Will Netanyahu Persuade Obama to Strike Iran?

Since the arrival of the Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu to the seat of power in Israel, there has been a deliberate Israeli escalation against Iran against the backdrop of its nuclear program. The anxiety over Iran becoming a nuclear country has become a kind of nightmare, to the point that one Israeli official said a while ago that he cannot sleep thinking about it. Along with the nightmare, several Israeli officials continue to openly and daily threaten a military strike against Iran’s nuclear reactors, amid reports which continue to talk about the next few months as a final deadline for this strike.

In the controversy over the strike, and on the threshold of the expected meeting between Netanyahu and Obama, there is talk of an imbalance of power between the two sides, in the face of a directive like this bombardment. Due to this imbalance, the Israeli conviction is that Iran’s nuclear program has entered a decisive stage of no return. Furthermore, the Israelis would counter that it must be destroyed militarily, while the American approach is to bet on increasing sanctions to change the Iranian regime from inside Tehran. America also wants to get to Iran’s nuclear capability through negotiations, rather than live in fear of the disastrous results of the possible bombing. In addition to the two causes mentioned is the American presidential election at the end of the year, which Obama does not want to lose because of this thorny issue.

On the threshold of the Netanyahu-Obama meeting, there is an American conviction or apprehension that Israel will go ahead with the military strike without the knowledge of the American administration. There are those who think that Netanyahu will decide this issue on his own because he doesn’t want to repeat the experience of destroying the Iraqi nuclear reactors in June 1981, when the Israeli prime minister at the time, Menachem Begin, asked the American ambassador in Tel Aviv, Samuel Lewis, to send a express cable to former American president Ronald Reagan informing him that the Iraqi nuclear reactor had been destroyed. Netanyahu wants to make a military hit under direct American supervision, even if Washington itself doesn’t participate. In doing so, he realizes the complications of the Iranian nuclear issue, and the difficulty of destroying the reactors in the same way as in Iraq; whether because of the distance, which is more than a thousand kilometers, or the number of Iranian nuclear reactors and the large distances between them, or the difficulty of destroying some of them, seeing that they are fortified underground. The most important calculation is the Iranian response, which could be disastrous to Israel, even without taking into account the expected reaction from Hezbollah in south Lebanon, and its capacity to fire thousands of missiles deep into Israel.

In spite of these dangers and the instability attendant on a possible military strike, from the Israeli point of view the longer the strike is delayed, the closer comes the moment when Iran attains the status of a nuclear country. Meanwhile the Israeli public, under the pressure of conscription and nightmares, continues to live in terrible anxiety, to the point that they are talking about a “new Holocaust.” It seems that the reactors in this vision have begun their work on the public. We only have to point to the survey taken by Tel Aviv University a while ago, which says that 30 percent of Israelis would emigrate if Iran had nuclear capabilities. The headlines in most world newspapers are not meaningless either; they seemed to be a cry to European, American and Western quarters in general about the need to put an end to the issue of Iran’s nuclear capacity. Otherwise Israel’s existence is in danger, and the Western countries would bear the responsibility for it. The German image is present in the minds of all, and the underlying message that Netanyahu wants to convey is the need for Western — and specifically American — participation in a military operation against Iran’s nuclear reactors. It’s an urgent plea which makes one ask: What will happen if Netanyahu fails to recruit Obama to what he is doing for his sake? This question leads to another one: If Netanyahu fails in this, will he start a war on his own, without any American resolution or backing? We may not find answers to these questions, but they are surely running through Netanyahu’s mind. He is trying in any case for the participation of the American administration, and he is on the threshold of a decisive and historic meeting with Obama.

Without a doubt, the Iranian nuclear issue and everything connected to it is practically the most important issue, if not the only one, which Netanyahu is bringing to the American administration. This development comes after numerous measures which Israel has taken during the last phase to strike at the nuclear reactors, whether on the level of gathering secret intelligence (which enabled Israel to assassinate numerous Iranian nuclear scientists); or making plans for bombing, especially by training planes to fly long distances; or comprehensive interior simulation training and exercises, in case of total missile warfare on more than one front simultaneously.

Netanyahu sees that time is not on the side of his country’s interests, but rather Iran’s nuclear capacity, and that the path of sanctions will not lead to results — and that American hesitation should not be at the expense of Israeli security and priorities… and, alongside all this, he thinks of the deadline for a military strike without anyone knowing what the region will be like the moment after it.