This past week was the final nail in the coffin for any optimism Israel has voiced regarding Iran over the past year. Anyone who expected the fall of the regime in Tehran or for the Islamic republic to alter its strategy was confronted with the opposite reality. Iran, it appears, was everywhere: dashing toward a nuclear bomb, activating terrorist cells abroad, sending advanced weapons to Syria.
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These events are not necessarily connected to one another, but they indicate the mood in Tehran. Despite the coronavirus pandemic, and despite the sanctions and dire economic situation, Iran is here and is here to stay. As belligerent and subversive as ever, with a ravenous appetite for action that is arousing considerable (and justifiable) concern in Israel.
It began with the attempted attack near the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi. The execution itself was relatively amateurish, but it could signal Iran's return to the stage of international terror. The Iranians played in this arena quite a bit in the past, from Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994, to failed attacks in several countries, to the deadly attack carried out by Hezbollah in Burgas, Bulgaria, in 2012.
Iran has an impressive terrorist network across the globe. The Quds Force, which oversees it, relies on Iran's diplomatic corps and a network of branches. This activity was completely frozen following the rise of the Islamic state group, which sparked a large wave of terror around the world. Iran, which fought ISIS in Iraq and Syria, didn't want to be perceived as employing the same tools of terror and decided to take a time out.
Evidently, Iran now feels safe enough to renew this activity, which is a combination of an unquenched desire for revenge over the assassination of chief nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the belief that the new administration in Washington provides it with relative immunity, the hope that the coronavirus will divert the world's attention from its actions, and the belief that the hired guns it uses won't be tied back to their Iranian handlers.
The New Delhi bombing naturally led to heightened alert levels at Israeli embassies, consulates and Jewish community centers across the globe. In Africa, suspects were reportedly spotted gathering intelligence on Israeli embassies, along with embassies belonging to the United States, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. Iran has an open score to settle with these countries for signing the Abraham Accords and pursuing normalization with Israel.
A sense of impunity
Iran's activities in Syria are even more troubling. Overnight Wednesday, Israeli aircraft reportedly attacked the airport in Damascus again. A few hours earlier, two Iranian cargo planes allegedly landed there, apparently carrying a fresh shipment of advanced weapons. Past experience tells us the cargo was unloaded and stored in an isolated, guarded warehouse belonging to Iran on the airport's premises, before being transferred upstream to Hezbollah or other Iranian militias operating in Syria.
Several hours later, the warehouse was attacked from the sky. From Israel's perspective, it's best to target the weapons while they're all in one place, before being dispersed across the country. This not only ensures complete destruction and prevents losing track of some of the weapons, but also delivers the enduring message: Israel will not allow the transfer of advanced weapons or Iranian entrenchment in Syria.
When Naftali Bennett left his role as defense minister, he claimed there were signs that Iran was retreating from Syria. For a while, it seemed he wasn't wrong either: Iran slowed the pace of its weapons shipments, and for a certain period of time also stopped using the airport in Damascus. This was a consequence of pressure applied by Syrian President Bashar Assad, who told Tehran the Israeli airstrikes were impeding his efforts to rehabilitate Syria.
The string of airstrikes attributed to Israel in recent weeks indicates that Iran has returned to full activities, including in Damascus. Although it has to strain to evade Israeli radar (sometimes it smuggles its weapons by air, sometimes on land via Iraq), the rejoicing over Iran's alleged white flag was, in this case as well, too soon and unnecessary.
Preceding the airstrike overnight Wednesday, Hezbollah tried shooting down an Israeli spy drone over south Lebanon. It wasn't the first such incident, but it seems to indicate a mood similar to the one in Tehran: self-confidence, and a significant sense of impunity.
As of Friday morning, Israel has not responded against Hezbollah. "The response will come at the place and time of our choosing," a senior Israeli defense official said. This threat was meant for Lebanese ears, but failing to follow through in the near future could erode Israeli deterrence. Anti-aircraft weapons were declared by Israel a long time ago as "game-changers," and Israel cannot grow accustomed to a constant threat to its aircraft operating over Lebanon.
Based on our experience from Lebanon and Gaza, habituation of this sort leads to an increased appetite on the other side (and, heaven forbid, Israeli casualties), and tends to culminate in Israel having to deliver a heavier blow than it originally planned − which could trigger an even larger conflagration. If IDF officials indeed "view the incident as very serious," as the army said in a statement shortly after, it isn't clear why a response is still forthcoming, even at the cost of a temporary escalation that will help prevent a larger one in the future.
The concern is real
Israel's primary concern on the Iranian front, however, doesn't come from India, Syria, or Lebanon, but from Iran itself. The new American secretary of state, Antony Blinken, made more than a few headlines this week when he told NBC News that Iran was just weeks away from accumulating enough enriched uranium for a breakthrough to an atomic bomb.
Blinken's assessments are not entirely corroborated by intelligence agencies across the globe, but the trend is clear. The series of violations committed by Iran in recent months has brought it much closer to a nuclear bomb, and it is currently closer to a bomb today than on the eve of the nuclear deal in 2015. Iran's use of new centrifuges allows it to enrich larger quantities of uranium at greater speeds. As in the past, Iran is still not enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels, but the steps it is taking significantly shorten the distance to a bomb − if it so chooses.
It seems Blinken's warning was intended to lay the groundwork for talks with Tehran and to explain the new administration's urgency to renew the nuclear deal with it. This logic is strikingly similar to what was peddled on the eve of the previous deal: If we don't stop Iran now with diplomatic tools and push it back by taking away the capabilities it has accrued, we will wake up one morning to discover we're too late.
In Israel, officials disagree with this approach and are convinced that the only way to deter Iran is by continuing to push it into the corner (through the "maximum pressure" campaign of sanctions on Iran's economy and leaders), while rattling a big stick in the form of threatening to strike its nuclear facilities. The effectiveness of this approach, it should be noted, isn't entirely evident. Although Iran has suffered a severe economic blow, it has also displayed an impressive ability to take the punches, remain standing, and keep pressing forward toward its goals.
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Considering the new American policies and Iran's conduct, Israel must act quickly. The remarks about putting the airstrike option back on the table were good for making headlines, but they are not practical at this stage, certainly not while the Americans and Iranians are engaged in dialogue.
Contrary to the situation in Lebanon, Israel must now opt for its own dialogue with the new administration. It must shelve the bombastic speeches and engage in discreet diplomacy. Despite the chilly winds blowing from Joe Biden's White House at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the working relationships on the ground − in the defense and foreign ministries, the IDF and the Mossad − are excellent and can act as a bridge to foster healthy communication, so that Israel can voice its concerns and reservations on the Iranian matter.
The belief in Israel is renewing the nuclear deal is a "foregone conclusion," not because the new administration thinks it's the most critical issue in the world, but because it wants to get rid of this headache and focus on more pressing matters, chiefly the coronavirus and the economy. Therefore, Israel's fight shouldn't be about the deal in and of itself, but its nature: what it includes and excludes, with the understanding that we won't get everything we want.
While Israel has achieved quite a bit in its fight against Iran's nuclear program, including in the past year, it will struggle to handle and eradicate it all alone. It must allow the Americans to take the lead on this matter while insisting on hitting Iran on all other fronts.
