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Report from Israel: "We Have Entered the Phase of Strategic Decisions"

(Foreign Policy) John Hannah - Amidst the unraveling of the Middle East, Israeli officials have maintained a laser-like focus on the Iranian nuclear threat. Israeli officials stress how much they value the Obama administration's strong support for Israel's security needs. They are also deeply appreciative of the recent, albeit belated, U.S. and European efforts to impose crippling sanctions on Iran's economy. But at this late date, Israeli officials suggest, coercive diplomacy's only chance of succeeding is if it is rapidly coupled with the credible threat of an overwhelming and imminent American attack. So long as Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei remains convinced that President Obama has neither the will nor the intention of destroying his nuclear program by force, negotiations are doomed to fail - leaving Israel and/or the U.S. with no option but war to retard Iran's dash to the bomb. The Israelis I spoke with note that the president has backed away from any commitment to stop Iran from gaining the capability to produce nuclear weapons. Instead, he now only speaks of stopping Iran from assembling an actual bomb. "He's prepared to let them get one turn of the screwdriver away," several Israelis remarked. "We're not." To Israeli minds, a genuine U.S. commitment to prevention would be undergirded by a single-minded campaign to convince Iran's leaders that a massive military onslaught was inevitable if they did not relent in short order. Instead, Israeli officials point out, what Tehran has been treated to is an unending display of American hand-wringing over the possible use of force, epitomized by a series of very public warnings against any Israeli military action, and constant fretting over the parade of horribles that might accompany a possible clash with Iran. I was told that the Israeli military has presented its detailed options for attacking Iran's nuclear program to Israel's political leaders, and that "we have entered the phase of strategic decisions." All the Israeli officials I spoke with would clearly love to see a diplomatic solution. But as more than one Israeli official told me, "We are forced to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it would be." America's stake in how this drama unfolds, in a region so vital to our national interests, seems obvious to me - as does the proposition that our own wellbeing is best served by standing strong in support of those alarmingly few friends and allies we actually have in the Middle East who possess both the will and the capability to act in concert with us to defend our common interests and values against those who, given the necessary means, would surely destroy us. The writer, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, served on former Vice President Dick Cheney's national security affairs staff.
2012-08-09 00:00:00
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