WarSclerotic

By Ron Kampeas · August 19, 2012

WASHINGTON (JTA) — How much noise does Israel’s leadership have to make to get the Obama administration to say what it wants to hear about Iran?

It’s a question now preoccupying Israel, along with its corollary: How much noise is too much and risks precipitating a crisis between Jerusalem and its closest ally?

Some Israeli analysts say that pronounced signals from their country’s leadership in recent days that it is readying for a strike against Iran are less an immediate call to arms than a call for an unequivocal commitment from the Obama administration to take the lead in such an attack or to come to Israel’s aid if it goes first.

“We are at a serious juncture,” said Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The way I understand it, the Israeli leadership is trying to signal to the administration that unless there is a change of tack on the part of Washington concerning the Iranian nuclear program, Israel may have to decide to make its own military move.”

The signals have included:

* an interview in Haaretz with a top Israeli official, whom is widely believed to be Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who argued that Israel risks more in the short term by not striking than it does by striking;

* the appointment to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet of Avi Dichter, a former head of Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet, to bring the home front up to speed;

* a series of notices to the Israeli public, including a call to update gas mask equipment and a listing of Tel Aviv underground parking lots that could double as bomb shelters.

* a series of public statements by Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, suggesting that an Israeli strike would reap sufficient rewards to justify it.

“One, two, three, four years are a long time in the Middle East — look what’s happened in the last year,” Oren said this week in a Bloomberg News interview, addressing the claim that an Israeli strike would “only” delay Iran and not end the nuclear program.

A key Israeli fear is that a nuclear Iran would provide an umbrella to hostile forces consolidating their hold along Israel’s borders in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, and possibly in Syria and Egypt as those nations undergo turmoil that threatens to disrupt decades of peace on their borders.

“The idea of these non-state actors on Israel’s borders which may be controlled by a nuclear Iran is a serious threat, the kind of which Israel has not encountered before,” Asher Susser, a senior fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University, said in a conference call organized by the Israel Policy Forum on Thursday.

Still, Obama administration officials are not yet publicly buying the rhetoric.

“I don’t believe they’ve made a decision as to whether or not they will go in and attack Iran at this time,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters on Aug. 15. “With regards to the issue of where we’re at from a diplomatic point of view, the reality is that we still think there is room to continue to negotiate.”

Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff, said an Israeli strike would have limited effect.

“I may not know about all of their capabilities, but I think that it’s a fair characterization to say that they could delay but not destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities,” Dempsey said at the same briefing.

Such sanguinity may be out of place, Susser said, adding that the notices to the public regarding homefront preparedness are not feints.

“I don’t think the Israelis are bluffing,” he said. “The people are getting the message.”

The likeliest means to shut down the escalating rhetoric, Susser added, would be for the Obama administration to reassure Israel — and not necessarily in public — that it would convey to Iran that military action was inevitable and not just a possibility if Iran does not stand down.

Netanyahu and Barak would want to hear “a very firm commitment from the United States that it will use force, not anything less — not ‘all options are on the table,’ not ‘any means necessary,’ but that the U.S. will take a clear commitment to use force when the time comes,” he said. “If the Israelis are convinced that the Americans are not going to take action against Iran, Barak and Netanyahu may very well come to the conclusion that they have to.”

Obama administration officials over the last several months have lobbied Israel intensely to tamp down talk of a strike, and to wait out a U.S. strategy of exhausting economic and diplomatic pressure as a means of getting Iran to stand down from its suspected nuclear weapons program.

Yaari said Israel’s leadership was not convinced, noting similar reassurances from successive U.S. administrations regarding North Korea, belied ultimately by that nation’s nuclear tests.

“It’s very much on the minds of Barak and Netanyahu that ‘the United States will not allow North Korea to acquire nuclear weapons’ — and we know the end to that story,” he said.

Israelis favor a U.S. lead should it come to military action against Iran, polls show.  A poll published last week by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University and reported by Bloomberg showed 61 percent of Israelis oppose an Israeli strike without U.S. cooperation. It had a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.

Meanwhile, a number of Israeli figures have lashed out against Netanyahu and Barak, saying that the government’s ratcheting up of the rhetoric could backfire.

“It’s clear to us that we can’t do it alone,” Israeli President Shimon Peres said in remarks on Israel’s Channel Two that were seen as a rare rebuke to the government from the largely ceremonial office. “It’s clear to us we have to proceed together with America.”

Several Likud Knesset members told the media that Peres was speaking out of turn.

Shaul Mofaz, the leader of the opposition Kadima Party, was more blunt in his assessment of the risks of confronting the United States. In a blistering Knesset speech, he accused Netanyahu of trying to weigh in on the U.S. elections, undercutting Obama in favor of Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

Netanyahu, who has had tense relations with Obama, is seen as close to the Republicans and has a longstanding friendship with Romney.

“Mr. Prime Minister, you want a crude, rude, unprecedented, reckless and risky intervention in the U.S. elections,” Mofaz said in remarks translated by Globes, the Israeli business daily. “You are trying to frighten us and terrify us. And in truth, we are scared — scared by your lack of judgment, scared that you both lead and don’t lead, scared that you are executing a dangerous and irresponsible policy.”

Meir Javedanfar, an Iran-born Israeli analyst, said that Netanyahu’s talk of war diminished the real results that U.S.-led sanctions were having on the Iranian theocracy’s viability.

“I don’t think that the ruling echelon in Israel understands that as much as the Iranian regime does not want war; it’s not an existential threat,” he said. “What is an existential threat are the sanctions. And the more attention that is diverted from the existential threat of the sanctions, the less the regime needs to address them.”

A few words in favor of an immediate Israeli attack on Iran:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad and Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah really mean it when they say they will destroy Israel. Purists tend to disagree with this comparison, but that doesn’t make it invalid: Adolf Hitler announced in advance what he was planning to do, and he was not taken seriously. True, America declares that it will prevent the ayatollahs from gaining nuclear weapons capability, but American also had good intentions when it came to North Korea and Pakistan, in vain.

This is particularly true at a time when economic sanctions are failing to achieve the desired results, and the world is largely ignoring the fact that negotiations between the West and sly Tehran have completely failed. In Israel, meanwhile, there is unprecedented opposition: Men are shaking their fellow men to their foundations for no good reason, telling lies upon lies, and while a public debate on the issue is entirely legitimate, there are those who are trying to expropriate the government’s authority to decide, and to sow panic. President Shimon Peres, overstepping the bounds of his authority, declares that not only is he opposed to a strike at this time, he is against any kind of military action. We mustn’t believe those who claim that when they’ve had it up to here with the plutonium they will support an attack. They will always find a reason to oppose.

A few words against an immediate Israeli attack on Iran: Israel’s actions have prompted the global community to impose tough sanctions on Iran and to confront Tehran over its nuclear program. We must give U.S. President Barack Obama, who has publicly vowed to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons capability, an opportunity to live up to his word. Israel only has limited capabilities — to delay the production of an Iranian nuclear bomb by a few years — but an attack on Iran now would only ignite the Middle East. When the top echelons of the defense establishment voice opposition to such a move, their opinion should be given a lot of weight when the government makes its final decision.

Furthermore, an attack could launch an all-out Israel-Iran war, which could last for a long time. At best, it would prompt a slow but consistent trickle of missiles directed at Israel from Iran and its satellites. Add to that the financial cost of such a move, which, in reality, we have already begun to pay. An Israeli attack would be considered an irreparable insult to Obama, who has every chance of being re-elected president of the U.S. Haste makes waste.

The debate is legitimate, even though it has taken on dimensions that indicate a lot of baseless hatred. But as it develops, it would be wise to add a few more ingredients, such as the fact that, ever since the War of Independence, every pre-emptive strike launched by Israel (Sinai, Six-Day War) has been a success. Its only failure came when, in efforts to appease the U.S., the government forbade the army from carrying out a pre-emptive strike ahead of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Is history now repeating itself?

On the other hand, a democratic government cannot launch a pre-emptive war when most of the defense establishment opposes such a move. How will this problem be resolved if an attack becomes a reality?

This too is clear: The pro and con list is irrelevant if the talk of a strike is merely an effort by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to pressure the world into blocking Iran and arming Israel with the necessary weapons to carry out a strike. If that is the case, and there is no proof one way or the other, it is clear that the debate within Israel is detrimental to Israel’s interests. In this case, the chatter stemming from opposition to a military strike has overpowered the national interest.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s famous observation — that Israel has no foreign policy, only domestic politics — has been underscored by the exchange between the U.S. and Israel over the past several days.

On the one hand we have “all the president’s men” exuding optimism over the sanctions’ chances of success in deterring Tehran, but on the other hand, this upbeat approach is mixed with a healthy dose of pessimism over Israel’s capacity to single-handedly remove the ever-growing threat from Iran. President Barack Obama’s electoral calculations and political constraints largely reflect this mindset.

A common misperception is that an incumbent administration would benefit from a regional flare-up by rallying the public around it (assuming a president is up for re-election). A sitting president’s experience and familiarity with foreign affairs and national security matters are usually his strong suit in such cases. But the truth of the matter is that with every new Israeli statement on Iran, the White House’s level of anxiety soars to new heights.

Although this is partially a result of Obama’s concern that a conflict in the Persian Gulf (even without the U.S. involvement) might dash his hopes of reconciling with the Muslim world, his main concern revolves around more subtle issues and mundane scenarios. Utopian dreams do not top his list of concerns.

While it’s true that Obama currently enjoys a 4 percent lead over Republican rival Mitt Romney, this advantage could disappear overnight due to the dynamic nature of the race. Moreover, polls show that on the issue of who would be a better steward of the sluggish U.S. economy (with unemployment currently at 8.3%), American voters have clearly parked their support with the former Massachusetts governor.

That is why the notion of an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities on the eve of the elections has had administration officials petrified due to the economic ramifications it entails: a wholesale spike in the price of oil and more economic travails for the euro zone, which could spill over to the U.S. economy. Such a scenario would make the idea of new economic leadership in the White House even more appealing.

To defuse this ticking time-bomb and avert such a nightmarish scenario — at least in the short run — Washington has recently devised a new carrot-and-stick policy: On the one hand, the administration was quick to offer Israel a new comprehensive aid package in the hope that these confidence-builiding measures (along with more severe sanctions on Iran) would increase its sense of security and possibly have it shelve the military option. This has come alongside an all-out and intense media campaign whose main objective is to convince wide swaths of the general public in the U.S. and Israel to reject a military confrontation for now, at least until the elections are over.

In 1956, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s decision to launch the so-called Sinai Campaign a week before the U.S. presidential elections produced a major rift with President Dwight D. Eisenhower (although the Suez Crisis did not affect his highly successful re-election bid). What happens after Israel launches a military campaign against Iran will only be determined in the days and months to come. Time will tell whether it is Obama who will have to deal with the consequences of such a strike come Jan. 20, 2013, the date in which a president-elect or a re-elected president will take the oath of office.