Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, who had been a close friend of mine, revealed to me what she thought was one of the most difficult days of her professional life. That was when she was the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and President Ronald Reagan had just learned of the secret operation that Israel had conducted to bomb Iraq’s nuclear reactor in Osirak on June 7, 1981. In those days, the U.S. was trying to work with Iraq against Iran. She was instructed by President Ronald Reagan to give a speech, condemning Israel’s actions “in no uncertain terms.” She followed his instructions and likened the attack to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
(July 16th, 2020 / JNS)
The Security Council then voted unanimously to censure Israel.
Many years later, she told me, that when the United States entered the Gulf War 1991, and again, in the War against Saddam in 2003, she had wished she could eat her words.
The United States has what I like to call “two liquid assets,” bordering us with the Atlantic Ocean on our east and the Pacific in our west, and two benign neighbors on our northern and southern borders. Up until now, that has helped to keep the continental United States relatively safe, with the sole exception of September 11, 2001.
We have periods of foreign policy adventurism and entanglement, fluctuating with periods of retrenchment and isolationism. After our long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States is in no mood for further entanglements. And no one can blame them.
However, Israel is in no such position. A quote, generally attributed to Prime Minister Golda Meir, is “We cannot afford to make a single mistake.” Nor can they afford the luxury of “waiting it out” while Iran has accelerated its nuclear program to near breakout.
As of last week, breakout time was a matter of perhaps 2 to 3 months.
Then, a series of mysterious, clandestine attacks began to occur.
No one knows for sure who is behind this spate of attacks in nuclear facilities throughout Iran, but we know that the Mullahs are not happy about it.
This sequence began on June 26th with a tremendous explosion lit up the skies at the Parchin military base. Parchin housed a missile factory, which also designs nuclear warheads in an intricate web of underground tunnels and nuclear facilities.
On June 30th, a gas leak was suspected to be the cause of an explosion in a medical clinic in Tehran, killing 19 and injuring 6.
On July 2nd an explosion destroyed the new underground centrifuge facility in Natanz, about 50 miles south of Tehran, where more advanced centrifuge machines had been intended to be built there. A specified number of advanced centrifuges were part of the JCPOA, the nuclear deal that the Obama administration had inked with Iran, but the Iranian regime has far exceeded their production.
On July 4th, a fire broke out at the Zergan Power plant in the city of Ahvaz in southwestern Tehran.
On July 9th, an explosion rocked several office buildings in Western Tehran, severely damaging a building that was home to several underground chemical production facilities and a military production site.
On July 11th, an explosion took place in Northern Tehran in a two-story building containing gas cylinders.
On July 13th, another explosion was reported in a gas condensation plant in East Tehran.
And as I write, another mysterious fire was discovered on three ships at the Iranian port of Bushehr.
In typical Iranian fashion, the government at first denied that there was a problem or even an obvious pattern. They even went so far as to quote a former mayor of Garmdareh as saying that Saturday’s explosion was at “a factory making gas cylinders,” only to later admit that that mayor has been dead.
The question remains: Why is this happening now?
There are two reasons. According to David Albright, Founder and President of the Instituter for Sconce and International Security, “the Iranians had become extremely close to nuclear breakout, perhaps two to three months away, and these incidents might have set them back a year or perhaps even years.”
For America, it is still a theoretical issue, although it shouldn’t be. Iran is working on intercontinental ballistic missiles, and they do not need those missiles to reach Tel Aviv. Also, Hezbollah has developed a hub right under our noses in the Western hemisphere, in Venezuela.
For Israel, the issue is an existential one.
The Israelis, or whoever might be responsible are correct to be worried, and to know that there is no time like the present. The elections are almost four months away. There are no guarantees of a Trump victory. Nor are there guarantees that a Biden presidency would give them “the green light” for such attacks.
It is true that the Obama administration did help participate, together with the Israelis, in Stuxnet, that malicious computer “worm” that targeted the computers of the Iranian nuclear program, (although neither of them would openly admit it).
However, it is also true that the vast majority of democrats tends to believe that negotiations are the penultimate objective of foreign policy. As one democratic congressional staffer once told me, “As long as they are in the room, talking, they are not on the battlefield, fighting.”
That argument might hold some water, in certain cases.
However, we have also learned from our sorry experience with the JCPOA that the Iranians are unsurpassed as “bad faith” negotiators. They are the ones that invented the Iranian shouk. Sometimes there are actors on the world’s stage that use the art of negotiation as a distraction for their true intentions, a Persian rug, behind which they speed up their nefarious objectives.
As Carl Von Clausewitz famously said, “Diplomacy is warfare by other means.”
In the meantime, Israel, (or whoever is responsible), must do what it must do to survive. In this era of American foreign policy retrenchment and isolationism, they might have to, ultimately, go it alone.
Perhaps America, Europe, and the Sunni Arab nations will once again vote to censure Israel at the U.N.
It seems, however, that only that plucky, little Jewish state is the one member in the community of nations that has the courage to do what has got to be done against the fierce Iranian menace.
And I would not hold my breath for the world to say thank you.
Israel’s Unique Methods Against the Iranian Threat
Painful Reckonings About Black Lives Matter
Help us work to ensure that our policymakers and the public receive the EMET- the Truth.
Take Action
