WarSclerotic

Israel Alters Calculus on Tehran Due to Unrest – WSJ.com.

By JOSHUA MITNICK

TEL AVIV—Antigovernment protests in Iran linked to the country’s weakening currency have raised hopes in Israel that international sanctions are working to undermine Tehran, lowering the likelihood of an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear targets in the coming months.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has frequently dismissed sanctions as ineffective in slowing Iran’s enrichment program. But, the unrest that erupted in Tehran on Wednesday—which subsided on Thursday—is causing Israeli officials to reconsider, analysts and officials said.

“Everything has changed” since the outbreak of the demonstrations on Wednesday, an Israeli official said. “You can’t say now that the sanctions are having no impact at all. It is self-evident.”

While the sanctions’ apparent effectiveness could undermine Mr. Netanyahu’s emphasis on the need for a credible threat of force, a faltering Iranian government would nonetheless enable him to take credit for pushing the international community for tougher sanctions.

The Israeli leader’s coalition allies said he is considering calling an election as early as February, from the originally scheduled October 2013. That would allow him to campaign on his hardline Iran position.

Iran’s turmoil is already giving enhanced credence to a report by Israel’s foreign ministry leaked to an Israeli newspaper last week that economic pressure could ignite turmoil in Iran similar to that seen in Arab countries around the region.

On Thursday, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, known as a hard-liner on national security, said that Iran was seeing the first buds of a “Persian Spring,” and that Israel has an interest in lobbying the international community to encourage regime change by bolstering internal opposition groups.

Last week, before the unrest broke out, Mr. Lieberman predicted the spread of Arab Springlike unrest in Iran.

“I have no doubt that the Iranian regime is approaching a critical moment,” he said in an interview on Thursday with Israel Army Radio. “The big question is what will come first: the development of a nuclear weapon, or the Persian Spring…We have to be ready for both options.”

Mr. Netanyahu has been lobbying the White House to set a red line that would trigger military action against the country in an effort to convince Tehran to abandon progress toward what the U.S. and Israel believe is nuclear weapon.

Last week, the Israeli leader said in an address to the United Nations General Assembly that such a red line should set before Iran accumulates 90% of the uranium needed for a bomb—a milestone he predicted would be reached by next spring or summer. The U.N. speech prompted diplomats and experts to conclude that an Israeli military attack on Iran before mid-2013 was already unlikely.

A Netanyahu spokesman declined to comment.

The current unrest in Iran is likely to give more momentum to efforts by Western countries to increase sanctions on Iran, while reducing even further the likelihood of an Israeli attack. Meir Dagan, Israel’s former top spymaster, and other top foreign affairs officials have argued that a strike on Iran would strengthen domestic support for the regime and its nuclear program.

“I don’t know if there will be a Persian Spring, but the fact that the Iranian government is under pressure, that is a sign that the sanctions are having an impact,” said Meir Javedanfar, an Iran expert at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center. “The legitimacy of the calls for immediate military action will be reduced by the recent events.”

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