This summer, it seemed that the world believed that an Israeli attack on Iran was imminent – a belief shared in the Jewish state as well. Panicked Israelis rushed to gas mask distribution centers, newspapers published banner headlines speculating on Israeli war plans, and Israel saw a seemingly endless parade of senior American officials trying to convince their counterparts to rethink plans for an attack.
But now, the urgency has dissipated and most experts believe a military operation is not likely before next spring, if at all. A series of factors have converged to make it unlikely at best that Israel will act within the next few months.
“If it was going to happen at all, it has been pushed off,” a senior Israeli official told The Media Line speaking on condition of anonymity. “The question is why – where does it come from?”
One reason is the American presidential election on November 6. The Obama administration has made it clear that it opposes an attack and any Israeli action against American wishes could strain US-Israeli ties. No single issue is more important to Israelis than the safeguarding of that sacrosanct relationship. Senior Israeli military officials say it is unlikely that Israel would act without coordinating with Washington.
A second reason is the presence of American troops in Israel for a joint missile defense exercise called Austere Challenge 12. The first US military personnel have already arrived and by the end of October there will be some 1,000 American troops in Israel to train in identifying and intercepting missiles -- including those fired from Iran.
Yet another reason is a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran has diverted part of its enriched uranium for medical research purposes. The IAEA report was published in late August but is receiving press coverage only now. It says that Tehran has converted more than a third of its most highly enriched uranium into a powder for a medical research reactor. Once converted, it is extremely difficult to reprocess that uranium for weapons production, the net result reducing the quantity of nuclear fuel available for weaponry and with it, the presumed ability of the Iranians to assemble a bomb.
A separate report this week from the Institute for Science and International Security, an American think tank, found that Iran could produce enough weapons grade uranium for a nuclear bomb within two to four months, but concluded that at the same time, Tehran would still face “engineering challenges” and delays before it could make the other components needed for a functioning warhead.
In his speech to the United Nations last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu effectively gave the international community until next spring to act to stop Iran. He said there are three stages of enriching uranium for a bomb: low enriched uranium, medium enriched uranium, and high enriched uranium.
“Where’s Iran?” Netanyahu asked in his speech. “Iran’s completed the first stage…Now they are well into the second stage. By next spring, at most by next summer at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move onto the final stage. From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks, before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.”
Some Israeli experts suggest that the IAEA report does not fundamentally change Israel’s perception of the danger of Israel’s program.
“You can’t say there’s less urgency if we are talking about enough fissile material for five bombs,” Shmuel Bar, the director of Studies at the Institute of Policy and Strategy and a former senior intelligence official told The Media Line. “They are producing enough 20 percent uranium that, once enriched to 90 percent, could make five bombs. They are constantly adding centrifuges, so any shifting of the 20 percent uranium to the research reactor is offset by increasing the capacity of the centrifuges.”
Bar also said that there is a growing sense that Israel will have to confront the Iranian nuclear program alone.
“The US will not act – not before the election and not after the election,” he said. “Like North Korea, the US believes they can contain a nuclear Iran. They will say ‘we didn’t want them to get there but now we have to live with it.’”
Israel is also closely following events in Iran. A Foreign Ministry assessment leaked to Israeli newspapers found that the sanctions are having a deep impact on the Iranian economy. The Iranian rial fell by 40 percent last week, and Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman even spoke of possible regime change in Iran. Yet, the assessment in Jerusalem is that it is too early for such talk.
“There was much wider-ranging unrest -- riots and protests -- after the elections in 2009 and remember how everything was then suppressed,” the senior Israeli official pointed out. “And despite the deep impact on the economy, the sanctions do not seem to have affected the nuclear program.”
He also said that all of the protests so far have been directed against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and not against Supreme Ruler Ayatollah Sayyed Khamenei or the other mullahs – or are even related to the issue of Iran’s nuclear program. The official believes Ahmadinejad’s days in power are numbered and the Iranian regime is using the protests.
“He’s fallen so far from grace he’s not even in the dog house – he’s outside the dog house,” the official said. “Directing popular rage against him serves the regime’s purposes. If he becomes the bad guy, then he can be kicked out and people will be satisfied.”
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