Israel's Dilemma

Most sayings do not make literal sense, but ‘caught between the devil and the deep blue sea’ almost seems tailor-made to describe the Israeli dilemma. The country is caught between the Mediterranean on the one side, and the Arabs and ayatollahs of Iran who would like nothing better than to throw the entire Jewish nation into that very sea. It’s the only country in the world that faces an existential threat, in that its enemies constantly deny its very legitimacy. And now, for the first time in decades, Israel is in the situation of being in deep fear of extermination, the dark shadow of an Iranian nuclear bomb looming ever larger in the imaginations and estimations of Israeli political and nuclear planners.

Since the early 1980s, the Israelis have not had to contend with existential dread. The peace treaty signed with Egypt in 1979 had ensured, at long last, a quiescent relationship with the biggest and most influential Arab country. As a result, Israel could afford to become less militarised – to almost relax. A successful air strike against an incipient nuclear programme in Osirek in Iraq in 1981 meant that Israel itself could afford to be quiet about its own nuclear programme, secure that that particular threat had been neutralised.

The moral complication came in those intervening years. The fact that Israel was the strongest country in its neighbourhood – and had proven that in war after war – meant the world no longer had to have the underdog’s sympathies towards it. Additionally, highly questionable moves – such as the Israeli-sanctioned massacres in Lebanon in 1982 – meant that righteous and wrong were no longer crystal-clear. The intifada – the uprising by Israel’s displaced Palestinian populations, were another sign that all was not morally well, or clear, in the country.

And now the Iranian nuclear plans have complicated Israel’s strategic life even further.

I met Danny Ayalon, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister in Nairobi recently, and his feelings against Iran are deeply held. His demeanour is a polite, but direct, wariness – a diplomat forced by circumstances to be unusually forthright. His portrayal of Iranian moves is less driven by Biblical allusions than by modern statecraft. (The preferred shorthand for discussion of Israel and nuclear arms is precisely that. Jeffrey Goldberg in the New York Times reported Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as saying that the driving fear is that of the Amalekites – the Old Testament tribe bent on carrying out a genocide of the Jews; the title of Seymour Hersh’s expose on the Israeli nuclear programme was ‘The Samson Option’). For Ayalon, Iran is developing nuclear weapons, not because of their deterrent (or bullying) effect, but as part of a larger scheme towards global hegemony. Iran has been propping up the murderous Assad regime in Syria, and is also the state sponsor of such bodies as HAMAS, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.

Of a piece, also, is the alleged multi-bomb plot by Iranian agents in Kenya in June. The plot, which was exposed by Netanyahu and led to the cancellation of an oil deal between Kenya and Iran, is part of the global plan of a hegemony of terror, according to Ayalon. The Iranians are keen on ‘penetrating Africa’, and only deeply-held and deeply-felt, friendships would help to resist this. And Israel would rather build these friendships bilaterally, than depend on an unreliable UN system where sheer force of Arab numbers overwhelms any discussion on Israel. And thus it’s no surprise that Ayalon considers UN General Assembly a toothless institution. ‘UN General Assembly resolutions are…virtual. They have no significance on the ground. They have no legal mandate; no political ramifications. If anyone looks at Israel from the perspective of General Assembly resolutions, the picture is not pretty, but luckily, it stays…virtual’.

The next few months will show how far the deeply-held fears about Iran, and Israel’s diminished moral status intersect. Would an attack on Iranian facilities be globally accepted as necessary, and, crucially, supported by the United States? Or will Ayalon’s, and Israelis’, worst fears be realised with the explosion of an Iranian bomb – as the first step towards a renewed Persian hegemony of terror?