While many parts of the world have called the Iranian nuclear deal a triumph of diplomacy, Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has branded it an “historic mistake, even though international inspection teams will monitor the number of centrifuges and see that Iran’s uranium is well below weapons grade.
The PM does not speak for all of Israel. Mossad and the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission have expressed doubt that Iran is anywhere near to having a weapon as Netanyahu claims. His generals see little if any likelihood of an Iranian first strike, if it ever did get a nuclear device. And former spy chief Meir Dagan called Netanyahu’s dire warnings before congress “bullshit.”
Netanyahu’s words and counsel will be heard over and over as the Iran issue is debated in the halls of congress and elsewhere. His objections, however, should be considered in the context of the injudiciousness of past actions in world affairs and the ambitions implicit in present ones.
Diplomatic insensitivity
Netanyahu wants Iran to completely dismantle its uranium-enrichment centrifuges at Natanz and Fordo. (Iran’s research site at Parchin mysteriously blew up last fall.) A hardline position, however, suggests insufficient appreciation for diplomatic give-and-take and the need to leave each side with something to take home to its political and military leaders and to its public. Dismantling the centrifuges would not be acceptable to Iran’s religious and military elites or to large parts of the public.
Most Iranians see their nuclear program as a source of national pride – something that has been trod upon by foreign powers more than once over the last century. Further, they are mindful of the Iraq War (1980-88) which led to immense casualties. Netanyahu and his council should know this. Indeed, they almost certainly do know it.
Emboldening great power diplomacy
Netanyahu looks askance at world powers’ handling a major issue facing the international community. This concern is especially pronounced in his coalition of politicians and generals who favor more settlements in the West Bank. If world powers are successful with the Iranian nuclear issue, they may one day turn their attention to the Palestinian issue, and press Israel to refrain from further settlements and accede to a fully independent Palestinian state.
This, of course, would endanger the Israeli Right’s vision of the West Bank as a defensive glacis, an attraction to the religious parties in the Right, and as a source of water for the growing population. Better, then, to oppose the Iranian agreement lest it set a precedent that will encourage further international accords that do not fit with the Israeli Right’s political and military ambitions.
Clumsy foreign policy
Many Americans will reflexively confer great respect upon Netanyahu’s position. This is not only due to his formidable influence in Washington and parts of the public. It’s also due to his perceived superior understanding of the situation born of his country’s vulnerability to miscalculations that world powers may make. But how judicious have Israeli security policies been over the years? How effective have they been in strengthening Israel’s national security?
Israel fought two wars with Egypt, in 1956 and 1967, that aimed at humiliating President Nasser and driving him from office. In each war, analyst Ze’ev Maoz argues, Israel displayed great military skill, yet each time Nasser emerged more popular than before. In 1982, Israel launched Operation Peace For Galilee which aimed to secure its border with Lebanon from attacks by Palestinian guerrillas. The operation led to a long controversial war and to the rise of Hisbollah – a far more formidable force than anything the Palestinians have developed. The 2006 ground and air attacks on Lebanon sought to weaken Hisbollah’s popularity yet the Shia group emerged even more popular – as did Hamas after punishing airstrikes on Gaza. The record, then, places Israel’s tough positions in a less than impressive historical context.
The record of adverse but perhaps foreseeable consequences will make many question the judiciousness of Netanyahu’s stance and ask if it will paradoxically lead to greater support inside Iran for nuclear weapons. This may be all the more likely as Israeli reports indicate that their country’s intelligence service has a more optimistic view of political change and opportunity in Iran than the Israeli prime minister and his council have.
Fragmentation
Netanyahu might have a bolder ambition in mind than merely preventing Iran from building nuclear weapons. The Middle East is changing more rapidly than at any time since the end of the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Countries in the region are vanishing from the maps of the world, breaking apart into smaller, often antagonistic mini-states. Libya is now three provinces and a dozen or so regional and tribal militias. Syria has fragmented into a Shia-Alawi region along the Mediterranean and countless regions under various militias backed by different foreign powers. Iraq has seen its Kurdish north all but break away and its Sunni west is slipping from its grasp.
Correctly or not, Israel may see Iran as vulnerable to fragmentation or at least to destabilization and it may also see prolonged and tougher sanctions as critical to causing internal disarray. A weaker economy brings discontent among the urban middle classes and out among the non-Persian peoples as well. The Kurds in the northwest see greater prospects for their own state than at any time since the end of World War One. The Balochs in the southeast are already waging a low-level insurgency. Several other groups such as the Azeri, Arabs, Bachtiari, Luri, Sevan, Khamseh, and Qashqai may become restive if Tehran’s coffers are no longer flush with sufficient oil revenue to mollify them.
More astonishing transformations have already taken place in the Middle East in the last three years. Among them is the rise of Sunni militancy, perhaps most ominously from Jerusalem’s perspective just to the west in Egypt and the northwest in Syria – two countries that were less hostile to Israel in recent years, either due to US aid or Israeli intimidation. Sunni militancy is on the rise and less doctrinaire and more pragmatic foreign policy advisers in Jerusalem might realize that it poses a more serious threat to Israel than Iran does. More historically-informed advisers will recall that Iran was once Israel’s chief regional ally and that the changing Middle East might make it an ally again someday.
© 2015 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a political-military analyst, and author of The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.