President Barack Obama, following his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu yesterday, said that engagement will not be open-ended and that he expected to see serious progress by year’s end. Whether this rough timeline will assuage Israeli concerns about Iran’s nuclear program remains to be seen.
Israel, the United States government, and the European Union assess the threat of a nuclear weapons-capable Islamic Republic differently.
• Europe’s major concern is preservation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty as a viable construct.
• Washington looks at Iran’s nuclear developments as an issue of strategic tenability, fearing both a cascade of proliferation across the region and more aggressive conventional or proxy actions ordered by an Iranian leadership overconfident with its own nuclear deterrence.
• Israel, however, sees Iranian nuclear development as an existential threat. Not only do they interpret Ayatollah Ali Akbar Rafsanjani’s December 14, 2001 sermon as evidence that Iran might launch a first strike, but they also find concern in subsequent statements by figures close to the Supreme Leader, which I highlight in this Middle East Outlook.
Realists argue that the Islamic Republic is not suicidal and would not use nuclear arms, fearing retaliation. Israeli officials are not so sure: First, the Iranian leadership has never had high regard for casualties among its people. While Saddam Hussein started the Iran-Iraq war in 1980, Ayatollah Khomeini chose to continue it for six years and at the price of several hundred thousand lives after the Iranian military pushed Iraqi troops out of Iran in 1982. Israeli officials also worry about chain of custody. Iranians are among the most pragmatic and cosmopolitan peoples in the Middle East, but the same may not hold true for the elite Revolutionary Guardsmen who would have custody over a bomb program. Lastly, Israeli officials fear that should the Islamic Republic experience internal trouble and see its regime collapsing (such as occurred, for example, in Romania under Ceauşescu), hard-line elements in the Supreme Leader’s circle or among the Revolutionary Guards might order a nuclear launch, figuring they have nothing to lose.
True, Israel has no good military options—Iran in 2009 is not Iraq in 1981—but the nature of existential threats is that one has no choice but to counter them.
Alas, while Obama is a gifted speaker, this is one situation in which rhetorical three-card monte falls flat. Israel is going to access the reality of U.S. actions and not just the promise. While Obama has suggested the diplomatic opening will not continue absent progress into next year, there are several reasons his case will convince neither Jerusalem nor Tehran.
• While Obama made headlines with his timeline, on May 14, 2009, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly declared, “There is no deadline for talks.” So long as the Obama administration does not speak with one voice, it will lack credibility. Indeed, Israel and Iran respectively fear and count on the fact that the gap between this administration’s rhetoric and policy reality will be as wide as it was under George W. Bush.
• Obama has provided no metric by which to judge progress. If there is a 1 percent chance that talks might advance, will Obama grant a 90-day extension? Indeed, it was this exact diplomatic pattern which enabled North Korea to go nuclear.
• U.S. authorities are negotiating with representatives of Iran’s foreign ministry. Iranian diplomats have no more sway over Iran’s nuclear program than would diplomats from Malawi.
There is also a wildcard that may lead Netanyahu to order a strike, even without a U.S. green light.
• Iran may purchase sophisticated Russian anti-aircraft defense systems, either directly from Moscow or through channels in Belarus. The Tehran-Minsk trade is as worrying as it is brisk. Likewise, Iran may benefit from infusions of nuclear technology or material from North Korea or any other rogue proliferators.
So what to make of Obama’s timeline? Little. Alas, for Israel, it’s not Obama’s good faith that matters, but rather Iran’s. And that, unfortunately, is in very short supply.