The inauguration of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s government marked a shift in Israel’s policy on handling the Iranian threat almost from day one: It decided to work with the Biden administration and not at cross-purposes with it, even if it disagreed on the merit of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that the US was seeking to rejoin.
The message was no longer Israel standing alone as the bulwark against the Islamic Republic’s regime of terrorism while the West appeased the mullahs. It was that Israel is stronger when it works together with its allies.
This week, that policy was put to the test for the first time after the Mercer Street, a Liberian-flagged, Japanese-owned and Israeli-managed ship, was bombed near Oman on Friday, and its Romanian captain and a British security guard were killed. A few days later, Iranian forces took over another shipping vessel in the Gulf.
Israel immediately condemned Iran for the Mercer Street attack, but the UK Foreign Office and US State Department were hesitant, and their initial statements on the attack didn’t mention Iran.
They said they would need to be totally certain Iran was responsible before saying so, a senior Israeli diplomatic source said, so Israel handed over intelligence showing the suicide attack was the work of Iran – specifically Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) UAV Command chief Saeed Ana Jani – to the US, UK and Romania.
All three countries released statements blaming Iran for the attack within a few days.
The next step was to push for a UN Security Council condemnation. Ambassador to the US and UN Gilad Erdan wrote to the UNSC and called on it to sanction Iran. The UK, Romania and Liberia did the same, separately, saying that Iran’s attack is “a clear violation of international law” that “must be condemned by the international community.”
Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Defense Minister Benny Gantz briefed ambassadors from UNSC member states, the vast majority of which have representatives in Israel, on the details of the attack, as well.
“We don’t know if it’ll work,” the diplomatic source said, “but we want to tell a story to the world that this is the way pirates behave, not a state. This is not just Israel vs Iran; it harms freedom to trade and maritime freedom, and it’s just the beginning.”
THE IRANIAN attacks at sea came as Bennett’s National Security Adviser Eyal Hulata – who hasn’t technically started his new job yet, but has been working on it for weeks – and Diplomatic Adviser Shimrit Meir were in Washington, where Hulata met with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and both met with US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, among other meetings.
The timing allowed for close coordination between Jerusalem and Washington on the response to the Mercer Street attack.
The trip was marked with goodwill from the Biden administration to work closely with Bennett, and Meir and Hulata’s mission is to leverage that in ways that will enhance Israel’s national security. Iran was the main topic of discussion, though the Palestinians and other matters came up, as well.
They even bumped into Chief Medical Advisor to the President Dr. Anthony Fauci, who had spoken to Bennett on the phone several days before and said to them: “Your prime minister really knows his stuff!”
The advisers were in the US to prepare for Bennett’s visit to the White House. The date hasn’t been finalized, but the current thinking is that it will be toward the end of August, if the COVID-19 situation in Israel permits.
But when the visit was originally planned, timing was of the essence. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal with Iran was the top item on the agenda. Bennett wanted to get to the White House in time to try to influence what the Americans ask for before they rejoin the 2015 agreement and to get security assurances for Israel. But he also didn’t want the embarrassment of meeting with US President Joe Biden and having him rejoin the JCPOA a week or two later.
Now, with nuclear talks in a two-month lull and new Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi entering office, things have changed. Raisi is an opponent of the JCPOA, and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said repeatedly in recent days that the West cannot be trusted, a sign that a return to the indirect negotiations with the US is anything but certain.
Some in the State Department, like US Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley, maintain hope for continued engagement with the Islamic Republic. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said this week that the Biden administration would still continue to try to return to the nuclear deal.
But many officials in Washington understand that they will likely have to learn how to live without putting the Iran nuclear threat “back in the box,” as Secretary of State Antony Blinken has referred to it.
The US and Israel are working to prepare for that scenario, a dangerous one in light of the pace of Iran’s uranium enrichment. This week, Gantz said Iran is 10 weeks from breaking out to a nuclear weapon, after it has continually violated the JCPOA and has made more progress toward the bomb than any other country that doesn’t have one.
Because of the advanced threat from Iran, Bennett supported a NIS 7 billion increase to the Defense Ministry’s budget, in the state budget approved by the cabinet this week. The prime minister has criticized his predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu for talking a lot about Iran but not doing much, and one of the areas Bennett was referring to was in the budget, where not all the necessary resources were allocated to staving off Iran.
As one Prime Minister’s Office source put it, “Every year before the budget, the Defense Ministry briefs reporters and says how terrible the situation is and tries to scare military reporters. Bennett told the ministry they don’t have to do that; he knows they need money. The citizens will pay a price – he said so in the Knesset – but we need to prepare to face the threats.”
WHILE IRAN dithers on nuclear talks, its IRGC is continuing to act, as this week’s maritime attacks showed, and it has given Israel an opportunity to push the world to respond to Iranian aggression.
Israel’s messaging has focused on Raisi as a uniquely extreme figure which highlights how problematic the ayatollahs’ regime really is.
Raisi, known as “the butcher of Tehran,” was on the “death committee” that was behind the 1988 extrajudicial execution of between a few thousand and 30,000 Iranian prisoners of conscience, including children, and personally oversaw some of their brutal torture. He called it his “proud achievement” in 2017.
Former Iranian president Mahmoud “Ahmadinejad is a joke compared to someone who commanded a death squad,” a senior diplomatic source asserted. “It’s like Khamenei looked for the most extreme choice. Raisi is a cold-blooded killer.”
The intelligence Israel has on Raisi includes documentation of him and his fellow death committee members celebrating the massacre of dissidents by eating cream puffs.
The fact that Khamenei chose Raisi as his favored candidate for president shows that they will take a tougher stance, and that plays a role in how Israel evaluates the situation in Iran and how the government encourages allies to view it.
Israel slammed the European Union for sending Enrique Mora, the EU coordinator in Iran nuclear talks and deputy secretary-general of the European External Action Services, to Raisi’s inauguration this week, only days after the IRGC killed a citizen of an EU member state – Romania – and the diplomatic source said the US is similarly baffled and appalled.
The view from the Prime Minister’s Office is that the efforts this week to get the US and others on board with its message against Iran has been a success.
The question remains, though, what comes next? The US is still willing to go back to JCPOA negotiations, which would mean lifting sanctions on Iran and no limitations on anything other than its nuclear program.
Bennett’s first course of action is to see what Israel’s partners will do and to try to work together, but he and other Israeli officials continue saying Israel will act alone if it has to.
That could mean hacking more nuclear facilities or striking ships in return.
But Bennett is known for questioning the conventional military wisdom, going back to when, as a member of the security cabinet, he pushed for the IDF to pay more attention to the tunnels from Gaza.
Bennett does not want Israel to have automatic answers and for the battle with Iran to follow a set protocol, a source said. He wants Israel to be unpredictable.
“The number of open accounts we have with Iran is high, and we have a lot of options in retaliation,” the source said.•