War and Bluff: Iran, Israel and the United States

[웃 910]

War and Bluff: Iran, Israel and the United States

By George Friedman

For the past several months, the Israelis have been threatening to attack Iranian nuclear sites as the United States has pursued a complex policy of avoiding complete opposition to such strikes while making clear it doesn't feel such strikes are necessary. At the same time, the United States has carried out maneuvers meant to demonstrate its ability to prevent the Iranian counter to an attack -- namely blocking the Strait of Hormuz. While these maneuvers were under way, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said no "redline" exists that once crossed by Iran would compel an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. The Israeli government has long contended that Tehran eventually will reach the point where it will be too costly for outsiders to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

The Israeli and American positions are intimately connected, but the precise nature of the connection is less clear. Israel publicly casts itself as eager to strike Iran but restrained by the United States, though unable to guarantee it will respect American wishes if Israel sees an existential threat emanating from Iran. The United States publicly decries Iran as a threat to Israel and to other countries in the region, particularly Saudi Arabia, but expresses reservations about military action out of fears that Iran would respond to a strike by destabilizing the region and because it does not believe the Iranian nuclear program is as advanced as the Israelis say it is.

The Israelis and the Americans publicly hold the same view of Iran. But their public views on how to proceed diverge. The Israelis have less tolerance for risk than the Americans, who have less tolerance for the global consequences of an attack. Their disagreement on the issue pivots around the status of the Iranian nuclear program. All of this lies on the surface; let us now examine the deeper structure of the issue.

Behind the Rhetoric

From the Iranian point of view, a nuclear program has been extremely valuable. Having one has brought Iran prestige in the Islamic world and has given it a level of useful global political credibility. As with North Korea, having a nuclear program has allowed Iran to sit as an equal with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany, creating a psychological atmosphere in which Iran's willingness merely to talk to the Americans, British, French, Russians, Chinese and Germans represented a concession. Though it has positioned the Iranians extremely well politically, the nuclear program also has triggered sanctions that have caused Iran substantial pain. But Iran has prepared for sanctions for years, building a range of corporate, banking and security mechanisms to evade their most devastating impact. Having countries like Russia and China unwilling to see Iran crushed has helped. Iran can survive sanctions.

While a nuclear program has given Iran political leverage, actually acquiring nuclear weapons would increase the risk of military action against Iran. A failed military action would benefit Iran, proving its power. By contrast, a successful attack that dramatically delayed or destroyed Iran's nuclear capability would be a serious reversal. The Stuxnet episode, assuming it was an Israeli or U.S. attempt to undermine Iran's program using cyberwarfare, is instructive in this regard. Although the United States hailed Stuxnet as a major success, it hardly stopped the Iranian program, if the Israelis are to be believed. In that sense, it was a failure.

Using nuclear weapons against Israel would be catastrophic to Iran. The principle of mutual assured destruction, which stabilized the U.S.-Soviet balance in the Cold War, would govern Iran's use of nuclear weapons. If Iran struck Israel, the damage would be massive, forcing the Iranians to assume that the Israelis and their allies (specifically, the United States) would launch a massive counterattack on Iran, annihilating large parts of Iran's population.

It is here that we get to the heart of the issue. While from a rational perspective the Iranians would be fools to launch such an attack, the Israeli position is that the Iranians are not rational actors and that their religious fanaticism makes any attempt to predict their actions pointless. Thus, the Iranians might well accept the annihilation of their country in order to destroy Israel in a sort of megasuicide bombing. The Israelis point to the Iranians' rhetoric as evidence of their fanaticism. Yet, as we know, political rhetoric is not always politically predictive. In addition, rhetoric aside, Iran has pursued a cautious foreign policy, pursuing its ends with covert rather than overt means. It has rarely taken reckless action, engaging instead in reckless rhetoric.

If the Israelis believe the Iranians are not deterred by the prospect of mutually assured destruction, then allowing them to develop nuclear weapons would be irrational. If they do see the Iranians as rational actors, then shaping the psychological environment in which Iran acquires nuclear weapons is a critical element of mutually assured destruction. Herein lies the root of the great Israeli debate that pits the Netanyahu government, which appears to regard Iran as irrational, against significant segments of the Israeli military and intelligence communities, which regard Iran as rational.

Avoiding Attaining a Weapon

Assuming the Iranians are rational actors, their optimal strategy lies not in acquiring nuclear weapons and certainly not in using them, but instead in having a credible weapons development program that permits them to be seen as significant international actors. Developing weapons without ever producing them gives Iran international political significance, albeit at the cost of sanctions of debatable impact. At the same time, it does not force anyone to act against them, thereby permitting outsiders to avoid incurring the uncertainties and risks of such action.

Up to this point, the Iranians have not even fielded a device for testing, let alone a deliverable weapon. For all their activity, either their technical limitations or a political decision has kept them from actually crossing the obvious redlines and left Israel trying to define some developmental redline.

Iran's approach has created a slowly unfolding crisis, reinforced by Israel's slowly rolling response. For its part, all of Israel's rhetoric -- and periodic threats of imminent attack -- has been going on for several years, but the Israelis have done little beyond some covert and cyberattacks to block the Iranian nuclear program. Just as the gap between Iranian rhetoric and action has been telling, so, too, has the gap between Israeli rhetoric and reality. Both want to appear more fearsome than either is actually willing to act.

The Iranian strategy has been to maintain ambiguity on the status of its program, while making it appear that the program is capable of sudden success -- without ever achieving that success. The Israeli strategy has been to appear constantly on the verge of attack without ever attacking and to use the United States as its reason for withholding attacks, along with the studied ambiguity of the Iranian program. The United States, for its part, has been content playing the role of holding Israel back from an attack that Israel doesn't seem to want to launch. The United States sees the crumbling of Iran's position in Syria as a major Iranian reversal and is content to see this play out alongside sanctions.

Underlying Israel's hesitancy about whether it will attack has been the question of whether it can pull off an attack. This is not a political question, but a military and technical one. Iran, after all, has been preparing for an attack on its nuclear facilities since their inception. Some scoff at Iranian preparations for attack. These are the same people who are most alarmed by supposed Iranian acumen in developing nuclear weapons. If a country can develop nuclear weapons, there is no reason it can't develop hardened and dispersed sites and create enough ambiguity to deprive Israeli and U.S. intelligence of confidence in their ability to determine what is where. I am reminded of the raid on Son Tay during the Vietnam War. The United States mounted an effort to rescue U.S. prisoners of war in North Vietnam only to discover that its intelligence on where the POWs were located was completely wrong. Any politician deciding whether to attack Iran would have Son Tay and a hundred other intelligence failures chasing around their brains, especially since a failed attack on Iran would be far worse than no attack.

Dispersed sites reduce Israel's ability to strike hard at a target and to acquire a battle damage assessment that would tell Israel three things: first, whether the target had been destroyed when it was buried under rock and concrete; second, whether the target contained what Israel thought it contained; and third, whether the strike had missed a backup site that replicated the one it destroyed. Assuming the Israelis figured out that another attack was needed, could their air force mount a second air campaign lasting days or weeks? They have a small air force and the distances involved are great.

Meanwhile, deploying special operations forces to so many targets so close to Tehran and so far from Iran's borders would be risky, to say the least. Some sort of exotic attack, for example one using nuclear weapons to generate electromagnetic pulses to paralyze the region, is conceivable -- but given the size of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem-Haifa triangle, it is hard to imagine Israel wanting to set such a precedent. If the Israelis have managed to develop a new weapons technology unknown to anyone, all conventional analyses are off. But if the Israelis had an ultrasecret miracle weapon, postponing its use might compromise its secrecy. I suspect that if they had such a weapon, they would have used it by now.

The battlefield challenges posed by the Iranians are daunting, and a strike becomes even less appealing considering that the Iranians have not yet detonated a device and are far from a weapon. The Americans emphasize these points, but they are happy to use the Israeli threats to build pressure on the Iranians. The United States wants to undermine Iranian credibility in the region by making Iran seem vulnerable. The twin forces of Israeli rhetoric and sanctions help make Iran look embattled. The reversal in Syria enhances this sense. Naval maneuvers in the Strait of Hormuz add to the sense that the United States is prepared to neutralize Iranian counters to an Israeli airstrike, making the threat Israel poses and the weakness of Iran appear larger.

When we step back and view the picture as a whole, we see Iran using its nuclear program for political reasons but being meticulous not to make itself appear unambiguously close to success. We see the Israelis talking as if they were threatened but acting as if they were in no rush to address the supposed threat. And we see the Americans acting as if they are restraining Israel, paradoxically appearing to be Iran's protector even though they are using the Israeli threat to increase Iranian insecurity. For their part, the Russians initially supported Iran in a bid to bog down the United States in another Middle East crisis. But given Iran's reversal in Syria, the Russians are clearly reconsidering their Middle East strategy and even whether they actually have a strategy in the first place. Meanwhile, the Chinese want to continue buying Iranian oil unnoticed.

It is the U.S.-Israeli byplay that is most fascinating. On the surface, Israel is driving U.S. policy. On closer examination, the reverse is true. Israel has bluffed an attack for years and never acted. Perhaps now it will act, but the risks of failure are substantial. If Israel really wants to act, this is not obvious. Speeches by politicians do not constitute clear guidelines. If the Israelis want to get the United States to participate in the attack, rhetoric won't work. Washington wants to proceed by increasing pressure to isolate Iran. Simply getting rid of a nuclear program not clearly intended to produce a device is not U.S. policy. Containing Iran without being drawn into a war is. To this end, Israeli rhetoric is useful.

Rather than seeing Netanyahu as trying to force the United States into an attack, it is more useful to see Netanyahu's rhetoric as valuable to U.S. strategy. Israel and the United States remain geopolitically aligned. Israel's bellicosity is not meant to signal an imminent attack, but to support the U.S. agenda of isolating and maintaining pressure on Iran. That would indicate more speeches from Netanyahu and greater fear of war. But speeches and emotions aside, intensifying psychological pressure on Iran is more likely than war.

Read more: War and Bluff: Iran, Israel and the United States | Stratfor

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

Stratfor is sometimes an interesting read, but as has been pointed out by critics, the factoids it contains are easily available with a quick Google search of open source media. It essentially repackages information that is already public, and tries to market it as authentic intelligence analysis based on inside sources. And its analyses are often less than the sum of the information that is available.

In Feb. 2012, Friedman predicted there was a 25% chance of Israel attacking Iran. Now, after numerous media reports come out quoting military experts who say that Israel can’t successfully complete the job, he revises his prediction to essentially 0% chance.

So Stratfor usually reports the obvious facts, but anyone can do that on their own - without waiting for Stratfor reports which are usually a couple of weeks late. Also, if you look at the media reports, you are able to read the entire articles (while Friedman frequently disregards much of the information once he gets whatever nugget he‘s fishing for.)

What are much less impressive are Stratford’s “forecasts.” It calls itself a “provider of geopolitical analysis,“ a theory which has been called “overly simple” and even “imperialistic.” And the company has yet to make any accurate “breakthrough” predictions on its own. In 1991, Friedman was predicting that Japan would attack the U.S. within the next 10 years. He also says that within the next 50-80 years, Poland will become the next great power of Europe; that Russia, India and China will fragment apart; and that Turkey and Mexico will rise up in a military confrontation against the U.S. And he hasn't given up his idea that Japan will be attacking.

Stratfor’s reputation for “analysis” and "predictions" is quite poor; some in the intelligence community have called them “a joke.”

I don’t claim to have “secret intelligence sources” like Friedman does, but I do read news reports from across the spectrum, and I’ve already been saying on this forum since at least 2008 (if not before) that the assessment of U.S. military intelligence - as well as most Israeli military intelligence - is that Iran is *not* building nuclear weapons, and that they do *not* consider Iranian leaders to be nut-jobs. They also think Netayahu’s approach is *stupid*, and advise against any war against Iran (at least not any time soon.)

I’ve also posted the obvious conclusion (which Friedman seems to want people to believe was some kind of closely-guarded secret until he revealed it) that Netanyahu himself doesn’t want any war unless he draw the U.S. into it to do the heavy lifting. I’ve quoted numerous reports saying that he has been rebuffed in all his attempts to get Obama on-board for a strike on Iran, and that he is now playing “mad dog ready to attack” in order to shake down the U.S. government for more perks (which include military hardware as well as political posturing.)

Friedman does not like to talk publicly too much about the manipulation of the U.S. government going on - in fact, he even tries to brush it off in the column you posted. But if you read the WikiLeaks of Stratfor emails (Stratfor was hacked by Anonymous in December 2011) you can see the references to the “covert and overt influence Israel enjoys through funding American congressmen and the control Israel has on American policies through coercion and fear of the Jewish lobby.”

Anonymous also managed to extract funds from Stratfor’s clients - reportedly half a million dollars which it donated to charity.

The fact that the so-called elite “private intelligence service” and “international security organization” was not even bothering to encrypt its sensitive data doesn’t do much for its reputation.

Anyone can do much better job of informing themselves by reading a wider variety of media, instead of relying on these hacks.

[PalestineMyHeart 1,897]

A rather different analysis

Analysis: Netanyahu risks overplaying hand in Iran dispute

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The public row between Israel and the United States this week will make it hard for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to launch a unilateral strike against Iran and risks undermining his domestic standing.

Despite years of warning about the dangers of Iran gaining nuclear weapons, the Israeli leader has failed to convince any major world power of the need for military action and has yet to persuade his domestic audience that Israel should go it alone.

By raising the stakes with Barack Obama in the middle of the president's re-election campaign, Netanyahu has drawn criticism from his own defense minister, Ehud Barak, and given Tehran the pleasure of watching its enemies argue over the case for war.

"Netanyahu is overplaying his hand and creating problems for himself with Obama. This could make life very hard for him should the president win re-election," said Alon Liel, a former director-general of the Israeli foreign ministry.

Infuriated by Washington's reluctance to lay down clear limits to Iran's nuclear program, Netanyahu fired a broadside at Obama on Tuesday, saying those who failed to set red lines did not have the "moral right" to prevent Israel from striking.

Further stirring the troubled waters, senior Israeli officials briefed journalists twice in two days to denounce U.S. policymaking, before announcing that the president had refused to see Netanyahu when both will be in New York later this month.

The White House denied ever receiving a request for a meeting and Obama swiftly got on the phone for a long chat with Netanyahu, with whom he has notoriously testy relations.

In the hours that followed, Israel sought to play down the differences between the two, but the damage was done, with the Israeli press bemoaning a new low in bilateral ties.

"The reality might be less serious than all the headlines are saying," said Oded Eran, a senior research associate and former head of the Institute for National Security Studies.

"However, perceptions are just as important, and in that regard, serious damage has been done to the idea of Israeli deterrence, which may be very hard to rectify," he added.

...

Regularly beating the drums of war, Netanyahu has succeeded in getting alarmed Western allies to turn the sanction screws, but has yet to persuade them of the need for military action, or even to win their backing for a lone Israeli initiative.

"The Israeli frustration stems from a sense that sanctions and negotiations are not as effective as they should be," said Gidi Grinstein, founder of the Reut Institute think-tank.

"But Israeli action in defiance of the United States and without legitimacy is extremely risky."

Aware that its armed forces might be hard pressed to do significant damage to Iran's far-flung nuclear sites, Israel has said repeatedly that it wants the U.S. military to do the heavy lifting, arguing a nuclear Iran is a threat to the whole world.

But rather than bow to Israeli demands for further clarity, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said Washington would not set any deadline with Iran. Her comments triggered fury in Netanyahu's office.

"The easiest thing would be to sit by and not tangle with Obama, but Netanyahu believes he has to state things plainly, even if they are unpopular and cause conflict," said a senior Israeli official, denouncing "fuzzy remarks" out of America.

INTERNAL, EXTERNAL CRITICISM

Yet Netanyahu might come to rue his outspokenness.

Israelis know the United States is by far and away their most important ally and previous premiers who jostled in public with Washington have invariably drawn flak at home.

Sure enough, Israeli opposition politicians have denounced the prime minister's handling of an increasingly complex situation.

"Who are you trying to replace? The administration in Washington or that in Tehran?" said Shaul Mofaz, head of the largest opposition party, Kadima, which was briefly part of Netanyahu's coalition over the summer.

"The world is not sick of Israel, the world is sick of Netanyahu and does not believe him."

Of more concern to Netanyahu was the fact he also received a clear rebuke from his own defense minister, Barak, who issued a statement saying problems with the United States should be worked out behind closed doors and not aired in public.

"Despite the differences and the importance of maintaining Israel's independence of action, we should also bear in mind the importance of the partnership with the United States, and try not to harm it as much as possible," he said.

Local media said Netanyahu was angered by Barak's intervention and a senior member of the prime minister's Likud party accused the defense minister of looking to score political points at a time of growing speculation about the prospect of an early parliamentary election in Israel.

Barak heads the small Atzmaut party in the governing coalition, and opinion polls have indicated it might not win a single seat in parliament in a new ballot.

"I am sorry that ... the defense minister has chosen to start his campaign at the expense of national interests and on the back of the prime minister," said vice prime minister Moshe Yaalon, who has long aspired to the defense portfolio.

Barak's spokesman denied any rift with Netanyahu, but again, the damage was done, with the two men who must work closest together on Israel's military strategies seemingly at odds over how best to proceed.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/09/12/uk-israel-usa-iran-idUKBRE88B0ZR20120912?feedType=RSS&feedName=GCA-GoogleNewsUK