Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's press conference on Monday, when he presented a trove of documents proving that Iran lied to the international community about the nature of its nuclear program, was just the opening act to the main event: U.S. President Donald Trump's expected announcement on May 12 that he is pulling the United States out of the 2015 nuclear deal.
The official American decision has yet to be made, but White House officials said this week that Trump's inclination is clear. This sentiment was shared by Israeli officials who visited Washington recently, including Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman. The defense officials with whom Lieberman met exhibited little to no tolerance for Iran's antics and made it clear that the time is right to take action against it.
It should be said that the U.S. and Israel are not in total agreement on Iran. Iran's efforts to entrench itself militarily in Syria look far more menacing from Jerusalem than they do from Washington, as evidenced by Israel's diplomatic and military activity, which is only highlighted by the lack of similar American efforts. Israel is also much more worried than the U.S. about Iran's efforts to arm Hezbollah, its proxy in Lebanon, and sponsor Hamas and Islamic Jihad activities in the Gaza Strip.
Still, Netanyahu and Trump see the bigger picture similarly, and not in shades of gray but in stark black and white, and both believe that Iran currently poses the biggest threat to world peace.
The defeat of the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria has paved the way for Iran to overrun large parts of the Middle East and create, for the first time in history, a Shiite advantage over the Sunnis. If this process continues unhindered, Iran will become a regional monster. The next thing on its list, when the provisions of the 2015 deal expire in about a decade, will be to develop nuclear weapons.
That scenario is exactly what Jerusalem and Washington are trying to prevent, by placing obstacles in Iran's way and exposing its true intentions for what they are in a way that will make Iran face a dilemma: either it will have to relinquish its nefarious plans and join the family of nations, or it will hold its ground and be pushed aside and treated like a pariah.
Iran cannot be allowed to continue to walk both sides of the line, dabbling in nuclear pursuits and sponsoring terrorism while presenting the world with the innocent facade of a normative, peace-loving country.
Exposing Iran's true colors will not be simple and not only because Tehran is making sure not to violate the terms of the deal. The impressive achievement of the Mossad, whose intelligence agents recovered Iran's nuclear archive, complete with detailed weapons schematics, may have proven that the Islamic republic deceived the world in the past but it also proved that right now, there is no golden evidence to prove Iran is in violation of the 2015 accord.
Analysts are still poring over the tens of thousands of documents recovered, and it is safe to say Israel will spare no effort to find out whether any such violation exists – but not just to show Iran in a bad light. The ultimate concern is that Israel and the world will wake up one morning to find out that Iran has fooled us all and has secretly produced a nuclear bomb. If anything, the intelligence community has a constant reminder of such a near-miss in the form of the Syrian nuclear reactor uncovered in Syria in 2007, at the 11th hour.
Domestic support
It is doubtful whether the information uncovered by the Mossad will convince the other signatories to the 2015 deal – Britain, Germany, France, Russia and China – to exit it, as they have all expressed support for keeping the agreement in place, and the first three are currently trying to negotiate revisions to the accord that would enable the U.S. to remain a part of it.
While they all agree that Iran is a manipulative nation, they also agree that walking away from this imperfect deal would be far more dangerous than maintaining it. Such a move would paint Iran into a corner and it is highly likely the ayatollahs would see developing nuclear weapons as their only way to break free of it.
Their position is not without its logic, but it is also laden with economic interests rooted in the conspicuous race between European, Russian and Chinese companies to sign huge contracts with Iran.
Washington and Jerusalem disagree with this approach.
"The argument that a bad agreement is preferable to no agreement is nonsense," a senior official said this week. "Without an agreement, Iran is exposed to an attack, to sanctions, and to diplomatic pressure. The agreement frees it from all this, and allows it to sail comfortably toward achieving its goals."
As for the concern that, in the absence of an agreement, Iran might make a mad dash for an atomic bomb, the source claimed that experts on both sides of the Atlantic are united in their assessment that it would take Iran two to three years before it could do so – a longer period of time than previously believed, during which it could be subjected to massive international pressure.
To Netanyahu's credit, he has been championing this approach consistently, saying that with Iran, what you see is what you get and no matter how extensive the appeasement the world shows, the Iranian leopard will not change its spots.
Netanyahu's past moves with regard to Iran have not always helped Israel achieve its goal. Some, like the threat of a strike in the late 2000s, proved useful and prompted the international community to impose crippling sanctions on Iran, while others ruffled the Obama administration's feathers and pushed it to sideline Israel from the final stages of the nuclear negotiations.
But the decision to remain focused on Iran worked in Israel's favor in other spheres as well, such as the daily, usually clandestine, war against Tehran's proxies in the region and its moves in Syria.
The Syrian angle has also helped Netanyahu form an internal alliance, which is as important – if not more – as the international effort to curtail Iran. In the late 2000s, Netanyahu faced off with IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, Mossad Director Meir Dagan and Shin Bet security agency Director Yuval Diskin, who presented a united front opposing an Israeli strike in Iran.
Their position was probably correct at the time because Israel had achieved its goal of stopping the Iranian nuclear program through sanctions and without going to war, but the current situation is different, both on the ground and in terms of the defense chiefs.
Iran's meddling in Syria, which threatens to create a double front against Israel in Lebanon and the Syrian Golan Heights, where thousands of Shiite operatives are armed with tens of thousands of rockets, has changed the reality on the ground and with it the recommendation of IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, Mossad Director Yossi Cohen and Shin Bet Director Nadav Argaman, who believe this is the time to take action, even if it means going to war, so as not to pay a heavier price later.
The third option
This position is based not only on the belief that this threat should be neutralized while it is still manageable, but also on the domestic situation in Iran.
The Iranian economy is still reeling from years of stifling sanctions and it is showing no real signs of recovery. Foreign currency trading is erratic and the prices of goods and services are soaring. Hopes that the lifting of international sanctions as promised in the 2015 deal would bring immediate relief proved false and the public's disappointment and frustration is evident – as is the criticism of Iran's leaders over their considerable investment (about $2 billion a year) in foreign conflicts, mainly in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
Several Western experts said this week that this process could lead to another revolution in Iran. You have to be a cockeyed optimist to believe this scenario and not just because similar assessments have been heard dozens of times since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Criticism and protests aside, the Iranian regime is very stable and the Revolutionary Guards protect it with an iron fist.
The lessons of the 2011 Arab Spring and its aftermath have not been lost on the leadership in Tehran, now also a student of the ongoing brutality in Syria, and it knows that opponents must be crushed by force and by intimidation.
Still, if Trump makes good on his threat and exits the nuclear deal, it would surely spark a heated public debate in Iran and the regime will find it difficult to convince the masses the lesson here is increasing defense expenditure at the expense of the economy.
Israel and the U.S. hope to use this extremely narrow leeway to push Iran into potentially agreeing to a revised agreement that would deal with three issues neglected by the existing accord, namely including Tehran's ballistic missile program; extending the so-called "sunset" clauses under which some of its terms expire; and curbing Iran's regional interference, especially in Syria, where Israel hopes to perhaps stop it in its tracks.
Achieving these objectives, if possible, would be better than no agreement at all, but as usual with Iran – in the absence of a credible threat it is doubtful that it will blink first. Iran must face losing everything before it agrees to give up anything. That is the challenge facing Trump, who talks about Tehran but is already preoccupied with Pyongyang, knowing that determination will serve him best as he tries to devise a solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis.
Ongoing crisis management serves Israel in another way. The past few weeks have been characterized with a tense wait for Iranian retaliation over the April 9 Israeli strike on the T4 air base in Homs province in Syria, which housed an Iranian drone unit, and last week's alleged Israeli strikes on two other Iranian facilities in the war-torn country.
A high-intensity Iranian response that would include substantial damage, and potentially Israeli casualties, could quickly deteriorate into rapidly escalating blows that would lead to war. Neither Israel nor Iran are interested in that but may find themselves there nonetheless.
The fact that Iran is now grappling with more complicated issues is delaying its retaliation. Dealing Israel a blow, whether directly or indirectly by targeting Israeli assets worldwide, will only prove the Israeli and American claims that Tehran is a hostile and aggressive nation.
This logic will remain valid until Trump's decision on May 12, after which Israel will have to reassess the situation and risks involved. But at the end of a dramatic week, and ahead of an equally dramatic week, Israel can feel that after a long time, it once again controls the narrative on the Iranian issue, and if it plays the cards correctly – and gets lucky – it may be able to fundamentally change the situation.
