Israel at War: Inside the Nuclear Showdown With Iran (7 page)

“Some commentators would have you believe that stopping Iran from getting the bomb is more dangerous than letting Iran have the bomb,” Netanyahu continued. “They say that a military confrontation with Iran would undermine the efforts already under way, that it would be ineffective, and that it would provoke an even more vindictive response by Iran. I’ve heard these arguments before. In fact, I’ve read them before. In my desk, I have copies of an exchange of letters between the World Jewish Congress and the United States War Department. . . . The World Jewish Congress implored the American government to bomb Auschwitz. The reply came five days later. I want to read it to you. ‘Such an operation could be executed only by diverting considerable air support essential to the success of our forces elsewhere . . . and in any case, it would be of such doubtful efficacy that it would not warrant the use of our resources. . . .’ And, my friends, here’s the most remarkable sentence of all, and I quote: ‘Such an effort might provoke even more vindictive action by the Germans.’

“Think about that—‘even more vindictive action’—than the Holocaust. My friends, 2012 is not 1944. The American government today is different. You heard it in President Obama’s speech yesterday. But here’s my point: the Jewish people are also different. Today we have a state of our own. And the purpose of the Jewish State is to defend Jewish lives and to secure the Jewish future. Never again will we not be masters of the fate of our very survival. Never again. That is why Israel must always have the ability to defend itself, by itself, against any threat.”

Then Netanyahu shared with the audience the story he had shared with the president: the biblical story of Jewish Queen Esther. “This week, we will read how one woman changed Jewish history,” he explained. “In synagogues throughout the world, the Jewish people will celebrate the Festival of Purim. We will read how some twenty-five hundred years ago, a Persian anti-Semite tried to annihilate the Jewish people. And we will read how that plot was foiled by one courageous woman—Esther. In every generation, there are those who wish to destroy the Jewish people. In this generation, we are blessed to live in an age when there is a Jewish State capable of defending the Jewish people. And we are doubly blessed to have so many friends like you, Jews and non-Jews alike, who love the State of Israel and support its right to defend itself. So as I leave you tonight, I thank you for your friendship. Thank you for your courage. Thank you for standing up for the one and only Jewish State.”

At the time, I wrote on my blog, “All the signs to me look like Israel is going to war with Iran, and soon. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu strikes me as a man who has made his peace with the task ahead of him, a man who now believes his nation is capable of winning a war with Iran and has made all of the preparations necessary to strike if need be. I’m not saying he’s made a final decision. But he’s talking like a leader ready to make that final decision in the not-too-distant future. Indeed, I believe this trip to Washington is part of Netanyahu’s process of making a final assessment of whether the Obama administration will truly have Israel’s back, as the president promises, or whether Israel will be completely isolated. And while the White House is clearly pressuring Israel not to strike, Congress seems ready to support Israel fully.”
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Final Preparations?

With millions of people around the world praying for peace, myself included, I was relieved when war did not break out that spring. But even as we prayed for peace, it seemed Israel was making final preparations for war. As spring turned to summer, Israeli officials accelerated the distribution of gas masks to its citizens. They tested an emergency SMS text-messaging system to alert people of incoming missiles. They also ran some of the largest and most dramatic military exercises and civil defense drills in the history of the country, all seemingly in an effort to prepare people for war.

Then, on August 1, an article in the
New York Times
sent a jolt of electricity through the foreign policy community in Washington, Europe, and the Middle East. In a story focusing mostly on the Obama administration’s efforts to persuade Netanyahu not to launch a preemptive strike, the
Times
quoted Efraim Halevy, the former chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, as saying, “If I were an Iranian, I would be very fearful of the next twelve weeks.”
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Halevy was not known for being an advocate for a strike, certainly not one so soon. But his instincts and experience suggested the war would start before the American elections on November 6. That single line caught the attention of many world leaders and intelligence analysts and caused them to wonder if war was coming sooner than they had expected.

A week later, on August 11, an Israeli newspaper published a story based on a two-and-a-half-hour discussion with an unnamed but very high-ranking Israeli leader (widely believed in Israel and in Washington to be Ehud Barak) who suggested the zero hour for an Israeli attack was fast approaching. “If Israel forgoes the chance to act and it becomes clear that it no longer has the power to act, the likelihood of an American action will decrease,” the high-ranking Israeli official said. “So we cannot wait a year to find out who was right: the one who said that the likelihood of an American action is high or the one who said the likelihood of an American action is low.”
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Here, apparently, was Israel’s defense minister making a vigorous case for Israeli preemptive action—and for taking such action in less than one year. Again, the clock seemed to be speeding up.

The following day, Israeli deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon said it was time for the international community to admit the nuclear talks with Iran had failed. After all, three fresh rounds of direct negotiations with Iran by the “P5+1 Group”
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in Istanbul, Baghdad, and Moscow had yielded absolutely no progress toward persuading Iran to stop illegally enriching uranium. “Asked how long the Iranians should be given to cease all nuclear activity,” reported the
New York Times
, “Mr. Ayalon said ‘weeks, and not more than that.’”
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Once again, a high-ranking Israeli official was indicating that the time frame for action was narrowing dramatically.

Then came the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report, a sobering document that was released on August 30, 2012. The report revealed that Iran had doubled its uranium enrichment capacity at its most secure, hardened underground nuclear facility at Fordow, near the religious city of Qom—this in spite of all the economic sanctions that had been imposed upon Iran, including strong new sanctions by Europe imposed on July 1. What’s more, the report indicated that Iran had enriched enough uranium to between 5 percent purity and 20 percent purity that could be quickly further enriched to 90 percent weapons-grade purity to produce between seven and ten nuclear warheads. The IAEA report also noted ominously, “The Agency has become increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear-related activities involving military-related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”
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The IAEA report—most certainly given to Israeli officials before its public release and based on intelligence that was, in part, developed by American and Israeli agencies—provided fresh details validating fears held by Netanyahu, Barak, and their closest advisors. International diplomatic negotiations with Iran were clearly going nowhere. Strong new international sanctions were showing real signs of worsening Iran’s economy. But the sanctions were having no impact. Iran’s leaders were not being dissuaded from pursuing the Bomb. New evidence revealed that Iran was accelerating its efforts to build warheads and to learn how to attach those warheads to ballistic missiles. And most concerning of all, Netanyahu and his team could see that Iran was about to hide and protect its nuclear program in hardened underground facilities like the one at Fordow—facilities that Israeli fighter jets, conventional bombs, and conventional missiles would not be able to easily neutralize.

Just days later, on September 4, Netanyahu met for ten hours in Jerusalem with his fourteen-member Security Cabinet, including the defense minister, the foreign minister, and other top military and intelligence officials. They were briefed on the latest highly classified intelligence on Iran. They discussed how close Iran was to hiding its nuclear program so far underground it would be unreachable by Israeli military means. And they discussed timelines for taking action. One participant told a reporter later, “We heard detailed, disturbing, and very troubling information regarding the progress of Iran’s nuclear program.” The media reported that no vote was taken by the Security Cabinet on operational decisions, but that could be disinformation to confuse Iran.
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In this context, a story published by the Israeli daily newspaper
Israel Hayom
on September 7 made big news: “Former Likud and Kadima member Tzachi Hanegbi said this week that he believed the fate of Israel’s conflict with Iran will be decided within the next fifty days.” The story, which immediately went viral and was discussed in Washington and in capitals around the world, quoted Hanegbi as saying, “We are entering the most fateful fifty days Israel has faced since, perhaps, the similarly fateful days prior to the Yom Kippur War.”
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The reference to the Yom Kippur War of 1973 was significant. At that time, Israeli intelligence failed disastrously, then–Prime Minister Golda Meir did not order a preemptive strike, Israel’s enemies instead struck first, and Israelis deeply feared they were about to lose their country.

The same day as the Hanegbi quote was released, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper—arguably the most pro-Israel leader on the planet today—ordered the Canadian embassy in Tehran closed and all Canadian diplomats to leave Iran immediately. He also ordered the Iranian embassy in Ottawa closed and gave Iranian diplomats and staff five days to leave the country. It was a move quickly applauded by Netanyahu and an ominous signal that Israel’s closest friends were preparing for war.
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The Train Wreck

With tensions rising rapidly, a disaster suddenly occurred in U.S.–Israel relations. The media in Israel and the U.S. began reporting that despite a possible major war in the Middle East so close at hand, President Obama had turned down not one but two possibilities for a personal meeting with Netanyahu when the Israeli premier was scheduled to arrive in the U.S. for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly’s fall session.

Netanyahu’s aides asked the White House for a meeting in Manhattan but were told the president would be too busy. The aides then suggested Netanyahu would be willing to go to Washington to meet the president, but again Mr. Obama’s aides said the president simply did not have time on his schedule for Netanyahu.

Time, however, was not the issue. The president appeared on the
Late Show
with David Letterman and on
The View
with Whoopi Goldberg and company during this period. The real issue was one of priority. President Obama chose to send a very public message to Israel—and to Iran—that he did not consider talks with Netanyahu important, even on the eve of war.

The president’s decision came the same week that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that the U.S. refused to set “red lines” or deadlines for Iran to stop its illegal nuclear activity before the U.S. would consider diplomacy and sanctions worthless and take military action. In some of his strongest comments to date—comments that struck me as suggesting the Israeli leader was so fed up with the White House’s inaction that he was ready to go it alone against Iran—Netanyahu told reporters that because the international community was refusing to set “red lines,” the world had “no moral right” to tell the Israeli government it cannot take military action to defend its people.

“The world tells Israel: ‘Wait. There’s still time,’” Netanyahu said. “And I say, ‘Wait for what? Wait until when?’ Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.”
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On September 16, a twenty-five-nation naval armada—including three American carrier battle groups—headed to the Persian Gulf, anticipating the possible breakout of an Israel-Iran war and the need to keep the Strait of Hormuz open to oil shipping.

Three days later, the IDF launched massive, surprise live-fire military exercises on the Golan Heights amid growing concerns regarding the implosion of the Syrian government and the risk of Syrian chemical and biological weapons falling into the hands of Israel’s enemies.
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The next day, Iran’s top nuclear official publicly admitted that his nation had repeatedly and purposefully lied to the IAEA about the progress of its nuclear program, confirming what many critics of Iran already suspected and raising new questions about just how much more advanced Iran’s nuclear program was than the world knew.
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Then Ahmadinejad came to New York and gave his stunningly clear speech to the U.N. General Assembly, indicating that the American and Israeli governments would not last long and the Twelfth Imam would soon come to rule the world.

Netanyahu then told the gathered leaders of the world that Iran was 70 percent of the way to having the Bomb and would be 90 percent of the way there by spring or summer of 2013. He warned the world to take decisive action to stop Iran soon and clearly implied Israel would take action if the world did not.

That very same month, the world began to learn of a curious new development at Iran’s Fordow uranium enrichment plant, the one being built in tunnels deep under a mountain near the religious city of Qom. First we learned through Iranian officials that an explosion occurred near the Fordow plant in mid-August. The explosion was so severe that it destroyed the power lines that fed the plant with electricity from a power station in Qom, apparently shutting down the plant that the Israelis most feared could move Iran into the “zone of immunity.”