Israel calls its attack on Iran’s nuclear program a justified response to an existential threat: Benjamin Netanyahu argues that Iran’s leaders should be taken at their word when they say they wish to wipe his country off the map.
So Israel has spent the last several days razing Iran’s nuclear structures and killing the people in charge of them; more than 200 people have died, according to the Iranian health ministry. Iran has been shooting back, blowing up buildings in Tel Aviv; at least 24 people have died, according to Israel.
Why are these two nations in this mess? Iran watched the United States fell governments in Iraq and Afghanistan. The government believes nuclear bombs (and the threat that it could use them) will protect it, just as they have protected North Korea.
Israel does not believe in the power of diplomacy to solve this existential threat. North Korea has been tolerated as a rogue regime with nuclear bombs because nations assume Kim Jong-un won’t use them. But Israel and its supporters treat Iran as uniquely irrational. Netanyahu saw a previous deal as vulnerable to cheating, and he struck Iran last week while President Trump was negotiating a new one.
But military intervention has its problems, too. Today’s newsletter is about that puzzle.
The talking cure
American presidents have chased a nuclear deal and asked Israel for restraint. The agreement struck in the last years of the Obama administration did not meet Netanyahu’s very high bar — the total elimination of Iran’s nuclear program — but it put inspectors on the ground to ensure Iran halted development. In exchange, Western nations loosened sanctions and unfroze Iran’s assets.
But even the most ardent proponents of Obama’s deal had to admit that it was a temporary measure to hold off Iranian nuclear ambitions for a decade, with the hope that something — anything — would follow. By most accounts, Iran was abiding by the terms, but Trump shredded the agreement in his first term, promising in this term that he would deliver something more secure.
Before he could, Jerusalem and Tehran went to war.
Fighting it out
Military intervention may get short-term results. But it won’t induce a regime to change its ambitions, and it almost always brings unintended consequences.
Four decades ago, Israel bombed the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq, determined to nullify Saddam Hussein’s capabilities. World powers criticized the violation of another country’s sovereignty, but Israelis still see it as a success: Baghdad never became a nuclear power.
On the other hand, the operation did not sate Saddam Hussein’s hunger for other weapons of mass destruction. He developed chemical agents — and later used them on his enemies. Eventually, George W. Bush used their existence to justify a U.S. invasion.
The bombing over the past week has already achieved some results. Aside from the targets eliminated or badly damaged — Iran’s air defenses, the Natanz nuclear enrichment complex, key missile sites — Tehran said yesterday it wanted an end to the fighting and would negotiate.
Yet there are few scenarios in which the regime changes. Maybe Tehran would sign a new nonproliferation deal. But even after these strikes, its store of enriched uranium still exists. Its underground lab to enrich more still exists (though Trump is weighing whether to lend a massive bomb to help destroy it, my colleagues reported last night). And the government’s desires — to have sanctions lifted and to prevent any future invasion — still exist. No wonder Netanyahu says he wants nothing to do with talks.
Mutual destruction
Israel’s perceived existential threat assumes that Iran’s leadership is irrational, or at least that it’s impervious to the theory of mutually assured destruction that has prevented a nuclear exchange since the outbreak of the Cold War. If an Iranian nuclear strike on Israel would mean the incineration of Tehran, would Iran’s government really carry out its oft-repeated threat to destroy the Jewish state?
Israel thinks the chances are good enough that it started a war last week. In the end, mutually assured destruction, much like diplomacy, is based on faith — in the rationality of leadership, in the instinct of self-preservation, in a desired future for humanity.
That faith is in short supply in the Middle East.
More on the conflict
- The Iranian military commander whom Israel said it killed had been in the job for about four days. Israel killed his predecessor last week.
- Israeli forces bombed the headquarters of Iran’s state TV station. It was broadcasting live, and the anchor scrambled for cover.
- Iran’s best-protected nuclear site, Fordo, is buried deep inside a mountain. Only the U.S. has a bomb that could reach it. Here’s a diagram.
- Iran is often portrayed as one of the world’s most dangerous powers. Israel’s attacks expose its weaknesses.