctions on every aspect of the Iranian economy, I am concerned that Iran has more than enough capabilities to not only complete a nuclear weapon, but to use it, if necessary.

In the 38 years since I worked in Israel, I have been privileged to visit the country many times. I always return with a stronger reality and greater concern for Israel’s safety and security. However, having returned just two weeks ago from an House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence trip to the country, and having met privately with numerous Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Netanyahu, the dangers our great friend Israel faces today are more acute and more serious than ever.

Rep. Michele Bachman represents a Minnesota district in thre House of Representatives.

Obama administration blames Israel for high oil prices – National Finance Examiner | Examiner.com.

‘Ministers told 300, at most, wo… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

(This is supposed to comfort us ? ! – JW )

By JPOST.COM STAFF

04/03/2012 02:49

Security cabinet briefed on worst-case scenario in potential war with Iran, Channel 10 reports; experts estimate relatively low number of Israeli casualties from thousands of missiles launched from multiple fronts.

By REUTERS/Morteza Nikoubazl

In the event of an Iranian attack on Israel, less than 300 people would be killed during three weeks of non-stop fighting on multiple fronts, according to estimates delivered to the security cabinet in a briefing, Channel 10 reported on Monday.

According to the estimates, described as a worst-case scenario, thousands of missiles would be launched toward Israel from Lebanon, Syria and Gaza as part of the Iranian attack. The scenario took into account Israel’s defenses as of 2012, with the Iron Dome rocket-defense system not yet at its full deployment.

Missiles would also be launched at Israel from Iran, according to defense experts briefing the ministers, however, they added, Tehran’s conventional missile capabilities are limited.

The estimates echoed comments Defense Minister Ehud Barak made last year about a potential war with Iran. Jerusalem does not want war, he said in an interview with Israel Radio in November, but even if it is drawn into a war against its will, fears of mass casualties are unfounded. “There’s no chance in such a situation for 500,000 killed, not 5,000 or even 500 killed.”

Despite Barak’s assurances of relatively low casualties in a war with Iran, Kadima MK Ze’ev Bielski warned in February that Israel’s civil defenses are not ready to protect the population in a missile war.

Almost one in four Israelis lack access to bomb shelters, whether communal or reinforced rooms in private homes, Bielski, chairman of a parliamentary panel on  home defense preparations stated.

“Are we prepared for a war? No,” he said. “Things are moving too slowly and we are wasting very precious time.”

Such shelters could be vital if Israel were to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and Tehran struck back, either directly or through its allies on Israel’s borders.

Israel says 100,000 rockets and missiles are pointed at it, many of these held by Syria, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Hamas, although they may decide to sit out any war between Israel and Iran.

The Civil Defense Ministry, which was set up after Israel suffered thousands of rocket strikes in the 2006 Lebanon war, confirmed Bielski’s data while seeking to play down his alarm.

“Our position remains that if everyone does what they are expected to do during an emergency, the situation will be tenable,” one ministry official said.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Israel Hayom | War of perceptions.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report April 2, 2012, 7:22 PM (GMT+02:00)

Taking part in “Noble Dina” US-Israel-Greek drill

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov issued a strong warning against a military attack on Iran Monday, April 2,, saying that a pre-emptive strike would violate international law. His comments, made during a visit to Armenia, stopped short of threatening (the US and/or Israel) of consequences. But they backed up and were in tune with the explicit threat from Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last Thursday of strong Iranian resistance to foreign intervention in Syria and vow to defend Damascus as the “center of resistance against Israel.”

Western military observers link the two statements as representing an evolving Russian-Iranian front. After their shared success in delivering Bashar Assad from the revolt against his regime, the two partners are preparing to fend off a potential strike against Tehran’s nuclear program as well as shore up Iran’s regional interests from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. They are getting set to counter two US-led steps, disclosed here by debkafile:
1.  Although the US-backed Friends of Syria 2, which took place Sunday, April 1, in Istanbul, offered the Syrian Free Army no direct assistance or support, Saudi Arabia and Qatar established an international fund to pay rebel fighters a regular wage. They hope to lure more officers and men into defecting from the army units loyal to Assad.
Moscow and Tehran view this step as Arab intervention in the Syrian conflict.

2.   The US, Israel and Greece launched a shadowy air-naval exercise in the Mediterranean Thursday, March 29. Codenamed “Noble Dina,” it appears to range across a broad sweep of sea up to Crete and including the waters off Turkey, Cyprus, and Israel Navy bases in Haifa and Ashdod ports.
None of the participants have admitted the maneuver is taking place, nor given out details. Some sources say it will end April 5, although this is not confirmed.
Russia and Iran appear to be treating the two events as interconnected.
Our military sources infer from the unusually broad area covered by the tripartite air and navy exercise – almost the entire eastern Mediterranean – that it is designed to simulate action in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Aden.
Western naval sources in Naples disclose that the American, Israeli and Greek fleets are supported by a British Royal Navy flotilla cruising around the Straits of Gibraltar. They also report that the exercise is led by the USS Enterprise Strike Force. As soon as it is over, this aircraft carrier and strike group will head through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, raising the number of US aircraft carriers facing Iran to three.
Those sources also disclose that Israel contributed missile ships, submarines, fighter jets and assault helicopters to the drill.

I’m flying to spend Passover with my father in California tonight.  The blog is likely to be spotty for the next two days.

Here’s a video I made expressing my feelings about San Francisco / Santa Cruz where I lived for 13 years before returning home to Israel.  The song is sung by Arik Einstein.

San Francisco on the Water

Why Israel is even less likely to strike Iran now – CSMonitor.com.

Obama appears to be hemming in Israel at every turn. Case in point: A report in which unnamed US officials allege that Israel has obtained access to bases in Azerbaijan, on Iran’s border.

By Dan Murphy, Staff writer
posted April 2, 2012 at 12:48 pm EDT

All the recent data points in the “will they, won’t they” speculation about an Israeli strike on Iran point to this: The already slim odds have gotten slimmer.

Sure, a long piece in Foreign Policy this month, sourced entirely to unnamed US officials, makes the case that Israel has extensive influence in Azerbaijan, which could make a unilateral Israeli attack on Iran easier.

But that story appears to be but one salvo in a broader Obama administration strategy to signal through the press that it doesn’t want Israel to strike Iran’s nuclear program, even as it seeks to assure Israel that it is committed to its defense.

At every turn, the US has hemmed Israel in (probably the reason so many “anonymous” officials fed the Azerbaijan story to FP). They have made it clear that they will truly be on their own if they attack unilaterally (read: You won’t force us into a war of your own choosing).

John Bolton, the hawkish former US ambassador to the UN, characterized the story as an intentional Obama effort to undermine Israel. “Clearly, this is an administration-orchestrated leak…. it’s just unprecedented to reveal this kind of information about one of your own allies,” he told Fox.

Mr. Bolton is wrong about the “unprecedented” part; the US has frequently acted to hem in close allies, like Britain or France, when it deemed their military activities a threat to its interests, as the Eisenhower administration did against the joint Israeli-French-British invasion of Egypt during the Suez Crisis in 1956.

But he’s certainly right that the Obama administration is worried about the damage to US interests that could be done by a solo Israeli attack on Iran.

In that context, it’s hard not to see the Foreign Policy piece as anything other than an Obama administration attempt to stave off an Israeli attack through highlighting growing Israeli ties with the country. (Israel has certainly been seeking warm relations with Azerbaijan; in February, Israel said it had signed a $1.6 billion deal to provide drones and missile defense systems to the country.)

No carte blanche for Israel in Azerbaijan

The piece didn’t say that Israel has been given bases of its own in Azerbaijan, or that it has been given carte blanche to use Azeri bases when it sees fit. The piece’s central claim is that “four senior diplomats and military intelligence officers say that the United States has concluded that Israel has recently been granted access to airbases on Iran’s northern border. To do what, exactly, is not clear.”

The FP story led to immediate denials from Azeri officials. An Azeri defense spokesmen told a press conference on Friday that Israel will not be allowed to use the country’s territory to attack Iran and said that unspecified press reports were designed to increase tensions between Iran and Azerbaijan.

That makes sense. While Iran’s conventional military is puny compared to the US military, it dwarfs Azerbaijan’s. Iran is a major trading partner for the country, and has a variety of means at its disposal to make life difficult for its northern neighbor in retaliation for an attack.

The story generated plenty of heavy breathing in the press. The Sydney Morning Herald says: “Unlikely alliance between Israel and Azerbaijan raises heat over Iran.” Haaretz writes: “Azerbaijan granted Israel access to air bases on Iran border.” A headline in this paper asks “Did US just torpedo Israeli deal for a base in Azerbaijan?”

Another leak

The FP story is far from the first emanating from unnamed US officials that appear designed to push Israel farther away from war. On March 19, The New York Times reported that the US military had just finished a secret war game to test the repercussions of an Israeli attack, and concluded that the chances were high that the US would end up drawn into a broader regional war that would leave hundreds of Americans dead.

“The results of the war game were particularly troubling to Gen. James N. Mattis, who commands all American forces in the Middle East, Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia, according to officials who either participated in the Central Command exercise or who were briefed on the results,” the Times wrote. “When the exercise had concluded earlier this month, according to the officials, General Mattis told aides that an Israeli first strike would be likely to have dire consequences across the region and for United States forces there.”

The message was clear: The US is highly unlikely to support an Israeli strike.

Amir Oren, writing in Haaretz, concludes that that war-game, coupled with renewed American promises to fund Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system (mostly deployed with great success against the unsophisticated rockets fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip), guarantees that Israel won’t attack Iran until the spring of next year, at the earliest.

“Israelis may be the world champions of chutzpah, but even biting the hand that feeds you has its limits when the bitten hand is liable to hit back,” he writes. “When [Israeli Defense Minister Ehud] Barak thanked the Obama administration ‘for helping strengthen Israel’s security,’ he was abandoning the pretension to act against Iran without permission before the US presidential elections in November.”

The US spent $204 million on Israel’s Iron Dome system in fiscal year 2011, and last week the Pentagon indicated that more money should be provided in the current budget year, a plan that has bipartisan support in Congress. The Pentagon says the system successfully shot down 80 percent of rockets recently fired from Gaza. The continued US commitment to Israel’s defense can be seen as the carrot in this scenario.

Why the US is worried about an Israeli strike

Gary Sick, who coordinated the White House response to the Iran hostage crisis in 1979-80 and who served on the National Security Councils of presidents Ford, Carter, and Reagan, made the case for why the US is worried about unilateral Israeli action in an opinion piece Friday. He says it could lead to the collapse of the sanctions regime that President Bush and President Obama have constructed against Iran, and leave the US on the hook for the aggression in the eyes of much of the world.

Whether the US gave the green light or not, “for Iran and just about everyone else, the fact that most of the Israeli aircraft and bombs were made in the US would be all they needed to know,” Sick writes. “On that first morning, the UN Security Council would convene in emergency session to consider a resolution denouncing the Israeli raid. If the United States vetoed the resolution, that would remove any lingering doubt of U.S. complicity.

“Perhaps more significant, however, would be European support of the resolution. This would signal the beginning of the collapse of the sanctions coalition against Iran that had been so laboriously assembled over the past several years. Both the Europeans and the Americans had operated on the tacit belief that crippling sanctions were an alternative to war. With the outbreak of war, that assumption would no longer be valid.”

Everything is tea-leaf reading at the moment. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and many on the country’s right insist that Iran is a major threat to the Jewish state’s existence, and fear can push people to do surprising things. But the leaves are almost overwhelmingly telling us no war soon.

The U.S. can meet Israel halfway on Iran :: Middle East Clarity.

By Dennis Ross and David Makovsky, Published: March 31

There is no daylight between the United States and Israel on the objective and the preferred means for dealing with Iranian nuclear ambitions. Much has been written about possible differences, but the recent meeting between President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu highlighted key points of convergence: Both agree that the objective is prevention, not containment, and that a nuclear Iran could set off an arms race in an already-dangerous region. The heightened risk of a nuclear war in the Middle East is, in essence, why Obama has indicated that the issue is in the “American national interest.”

The two leaders agree that a peaceful solution to ensuring that Iran does not achieve nuclear weapons is preferable. Iran faces sanctions that are tougher than ever before, giving diplomacy a chance to succeed in a way that it has not.

Any differences between the two countries stem from a basic reality: The United States, given its significantly greater military capability, can afford to wait longer than Israel to give diplomacy time to succeed. From Israel’s perspective, as Defense Minister Ehud Barak has explained, there will come a point when, if no action is taken, the depth and breadth of the Iranian nuclear program will force Israel to forgo its military option. Forgoing the use of force against an existential threat would be a historic decision for any Israeli prime minister and goes against that country’s ethos of self-reliance.

That said, Israeli military action need not be imminent or inevitable. After his meeting with Obama, Netanyahu said the time frame for the possible use of force is measured “not in days or weeks” but “also not in years.” Although Obama has noted that the “window” for diplomacy is “closing,” there is space for it to work.

Will diplomacy complicate efforts to synchronize the U.S. and Israeli clocks? Possibly, but here again we see more convergence than divergence. The United States, like Israel, has limits. Perhaps that is why Obama has also said that he is not bluffing, essentially signaling to Iran that this is its last chance: If Tehran wants to avoid military action against its nuclear program, it must take the diplomatic route that remains available.

Given the stakes, the issue of Iran’s nuclear program is a global responsibility. It is important that any military action be widely accepted internationally as a direct consequence of Iran’s intransigence. If force is used, it must be because Iran brought it upon itself. Under such circumstances, it is far more likely that after the strike the world will be able to preserve the sanctions against Iran and maintain its international isolation. These are crucial if Iran is to be prevented from reconstituting its nuclear program.

With negotiations among Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) set to begin April 13, there is a need to assuage the Israeli fear that negotiations will drag on beyond a point at which Israel would lose its military option. Several actions could reconcile the U.S. and Israeli timetables with the ongoing diplomacy.

First, Washington should reassure Israel that it will be looking for concrete and verifiable signs that Iran is prepared to comply with its obligations on the nuclear program. Second, U.S. officials should discuss these concrete signs with the Israelis and consult with them about the ongoing negotiations. Third, Washington should discuss a time frame with the Israelis and the P5+1 during which progress must be made in the negotiations to justify their continuation. This must be conveyed to the Iranians as well. Fourth, the United States should make publicly clear that while it is serious about giving diplomacy a chance, it will not engage in a phony process; that time is running out for diplomacy to work and obviate the alternative — the use of force.

Because Israel is the only country that Iran has repeatedly threatened to “wipe off the map,” it is reasonable for it to have some input into the objectives of diplomacy and the timetable for progress in negotiations. The more Israelis feel their views are being taken into account, the more inclined they will be to give diplomacy a chance to work before resorting to force. Israel should also understand that if diplomacy fails and force proves necessary, the context in which force is used will be critical. A strike on Iran is likely to be limited in value if it is not followed by a sustained international sanctions effort to avoid importation of key material to reconstitute Iran’s nuclear program.

It is possible to synchronize the U.S. and Israeli clocks and give diplomacy a chance to work. Ironically, the better these timetables are aligned, and the more Tehran understands this reality, the more likely the Iranians are to see that if they want to avoid force being used against them, they must take advantage of the diplomatic out that the United States is offering.

© The Washington Post Company