The "Plan"

I've been trying to withhold judgment, because it seems that the Trump administration actually did have a plan for Venezuela. But the signs concerning any Iran plan are not promising. The NY Times:

In a brief telephone interview with The New York Times, Mr. Trump offered several seemingly contradictory visions of how power might be transferred to a new government — or even whether the existing Iranian power structure would run that government or be overthrown.

Among the options he suggested was an outcome similar to what he engineered in Venezuela, in which only the top leader was removed during an American military strike and much of the rest of the government remained in place, but newly willing to work pragmatically with the United States. . . .

During the roughly six-minute call, Mr. Trump said he had “three very good choices” about who could lead Iran, although he declined to name them. Earlier on Sunday, Iran’s top national security official, Ali Larijani, said that an interim committee would run the country until a successor to the supreme leader was chosen. . . .

When pressed on his plans for a transition of power, Mr. Trump said he hoped Iran’s elite military forces — including hardened officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who have held substantial influence and profited from the existing regime — would simply turn over their weapons to the Iranian populace. “They would really surrender to the people, if you think about it,” he said.

It was those same security forces — in particular, the Basij, which organizes local militia — that opened fire on street protesters in January and killed thousands.

Then he offered a very different model of what the transition of power in Iran might look like, referring repeatedly to his experience in Venezuela after he ordered a Delta Force team to seize Mr. Maduro.

“What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario,” Mr. Trump said. . . . “Everybody’s kept their job except for two people,” Mr. Trump said of the outcome in Venezuela.

He was vague on the question of who should be in the top ruling position in Iran after the ayatollah’s death, or even who should decide. At first, when asked whom he wanted to lead Iran, he said, “I have three very good choices.” He added: “I won’t be revealing them now. Let’s get the job done first.”

But then he described a scenario in which the Iranian people would overthrow the existing government. “That’s going to be up to them about whether or not they do,” Mr. Trump said. “They’ve been talking about it for years so now they’ll obviously have an opportunity.” That would, of course, be the opposite of the Venezuela model that he had said minutes earlier he wanted to replicate.

Not encouraging. Trump says we have the weapons for four or five weeks of aerial attack. What happens in five weeks when the battered government is still in place? We're talking about a regime with thousands of determined guerrilla fighters who have been skirmishing with the US for decades. They are not likely to go quietly. So far as I can see, the only remotely plausible outcomes are 1) the regime remains in place, either chastened or with renewed fervor, and 2) we install a new regime that is then embroiled in civil war with surviving elements of the old, just like in Iraq.

Grim.

It Keeps Getting Weirder

So Trump and the Emir of Qatar have arranged a cease-fire between Israel and Iran. Which both sides promptly violated, which led Trump to publicly berate both sides:

We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing.

Which as a summary of Middle Eastern politics has much to recommend it. As of Tuesday afternoon, there is no news of attacks, so for now the cease fire holds.

The real reason for the cease-fire has to be that both sides agree with Decker Eveleth's assessment, which I posted here a few days ago: 

Neither side has demonstrated the capability they need to end the conflict on favorable terms to them.

Israel's decapitation strike did not disable Iran's military, their bombs only did limited damage to Iran's nuclear sites, and their air force is probably reaching the end of its ability to continue large nightly strikes. (Pilots, aircraft, and missile stockpiles all have limits.) 

Meanwhile Iran's ballistic missile attacks were diminishing and they seemed to be running out of missiles about as fast as Israel was running out of interceptors. Since they have apparently decided not to try interfering with oil shipping through the Straight of Hormuz, I'm not sure what other options they had.

So, exhaustion, declining returns on their efforts, etc.

But is anything resolved? Inspectors from the IAEA says they have not detected any increased radiation in Iran's air, which probably means that no bombs hit stores of uranium. (Unless maybe far underground? I have no idea about that.) Which is a good thing for people in the region, but if nothing was destroyed but a few dozen centrifuges, what did Israel accomplish? Report are coming out today that purport to be based on early US intelligence assessments of our own strike, and they all look like this:

Early US intel assessment suggests that the strikes on Iran did not destroy nuclear sites. Core components of the country’s nuclear program are still intact and the program is likely only set back by months.

I can't see that anything about regional politics has really changed. It would be great if this defeat emboldens people in Iran to overthrow their government, but I don't see that happening. Instead the news from Iran is of "victory rallies," with regime supporters paryting in the streets to celebrate their survival.

(Incidentally, the Ukrainian bloggers I follow are disappointed in Israel and Trump, and really wanted them to keep bombing until Iran had endured at least as much suffering as the Shaheds have imposed on Ukraine. Several people in my Ukraine feed reposted a cartoon that shows a Russian and a Ukrainian watching the US and Israeli bombing campaigns and saying, "You fight like pussies.")

The only clear winner in this fiasco seems to be Donald Trump, who has been on a roll. Here's another Turmpian gem:

As you know, Vladimir Putin called me and asked 'Can I help you with Iran?'

I said 'No, I don't need help with Iran. I need help with you.' 

I mean, I don't think his strike accomplished much beyond 1) showing support for Israel, and 2) reminding Iran that facilities deep underground can, in fact, be bombed. But nobody else has been able to solve this problem, either, so that would be a lot to ask of a deranged orange narcissist. Glad that he put his personal reputation behind the cease fire when that could easily have gone badly for him.

If this cease fire holds, my overall response is going to be "it could have been a lot worse." But it would probably have been better not to do it at all.

UPDATE

From this morning's breakfast conversation here: "If Trump is the sanest person in the room, that's a really crazy room."

Aftermath

Some negative reactions:

Jeffrey Lewis (aka Arms Control Wonk):

Why am I so unimpressed by these strikes? Israel and the US have failed to target significant elements of Iran's nuclear materials and production infrastructure. RISING LION and MIDNIGHT HAMMER are tactically brilliant, but may turn out to be strategic failures.

Lewis says that so far as we know, Iran's store of highlly enriched uranium (60%) was in tunnels at a site that hasn't been attacked yet, but it may well have been moved, so right now we have no idea where it is. It still needs further refinement to get it to bomb grade, but Iran may have more centrifuges in other buried sites, so that isn't a major barrier. But the hardest thing about making a bomb isn't anything physical, it's knowledge. It's hard to bomb knowledge, and once a program is set up, you no longer need those top famous scientists, just a lot of skilled techs.

Let's say Iran decides to rush a bomb. Iran can install ~1.5 cascades a week. In six weeks, it could have 9 cascades of IR-6 machines. It would take those machines about 60 days to enrich all 400 kg to WGU. Altogether that's about five months.

Decker Eveleth:

I largely agree with Jeffrey here, and the same logic applies to the Iranian missile program. It appears Israel and US believed that Iran was at the cusp of deploying ICBMs (per @DefenseIntel) and large numbers of missiles, enough to overwhelm Israel.

So Israel has been targeting critical linkages in Iranian missile production, like mixing facilities to destroy difficult to make industrial planetary mixers. But these facilities can always be rebuilt, and sanctions can always be evaded.

Once the tech has been figured out, there is nothing stopping Iran from rebuilding everything that Israel has destroyed in five years - perhaps now with a more aggressive, North Korean style quick-launch missile posture.

Those who are defending the strike basically fall back on the "mow the grass" scenario:

They can also be hit again. It’s a mistake to view this as a one off campaign.

To which Eveleth responds:

But that is my point. Israel seems willing to lock itself into a forever war they can never really win.

Which is why, I guess, Israel is hoping for Iranian regime change; because they don't see any other way to end the violence.

Since October 7, Israel has imposed major losses on three of its main military opponents: Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, plus the Assad regime was overthrown by its own people (with Turkish help). Their military should feel good about their accomplishments.

But how much better is their political situation? The problem of the Palestinians remains, despite millions of Israelis praying every day that they will simply disappear. The Netanyu government would love to ethnically cleanse them out of Gaza, but that would mean finding someplace for them to go. Israel's successful belligerence has reinforced the admiration that fans of successful belligerence have long felt for them. But others are increasingly exasperated with them, and though the Trump administration may be trying hard to clamp down on pro-Palestinian protests, the anti-Israel sentiment is still common, including among some of Trump's biggest supporters. So far as I can tell, in the US at least antisemitism really seems to have gotten worse over the past decade.

No doubt Iran's military has been heavily damaged. Hundreds of missiles may have been destroyed. Perhaps its bomb program has been set back months or years. But I can't see how the attack on Iran has radically improved Israel's strategic situation. I also don't know what the strike has done for the US. Ok, we showed off our stealth bombers and our big bombs, and did a solid for our Israeli friends. But if Trump is serious about wanting to stop all Iranian enrichment, this is only one step and many more will be required. That would involve negotiations, as Trump himself has said many times. Have we made those negotiations harder or easier? Beats me.

Thoughts on Israel and Iran

Iranian missiles on their way to Israel,
filmed from an airliner over Saudi Arabia

So far, Israel has wrecked real damage on the Iranian defense establishment, and Iran has stretched Israeli missile defenses and landed several missiles in Israeli cities. But is anyone winning? What would that even mean?

For decades, wargames have shown the Iranian regime surviving a war with the US (here and here), so I have my doubts that Israel can achieve their overthrow. It is true that the mass of the Iranian people is unhappy with their government, but I very much doubt that Israeli bombs are encouraging them to revolt. On the contrary most who have written about the possibility of the US bombing Iran have assumed that this would only increase the power of anti-western hardliners. Maybe there could be an opening after the war, if the regime is humiliated, but I am not optimistic.

So what is Israel achieving?

The stated goal was to destroy Iran's nuclear program. To date, though, there have been rather few attacks on the main Iranian nuclear facilities. The initial wave focused on air defenses, as you might expect, and Israel now says they have air superiority over the western half of Iran. But instead of intensifying attacks on nuclear sites they are deploying their planes to hunt Iranian ballistic missile launchers, and they brag every morning about how many they have destroyed before they could launch. Yes, this is the best way to protect Israel from Iranian strikes, but is it really a winning strategy? Seems to me like a vast expenditure of effort for little gain, and therefore a big diversion of valuable assets into a side eddy to the main conflict.

But even if they do get around to focusing on it, can Israel prevent Iran from making a bomb? For years, experts have been saying things like this about the Iranian nuclear program:

Striking Iranian nuclear sites is like mowing the grass. Unless a strike succeeded in permanently crippling the Iranian capacity to produce and weaponize fissile material, the grass would only grow back again. And no strike -- or even series of strikes -- can accomplish this. Iran's hardened sites, redundancy of facilities, and secret locations present significant obstacles to a successful attack. Even in the best-case scenario -- an incomplete strike that, say, set back the Iranian nuclear program by two to three years -- the Iranians would reseed it with the kind of legitimacy and urgency that can only come from having been attacked by an outside power. Self-defense would then become the organizing principle of Iran's nuclear program; it would resonate tremendously throughout the Middle East and even in the international community.

I wondered, when satellite photos after the first attack showed little damage to nuclear sites, if Israel was planning to land commandos to go into underground facilities and destroy them. But that didn't happen, and one has to assume that Iran is doing all they can to make that very costly. So it looks to me like this will be done from the air or not at all. 

I doubt that Israel can do it by themselves, but with US help, no doubt something could be achieved. (29 US aerial refueling tankers deployed to Europe last night, which looks like preparations for a strike.) But how much? At this point, do the US and Israel even know where all of Iran's nuclear material is stored? I have no idea. And, again, at the moment I don't even see that Israel is trying very hard.

There are rumors that Iran is now seeking a deal that would involve promising to give up all enrichment, but that is a rumor and so far is having no obvious impact on events.

So the cycle of hate and death goes on.

Update 1, 6/16:

Jeffrey Lewis (aka Arms Control Wonk) has some good material on Twitter/X. Like this on the deeply buried nuclear site at Fordow: "If Israel doesn't have a plan for destroying Fordow, I don't see how any of this is worth it." And this on the puzzling way the Israeli attack has unfolded: "Netanyahu's attack on Iran is about sparking regime change with just enough strikes on nuclear facilities to frame it as an act of preemptive self-defense. I doubt this will turn out well."

Update 2, 6/16

Decker Eveleth: "I have no idea how or when this will end as neither side has demonstrated the capability they need to end the conflict on favorable terms to them. Also notable: all major potential mediators have expressed varying degrees of disinterest in getting involved."

Update 3, 6/16

Heatloss on Twitter/X: "Somebody asked how Israel achieved air superiority over Iran so easily, when Iran had a full arsenal of anti-air missiles. I can answer that in three characters: F-35."

A Plea for Peace

Israeli reservist Nir Avishai Cohen took time on his way to the front to write, I'm going to war for Israel. Palestinians are not my enemy.

This war, like others before it, will end sooner or later. I am not sure I will come back from it alive, but I do know that a minute after the war is over, both Israelis and Palestinians will have to reckon with the leaders who led them to this moment. We must wake up and not let the extremists rule. Palestinians and Israelis must denounce the extremists who are driven by religious fanaticism. The Israelis will have to oust National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and their far-right circle from power, and the Palestinians will have to oust the leadership of Hamas.

I try to look for shreds of hope. The Yom Kippur War, the most difficult war that Israel had known until this week, started by surprise in 1973. After a peace agreement between Israel and Egypt was finally signed in 1979, the border with Egypt — one that was once the site of the dead and wounded — became a border of peace.

Israelis must realize that there is no greater security asset than peace. The strongest army cannot protect the country the way peace does. This current war proves it once again. Israel has followed the path of war for too long.

At the end, after all of the dead Israelis and Palestinians are buried, after we have finished washing away the rivers of blood, the people who share a home in this land will have to understand that there is no other choice but to follow the path of peace. That is where true victory lies.

Tel Aviv and Dubai

Tom Friedman is fascinated by the budding tries between Israel and the UAE that have sprung up since Jared Kushner brokered a deal between these nations in October (New York Times). Since then, 130,000 Israelis have flown from Tel Aviv to Dubai, and this in the midst of a pandemic.

Something big seems to be stirring. Unlike the peace breakthroughs between Israel and Egypt, Israel and Lebanon’s Christians and Israel and Jordan, which were driven from the top and largely confined there, the openings between Israel and the Gulf States — while initiated from the top to build an alliance against Iran — are now being driven even more from the bottom, by tourists, students and businesses.

A new Hebrew language school that holds classes in Dubai and Abu Dhabi has been swamped with Emiratis wanting to study in Israel or do business there. Israel’s Mekorot National Water Company just finalized a deal to provide Bahrain with desalination technology for brackish water. The Times of Israel recently ran an article about Elli Kriel in Dubai, who “has become the go-to kosher chef in the U.A.E. … Last year, Kriel launched Kosherati, which sells kosher-certified Emirati cuisine, as well as fusion Jewish-Emirati dishes.” And, by the way, those 130,000 Israeli visitors helped to save the U.A.E.’s tourist industry from being crushed by the pandemic during the crucial holiday season.

This is certainly encouraging; better tourism and business deals than missile bombardment. It is also important, I think, that so much of this is being driven by governments in the region rather than dictated by great powers.

On the other hand, it all rests on accepting that some problems simply can't be solved now. The status of Palestinian refugees, the political rights of people in Arab autocracies, peace with Iran; all that is set aside. The liberating dream of the Arab Spring is forgotten. Instead, we're all going to get on with our careers and try to get rich.

As I have said before, this is pretty much all the world has to offer millions of people. Democracy is either not in the offing or, if it does come, partial, contested, unstable, and unbeloved. (Russia, Thailand, Burma, Ethiopia, Egypt, etc.) It is not at all clear to me that people in Tunis are in a meaningful way more free than people in Saigon (yes, that's what people who live there call it). In both places politics is mostly frustration, and while Vietnam is a dictatorship, Saigon has a booming business scene and double-digit economic growth. 

What is our civilization really good at, other than science and capitalism?

So it makes perfect sense to me that if there is going to be a thaw between Israel and the Arab world it would take place between businessmen. No Arab is going to study Hebrew out of love, but it seems plenty will for a chance to get rich.

Sometimes, you take what you can get.

Saudi Arabia and Israel as Allies

This Haaretz columnist thinks Saudi Arabia is trying to instigate a war between Israel and Hezbollah, by way of enlisting Israel in its struggle against Iran. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri recently resigned, and he was widely considered to be Saudi Arabia's man in Lebanon. Why did they have him step down?

It is plausible that the Saudis are trying to create the context for a different means of contesting Iran in Lebanon: an Israeli-Hezbollah war.

With Assad clearly having survived the challenge posed by Saudi-backed rebels, the Saudi leadership may hope to move its confrontation with Iran from Syria to Lebanon. By pulling Hariri out of his office, they may hope to ensure that Hezbollah gets stuck with the blame and responsibility for Lebanon’s challenges, from caring for Syrian refugees to mopping up Al Qaida and ISIS affiliates.

That could, the Saudis may believe, lead Hezbollah to seek an accelerated confrontation with Israel as a means of unifying Lebanese support for their dominance. As indicated in a different context - this week’s arrests of Saudi princes in a putative corruption crackdown - King Salman and MBS have little patience to establish their desired order.

Israeli leaders have been preparing for the next war with Hezbollah since 2006. Iran’s increasing assertiveness across the region makes clear that, even more than the last war, it will be a fight to diminish the Iranian threat on Israel’s borders. Israel and Saudi Arabia are fully aligned in this regional struggle, and the Saudis cannot help but be impressed by Israel’s increasing assertiveness to strike at Iranian threats in Syria.

Wheels within wheels.

In Israel, the Price of Relentless Polarization

Israeli politics is becoming entrenched along partisan lines in the way that many Americans fear will happen to us. The big questions of Israeli greatness vs. Palestinian rights dominate everything. Israel used to be a model of contentious politics in a truly united country, but now people who speak against the settlements and against oppression are regularly called traitors:

Back in Tel Aviv, I had dinner with Gil Friedlander. He’s an Israeli patriot who served in the air force for many years, before creating and selling a tech company. But his country, so dynamic on the economic front, fertile soil for start-ups, finds itself at a terrible political impasse.

“The great victorious war of 1967 had an impact that is eating us from the inside,” he told me. “I would be more than happy to get out of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and build a country with a morality I believe in. I will fight for peace, but I will not fight to maintain the status quo.” He described feeling more and more confined, living in “smaller and smaller areas where I find people who think like me,” and feeling a stranger in the Jerusalem where he grew up.

I think that captures what decades of intense partisan conflict can do to a country.

Today's Miserable Middle East News.

Palestinian Rockets Force Evacuation of Israeli Peace Conference.

Neolithic Stone Masks of Judea, the World's Oldest Masks

The Israel Museum is hosting a magnificent exhibit of the world's oldest well-document masks. Two of these objects were found at archaeological sites in Israel dating to the early Neolithic period, as early as 7000 BCE. The rest are from the private collection of Judy Steinhardt, who has loaned them to the museum for this exhibit. They were probably looted from sites in the same area. Above is one of the well-documented masks, from the Nahal Hemar cave in the Judean desert. Note the holes, which could have been used to attach the masks to people's heads, or to attach them to walls or poles. (Sometimes people wear masks, but sometimes they use them in other ways.)

The masks are made of stone, which explains their survival. Broken mask from the archaeological site of Horvat Duma in the Judean hills, also around 7000 BCE.

Masks from the Steinhardt collection. To be so well preserved these must have come from burials or burial caves. The second mask in this series was auctioned by Christie's back in May, 2012; I wrote about this at the time. Not sure how much Steinhardt paid for it, but the estimate was around $500,000.

These really are wonderful, and so incredibly old. No wonder people pay so much for them, and good for Ms. Steinhardt for loaning hers to this exhibition.

A Palace from 10th Century BCE Judah

Israeli archaeologists have announced the discovery of two large buildings in the fortified town of Khirbet Qeiyafa, which may be the Biblical town of Shaarayim. One appears to be a warehouse, the other a large house or palace.

You can see the palace in the picture above, with a Byzantine fortified villa built across the top of it.

Find from the site.

This is a great discovery, and it adds to the picture of Judah in the 10th century BCE as a kingdom of some substance, not just a bunch of hill bandits as some have claimed. But it bugs me that most of the press is repeating the excavators' claim that this is "King David's Palace." If King David really existed, which is disputed, we have no idea of his exact dates or exactly what he did and where. There is no convincing evidence that this building was a royal palace -- seals, inscriptions, that sort of thing -- and nothing to associate it with King David beyond the assertion that this site is the Biblical Shaarayim.

Obama Goes to Israel, Gives a Speech

And nothing changes, and nothing will change, and there is nothing anyone in America can do about it. The latest polling from the region:

The ugly truth is that the Palestinians and Israelis are arguably further apart on peace now than they have been at any point in the past 20 years. Both sides want a settlement, but they can’t see how to achieve it and they don’t trust each other. The only aspect they really agree upon at all is that President Obama will not be helpful in establishing peace.

Masada

Pictures like this one never cease to astonish me.

This is the rock of Masada, a natural fortress overlooking the Dead Sea where King Herod built a palace retreat. After the Romans sacked Jerusalem in 70 CE, the remaining Jewish rebels retreated to this place. Perhaps they thought they would be safe here. But in both of these pictures you can see the ramp, rising up from the right, built by the Roman legionnaires when they besieged the place. They used a natural spur of rock, but still they moved a huge quantity of stone to build this. The cliff is 300 feet (90 m) tall, or, perhaps better, very tall but not tall enough.

The ramp from the bottom. They also built a huge siege tower with a ram, and when the ramp was ready they pushed the tower to the top and broke through the fortress walls. They found that the defenders and their families, 960 people, had all committed suicide rather than surrender.

The Roman camp, which looks strikingly like every single other Roman camp throughout their vast empire.

Today Masada is one of Israel's top tourist attractions. It strikes me, though, that it has an ambivalent meaning. I suppose Zionists get all misty-eyed about the great sacrifice their ancestors made for freedom. But anti-Zionists could get equally excited imagining that some future great empire would do to Israel what the Romans did.

King Herod on Exhibit

The Israel Museum is putting on a major exhibit about Herod the Great, who ruled in Jerusalem from 37 to 4 BC.  Herod was put into power by the Romans, who found the Jews baffling and were very happy to have a Jewish client king manage that fractious population for them. Herod did a good job, too, despite the evil reputation he left behind him; there were problems in Israel under his reign, but nothing compared to those that came after, when there was no figure of his stature to mediate between the Romans and the Jews.

Israeli archaeologists have been exploring the site of the city he founded, Herodium, for decades, and their spectacular finds include his tomb and sarcophagus (above). The exhibit is dedicated to the memory of Ehud Netzer, the archaeologist who led the project for many years before he died in the midst of his own excavation, falling to his death when a safety railing he was leaning on gave way. Think about that the next time you are tempted to blow off safety precautions on your own site.

Since this is Israel, the exhibition is of course causing political controversy. Herodium is on land administered by Israel but claimed by the Palestinian Authority, and some Palestinians have protested Israel's possession of these artifacts. The Israel Museum says that the Oslo Accords have a provision for Israel to serve as custodian for Palestinian artifacts, and that they are not asserting ownership. As I usually do with Israeli/Palestinian problems, I will close my eyes and hope the conflict magically goes away.

Meanwhile, the exhibit looks amazing, a reminder of a brief time when Israel and the wider world reached a political and cultural accommodation that bore amazing fruit.

The Disquiet of Israel's Spy Chiefs

Richard Cohen reviews the new documentary by Dror Moreh that consists mainly of interviews with six former chiefs of Shin Bet.

Some of these former spy chiefs view right-wing Jewish militancy as more perilous to Israel than the restive and seething Palestinians on the West Bank. It was a Jew, after all, who killed the revered Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 because that prime minister was determined to make peace. This was, they all concede, an event that changed history.

The film is a tough indictment of Israeli policy, particularly the continued occupation of the West Bank and the expansion of Jewish settlements there. All of the former officials are traditional Israeli secularists, and they show a commendable loathing for the religious militants that Israeli governments continuously pandered to. Above all, though, they are critical of government after government that lacks a strategy to somehow withdraw from the West Bank and instead relies on oppression. “You can’t make peace using military means,” says Ami Ayalon, head of the Shin Bet from 1996 to 2000 and a former navy commando.

Israel is on a troubled course.

Snow in Jerusalem

The Real Consequences of an Israeli Attack on Iran

Jeffrey Goldberg interviewed former Mossad chief Meir Dagan about his campaign against the notion of an Israeli air attack on Iran:

what angers him most is what he sees as a total lack of understanding on the part of the men who lead the Israeli government about what may come the day after an Israeli strike. Some senior Israeli officials have argued to me that a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities might actually trigger the eventual downfall of the regime. Dagan predicts the opposite: "Judging by the war Iran fought against Iraq, even people who supported the Shah, even the Communists, joined hands with (Ayatollah) Khomeini to fight Saddam," he said, adding, "In case of an attack, political pressure on the regime will disappear. If Israel will attack, there is no doubt in my mind that this will also provide them with the justification to go ahead and move quickly to nuclear weapons." He also predicted that the sanctions program engineered principally by President Obama may collapse as a result of an Israeli strike, which would make it easier for Iran to obtain the material necessary for it to cross the nuclear threshold.

Dagan believes that sanctions may still yet work, especially the sort of sanctions, combined with sabotage programs, that threaten the stability of the regime. If the Iranian economy is squeezed in a way that causes average citizens to rise up against their government's policies, Dagan believes that the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, might be forced to shelve his nuclear ambitions. And Dagan believes the tempo of sabotage should, if anything, be increased. "Covert operations have a better impact on proliferation than an attack," he said. 

Bombing Iran would be a terrible, terrible idea, and some of the men most responsible for Israel's defense understand this.

No Israeli Attack on Iran this Year?

From the Jerusalem Post:

A possible military confrontation with Iran may be postponed until 2013, senior defense officials said in recent weeks amid growing signs that the West’s economic crackdown on Iran is bearing fruit.

In addition, while skeptical, the defense establishment is waiting to see what the outcome will be of the talks expected to begin in mid-April between the Islamic Republic and the P5+1 group comprised of the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China.

“It could happen this year, but also 2013 is a possibility,” a senior official said recently. “We will need to wait to see the effect sanctions and diplomacy have on Iran and what the regime decides to do.”

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu acknowledged that sanctions were hurting Iran but that it was not yet clear if they would succeed in ultimately stopping Tehran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

What could potentially change Israel’s timeline would be an Iranian decision to begin enriching uranium to higher military-grade levels and to begin building a bomb.

I keep hoping that the longer this is dragged out, the less likely it is that somebody will do something crazy in a moment of passion.

Iran is not Auschwitz

Israeli Historian Yehuda Bauer is fed up with Bibi Netanyahu's constant equation of an Iranian bomb with the Holocaust:

Contrary to Netanyahu's claims, Iran's nuclear facilities are not the same as Auschwitz. Is it possible to drop an atomic bomb on Israel? Of course it is possible. And our friend, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, would do so if he could. Of course, an error of one degree or less would end up destroying Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque, and the bomb issue has more to do with the Iranians' desire to control the petroleum reserves of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states than a credible threat to Tel Aviv - although this cannot be discounted.

Still, this is very different from going helplessly to the gas chambers. It is a different situation. Then, it was impossible to stand up against what was being done to the Jews. Today Jews have options, including military ones. The analogy is false, demagogic and infuriating, and it is more dangerous for us than it is for the Iranians. Any air strike against Iran, God forbid, will be the result of an Israeli decision. It will wreak uncontrolled disaster and delay only briefly the manufacturing of an Iranian bomb. Bombing Iran, not Iran's bomb, could destroy Israel. There is no analogy.

Israel and the Dangerous Fantasy of Autonomy

Something Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu said to Obama Monday caught my eye:

I believe that's why you appreciate, Mr. President, that Israel must reserve the right to defend itself. After all, that's the very purpose of the Jewish state, to restore to the Jewish people control over our destiny. That's why my supreme responsibility as prime minister of Israel is to ensure that Israel remains master of its fate.

It is a dangerous fantasy that any nation can be complete master of its fate, and certainly no small nation like Israel can. This is the foreign relations equivalent of libertarianism, founded on a fantasy of self-reliance. Some people just hate the thought that their lives depend on someone else's good will. Belligerent militarists like Netanyahu especially hate it.

Since Israel has its own nuclear weapons, its existence will never depend entirely on anybody's good will; to destroy it any nation would face horrible destruction itself. But that is not enough for Netanyahu. He fantasizes about complete security. There is no complete security.

Except through peace.