Israel at War: Inside the Nuclear Showdown With Iran (6 page)

Reuel Gerecht said he was “skeptical that many of the worst-case scenarios” about a U.S.- or Israeli-led war against Iran “are likely.” He said, “Hezbollah would respond with everything they have” [i.e., missile attacks against Israel] but added, “I’m seriously doubtful that you’d see much of a [negative] reaction throughout the Middle East. . . . Main Iranian reaction would be terrorism [against Israeli and Western interests]. . . . The repercussions are quite sustainable, especially compared to the Iranians having the Bomb.”

Ken Pollack said, “I’m a skeptic on the use of force against Iran . . . because I don’t think the math works out. . . . Will a strike work? I remain very skeptical. . . . I would give more credit to the [Obama] administration for sanctions than I would have expected.” He said the evidence suggested the economic sanctions against Iran were having more impact on Iran’s economy—and creating more division within Iran’s government—than he had anticipated, and he was worried that an Israeli strike against Iran would unify the Iranian government at a time when it was splintering.

The most important comments, it turned out, came from General Yaakov Amidror, as three months later he was appointed by Netanyahu as his national security advisor. I first met Amidror in the summer of 2005, when I interviewed him for my book
Epicenter
about the threats facing Israel in the years ahead, including the threat from Iran. At this conference, Amidror made it clear he believed the Iran threat had reached a point in which war was both necessary and likely inevitable. “Technically, Israel will be ready [to strike Iran] if and when the decision will be taken,” Amidror said. But “no one is eager for war with Iran. . . . If war with Iran comes, American planes will be used—the question is, will it be American pilots or Israeli pilots flying those planes? . . . It would be a dirty [war], a long one, one no one wants to be in. . . . We want to postpone as long as possible. . . . If you ask me for my assessment—and that’s what I have done for twenty-five years, doing assessments—I believe it is almost impossible to stop Iran without military force.”
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The Escalation

At the end of 2010, Israelis were breathing a bit easier. But as 2011 began, revolution erupted in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Syria.

To Israel’s south, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak—a strategic if not warm ally of the U.S. and Israel—was under siege by millions of Egyptians bent on change. President Obama, who had inexplicably refused to help the millions of Iranians demanding an end to the Khamenei/Ahmadinejad regime in the summer of 2009, called for Mubarak to step down. Mubarak was soon toppled, having chosen not to use his military to defend his regime. In the chaotic vacuum created by Mubarak’s sudden downfall, the radical Muslim Brotherhood—not exactly a band of pro-democracy, pro-Western, pro-Israel moderates—began rising to power in Cairo. Soon, Mohamed Morsi, a senior Muslim Brotherhood leader and fierce enemy of Israel, would emerge as the new leader of Egypt after giving a provocative speech at Cairo University declaring, “The Qur’an is our constitution, the Prophet is our leader, jihad is our path, and death in the name of Allah is our goal.”
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To Israel’s north, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad found himself under siege by an increasingly well-armed and well-funded movement of rebels. Having seen Mubarak’s plight, al-Assad chose another path. He ordered his military to fight the rebels to the death, a move that would lead to the slaughter of more than twenty thousand Syrians, many at the hands of the al-Assad regime.
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Suddenly Netanyahu and his cabinet found Israel’s security environment deteriorating rapidly and dramatically.

On July 23, 2011, another Iranian nuclear scientist was assassinated. “The most recent victim, 35-year-old Darioush Rezaeinejad, was shot in the neck outside his daughter’s Tehran kindergarten on Saturday by two gunmen on a motorcycle,” ABC News reported. “According to an unconfirmed report in an Israeli intelligence publication, Rezaeinejad was working on a nuclear detonator and was seen daily at a nuclear lab in northern Tehran.”
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On October 3, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta visited Israel and met with Defense Minister Barak. Panetta made it clear to Barak in no uncertain terms that the Obama administration was strongly opposed to an Israeli first strike against Iran and that Israel should not even consider such a move.
⁷⁷

On October 11, however, an Iranian plot to unleash devastating terrorist attacks against U.S., Israeli, and Saudi targets in Washington, D.C. was exposed. “FBI and DEA agents have disrupted a plot to commit a ‘significant terrorist act in the United States’ tied to Iran,” ABC News reported. “The officials said the plot included the assassination of the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, Adel Al-Jubeir, with a bomb, and subsequent bomb attacks on the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington, D.C. Bombings of the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Buenos Aires, Argentina, were also discussed, according to the U.S. officials.”
⁷⁸

“One of the two central figures in the alleged plot, Manssor Arbabsiar—described as a 56-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen with Iranian and U.S. passports—was arrested September 29 at JFK Airport in New York,” the
Wall Street Journal
reported. “At a July 17 planning meeting in Mexico, an undercover U.S. agent suggested to Arbabsiar that the assassination would cause mass casualties.”
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“Though it reads like the pages of a Hollywood script, the impact would’ve been very real, and many lives would’ve been lost,” FBI director Robert Mueller said of the foiled plot.
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Federal law enforcement and U.S. intelligence deserve credit for uncovering this plot and shutting it down in time. Yet the Obama administration took no decisive action against Iran. Instead, the administration continued pressuring Israel not to consider a preemptive strike against Iran.

Fact or Fiction?

On Sunday, October 16, 2011, I was interviewed on the Fox News Channel about the Iran terror plot. “The Iranian plot FBI Director Mueller has talked about this week also reads like the pages of a soon-to-be-released novel by an author that some are calling a ‘modern-day Nostradamus,’” said Fox host Shannon Bream. “Joel Rosenberg’s new book,
The Tehran Initiative
, bears an eerie, uncanny resemblance to current events. And it isn’t the first time he has written fiction that’s foreshadowed the future. It’s a special gift I think he has. He joins us now. . . . Of course, this week we’re talking about the foiled Iranian plot. There are some skeptics who wonder just how far up it went in the Iranian leadership. . . . What do you make of it? Were you surprised by it at all, this plan to assassinate the Saudi ambassador here in D.C.?”
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I was not surprised. “The problem is that Iran declared war on the United States in 1979, declared war on Israel in 1979 under Ayatollah Khomeini. They started taking hostages. They’ve killed Americans in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan. Now, if this plot turns out to be credible—combined with the nuclear weapons development strategy—you basically have a declared war from an enemy with virtually no response for all these years. I brought in with me an article from April 2010 from the
New York Times
—then–Defense Secretary Robert ‘Gates Says U.S. Lacks a Policy to Thwart Iran.’ It details a three-page secret memo saying the Obama administration doesn’t have a plan. Well, eighteen months later the problem is, what is that plan to neutralize the Iranian threat, to degrade their capability to threaten us, either with terrorism or nuclear war? The problem is we have a president currently who doesn’t have a plan, and none of the Republican presidential candidates have laid out a serious, credible plan either. And look, I’m writing a fictional novel about . . . a fictional terrorist attack on the United States by Iran . . . and Iran getting nuclear weapons and the U.S. pressuring Israel not to launch a first strike. But we’re not living in a fictional world. We’re living in a world where we neither have a president nor—currently—a Republican presidential campaign structure that has given us a plan.”

“How important do you think it is that the candidates—the GOP candidates—be asked about this at the next debate, what their plan would be and whether or not they would tie Israel’s hands?” Bream asked. “Because there are many candidates within the GOP field who are strong supporters of Israel, but do you think they would allow Israel to act on its own behalf if that nation felt it were necessary for survival?”

“I’d like to see that,” I replied. “And that’s the thing—there’s no question that jobs, the economy, bold tax reform, these are all critical issues, and the candidates—to varying degrees—are addressing them. But in terms of foreign policy and the number one threat to U.S. national security—Iran—nobody has really laid out a comprehensive, detailed plan to neutralize the Iranian threat. We don’t really know if the candidates would launch a preemptive military strike or would seriously consider it as an American president. Nor do we know whether they would support Israel in such a strike either. And yet, in my novel—
The Tehran Initiative
—I have a fictional American president sending a senior American official to Israel to pressure Israel not to launch a preemptive strike even though they are facing a second Holocaust. Now, just a few weeks ago, President Obama sent Secretary of Defense Panetta to Israel to do that very thing. So, unfortunately, the issues I’m dealing with fictionally are playing out right now. And I think we need to hear from the president and from the Republican candidates—walk us through a plan, because this is a very, very serious issue.”

Sending the Wrong Signals to Iran

On November 12, 2011, a massive explosion occurred at one of Iran’s key missile bases. Iranian officials claimed it was an accident, but speculation was rampant that the explosion was another Mossad covert operation. In light of who was killed, the speculation may have been accurate. “The blast at the Alghadir missile base at Bid Ganeh was so powerful it rattled windows thirty miles away in Tehran,” the U.K.
Guardian
reported. “Witnesses said it sounded like a huge bomb had been dropped. Seventeen of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards were killed, among them a man described by his peers as the ‘architect’ of the country’s missile programme, Major General Hassan Moghaddam.”
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Sixteen days later, on November 28, there was another mysterious but enormous explosion, this time at the Iranian nuclear facility in Isfahan, a site known to be used for uranium enrichment.
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Two weeks after that, on December 11, there was a massive explosion at a steel factory in the Yazd province. The factory was believed to be producing materials for Iran’s missile or nuclear program or possibly both. Seven workers died in the blast, while twelve others were injured.
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That same month, a highly classified U.S. spy drone—filled with state-of-the-art electronic surveillance technology—crashed inside Iran.
⁸⁵
Iranian officials say they shot it down. The Obama administration asked for the drone to be returned. Tehran laughed in their faces.

Meanwhile, the administration was opposing a new round of tougher sanctions on Iran, publicly pressuring Israel not to strike, and publicly dismissing Israel’s ability to do any serious damage even if they did hit Iran from the air. This was too much even for the reliably pro-Obama editors of the
Washington Post
. They published an editorial scorching the White House for “waffling” on the Iran issue and sending the “wrong signals to Iran”—signals of weakness and indecision.
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“A major ‘hot war’ in the Middle East may be coming in 2012,” I wrote at the end of 2011. “But evidence continues to mount of an aggressive ‘covert war’ already being fought inside Iran and the Middle East. The goal: to neutralize Tehran’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs before it’s too late. Mysterious explosions are occurring. Iranian scientists are disappearing. Top-secret U.S. stealth drones are being used—now one has been downed and captured by the Iranians. There is little doubt that the Israeli Mossad is involved in some of these operations. The question is how extensively the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies are involved. In my new political thriller,
The Tehran Initiative
, the main character—David Shirazi—is a CIA operative sent deep inside Iran to use ‘all means necessary’ to pinpoint, disrupt, and sabotage Iran’s nuclear threat before Israel launches preemptive strikes. We can only hope the CIA is being this aggressive. But the White House and State Department continue to pursue a policy of appeasement toward the wicked regime in Tehran. Now the Obama administration is even trying to water down tougher new Iran sanctions passed by the Senate last week, 100 to 0. Why? Such actions are foolish and reckless and are making the prospect of an Israeli first strike more likely, not less. Keep praying. It may be a long, tough year ahead.”
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As 2012 began, Netanyahu’s confidence in the Obama administration was at an all-time low. The White House still had no real plan to stop Iran from getting the Bomb and was more focused on removing U.S. military forces from Iraq and Afghanistan than on preparing for military action against Iran. Israeli covert operations, meanwhile, were proving tactically effective in slowing down the Iranian nuclear program bit by bit. However, these efforts were not proving to be strategic game changers. In other words, Netanyahu and his senior advisors were coming to the conclusion that black ops could buy them time—a few weeks here, maybe a few months there—but alone, they would not be able to stop Iran from building the Bomb.

Worse, the Israelis noticed that Iran was building enormous new uranium enrichment facilities in tunnels deep under large mountains and was preparing to move its entire nuclear program into these facilities. Ehud Barak and his military intelligence specialists now spoke privately to the prime minister about a new danger that Barak called the “zone of immunity”—not the point at which Iran would necessarily have built operational atomic bombs but the point at which Iran’s nuclear program would be immune from an Israeli attack. Together, Barak and his team had developed a detailed, credible, and effective plan of attack. They had convinced Netanyahu that they had enough fighter jets, refueling tankers, missiles, bunker-buster bombs, and other munitions and intelligence to effectively attack Iran’s nuclear program and set it back for at least two to five years. The Americans with all their resources could annihilate the Iranian program but showed little or no interest in doing so. The problem was that as soon as Iran was able to move its program into the hardened underground facilities, Israel’s military capabilities would no longer prove decisive.

Now there was not just one metaphoric clock guiding Netanyahu but two. One was counting down the time until Iran had the Bomb. The second was counting down the time until Israel could no longer unilaterally prevent Iran from building the Bomb. The second clock was moving faster than the first, which meant a full-scale, all-out war was coming up sooner than anyone in the Israeli Cabinet had previously anticipated.

Barak Goes Public

On January 25, 2012, the
New York Times Magazine
published a cover story by Ronen Bergman that stirred up a firestorm. One of the most respected Israeli journalists following the Iran threat over the past several decades, Bergman was the author of the 2008 book
The Secret War with Iran: The 30-Year Clandestine Struggle against the World’s Most Dangerous Terrorist Power
. The lengthy and well-sourced article was headlined “Will Israel Attack Iran?”

Bergman concluded the answer was yes.

“After speaking with many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and the intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012,” Bergman wrote. “Perhaps in the small and ever-diminishing window that is left, the United States will choose to intervene after all, but here, from the Israeli perspective, there is not much hope for that. Instead there is that peculiar Israeli mixture of fear—rooted in the sense that Israel is dependent on the tacit support of other nations to survive—and tenacity, the fierce conviction, right or wrong, that only the Israelis can ultimately defend themselves.”
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According to Bergman, “Netanyahu and Barak have both repeatedly stressed that a decision has not yet been made and that a deadline for making one has not been set. As we spoke, however, Barak laid out three categories of questions, which he characterized as ‘Israel’s ability to act,’ ‘international legitimacy,’ and ‘necessity,’ all of which require affirmative responses before a decision is made to attack.”

• Ability to act:
  “Does Israel have the ability to cause severe damage to Iran’s nuclear sites and bring about a major delay in the Iranian nuclear project? And can the military and the Israeli people withstand the inevitable counterattack?”
  
• International legitimacy:
  “Does Israel have overt or tacit support, particularly from America, for carrying out an attack?”
  
• Necessity:
  “Have all other possibilities for the containment of Iran’s nuclear threat been exhausted, bringing Israel to the point of last resort? If so, is this the last opportunity for an attack?”
  

“For the first time since the Iranian nuclear threat emerged in the mid-1990s,” Bergman wrote, “at least some of Israel’s most powerful leaders believe that the response to all of these questions is yes.”

Well, almost yes.

Yes, Israel had a solid plan of attack. It had the military capabilities to make the plan work—at least for now. The Obama administration was publicly pressuring Israel not to strike, but Netanyahu and his team knew they had sweeping bipartisan support from Congress, and they concluded it would be politically devastating for Obama to truly oppose an Israeli strike during a reelection campaign. As for exhausting all their other options, that might not yet be true, the Israelis privately concluded, but it was almost true, and it felt true. They had creatively bought themselves more time, but even that was now running out. If they began making genuine final preparations for war, would the Obama administration finally take measures into their own hands and take decisive action to stop Iran? Netanyahu and Barak did not know. But they concluded it might be their last shot. That’s why Barak went public.

The
Times
cover story was one everyone in the know was reading and seriously contemplating, and it did force the Obama team’s hand, but not in the way Jerusalem had expected.

On February 2, the
Washington Post
published an article by veteran foreign affairs writer David Ignatius. The article indicated that senior Obama administration officials feared an Israeli strike was imminent. According to Ignatius, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta “believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May, or June—before Iran enters what Israelis described as a ‘zone of immunity’ to commence building a nuclear bomb. Very soon, the Israelis fear, the Iranians will have stored enough enriched uranium in deep underground facilities to make a weapon—and only the United States could then stop them militarily.”
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Suddenly, Washington, foreign capitals, and the international media were abuzz with rumors of impending war between Israel and Iran within just a few weeks. Senior U.S. and Israeli officials were speaking with rare candor about the growing possibility of Israeli air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities. The handwriting had been on the wall for some time, but I had never heard such high-ranking officials speaking on the record in terms of specific time frames for war.
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That same day, February 2, Barak delivered a major speech at a security conference in Israel. In it, he publicly acknowledged the fear that Iran was rapidly approaching the “zone of immunity.”

“Today, as opposed to the past, the world has no doubt that the Iranian military nuclear program is steadily approaching maturity and is about to enter the zone of immunity, after which the Iranian regime will be able to complete the program without effective interruption and at a time it finds convenient,” Barak explained. “The dividing line may pass not where the Iranians decide to break out of the non-proliferation treaty and move toward a nuclear device or weapon, but at the place where the dispersal, protection, and survivability efforts will cross a point that would make a physical strike impractical.”
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How soon would Iran enter this “zone of immunity”? Ehud Barak did not say. But given Defense Secretary Panetta’s remarks, it seemed plausible that Israel would hit Iran in the spring.

Speaking to reporters and U.S. airmen at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany on Friday, February 3, Secretary Panetta refused to back away from the
Post
report, thus effectively confirming the story.
⁹²
The question, of course, was: Why did Panetta publicly describe the window the Israelis were considering for a preemptive strike? Was it to help prepare the American public and the world for the inevitable? Or was Panetta undermining the Israelis by alerting the Iranians to their plans?

The following month, on March 4, President Obama addressed thousands of pro-Israel activists at the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). In his speech, the president warned, “There is too much loose talk of war. . . . For the sake of Israel’s security, America’s security, and the peace and security of the world, now is not the time for bluster.” He defended himself against mounting criticism that he was not doing enough to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons or being a strong and faithful enough friend of the Jewish State. He said he would keep the military option on the table and stated emphatically that his administration was not pursuing a policy of “containment” (i.e., letting Iran get the Bomb but then making sure they would not use it). But the president said he believed so much talk of possible war was benefiting Iran, in part by driving up oil prices, which helps fund the regime in Tehran. What’s more, Obama made it crystal clear—yet again—that he did not want Israel to launch a preemptive, unilateral strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
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For someone living in a cave and just stepping out to attend the AIPAC speech or watch it on television, the president’s words might have sounded tough and convincing. The problem was, it did not sound that way to Netanyahu, Barak, or their inner circle. Though the Israelis continued to speak respectfully of the president in public, in private they felt the Obama administration had been dragging its heels for years and still refused to get serious about stopping Iran.

This was not just perception. The Israelis could point to a troubling set of facts.

• In 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed the U.S. would impose “crippling” economic sanctions on Iran if nuclear negotiations failed.
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• In 2010, however, the administration reversed course and said the U.S. would not impose “crippling” sanctions on Iran, even though talks were yielding no positive results but rather giving Iran more time to defy the international community and move toward the Bomb.
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• In late 2011, the Obama administration resisted stringent sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank and then worked to water down a new sanctions bill in Congress.
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• In December 2011, the Senate passed a bill 100-0 imposing tough new sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank in an attempt to cripple Iranian oil sales and force the regime to negotiate a deal on its nuclear program. Incredibly, the Obama administration initially opposed the bill.
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• In the end, the Obama White House finally relented and supported the sanctions on Iran’s Central Bank, but only after France and Britain led the way.
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Netanyahu Goes Public

On the morning of Monday, March 5, 2012, President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu met privately in the Oval Office for over an hour, followed by a private lunch with top advisors in the State Dining Room. In a gesture aimed at warming the strained relationship between the two leaders, Netanyahu gave the president a decorated scroll containing the biblical book of Esther. He also discussed with Mr. Obama the significance of the story, explaining that some twenty-five hundred years ago, a Persian tyrant had threatened to annihilate the Jewish people. In response, Queen Esther, at the urging of her Jewish cousin, prayed and fasted for the salvation of the Jews and then pleaded with King Ahasuerus for the protection of her people.

“Then, too, they wanted to wipe us out,” Netanyahu told Obama.
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For Netanyahu, who has never been a religious person, it was an unexpected gift at an unexpected time. It was also a gift with a critically important meaning, one that Netanyahu reinforced in his private meeting with the president. He thanked Mr. Obama for stating in his AIPAC speech that Israel has “the sovereign right to make its own decisions.” Israeli officials privately interpreted the president’s comments to mean the U.S. would not interfere in an Israeli strike if there was no other option left. Then, sitting next to the president, the prime minister personally reiterated that Israel must have the ability to defend itself against an existential threat. “My supreme responsibility as prime minister of Israel is to ensure that Israel remains the master of its fate,” he said.
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What is not clear is whether the prime minister explained the ending of the biblical story. Yes, Esther did her part, praying, fasting, and intervening before the Persian king on behalf of the Jewish people. And yes, the God of Israel heard those prayers and answered powerfully. He softened the Persian king’s heart, caused the evil official known as Haman to be executed, and miraculously changed the dynamic in favor of the Jews. Still, it must be remembered that in the end the Jewish people did have to fight against the Persian forces who were hell-bent on their destruction. With the Lord’s help, the Jews miraculously prevailed.

“The king granted the Jews who were in each and every city the right to assemble and to defend their lives, to destroy, to kill and to annihilate the entire army of any people or province which might attack them,” the Bible tells us. “The Jews assembled in their cities throughout all the provinces of King Ahasuerus to lay hands on those who sought their harm; and no one could stand before them, for the dread of them had fallen on all the peoples” (Esther 8:11; 9:2).

That night, Netanyahu himself addressed the AIPAC conference. He made it clear to Israel’s Jewish and Christian supporters—including hundreds of congressmen, senators, and foreign ambassadors—that the time to act decisively was running out. “For fifteen years, I’ve been warning that a nuclear-armed Iran is a grave danger to my country and to the peace and security of the entire world,” the prime minister told the thousands of supporters of Israel gathered in the Washington, D.C. convention center.
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“For the last decade, the international community has tried diplomacy. It hasn’t worked. For six years, the international community has applied sanctions. That hasn’t worked either. I appreciate President Obama’s recent efforts to impose even tougher sanctions against Iran. These sanctions are hurting Iran’s economy, but unfortunately, Iran’s nuclear program continues to march forward. Israel has waited patiently for the international community to resolve this issue. We’ve waited for diplomacy to work. We’ve waited for sanctions to work. None of us can afford to wait much longer. As prime minister of Israel, I will never let my people live in the shadow of annihilation. . . .