The nuclear agreement that will be signed in a few days between the United States and the European powers on the one hand, and between Iran on the other hand, will not change a fundamental fact: with the agreement (and even if it is not signed) Iran becomes a de facto nuclear state. It is the Ayatollah regime that will decide when to complete the short distance to the first atomic bomb, and when to announce it.
Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s trip to Washington this week will not change the course of history: the Europeans have already given the green light, American President Biden is determined to sign, and therefore most of Israel’s attention should be directed to developing a new strategy: how to make sure that no Iranian regime dares to start a nuclear war Against Israel?
These are deep discussions that take place between the security establishment and the political echelon, of course not publicly. The effect will be long lasting. On the other hand, the talks held with America, in the last days before the signing of the agreement, are mainly about tactical matters.
The attempt is to make the pill of the agreement a little less bitter for Israel.
The core of the agreement is already known: it will deal with the amount of uranium that Iran will be allowed to enrich, the quality of the enrichment and the methods of monitoring the Iranian nuclear program from now on. In the previous agreement, signed during the Barack Obama era and canceled by Donald Trump in 2018, the amount of enriched uranium was limited to 280 kilos at a rate of up to 3.8 percent. Since the cancellation of the agreement and the removal of supervision, the Iranians have raised the level of enrichment to 60 percent. The amount has also increased a lot, obviously.
What is certain, even if the new agreement will be more or less similar to the previous one, the terms have changed since 2018 in favor of the Ayatollahs. Iran has proven that it can withstand any regime of sanctions, and has greatly improved the quality of its centrifuges.
This quality will determine how long it will take for it to produce the first bomb with the tools that will remain in its hands, the moment it decides to withdraw from the agreement and break forward (just as North Korea previously recognized an opportunity to put an end to an existing agreement with the United States and declare it going nuclear).
Global conditions have also changed immeasurably in favor of Iran. Russia is immersed up to its neck in the war against Ukraine, while China is in the midst of a trade war with the United States, with all its attention focused on taking over Taiwan. These two countries will not be in a hurry to back any move by the West against Iran. On the contrary: Russia receives military equipment from Iran, while China shares Action in the cyber field with her.
Extracting a 40-year strategy
More or less 40 years have passed since Iran made the principled decision to go nuclear. This happened following the Iraqi missile attack on Tehran in the Iran-Iraq war. The first to recognize the program was the head of the Mossad in the 1980s, Shabtai Shavit. Since then, the Iranian nuclear efforts have been conducted at a variable pace, with a fixed goal: to reach a bomb and the ability to launch it, mainly through long-range missiles.
Israel, for its part, declared that “it will not allow Iran to get a nuclear bomb under any circumstances.” In order to realize the declaration, Israel acted, according to the publications, in every possible way to slow down the Iranian nuclear program, with the help of partners from the West.
Nuclear production facilities have been sabotaged in many ways, Iranian nuclear scientists have been eliminated repeatedly, including a stunning cyber attack called “Stuxnet”, in which the attackers managed to penetrate the command and control system at the Syracuse facility in the city of Natanz in Iran.
The sarcases are used to enrich uranium from its natural state. The enrichment is required because in every kilogram of uranium mixture in nature, there is 99.7% of uranium type 238, and only 0.3 percent, only three grams, of uranium type 235.
This is exactly the material required to make an atomic bomb, or to run nuclear power reactors. The enrichment separates the different types of uranium. The goal is to get a mixture, where the percentage of “235” is much higher.
Each sarcasm is an elongated and narrow cylinder, made of thin and strong metal. The length of the roll is a few meters, and the width – several tens of centimeters. The cylinder rotates at a speed of tens of thousands of revolutions per minute, sometimes even 100,000 rpm, more than ten times the maximum speed of the piston in the car engine.
Only such a speed allows a real separation between the two forms of uranium. But the enormous speed also requires the maintenance of expensive parts, and the production of magnetic bearings for cylinders and other complex components, without which the centrifuge would be out of its precise balance.
Taking the sarcasm out of balance results in its immediate crash. The crash can also damage the surrounding centrifuges. This is what happened to Natanaz following the “Stuxnet” attack, but since then the Iranians have equipped themselves with new weapons.
The US as a deterrent
Is it still possible to get Iran to withdraw from its nuclear program? MK Yuval Steinitz, as Minister of Energy coordinated Israel’s classified discussions with the powers before the agreement in the previous decade. He believes that with all due respect to Israel, only the US has a real deterrent capacity against Iran. The degree of Iranian deterrence depends on the willingness they attribute to the US to use its military capabilities, about which there is no doubt.
According to him, the only time the Iranians really completely froze their nuclear program was in 2003, following the American invasion of Iraq. At that time, the Libyan president candidate Gaddafi was also frightened by the American aggression, who gave up his initiative on his nuclear program, which Israel was not even aware of.
According to Steinitz, in the previous decade Iran reduced the amount of its uranium even before signing the agreement with the powers. and increased the enrichment only after Biden’s victory in the elections. In the days of Trump, they didn’t dare to do that.
A new kind of deterrence
There is a consensus in the Israeli security establishment – there is no military option to bring about the elimination of the Iranian nuclear program in a single military operation. Similar to the bombings of the Iranian reactor in 1981 and the Syrian reactor in 2007. The Iranians learned the lesson, and scattered their facilities in different places, in the thick of the earth.
On the assumption that only Iran will decide when to go nuclear in the future, a new strategic approach is required in front of it.
The late head of the Mossad, Meir Dagan, was for many years considered the “mastermind” who devised Israel’s strategy against Iran. He used to estimate that at a certain point in time Israel would be required to switch from a strategy of preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon at all costs to a strategy of operating on the assumption that Iran is nuclear.
Dagan has not been with us since the middle of the last decade. Many security officials who were partners in brainstorming with him, tend to estimate that the right point in time for this strategic change should have been about 3-4 years ago. Close to the cancellation of the nuclear agreement by Donald Trump. The Israeli moves to the new nuclear age are gaining momentum now.
In the new situation, the strategy that dominated the Cold War era between the US and the former Soviet Union (thousands of books have been written on terms such as “mutual deterrence”, “second strike” capability and “red lines”) is less relevant to the Iranian case.
The main reason for this is that the regime of the Ayatollahs is also motivated by messianic considerations, according to which the more bad it is, the better it will be (Judgment Day). In a central square in Tehran there is a clock that counts down the time until the annihilation of the Zionist entity (according to this count, the Iranians “leave” us more or less 20 years). It can be considered a curiosity. Better not.
Intelligence superiority
According to foreign publications, Israel is developing a second strike capability. That is, the ability to attack Iran with a nuclear weapon, even in the event of enormous damage to Israel following a pre-emptive Iranian attack. According to some of those publications, this is the background for the purchase of submarines by Israel, and for the huge deals that will be decided in 2023 for the purchase of new fighter-bomber planes. But, as mentioned, it is not enough.
What more? Towards the new era, Israel will be required to further increase its intelligence superiority vis-à-vis Iran, and to make the Iranian regime feel that it is completely “perforated”, so that it does not dare to explode with a bomb.
Beyond that, the development of interception means such as the “Arrow 3” and “Magic Wand” missiles is important. However, even if Israel equips itself with countless interceptors, it is possible to imagine a mass abandonment of residents in Gush Dan, if only there is a tangible threat of a nuclear missile towards us and an Iranian declaration of intent to launch it. No one will take the risk and stay at home, as in the case of the non-nuclear threat from the Gaza Strip or Lebanon.
new ideas
Brigadier General Mil Nitzan Nourial, who was a senior member of the National Security Headquarters, proposed a few days ago in the article “In Israel Defense” a new concept of developing “deterrence to the point of paralysis”. According to him, the Abraham Accords can form the basis for a multidimensional regional defense concept, led by the United States.
This refers to an integrated system that will allow the creation of a comprehensive network of radars, connecting them together will allow for a very broad detection picture, including, when correctly connected to the array of satellites, the identification of additional components that are essential to all threats from Iran.
At the same time, an integrated array of a variety of interceptors from several platforms will be built for all interception layers so that a multi-layered offensive defense will be created that can deal with all warheads in any outline and on any flight path.
The proposed array will be able to intercept a warhead above the launch area, a few seconds from the moment of launch (in special cases before the launch), thus creating a significant deterrence to the point of paralysis.
Practically speaking, no one would want a missile that they plan to launch at one or another target to be intercepted above the shooter himself. So that the potential damage rule will apply to the shooter himself. Not everything is true when it comes to an unconventional warhead. Such a system can be adapted to other places in the world and thus fully neutralize significant threats.
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According to him, what is required is: to announce this strategy, to have a display of purpose, to convey messages both to the Iranian leadership and its partners and to the Iranian people (your leadership leads to your elimination). In this way, use the time that this deterrence provides, to formulate complementary moves that will collapse the regime in Iran.
And what about the fantasy of regime change in Iran? A new regime will not withdraw from the nuclear program, but it can be expected to be more “rational”. Can the ayatollahs’ regime really collapse economically and socially like the Soviet Union at the time? Definitely yes.
The problem is that the former head of the Mossad, Ephraim Halevi, predicted such an imminent collapse in 2000, and it did not happen. Moreover, in 2011, mathematicians in the Intelligence Division made “scientific” calculations according to which the life expectancy of the Bashar Assad regime in Syria is a few months. Defense Minister at the time, Ehud Barak, shared this assessment with the US, but that, as we know, did not happen either.
The conclusion that it is impossible to build on regime change in Iran as an element of a new strategy.
Silence is a lie
What is expected in the first years after the nuclear agreement? Probably relative silence, intoxicating and lying. We have already been disappointed in our past from three very quiet years. Between the end of the War of Attrition in 1970 and the Yom Kippur War in 1973. A period in which it became clear that the truce was used to change the regional situation, by the surface-to-air missiles provided by the Soviet Union.
Regarding the new nuclear agreement, Israel has already announced that it is not committed to it and is not a party to it (the meaning of the announcement: preserving the freedom of action to carry out “sabotage” in Iran).
But, the strategic situation is worrisome and requires far-reaching changes in the means of warfare in Israel’s hands and in the concept of operation. Not just talk.