Nuclear deal leaves Israel with few options

From an Israeli security perspective, the framework deal reached in Switzerland Thursday with Iran will require three central efforts — in the realms of intelligence, diplomacy, and, perhaps, in Israel’s regional posture.

The latter may be the most pressing. Israel has sat on the fence — or rather within its bunker — since the Arab Spring melted into sectarian war in March 2011. At first covertly and then more openly it has provided medical support to injured Syrian rebels along the Golan border and given out baby food and warm clothes.

Recently, a resident of the Israeli town of Majdal Shams, a Druze Assad loyalist, went to great pains, primarily via Facebook, to show that Israel was not merely an implacable foe behind a thick steel fence, but an active agent in Jabhat al-Nusra’s battle against Bashar Assad and Iran’s Hezbollah henchmen. Sudki al-Makat, a former security prisoner who has been re-arrested, posted videos, primarily against a dark night backdrop, of border regions where, he claimed, without providing evidence, Israeli troops were meeting with members of the al-Qaeda affiliate.

A senior military source confirmed in March that there have been debates within the Israel Defense Forces’ General Staff regarding Israel’s posture and which side it should prefer in the battle that still rages in Syria, but said that the prevailing understanding is that the forces run by Iran’s al-Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani, a highly competent operative and one of the most influential regional actors, are a more dangerous foe.

The immediate repercussions of the world powers’ deal with Iran — and Iran will surely portray the results as a glorious victory and vindication — is not a sprint to the bomb, but rather an emboldened posture across the region.

Iran-backed forces currently control four Arab capitals: Damascus, Beirut, Baghdad, and Sana’a. Incredibly, even while its diplomatic chiefs were seated around tables in Lausanne, Iran aided — some say initiated — the Houthi overthrow of the Yemeni leadership.

The US position, it would seem, has been to withdraw from the region, staunching the flow of American blood, and in the place of its hulking presence, create, or perhaps just abide, a more even balance of power between an ascendant Iran, an Israel seen by some as anachronistic, and the Sunni powers that be.

With the deal in hand, Iran will likely take more strident steps. Israel, of course, will have to act to defend its immediate interests, such as the Iranian attempt to set up a Hezbollah front along the northern Golan Heights, as occurred in January. But it may, at least covertly, also have to increase the aid it provides to its allies as borders melt and the balance of power shifts more toward Tehran.

Diplomatically, the overt rift with the Obama administration is troubling in too many ways to detail here. But the key, from a security perspective, relates to understandings that might, at a future date, enable a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Today, that option is off the table. Israel cannot act now in open defiance of the entire world. That window closed, as then-defense minister Ehud Barak warned it would (albeit for different reasons), sometime in early 2012. And while many, including the past two army chiefs of staff and the former heads of the Mossad and Shin Bet, were against a strike then, the debate has always been about timing, not need.

Israel is quite certain that the regime in Tehran will, as it has for the past two decades, begin cheating on the agreement when the time seems right. It will likely be a careful and well-calibrated advance.

In order to thwart such a move, Israel needs rock-solid intelligence. With a deal in hand and a presumed one-year buffer between Iran and the bomb, convincing the world powers of a violation so significant that it demands action will be a Herculean task.

It bears mentioning that in the summer of 2007 the prime minister of Israel reportedly showed up in the Oval Office with photos stolen from the computer of Ibrahim Othman, the head of the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission; the three dozen color photos, the New Yorker reported in 2012, depicted a North Korean-made plutonium reactor near the Euphrates River. Israeli commandos, at great risk, had collected soil samples from the site. And still president George Bush, an uncommonly strong advocate for Israel, did not agree to launch a military strike.

He did, however, according to his own account, agree to let Israel do what it felt necessary.

At this stage, for Israel to possess a credible military option against Iran’s nuclear program — and it is crucial that it possess one — the prime minister might want to weigh carefully how much effort he puts into rousing opposition to the deal in Congress during the coming months. And how much he invests in reaching an accord with the administration, alongside the nuclear deal, that would cement Israel’s ability to act in the event of flagrant violations.