Let us lay our cards on the table: Israel is unable to launch a campaign in Iran to take out the country's nuclear program. This option exists primarily in TV studios. Of course, it is also present in the diplomatic discourse of senior defense officials, who claim - against the backdrop of the renewal of nuclear talks in Vienna – that Israel has freedom of operation and the military option at its disposal.
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This stated and official position is almost a given. It is part of the diplomatic game. Israel cannot signal flaccidity and defeatism to the outside world. Given the Israeli position that a nuclear Iran is a strategic threat, Jerusalem must demonstrate determination and decisiveness.
Not only is an open war with Iran operationally too much for regional powers to take on but it is doubtful stability- and economic prosperity-seeking Israel would be able to deal with the outcome of such a war and the need to contend the day after with a never-ending "trickle" of long-range missiles and drones on its cities in particular. Israeli citizens would likely show the same ability to deal with the situation as they did with coronavirus restrictions.
To this, we must add a highly uncomfortable strategic picture. Although it is the only country that could succeed in the mission, the progressive United States will not do the dirty work of taking out Iran's nuclear facilities for Israel. The way things look now, US President Joe Biden's administration is the worst US administration to date as far as Israel is concerned, even when compared to that of former US President Barack Obama.
As with its hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan, the American revulsion from the idea of getting involved in the Middle East and its efforts to disengage from the space lead it directly toward a new nuclear deal with Tehran. This is an agreement that will not only make Iran a nuclear threshold state but will free it from the sanctions regime Biden's predecessor Donald Trump maintained, something that will certainly make Iran a regional power in every respect.
Under these circumstances, Israel may be making a last-ditch effort to prevent such a scenario, and more precisely, squeeze as much as it can out of the diminishing time it has left. But it is precisely because of the scarcity of options and the certain direction Iran is headed, which has the international system growing accustomed to a reality in which Iran is a nuclear threshold state, that demands a new approach to Israel's general strategy on the issue.
A nuclear threshold Iran is not a particularly pleasant idea, but the threat it will pose extends beyond the possibility the ayatollah regime will actively and directly use its nuclear weapons against Israel. This is an extreme scenario, and given that under such circumstances, Israel would adopt its own nuclear deterrence, is highly unlikely to happen.
The more realistic threat presented by a nuclear threshold Iran concerns the possibility it will expand its regional freedom of operations and mainly, the utilization of the umbrella provided by pro-Iran players that undermine stability in our neighborhood, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Situated directly on Israel's border, both these players threaten its security on a regular basis and through conventional missiles like missiles in particular.
Iran's transformation into a nuclear threshold state will not only chew away at Israeli deterrence and increase the willingness of those same organizations to challenge it on a regular basis, but it will also make Israeli efforts to contend with the undermining of the security situation ten times harder.
The sands in the Israeli hourglass are running out as the country faces two kinds of threats. The first is the time that remains until Iran becomes a nuclear threshold state, and the second is the time that remains until members of the region's activist camp directly threatening Israel are able to enjoy Iran's strategic umbrella.
As Israel confronts this two-pronged challenge without the effective tools to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat, it is certainly equipped with the tools to contend with the second threat, which will determine the security situation in the Middle East the day after the bomb.
Dismantling this threat, or at least portions of it is a type of strategy that until now has yet to be taken seriously in Israel. The dilemma, then, is not constrained only to the question of the possibility of an attack on Iran, but rather the choice between a direct confrontation with Iran and neutralizing direct threats to Israel that could prove to be a more acute problem once Iran has crossed the Rubicon.
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