In 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was moving heaven and earth to try to stop the nuclear deal, even arranging to address Congress without President Obama’s knowledge or approval. When the deal went through, not all Israeli military men were as unhappy as Netanyahu. In fact, the then-IDF chief, Gadi Eisenkot, famously said that the deal presented “many opportunities.” The present IDF chief, Major General Aviv Kochavi, thinks quite otherwise. A report on his recent speech to Israel’s INSS (Institute for National Security Studies) about an American return to the Iran nuclear deal, is here: “Kochavi signals to Biden: Netanyahu, top security agree on Iran this time,” by Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post, January 27, 2021:
On January 20, 2016, just six months after agreement was reached on limiting Iran’s nuclear program during the Obama administration, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had publicly attacked and worked so hard to prevent, then-chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot addressed the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) annual conference.
“Without a doubt the nuclear deal between Iran and the West is a historic turning point,” he said. “It is a big change in terms of the direction that Iran was headed, and in the way that we saw things.”
While the deal had many risks, Eisenkot said, it also presented “many opportunities.”
“In the 15-year time frame that we are looking toward, we are still keeping Iran high on our priority lists because we need to monitor its nuclear program. But this is a real change. This is a strategic turning point.”
“Those who had heard Netanyahu’s passionate address against the deal in Congress just 10 months earlier, and who had listened for years as the prime minister described Iran and its nuclear program as an existential threat, could only scratch their heads in wonder at Eisenkot’s comments.
These words stood in stark contrast with what Netanyahu said in Congress: “We’ve been told that no deal is better than a bad deal. Well, this is a bad deal. It’s a very bad deal. We’re better off without it.”
Eisenkot’s comments indicated that he and Netanyahu were not aligned on this cardinal issue, that the political echelon – headed by the prime minister – and the security echelon, headed by Eizenkot, had different views of the Iran deal.
While Netanyahu viewed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) as a disaster of historic proportions, Eisenkot’s view was that, while not the greatest agreement in the world, it had its upside and was something Israel could learn to live with and even extract benefit from.
This dissonance between what Netanyahu was saying, on the one hand, and what Eisenkot was saying, on the other, was highlighted by those in Washington interested in promoting the deal, and who could now argue that “even senior Israeli security officials” agree that there were benefits to it.
As Graham Allison wrote in The Atlantic monthly in March 2016, citing Eisenkot’s speech, “Having recently returned from a week of off-the-record discussions with leaders of Israel’s security establishment, I can confirm that Eisenkot’s assessment is not an exception: Israel’s security professionals see a dramatically different threat environment in the wake of the nuclear agreement…. They now believe that threat has been postponed for at least five years, and more likely a decade or more, which allows them to address other serious challenges.”…
Some Israeli senior military men did share Eisenkot’s hopeful assessment of the Iran deal. But that was then. Their view now is dramatically different. They believe that the deal allowed Iran to get away with continuing its uranium enrichment program, building ever more advanced centrifuges, and hiding from the IAEA many of its nuclear facilities. And they realize that lifting the sanctions will provide Iran with more than $150 billion.
Which is important to keep in mind when listening to what the current chief of staff, Lt-Gen. Aviv Kochavi, said Tuesday night at the same INSS conference that Eisenkot addressed five years earlier about the same nuclear deal.
“If the Iran deal, from 2015, would have materialized, at the end of the day Iran could have obtained a bomb, because the deal did not include limitations to stop it at the end,” Kochavi said.
Fortunately, the Trump Administration shared Kochavi’s – and Netanyahu’s – dim view of the Iran deal, and pulled out of it entirely. What’s more, Washington managed to impose sanctions that, over time, helped to cripple Iran’s economy.
The success of the Trump policy in damaging Iran’s economy was accompanied by Israel’s campaign to set back Iran’s nuclear program in other ways. There had already been, before Trump’s presidency, the Stuxnet computer worm that Israel introduced into Iranian centrifuges in 2010, causing 1,000 of them to speed up and destroy themselves. There were the targeted assassinations, between 2010 and 2012, of four of Iran’s top nuclear scientists. In 2018 Mossad agents blasted through 32 steel doors of a nondescript warehouse in Teheran, and made off with Iran’s entire nuclear archive, 100,000 pages of information that revealed many details about its nuclear program, including secret facilities unknown to the IAEA inspectors. In 2020 Mossad saboteurs managed to blow up an advanced centrifuge plant at Natanz, and in the same year, Mossad agents assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s nuclear mastermind.
And now it seems that the Biden Administration plans to lift those crippling sanctions that had been working so well, and return to the original Iran nuclear deal, with only minor modifications. It is this prospect that caused the IDF chief, Aviv Kochavi, to express his alarm, and Israel’s determination, no matter what it takes, to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Kochavi warned that a return to the 2015 deal – which former president Donald Trump pulled out of – or even a return to a deal that would be somewhat improved, would be a strategic and operational mistake….
Kochavi’s comments should not be seen as a challenge to the Biden administration, but, rather, as an attempt to stamp out any effort to identify and possibly exploit any difference on the matter between the prime minister and the head of the army, as was done in the past. Because, as Kochavi made perfectly clear, this time the two are in agreement.
Who was right? Was it Netanyahu, who has consistently warned against the Iran deal, and managed to help convince the Trump Administration to walk away from it, or was it former IDF Chief Gadi Eisenkot, who claimed that the deal presented “many opportunities”? Clearly, Netanyahu, for Iran has managed to produce twelve times as much enriched uranium as it was supposed to be allowed, has built cascades of advanced centrifuges that will enable it to quickly produce uranium enriched to bomb-producing levels, and has built nuclear facilities deep inside a mountain at Fordo, which even Israeli pilots will not be able to destroy, unless of course the Americans decide to supply the IAF with Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs), known as bunker busters. Supplying the Jewish state with bunker busters would be a good way the U.S. to ensure that Israel maintains its Qualitative Military Edge (QME).
Kochavi has presented a clear statement of Israel’s position. Israel intends to do whatever it takes to prevent the nuclearization of Iran. It opposes a return to the original nuclear deal or anything like it. Returning to the JCPOA would present Israel with an “intolerable threat.” On this conclusion, there is no daylight between Netanyahu and his top brass.
Therefore, Kochavi said, “anything that is similar to the current deal is a bad thing, and we cannot allow it.” He added: “I have directed the IDF to prepare a few operative plans, in addition to what they have already, and we are working on those plans and developing them.” Bombings from on high, sabotage by agents on the ground, a dozen Stuxnets wreaking all kinds of havoc, Israeli hackers running circles around their Iranian counterparts – as to what those “operative plans” might be, I’m sure Israel will, as it has so often, surprise the world – and especially Iran.
At his confirmation hearing to be Secretary of State, Tony Blinken said it was “vitally important” for the US to engage with Israel and its Gulf Arab allies “at the takeoff, not the landing” of its negotiations with Iran. But Aviv Kochavi doesn’t just want the Americans to listen. He wants them to hear.
Frank Anderson says
A statement in the article deserves more explanation. The bunker buster bomb mentioned seems to be far larger than any aircraft presently flown by Israel is able to carry. The bomb without a means of delivery appears to be useless.
The history I know, which is far from all there is to know, is that such bombs were originated in WWII by UK genius Barnes Wallis, who designed the 12,000 pound Tall Boy and 22,000 pound Grand Slam. There is (hopefully) a dummy of a US designed T-44, which is a 44,000 pound bomb designed by the US at the entrance of the Air Force museum near Fort Walton Florida. From my reading, again limited in scope, that bomb could be delivered by very few planes, (B-36 and 52?) none of which are in Israeli inventory. And all 3 of those old designs were unguided.
I think, welcoming correction, that the present massive penetrator is about 44,000 pounds in weight and limited to B-52, B-1 and B-2 delivery. The conclusion I make is that if Israel must attack without US participation, it will be forced to use nuclear weapons to destroy the underground facilities Iran is using for nuclear weapons production and storage.
mortimer says
To deliver this bomb, the Israelis could surely ‘borrow’ a bomber for the mission.
Westman says
The entrances into the underground Fordow complex can be seen on google maps and are remarkably similar to those seen in North Korea.
One could envision adapting cruise missles to fly dirty bombs into the Fordow complex right through the tunnel entrances, resulting in both the destruction of processing equipment and making the complex permanently uninhabitable from the implanted radiation. The explosives could be conventional while the payload is nuclear contamination products.
Frank Anderson says
W. I can’t imagine that my support for Israel is any secret. I am concerned that if I do too much discussion of what is, or could be done, I would be helping the enemies. Whatever the challenge, we have seen since 1948 Israel will find a way to handle it.
Westman says
Frank, observing that the best engineering texts are written by those of Jewish ethnicity, I wouldn’t doubt that for a moment.
Jack Holan says
No one is listening astutely. Netanyahu, Kochavi and probably many others meeting with DC counterparts are saying the same message with seriousness “whatever it takes” and probably “whatever the consequences” because the outcome of a nuclear Iran is a conflagration that will end in annihilation.
Frank Anderson says
I was in a military school from 1955 to 67. We lived with “duck and cover”. As a result, I have read many books on related subjects, particularly including Herman Kahn’s On Thermonuclear War and the US Government Printing Office The Effects of Nuclear Weapons. I agree with your assessment.
Several other books have information on the apocalyptic imperative of shia islam: The Islamic AntiChrist by Richardson, Why Israel Can’t Wait by Corsi, The Apocalypse of Ahmadinejad by Hitchcock and The Iran Threat by Jafarzadeh..
Israel will not likely endure another Yom Kippur strike. Especially with the openly hostile and collaborative administration presently in charge. “If not now, when? If not me, who?”
Hugh Fitzgerald says
Yes, you are right, and I should have made clear that the U.S. would also have to lend — or sell — planes capable of carrying the bunker busters.
Frank Anderson says
H.F. please know my observation was directed solely at a missing detail, not as any criticism of a highly respected contributor. I suggest there would be a problem with lending or selling a plane without a trained and experienced crew.
I think we can be certain the current US administration would be more likely to enhance Iran’s air defenses than to facilitate an Israeli strike. Consider the large and active US presence in countries between Israel and Iran, and the certainty US personnel are operating air defense systems in their present locations that could provide Iran with ample early warning of a strike from Israel. I would love to see a squadron (16 to 20) of B-1’s sold to Israel for their depreciated cost before they are worn out and retired. Israel would make good use of them. One or 2 planes are not enough. In any event, Israel has other means to deliver nuclear payloads that avoid the problems.
Always with great respect and appreciation for your writing.
Walter Sieruk says
This IDF chief is 100% right about he said . President imposter Biden by he zealous willingness to restore the folly and dangerous destructive folly and hoax of that Obama/Iran “deal” is showing and a foolish senseless and evil man he really is.
somehistory says
Common sense and self-preservation working together.
Never trust a moslim. moslims are taught to lie and then lie some more, even if they are contradicting themselves. And they don’t want peace…real peace…with anyone. Every one is Israel should know that. Looks like some do.