Israel's New Strategic Position - 0 views
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After two years of stress, its peace treaty with Egypt remains in place. Syria is in a state of civil war that remains insoluble.
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In other words, the situation that has existed since the Camp David Accords were signed remains in place. Israel's frontiers are secure from conventional military attack. In addition, the Palestinians are divided among themselves, and while ineffective, intermittent rocket attacks from Gaza are likely, there is no Intifada underway in the West Bank.
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Clearly, a nuclear strike on Tel Aviv would be catastrophic for Israel. Its ability to tolerate that threat, regardless of how improbable it may be, is a pressing concern for Israel.
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In this context, Iran's nuclear program supersedes all of Israel's other security priorities. Israeli officials believe their allies, particularly those in the United States, should share this view.
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Israel understands that however satisfactory its current circumstances are, those circumstances are mercurial and to some extent unpredictable.
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There are plenty of scenarios in which Israel would not be able to manage security threats without American assistance.
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Thus, Israel has an overriding interest in maintaining its relationship with the United States and in ensuring Iran never becomes a nuclear state. So any sense that the United States is moving away from its commitment to Israel, or that it is moving in a direction where it might permit an Iranian nuclear weapon, is a crisis.
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Israel's response to the Iran talks -- profound unhappiness without outright condemnation -- has to be understood in this context, and the assumptions behind it have to be examined.
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Iran does not appear to have a deliverable nuclear weapon at this point. Refining uranium is a necessary but completely insufficient step in developing a weapon. A nuclear weapon is much more than uranium. It is a set of complex technologies, not the least of which are advanced electrical systems and sensors that, given the amount of time the Iranians have needed just to develop not-quite-enough enriched uranium, seems beyond them.
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The idea that the Iranians will use the next six months for a secret rush to complete the weapon simply isn't the way it works.
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Nations do not even think of deploying nuclear weapons without extensive underground tests -- not to see if they have uranium but to test that the more complex systems work. That is why they can't secretly develop a weapon: They themselves won't know they have a workable weapon without a test.
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Of course, there are other strategies for delivering a weapon if it were built. One is the use of a ship to deliver it to the Israeli coast. Though this is possible, the Israelis operate an extremely efficient maritime interdiction system, and the United States monitors Iranian ports.
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But these weapons are not small. There is such a thing as a suitcase bomb, but that is a misleading name; it is substantially larger than a suitcase, and it is also the most difficult sort of device to build.
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even assuming Iran's acquisition of a nuclear weapon, its use against Israel would kill as many Muslims -- among them Shia -- as Israelis, an action tantamount to geopolitical suicide for Tehran.
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If the Israelis forward-deployed to other countries, the Iranians would spot them. The Israelis can't be certain which sites are real and which are decoys.
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Some will dismiss this as overestimating Iranian capabilities. This frequently comes from those most afraid that Tehran can build a nuclear weapon and a delivery system. If it could do the latter, it could harden sites and throw off intelligence gathering.
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But ultimately, the real reason Israel has not attacked Iran's nuclear sites is that the Iranians are so far from having a weapon. If they were closer, the Israelis would have attacked regardless of the difficulty.
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The Americans, on the other hand, saw an opportunity in the fact that there are no weapons yet and that the sanctions were hurting the Iranians. Knowing that they were not in a hurry to complete and knowing that they were hurting economically, the Iranians likewise saw an opportunity to better their position.
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What the Americans wanted was an understanding with the Iranians, whereby their role in the region would be balanced against those of other countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, the Arabian emirates and to some extent Israel.
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The Israelis tempered their response initially because they knew the status of Iran's nuclear program. Even though a weapon is still a grave concern, it is a much longer-term problem than the Israelis admit publicly.
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if the negotiations fail, no one will be in a more dangerous position for trying. Six months won't make a difference.
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The Israelis could not simply applaud the process because there is, in fact, a strategic threat to Israel embedded in the talks. Israel has a strategic dependency on the United States.
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But they understand that the outcome of these talks, if successful, means more than the exchange of a nuclear program for eased sanctions; it means the beginning of a strategic alignment with Iran.
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As Richard Nixon's China initiative shows, ideology can relent to geopolitical reality. On the simplest level, Iran needs investment, and American companies want to invest. On the more complex level, Iran needs to be certain that Iraq is friendly to its interests and that neither Russia nor Turkey can threaten it in the long run.
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The United States is trying to create a multipolar region to facilitate a balance-of-power strategy in place of American power.
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Egypt went from disaster in 1967 to a very capable force in 1973. They had a Soviet patron. They might have another patron in 10 years.
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But the real Israeli fear is that the United States is moving away from direct intervention to a more subtle form of manipulation. That represents a threat to Israel if Israel ever needs direct intervention rather than manipulation.
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it threatens Israel because the more relationships the United States has in the region, the less significant Israel is to Washington's strategy.
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In the end, Israel is a small and weak power. Its power has been magnified by the weakness of its neighbors. That weakness is not permanent
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"Israel has expressed serious concerns over the preliminary U.S.-Iranian agreement, which in theory will lift sanctions levied against Tehran and end its nuclear program. That was to be expected. Less obvious is why the Israeli government is concerned and how it will change Israel's strategic position."