What was Obama thinking when Barak called for an attack on Iran?

September 6, 2015   

ביולי 2008 הגיע הסנטור והמועמד לנשיאות, ברק אובמה, לישראל. תחנה מרכזית בביקור הייתה הסיור הקורבני הקבוע במסוק יחד עם שר הבטחון. לפני שהמריאו, לאהוד ברק הייתה בקשה יוצאת דופן: תטוס בבקשה קודם מעל מגדלי אקירוב, הוא ביקש מהטייס, שהסנטור מאילינוי יראה כמה הצליח בחיים. אין ספק שהנשיא לעתיד התפעל מהמגדל המהודר, שכמותו בוודאי לא ראה בארה״ב. האם נזכר הנשיא אובמה בסצנה הביזארית הזאת בשנים שלאחר מכן? האם תהה לגבי שיקול הדעת של האיש החד פעמי הזה, בזמן שברק ניסה שוב ושוב לשכנע אותו בזכות תקיפה צבאית באיראן? מתחילת פרויקט הגרעין האיראני היו למעשה רק שתי דרכים אמיתיות לסכל אותו: תקיפה אמריקנית מסיבית או הסכם עם האיראנים, שיהיה כרוך במתן גזרים עבים. Everything else is nonsense. When Barak describes to his biographers how Steinitz melted and Chief of Staff Gantz opposed and Chief of Staff Ashkenazi said they were not ready, he only forgets to mention one detail: the entire concept of an Israeli attack was based from the start on the terribly dangerous thesis that such an attack would drag the US into war against Iran. It was clear to everyone that an Israeli attack would not thwart the Iranian nuclear program. It might even accelerate the project, but the Americanologist Netanyahu and his partner Barak claimed that they would succeed in dragging the superpower into this war, and Gantz, Ashkenazi, Meridor and Begin were not willing to lend a hand. They knew full well that President Obama's public statements about Israel's right to defend itself hid a clear red flag. Don't you dare attack Iran, American officials repeatedly told their Israeli counterparts, and no, it's not just the naive Kerry and Obama. Barak is the first to know this. He probably remembers how he insisted on entering President Bush's meeting with Prime Minister Olmert. He probably assumed that Bush wouldn't stand up to his persuasiveness, but the president said 'no' and Barak probably remembers that when the substantive discussion was over and he asked the president for bunker-busting bombs, even that president, whose middle name is not 'Hussein,' gave him a look of 'what was unclear about what I said?'.

In general, if there is one sharp bottom line that can be taken from this story, it is that when the US identifies something as an important interest of its own, then Republican money and AIPAC, and not even Netanyahu's speeches, will help. Obama did not hesitate to send his close advisor to establish a secret dialogue with Iran.

This was done with uncharacteristically American clumsiness. The advisor walked into a building in Oman, which was being watched by all the intelligence services in the area (which did not prevent the White House from later denying the report about the secret channel, which was not reported to Israel). The secret channel led to the interim agreement, despite all the pressure and objections, and the interim agreement led to a final agreement, which would pass Congress over Netanyahu's nose and fury. Once again, it became clear that on foreign and security issues, it is almost impossible to defeat an American president at home.

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 Former Mossad head Meir Dagan actually thinks there was a third way: continued postponement of the project through covert operations. For Dagan, Netanyahu is to blame for the agreement between the US and Iran. The prime minister turned the issue into a global crisis, thereby forcing the Americans to reach an agreement. Dagan is a much bigger expert than me, but in my humble opinion, when a country the size of Iran wants nuclear weapons, it will get them. One should not underestimate the ability to delay it for a few years, but in the end they will get them, or a significant return for freezing them. There were people in the system, like the head of the National Security Council, Ilan Mizrahi, who said 8 years ago that Israel would have to get used to living with a nuclear Iran, just as the United States lived for decades with a nuclear USSR. It is unfair, then, to blame Netanyahu for the generous compensation package that Iran will receive. He can certainly be accused of pretension and arrogance. Netanyahu is the one who declared before the 2013 elections that by the end of his next term, Iran would not have a nuclear program. I still remember how in 2008, when we were about to publish an investigation into Netanyahu, then the opposition leader, his wife called one of Channel 10's shareholders and screamed at him that only her husband could save the people of Israel from the Iranian Holocaust and that such investigations could destroy everything. Well, apparently, no Israeli leader would have brought about a better result, but only one prime minister dedicated his term to this, enslaving the security system and billions of dollars. In the end, it didn't deliver the goods. • The article was published this morning in Haaretz: http://drucker10.net