Israel will have to start thinking differently about its long-term security and existence, extrapolating from current indications about Secretary John Kerry’s nuclear negotiations with Iran’s Mohammad Javad Zarif this week in Montreux, Switzerland.
Mindful of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s address to the joint meeting of Congress tomorrow, Kerry told a press conference in Geneva:
“Any deal must close every potential pathway that Iran has towards fissile material, whether it’s uranium, plutonium, or a covert path. The fact is only a good, comprehensive deal in the end can actually check off all of those boxes.
“Now, I want to be clear about two things. Right now, no deal exists, no partial deal exists. And unless Iran is able to make the difficult decisions that will be required, there won’t be a deal. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. That is the standard by which this negotiation is taking place, and anyone who tells you otherwise is simply misinformed.”
Kerry was very clear and this is not a time to jump to conclusions about the potential deal’s contents and likely impacts.
However, it would be imprudent for anyone in Israel to imagine that its nuclear weapons will be a deterrent to its enemies in the longer term. At this time, Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal and capacities to use those weapons effectively in its neighborhood guarantee its long-term survival and existence.
If for any reason, its enemies were to gang up against Israel and attack it militarily – as they have already – its first option would of course be to defeat them through conventional means as it has in the past.
That defeat may not difficult especially with American military help but it would not guarantee long term peace with all the neighbors — unless the entire regional were reordered and Israel became the hegemonic power imposing order through military might over tens of million Arabs and Persians.
Absent such a new regional order, Israel would have to stand on its own to prevent its Jewish population from being subjugated or “pushed into the sea”, in the event that the alliance with the US frayed because of Washington’s need to keep the peace with Arabs and Iranians.
This is where the nuclear option comes in. If Israel alone has nuclear weapons among both Arabs and Iranians, its deterrence would be effective. If it ever faced defeat for whatever reasons in conventional war, it could threaten nuclear attacks killing hundreds of thousands of it enemies – civilians or not — to obtain peace.
The situation would not be ideal because Israel would not be surrounded by friends but it would at least continue long-term existence as the secure home of the Jewish people.
Whatever the outcomes of current negotiations with Iran, they will never be able to guarantee Israel’s exclusive ownership of a nuclear arsenal in the region because there is no way by which the US can ban Iran completely from possessing the knowledge necessary for building nuclear weapons. At best, the US can buy time for Israel – perhaps 10 or 20 years.
But continuing to punish Iran would require unprecedented determination by all the world’s major countries to cooperate with Washington in causing ever sharper economic pain to the Iranian people for decades with the aim of changing the behavior of Teheran’s rulers mainly to protect Israel. That is a tall order given the challenges emerging already to America’s global influence.
Iran’s ability to possess nuclear weapons will end Israel’s nuclear deterrence definitively. Israel’s vulnerability will worsen if neighboring Arab countries acquire nuclear weapons to deter Iran because they are Sunni Muslim and fear that Persian and Shia Muslim theological state.
Israel’s vulnerability is caused by its lack of friends in the region where it is situated and wants to exist in perpetuity. None of its neighbors fully accepts its existence and no one trusts it as a friend, regardless of the UN resolutions guaranteeing its existence or bolstering the right of its people to live in secure frontiers.
This situation is unfair and reasons for its continuation may include the awful plight of Palestinians. However, even reaching a settlement with Palestinians that meets their highest desires will not be enough to ensure long-term acceptance of the Jewish state in the region.
Nuclear deterrence of enemies may still be necessary and cannot reasonably be given up without many other guarantees for full acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state within an agreed and reformed context of regional peace and security.
Israel’s nuclear arsenal or any number of Netanyahu speeches in Washington, or his invitations to the world’s entire Jewish people to migrate to Israel, cannot change these realities.
Speeches and skillful appeals to the American people can only buy time but not guarantee the perpetual security he seeks for his people — even if he patches up the current rift with the Obama administration and again secures unwavering bipartisan American support, like Israel has long enjoyed.
It is a mistake to blame Kerry and President Barack Obama for trying to talk to Iran in a patient effort to buy Israel more time before someone in the region challenges its nuclear deterrence.
Acquisition of knowledge to make nuclear weapons cannot be bombed or negotiated out of existence, without killing every enemy of Israel possessing traces of that knowledge. Still more severe sanctions or even bombing Iranian nuclear facilities can only postpone efforts of an enemy that will become yet more determined to end Israel’s nuclear deterrence.
The only way of making it unnecessary for enemies to seek the means to counter Israeli nuclear deterrence is to establish coexistence and trust, and if possible friendship, with neighbors.
At some point, Israelis will have to start thinking along those lines because the alternative is perpetual insecurity.
That would be a great use of the time Kerry buys for Israel if he succeeds, which is far from a given at this time. Washington is thinking in terms of sticks and carrots for Iran but Teheran could prefer sticks to carrots it suspects may be poisoned. Kerry deserves more space to exercise his diplomatic skills — for Israel’s sake.