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Steve Kramer: The inevitable war against Iran
Preface: We’re among the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who were caught abroad when Israel attacked Iran’s war machine last week. Like the others, we’ve been scrambling for a hotel room and we have to find another one in two days. After our cruise finished, we elected to fly to Athens, much closer to home. Many others had the same idea. We’re not sure what the next few days or weeks will bring, so we’re sharing a sense of insecurity with our fellow Israelis back home. But they are the ones who are in real danger…
It had to happen. After decades of warning about the dangers of Iran’s nuclear weapons ascendance, Israel’s long-time prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, acted. While some, including me, had doubts that he would ever fulfill his promises to stop Iran’s growing power, Israel’s substantial victories after the October 7 debacle changed the equation. The current unraveling of Iranian power and influence is due to Israel’s defeat of Hezbollah following Nasrallah’s assassination; the demise of the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad; the assassinations of the political and military leaders of Hamas; and Iran’s resultant vulnerability.
Netanyahu started declaiming against Iran decades ago;
- In 1992, then-member of Knesset Netanyahu warned that Iran was 3-5 years from assembling a nuclear weapon, a threat that must be ” uprooted by an international front headed by the U.S. “
2) In his 1995 book Fighting Terrorism, Netanyahu warned that Iran was “five to seven years at most” from assembling a nuclear weapon. [He was wrong about that.]
3) In an address to a joint session of the US Congress in 1996, Netanyahu warned that the “nuclearization” of Iran was “getting extremely close,” and only the U.S. could stop it.
4) In 2009, Netanyahu warned a Congressional delegation visiting Israel that, according to “our experts,” Iran was 1-2 years away from assembling a nuclear weapon. [wrong again]
5) On September 27, 2012, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set out his ‘red line’ for Iran on a cartoon bomb drawing during a speech to the UN General Assembly. ‘Iran will back down’ from its nuclear weapons drive if the world sets out clear ‘red lines’ to thwart it, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday in a speech to the United National General Assembly. But, he warned, failure to address the Iranian nuclear program forcefully was tantamount to placing an atomic weapon in the hands of the al-Qaeda terror organization. (https://www.timesofisrael.
6) “This is a bad deal — a very bad deal,” Netanyahu told a joint meeting of Congress on 3/3/15. “We’re better off without it.”
Obama, speaking at the White House, said, “as far as I can tell, there was nothing new” in Netanyahu’s speech, adding, “the prime minister didn’t offer any viable alternatives.” He said he didn’t watch the speech because it coincided with a video conference with European leaders. (https://www.npr.org/sections/
Netanyahu’s admonitions against Iran continued, to no avail. One can speculate what would have happened if the United States, under President Trump’s leadership, had not withdrawn from the deal in May 2018. But by then it was abundantly clear that rather than buying Iran’s moderation, the JCPOA (President Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) actually funded Iran’s aggression.
Many former and current US and EU officials maintained that the JCPOA was working. Paradoxically, the deal was doing exactly what it was designed to do. That is, it allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium, while developing increasingly advanced centrifuge technology and nuclear-capable missiles. Nearly all restrictions on Iranian nuclear developments would end after 10-15 years. Some deal!
In early 2018, in a daring covert action, Israeli intelligence surreptitiously obtained Iran’s “atomic archive.” Despite the promises of “robust transparency,” it was abundantly clear that in the months following the JCPOA’s conclusion, Iran accelerated its efforts to collect, organize and hide this huge archive of materials detailing its extensive work to develop and produce nuclear weapons. The discovery of the archive by Israel laid bare both Iran’s long-term intentions and the JCPOA’s many flaws (not that the Western politicians took notice). (https://www.fdd.org/analysis/
After this amazing disclosure of Iranian intelligence documents in 2018 by Mossad operatives, one could hardly believe that Iran was intent on having atomic weapons to use against the ‘Little Satan’ Israel and then the ‘Big Satan’ America. Yet, Iran continued, mostly unimpeded, in its march to obtain nuclear weapons.
That brings us to the ongoing war of Israel against the ayatollahs and the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps). So far, Israel has had good results at decapitating its leaders and causing it damage. Most IRGC military leaders have been eliminated and a big dent has been put into the stockpile of materiel that Iran has accumulated over the preceding decades. Yet, Iran is a large, powerful country and its political leadership is very astute, but hopefully not as clever as its negotiators, who run rings around those with whom they negotiate. In this case, Israel is very fortunate that President Trump, no mean negotiator himself, put a 60-day time limit on the length of negotiations. Otherwise, as is their custom, the Iranians would continue to procrastinate and prevaricate while developing their nuclear systems.
In this case, Netanyahu and Trump used subterfuge to give the impression that there was a rift between them. Also, the impression was given that Israel wouldn’t dare to start a war while negotiations were ongoing. Evidently the usually perspicacious Iranians miscalculated in thinking that the 60-day period was not a real deadline. In the event, Israel attacked on day 61 in a surprise attack that caught the Iranians unawares.
Israel’s reserve fighting forces as well as its regular army, are at 100% readiness and are determined to devastate the regime of the mullahs. The question is, how long will it take to accomplish that goal? Israel is already involved in a difficult war with Hamas. But, the precedent to defeat Iran is the recent downfall of Hezbollah in Lebanon. Winning this war with Iran would surely bring down Hamas as well.
Israel remembers the close relations it had with Iran and Iranians before the 1979 overthrow of the Shah. One hopes that an Israeli victory over the current malign Iranian dictatorship will break the back of the terror network that the Muslim jihadists have worked so diligently to build. The result could be good relations between Israel, other friendly Arab states, and even Iran.
