Israeli Defense Establishment and Iranian Nuclear Issue

Israel made unprecedented concessions to the US administration and for the first time agreed to legalize the Iranian nuclear program in any form in exchange for Washington’s “tough guarantees” to put Tehran before choosing between this plan and the prospect of a full-scale military clash with the US and its allies.

The discussion of the disappointing “5 + 1” meeting in Istanbul, which ended recently in Istanbul (five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany) with the delegation of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), continues in Israel. The theme of the meeting, which took place more than a year after the UN Security Council introduced economic sanctions against Iran, was the desire of the main players in world and Middle East policy to finally find a mutually acceptable formula that would induce Tehran to stop the enrichment process of uranium nuclear program. It was expected that at this meeting Tehran would be presented with an ultimatum demanding a return to full compliance with international agreements on the development of nuclear programs and the consequences would be clearly defined if it were refused: strengthening of sanctions to a state that “paralyzes” a nuclear program with a possible prospect of using armed force.

Expert judgment of the military

Nothing of the kind, however, happened. Instead, representatives of the "six", making a number of vaguely non-binding statements, preferred to accept the Iranian version of the sufficiency at this stage of Tehran’s readiness to "resume constructive dialogue", accompanied by a long list of "preliminary conditions" put forward by the Iranian side.

For Israel, where the regime of Shiite fundamentalists existing in Iran is considered to be almost the main source of regional, and in many respects global instability, the threat of the appearance of nuclear weapons in Tehran’s hands is by no means abstract. As Israeli leaders have repeatedly stressed, the Jewish state is the only country in the world whose destruction is the officially formulated goal of another state. Accordingly, Israel cannot ignore the fact that Iran not only actively sponsors numerous radical Islamist terrorist groups operating against Israel, but also is rapidly developing infrastructure for the production of nuclear weapons and their means of delivery.

The leaders of almost all existing political factions and interest groups spoke about the “Iranian atom”, but the Israeli public was looking forward to the expert opinion of the military establishment. It was not long in coming: two members of the Israeli government’s military-political cabinet, in the past the chiefs of the IDF’s General Staff, and now the heads of departments responsible for external security issues, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and First Deputy Prime Minister and Strategic Planning Minister Moshe (Boogie ) Yaalon, announced their assessments of the situation within a few days after the Istanbul summit.

To some surprise of observers, the position of the “pigeon” of Ehud Barak, who heads today the centrist party Atzmaut, which left the current ruling coalition that broke away from the “moderately left” Avoda, turned out to be even more rigid than the approach of one of the leaders of the current ruling coalition. hawk ”faction in the center-right Likud, Boogie Ya'alon. While Barak said that in principle he does not believe in the possibility of achieving the freezing of the Iranian nuclear project through negotiations, Ya'alon decided that if it is a matter of stopping Iran’s nuclear program, international isolation, economic sanctions and opposition help are the right tools. However, in his opinion, these funds will be ineffective if the background does not show the possibility of a military operation.

And on the eve of Israel’s Independence Day, which on the civil calendar this year falls on April 26, the Yediot Ahronot newspaper published excerpts from an interview with the Chief of General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Beni Ganz. In this interview, excerpts from which were previously published in the same 22 newspaper in April, Beni Gantz stated that “from the point of view of the State of Israel, the appearance of the [atomic] bomb in the hands of the current Iranian regime is completely incompatible with the requirements of [international] security, and Israel, like the whole world, is obliged to stop this process. ” Accordingly, according to the chief of the General Staff, "the IDF is ready to execute an order to attack Iranian nuclear facilities and has all the necessary resources to achieve the goal, although the question of giving an immediate order of this kind to the commander of the Israeli military aviation is not worth it yet."

In the same interview, Beni Ganz, referring to the data and assessments of the Israeli military intelligence and other special services, defined as “a rather low” perspective of the armed conflict between Israel and / or the United States and Western countries with Iran “this year”. However, he stressed that in the light of "instability and other strategic realities of our region, the chances of slipping into such a conflict today are higher than they were before." Answering the question whether Iran poses an immediate threat to the existence of Israel, Ganz noted that the potential for such a development of events may be, but at the moment it is not so, and therefore it is worth “checking all the options” as soon as a possible conflict will be difficult for the army , and for the rear.

From further it became clear that Beni Ganz had in mind not only the prospects for the so-called retaliatory or especially preventive strike on Israel (Iran’s opportunities for such Israeli military experts assessed as quite low), but also actions, on orders from Tehran, against Israeli and Jewish sites of Islamist terrorist structures, for example, the shelling of Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip and South Lebanon. According to the estimates of the Chief of the General Staff, the IDF will be able to solve this problem in parallel, although he “cannot promise that not a single projectile will fall in the country”. He suggested that terrorist leaders keep in mind that in this situation all targets on the enemy’s territory would become legitimate. As Beni Gantz noted, in those rare hours when the head of the pro-Iranian Shiite terrorist movement Hizbullah Hassan Nasrallah “comes out of his bunker [where he has been sitting almost non-existent since the second Lebanon war in the summer of 2006], he is rightly worried about his life. He saw what happened through his fault with Lebanon then, and he is well aware that this was a weak likeness of what would happen to Lebanon if the Iranian satellites operating there again decide to try Israel for strength. ” At the same time in another holiday interview, the newspaper Ha'aretz, Beni Gantz said that the international pressure exerted on Iran is already bearing some fruit, as it keeps Tehran from starting the production of nuclear weapons.

If to summarize the statements of Beni Ganz, they, in essence, are reduced to five points:

· At the moment, Tehran does not have a sufficient number of equipped nuclear charges to unleash a full-scale conflict or the threat of its commencement, but Iran has all the technical capabilities to start their production in the short term.

· The only thing that keeps Iran from taking the step after which the military component of its nuclear program will pass the “point of impunity” is the threat of tough, including military sanctions, therefore Tehran must be sure that such sanctions “if anything happens” will follow immediately.

· Since nuclear Iran is a problem of all or most civilized countries, and not just Israel, the Jewish state should not be the only one who in this case should bear all the risks and costs associated with the force scenario. All “interested parties”, including the “Six Great Powers” ​​and “pro-Western” Arab-Muslim regimes, must contribute in one way or another to this process.

· Nevertheless, in the light of the fact that the absence of possible physical, economic and political-diplomatic damage from such actions cannot be guaranteed, the Israeli military-political leadership is ready to give a chance other than the military to persuade the Iranian leadership to refuse to possess nuclear weapons (and therefore , and almost inevitably in one form or another from its use).

· If this fails and Israel still has to act - in a bloc or alone - against Iran, then the IDF is able to both hit the necessary minimum targets on Iranian territory and simultaneously repel the aggression of Tehran-sponsored terrorist movements and other Iranian allies. Moreover, the latter should bear in mind that the Israeli military this time will be significantly less than before, constrained by moral, diplomatic and other restrictions, and the parties that have attacked Israel will themselves be responsible for their (and others) victims.

The importance of this statement is due not only to the professional assessment of the real capabilities of the Air Force and the special forces of the IDF about the combat mission, if such an order comes from the Government of Israel, but also due to the fact that the Chief of the General Staff did not make independent political statements, Beni Ganz, in fact, voiced the mood, almost well-established in the political leadership of the Jewish state.

Political and diplomatic factors

However, as we have already noted, the transfer of these sentiments to the plane of practical actions largely depends on the corresponding international political and diplomatic situation. And not only and not so much from the position of the Middle Eastern superpowers - Turkey, Egypt and especially Saudi Arabia and its monarchist allies from the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf - these leaders feel the deadly threat to their power in the face of Iranian hegemonism covered with a “nuclear umbrella” and therefore literally dream to Israel solved this problem for them, preferably without demanding too much of a political and diplomatic price from them, but first of all from the position of the aforementioned “six mediating countries”, within which Ora talk about unity while, as we know, there is no reason.

The leaders of the “big three” of the EU (Great Britain, France and Germany) for many years, being interested in returning to the Iranian, including nuclear, market, objected to the imposition of economic sanctions against Iran, insisting on solving the problem within the framework of multilateral dialogue and effective international control over Iranian nuclear technology. Today, they recognize the fallacy of this position and support the methods of diplomatic and economic pressure on Tehran, but still oppose the force scenario, believing that a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities "will be a catastrophe for the region and the whole world." A similar position was practically established in the institutions of the European Commission and other foreign policy structures of European countries and was replicated many times by the European media.

One such example is an article by Paolo Cotta-Ramusino, Pierre Asner and Bernard Norlin, which appeared on April 22 in France's Le Monde, excerpts from which were also published by the Israeli news agency Cursor. According to the authors, "any military attack from Israel or the United States will lead to Iran's withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the acceleration of the course towards the development of nuclear weapons ... as well as to the possible spread of nuclear weapons in the region." In addition, as the authors of the article believe, "nothing guarantees that such an attack will stop the Iranian nuclear program or lead to the overthrow of the regime, while the consequences will be dire for the regional and global balance." It is interesting that some Israeli politicians, who are in opposition to the current ruling coalition headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, turned out to be ready to "buy" the same version. For example, the former head of the General Security Service (SHABAK), Yuval Diskin, sharply critical of the Prime Minister and Defense Minister, said that an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities not only would not prevent the appearance of an atomic bomb in Iran, but could also lead to the opposite effect: if now Iran is trying to arm itself slowly and covertly, then after the attack it will receive legitimation for a sharp acceleration of its nuclear program.

In turn, Russia, which has played a significant role in the development of the Iranian nuclear program, and China, which is the largest consumer of Iranian oil, consistently oppose any option of pressure on Iran, both military and, de facto, economic. Thus, Moscow (together with Beijing), despite the sometimes expressed dissatisfaction with Tehran’s actions or statements by Iranian leaders, consistently torpedoes any real actions in this direction. Probably, she believes that the potential threat to Russia of the Iranian nuclear program is less significant than the opportunity to play the “Iranian card” in a new round of rivalry with the United States and its Western allies. Accordingly, undertaken since the end of 90-x. Israeli officials' regular attempts to convince Russian colleagues that Russia may be in the same package of “goals”, that Israel and the pro-Western Sunni regimes of the Middle East, and not the fact that the latter on this list, have not yet been crowned with success.

This was once again confirmed in the course of the first meeting of its kind in mid-April, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Israeli National Security Council Chairman Yakov Amidror, where the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry reiterated that “the appearance of Tehran’s atomic bomb would be an extremely undesirable option development of events. " At the same time, Russia will act on the basis of an understanding that “sanctions, like the use of force, are dangerous and counterproductive for relieving tension around the Iranian nuclear program.”

In this situation, the United States, as the main strategic partner of the Jewish state, and an ally of many of the still existing “pro-Western” Arab regimes in the Middle East, expresses a critical attitude. According to media reports, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak went to Washington immediately after the Six talks on the Iranian nuclear issue in Istanbul, where he met with his American counterpart Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey. According to the same data, the main task of Barak was to find out both the details of the agreement with Tehran, and the true plans of the White House, for which Israel is still in the dark, and even, as we have already noted, are not quite sure that some consistent the plan basically exists.

From a formal point of view, the United States, fully aware of the threat posed by regional and world stability to the Iranian nuclear program, are determined not to allow Tehran to acquire atomic weapons. And therefore, they not only initiated the combination of methods of diplomatic pressure on Iran and economic sanctions, but also declared readiness, if these actions did not bring the desired effect, by stopping the military component of Tehran’s nuclear program by force. This position was most clearly stated by US President Barack Obama in his speech at the American-Israel Public Affair Committee (AIPAC-EIPAC) 4 March, where they made a number of binding statements that, as some observers thought, went beyond the standard electoral pro-Israel rhetoric.

Obama's then declaration on the possibility of a preemptive US strike on Iranian nuclear facilities seemed to be a serious departure from the concept adopted by the current US administration that there are no legally grounded rights to US military intervention in sovereign countries in circumstances similar to those that preceded the previous administration of George Bush Jr. Iraq. 2003 wars. Among the most authoritative jurists who are supporters of this concept, for example, was prof. Harold Koh (Harold Koh), Dean of the Law Faculty of Yale University, who, after the Democrats won the 2008 presidential election, became a legal adviser to the US State Department. His colleague from Columbia University in New York, prof. Michael Doyle, who argued that “in the light of the Iraqi fiasco, talking about“ preventive self-defense ”today is about the same thing as interviewing the [sinking] Titanic passengers in the rescue boats about their point of view on ocean travel ".

The departure, as it seemed at the time, of the Obama administration from this imperative was accompanied by a little more willingness to weigh the approach of those politicians and experts who, like Robert M. Gates, the former US Secretary of Defense, in 1990's. also held the post of director of the CIA, warned that by the time the United States will be sure that Iran (unlike Iraq at the beginning of the last decade) has crossed the “red line” in the process of building its military-nuclear potential, it will be too late that -to take. According to Robert Gates, who presented 2010 in April in the form of a memorandum to the White House and partially voiced in an interview with the program “Meet the Press” on NBC News, “if Iran’s strategy is to approach this line, at the same time convincing everyone that they do not intend to assemble nuclear charges, how can you be sure that you are not led by the nose? ”

Apparently, it was precisely under these understandings and commitments that Obama convinced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take an extremely difficult step for him personally and internally. According to the data of the well-informed Israeli news agency Debka, on the eve of the talks in Istanbul, the two leaders reached some agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, designated the “1000 Formula”. According to sources in the US administration, this formula, if adopted by Tehran, allows it to keep 1000 centrifuges working to produce low-enriched uranium to 3,5%, but it excludes accumulation of uranium enriched to 20% uranium, the presence of which, according to experts, will allow Iran to quickly and cheaply produce at the right time any amount of weapons-grade uranium.

In other words, Israel made unprecedented concessions to the US administration and for the first time agreed to legalize the Iranian nuclear program in any form in exchange for Washington’s “tough guarantees” to put Tehran before choosing between this plan and the prospect of a full-scale military confrontation with the US and its allies. However, according to the same sources, to the disappointment of the Israeli side, instead of presenting the proposals and requirements envisaged by the plan to Iran at the Istanbul meeting, Obama, in violation of the security rules of the game, preferred secret contacts with representatives of Tehran in Paris and Vienna. The result was the fact of a sharp collision published by the same agency (although it was not widely publicized) that occurred one day after the Istanbul meeting, i.e. 16 April, between Netanyahu and Obama. To the point that the high-ranking officials of the Israeli Prime Minister directly accused the US President of violating the agreements and understandings reached.

Explanations of the White House’s move can vary from the return of the Obama administration to its doctrine of the beginning of cadence, which included a fundamental rejection of forceful scenarios for solving regional problems or a reluctance to start the next and inevitable in case of failure of the “Formula 1000” actions right before the US presidential election.

Be that as it may, on the background of a scandal that was still unpleasant for Obama, representatives of the US Administration were quick to say that Netanyahu was fully informed about the strategy of the Six talks both during and after the Istanbul meeting, and According to the same statements, it was known in advance that at this round it was not supposed to achieve a diplomatic breakthrough, but only to “test the seriousness of the approach” of Iran to the negotiations. But at the next meeting, the great powers allegedly would demand from Tehran to stop enriching uranium for military purposes. Moreover, the representatives of the Israeli Prime Minister made it clear that the United States does not intend to allow the discussion to continue indefinitely.

It is difficult to judge how these arguments convince the Israeli military-political establishment. However, there is no doubt that such circumstances clearly increase in his environment the number of those who insist on the need to take the initiative "on the Iranian track" in their own hands. One can only guess what it can mean in practice.

The author of the article: Dr. Vladimir (Zeev) Khanin (Israel), chief scientist of the Ministry of Immigration of Israel. Material first printed on Online Institute of the Middle East (Moscow).