To understand Israel’s security concerns, as well as its ambitions, one needs to look into the head of Uzi Arad, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s National Security Adviser. He is a veteran of Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, where he spent 20 years; he has Netanyahu’s ear; he occupies an office a step away from his and, in terms of influence over the prime minister, he seems to have managed to beat off competition from the heads of the armed services and from other security and intelligence chiefs. Dr Arad is Israel’s super-hawk. Some have called him Israel’s Dr Strangelove.
His over-riding goal is to put a permanent end to any ambition Iran may have to build a nuclear bomb, or even simply to acquire the means and ability to do so. He does not believe that ‘crippling sanctions’ will do the job and deplores the lack of resolve of Western leaders in stopping Iran’s race for nuclear weapons. He is convinced, against a good deal of evidence, that Iran is determined to become a nuclear power.
Uzi Arad wants the US and its Western allies to confront Iran with the certainty of military attack if it does not give up all uranium enrichment and plutonium production. Indeed, he believes that a pre-emptive attack on Iran would be perfectly legitimate: Iran, he argues, must be stopped before it is too late. Since Netanyahu never misses an opportunity to demonise Iran as the ‘greatest threat to world peace’ and ‘the world’s leading sponsor of international terrorism’, one can safely predict that his address to the 67th session of the UN General Assembly this month will be an anti-Iranian rant.
What is the root cause of Israel’s animus against Iran? Certainly, there is an element of paranoia. Having suffered genocide at the hands of Hitler, Jews are utterly determined never to risk another Holocaust. ‘Never again!’ is the slogan. Arad has spoken of the ‘genocidal attributes of Iranian statements.’ But, equally, there is an element of hubris ‑ of overweening pride ‑ in the Israeli approach. Having built up a powerful nuclear arsenal over the past 45 years ‑ estimated at between 100 and 200 warheads, together with an array of delivery vehicles, including a ‘second strike’ capability in the form of submarine-launched missiles ‑ Israel wants no competition in the nuclear field. It wants to be the Middle East’s sole nuclear power ‑ a key element in its determination to remain the region’s dominant military power.
Men such as Arad and Netanyahu do not, even for a moment, think that Iran’s leaders are mad or suicidal. They are well aware that if Iran were to acquire nuclear weapons, it would never launch them against Israel ‑ and risk immediate national annihilation. Atomic bombs are weapons of defence, not offence. They provide a deterrent capability to the country possessing them ‑ that is to say they serve to deter a hostile nuclear power from launching an attack. No nuclear power, for example, would consider attacking nuclear-armed North Korea.
Israel does not want Iran, or any other state in the Greater Middle East, to acquire a deterrent capability in the form of nuclear weapons, since this would restrict its own ability to attack its neighbours at will. If Iran or an Arab state had a nuclear capability, Israel would not have attacked Lebanon in 2006, Syria in 2007 and Gaza in 2008.
Arad believes that the US and its allies should address a clear ultimatum to Iran on the following lines: ‘Dismantle your entire nuclear industry or face attack. Don’t dare retaliate to any attack as more punishment will follow. And don’t dare restart your nuclear programme once it has been destroyed, as it will be destroyed again.’
He has expressed these brutally robust views on many occasions, among them an address last February to Canada’s annual Conference on Defence and Security. What does he recommend? First, that Iran’s oil exports should be ‘put in jeopardy’; and secondly, that strikes against Iran should be ‘surgical’, aimed initially only at its nuclear facilities and at the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Such strikes, he argues, would be far easier to conduct than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and would cause little collateral damage. He dismisses as unfounded the often-cited fear that an attack on Iran would set the whole region on fire.
Like his boss Netanyahu, Arad rejects all compromise with Iran on the nuclear issue, rejecting the widely held view that Iran, as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, has the right to enrich uranium on its own territory for the purpose of power generation or medical purposes. He wants none of it. His whole argument is that a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities would be far less dangerous than living with a nuclear-armed Iran. If Iran were to get the bomb, he warns, it would ‘enhance the clout of a militant, extremist Islamic regime’, and drive Arab states to go nuclear as well. Proliferation would make life in the Middle East a nightmare.
US President Barack Obama has so far resisted Israel’s relentless pressure for war and its constant threat ‑ in effect blackmail ‑ that ‘If you won’t attack Iran, we will, and you will be forced to join in, whether you like it or not.’ To counter the accusation that he is ready to ‘throw Israel under a bus,’ Obama has showered the Jewish state with funds, with secret intelligence, with UN vetoes in its favour and with weapons, including the latest warplanes and bunker-busting bombs. He has joined with Israel in acts of state terrorism, such as cyber warfare against Iran. But all this is still not enough for Israel’s super-hawk. He wants Iran’s nuclear industry destroyed.
So, if one were able to look into Uzi Arad’s head, what other imperatives might one note?
• First, the need to maintain at all costs the vital relationship with the American super-power. More than an alliance, it is a marriage, a merger, an inter-penetration of each other’s society, to the extent that it is difficult to tell which of the two is the dominant partner.
• Second, the need to ensure Israel’s military dominance over the Greater Middle East by all possible means – wars, sabotage, the dismemberment of threatening states, mobilising the US for regime change as in Iraq in 2003, and now in Syria and Iran, the assassination of political opponents. (The long list of Israel’s victims includes the former leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas as well as Iranian scientists. Palestinians figure prominently on the list, including very probably Yasser Arafat himself. )
• Third, the need to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state, since it would put an end to the dream of a Greater Israel and might even undermine the legitimacy of Israel’s own enterprise, built on the ruins of Arab Palestine.
Uzi Arad is the dangerous advisor of a dangerous prime minister. In the Greek legend, hubris leads to nemesis. Israel’s long-term survival rests on accepting, indeed encouraging, the emergence of a Palestinian state and on peaceful, cooperative relations with the whole region, not on murder, subversion, domination and war.
Patrick Seale is a commentator and author of several books on Middle East affairs.
