Biden Tells Israel to Stop Attacking Iran
Israel Today
November 22, 2021
Smoke and flames rise over the Syrian border town of Kobani after an Israeli airstrike on Iranian positions
Biden Administration officials have cautioned Israel that its
repeated attacks on Iran’s nuclear program are “counterproductive,”
reported The New York Times.
While blowing up centrifuges and taking facilities temporarily
offline might be “tactically satisfying,” the report cited the US
officials as saying that for Israel to do so is “ultimately
counterproductive.”
The Americans stressed that in nearly every case of suspected Israeli
interference, the Iranians quickly recovered and came back stronger and
even closer to their goal of attaining a nuclear weapon.
The report stated that Israeli officials rejected Washington’s
warning and stressed that the Jewish state has no intention of backing
off.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Defense Minister Benny Gantz attended a IDF exercise in northern Israel last week that simulated an attack by Iran and its proxies.
Bennett told reporters, perhaps in direct response to the American position: “No
matter what happens between Iran and the world powers, we are concerned
that there is not enough toughness in the face of Iranian violations.
Israel will defend itself on its own.”
Gantz added: “The world must act against Iran, and Israel must continue to do what it needs to do.”
Iran is scheduled resume negotiations with world powers in Vienna
next week. The negotiations are aimed at renewing the previous Iran
nuclear deal that Israel’s previous government vehemently opposed.
In an op-ed for The Times of Israel, former ambassador Michael Oren explained the subtle, yet critical difference in the US and Israeli positions regarding the process with Iran.
“While the United States can live with an Iran that has the ability to make a bomb but doesn’t do so, Israel simply cannot,” wrote Oren.
In other words, the US is committed to preventing Iran from attaining
a nuclear weapon, but not to stopping it from becoming a nuclear
threshold state. There are a number of nuclear threshold states in the
world, and Washington seems to believe that like them, Iran could
ultimately be persuaded against going nuclear, even if it has the
capability to do so.
But “threshold” in this sense means that a country has the ability to
produce and field a nuclear weapon within weeks, or even days, if it
ever chooses to go down that path. That would leave far too little time
for the international community to do anything about it.
Israel cannot live with that risk.
Even without ever producing “the bomb,” an Iran that reaches
threshold status would alter the balance of power in the Middle East by
providing a viable, if potential nuclear deterrent for itself and all
its proxies. Taking action against Iranian aggression would suddenly
become a far more perilous endeavor.
Lastly, for Iran to reach threshold status would prompt a number of
rival Sunni Arab states to do the same, sparking a nuclear arms race in
one of the most unstable regions in the world.
2 comments:
I am inclined to agree with the author on this one. Unfortunately I don't think the current administration in the US gives a rat's ass about the continued existence of the Jewish state of Israel. Mutually Assured Destruction is all they have protecting them. This only works when one is dealing with sane actors. I am unsure that is the case in the Middle East.
Living alongside a nation whose people openly admit they want to destroy you.
What could possibly go wrong?
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