How Netanyahu's bomb Iran ploy failed

Gareth Porter

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/10/201210493522531400.html

[photo] Binyamin Netanyahu's explicit aim was to get the US to
adopt his "red line" - meaning that it would threaten
military force against Iran if it does not bow to a
demand to cease enrichment [Reuters]

The rest of the world can stop worrying about Israeli
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's supposed threat to
bomb Iran. Netanyahu's speech at the United Nations
General Assembly last week appears to mark the end of
his long campaign to convince the world that he might
launch a unilateral strike on Iran's nuclear programme.

The reason for Netanyahu's retreat is the demonstration
of unexpectedly strong pushback against Netanyahu's
antics by President Barack Obama. And that could be the
best news on the Iran nuclear issue in many years.

Commentary on Netanyahu's speech predictably focused on
his cartoon bomb and hand-drawn "red line", but its
real significance lay in the absence of the usual
suggestion that a unilateral strike against Iran might
be necessary if the Iranian nuclear programme is not
halted.

Although he offered yet another alarmist portrayal of
Iran poised to move by next summer to the "final stage"
of uranium enrichment, nowhere in the speech did
Netanyahu even hint at such a threat. His explicit aim
was to get the US to adopt his "red line" - meaning
that it would threaten military force against Iran if
it does not bow to a demand to cease enrichment.

Journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, whom Netanyahu had twice
used to convey to the US his purported readiness to go
to war with Iran, called it a "concession speech".
Netanyahu conceded, in effect, that his effort to force
the US to accept his red line had failed completely.

Although Netanyahu has been generally perceived as
deadly serious about the threat of war against Iran,
there is good reason to doubt that Netanyahu and
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak ever intended to
attack Iran. A review of the record of statements by
Netanyahu and Barak on Iran reveals that both of them
have carefully avoided issuing an actual threat to
attack Iran under any circumstances.

In fact, Netanyahu has been distinctly more cautious in
that regard than his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, whose
government twice issued actual military threats against
Iran - in February 2006 and again in June 2008. A
former Israeli official who requested anonymity
confirmed to me last spring that people who had worked
under Netanyahu as well as under Olmert and Ariel
Sharon had found Netanyahu "less decisive" on Iran than
either of those former prime ministers.


Empire - Targeting Iran - Video: Iran, Israel and the
US

Despite Olmert's much more explicit threats of attack
on Iran, we now know from US diplomatic cables released
by WikiLeaks to Haaretz newspaper that on December 2,
2005, American diplomats had reported that their
conversations with Israeli officials indicated that
there is no chance of a military attack being carried
out on Iran.

Israel's 'red line' option

Even more telling, before his retirement as IDF Chief
of General Staff in February 2011, General Gabi
Ashkenazi told then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff Admiral Mike Mullen that all the talk about the
Israeli military option against Iran by Netanyahu and
Barak was "empty words", because "Israel has no
military option", according to a report by Shimon
Shiffer of Yedioth Ahronoth.

The evidence now available indicates that the Netanyahu
campaign about a unilateral strike on Iran was from the
beginning a bluff aimed at pressuring President Barack
Obama to adopt both "crippling sanctions" against
Iran's oil export sector and an explicit threat of war
if Iran did not end its nuclear programme.

Netanyahu had successfully manipulated the Clinton
administration on the Oslo "peace process", and in
2001, unaware he was being recorded, he said, "America
is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the
right direction. They won't get in the way". He
evidently calculated in late 2011 that his pressure on
Obama would be amplified by a majority of the US
Congress, which the powerful pro-Israel lobby AIPAC had
repeatedly mobilised in support of legislation desired.

Obama's vulnerability to such pressures would at its
maximum during the Presidential election campaign
season of 2012, according to Netanyahu's calculation.
It was no accident that Defence Minister Ehud Barak
suggested in an interview with CNN last November that
Israel would be forced to make a decision on war either
during the summer or fall of 2012. There was no
objective, technical reason but an obvious political
logic for suggesting such timing. The Republican
Party's candidate could be expected to be heavily
dependent on Sheldon Adelson, the same big funder who
had bankrolled Netanyahu's own campaign.

During late 2011 and the first half of 2012, the Obama
administration was ostensibly alarmed by what was
widely viewed as a Netanyahu threat of unilateral
action. When the US and Israel agreed in mid-January to
postpone a joint military exercise originally scheduled
for early Spring, US defence officials and former
officials lined up to tell Yahoo news reporter Laura
Rozen and Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic off the
record that they feared Israel was planning an attack
during that period. And in early February, Washington
Post columnist David Ignatius reported that Secretary
of Defence Leon Panetta was alarmed about a possible
Israeli attack between April and June.

But there was more to those apparent expressions of
alarm than met the eye. Panetta was making the threat
of an Israeli attack during those months seem more
credible than it really was, and he was doing so
without any pushback against it. Those were tell-tale
indications that the Obama administration was  using
the supposed threat of a unilateral Israeli attack to
increase the pressure on Iran in advance of the
negotiations between Iran and the "P5+1" scheduled for
the spring.

As the Republican Party prepared to nominate
Netanyahu's old friend Mitt Romney as its presidential
candidate, all the pieces seemed to be in place for
Netanyahu to maximise the impact of his Iran war bluff.
Two weeks before the convention, Netanyahu and Barak
telegraphed their intention to convert their campaign
into decisive influence over US Iran policy. In an
interview with Ynet news on August 11, an unnamed
"senior official in Jerusalem" offered an explicit deal
with the Obama administration: Netanyahu would
"reconsider" Israel's unilateral attack option if Obama
would adopt Israel's red line - meaning that he would
threaten to attack Iran if it had not agreed to stop
its enrichment by a date certain.

US resistance to 'pressure tactic'

But Netanyahu met unexpectedly firm US resistance to
his pressure tactic. On August 30, General Martin
Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, talking
with reporters in the UK, said an Israeli strike on
Iran would be ineffective, and then dropped an
unexpected bomb. "I don't want to be complicit it they
[the Israelis] choose to do it," Dempsey said.

That Dempsey comment was the first public rebuke to
Netanyahu and Barak, and former Israeli national
security adviser Giora Eiland was emphaticabout its
impact on Netanyahu's strategy. "Israeli officials
cannot do anything in the face of a very explicit 'no'
from the US president," he said. Netanyahu had been
arguing all year that the US "might not like" an
Israeli attack, but that it would "accept it the day
after". But after such a "public, bold statement" by
Dempsey, Eiland said, "the situation had to be
reassessed". Netanyahu and Barak were now "exploring
what space is left to operate".

"... people who had worked under Netanyahu as well as
under Olmert and Ariel Sharon had found Netanyahu 'less
decisive' on Iran than either of those former prime
ministers."

That space had shrunk even further, moreover, because
the Republican convention in Tampa Bay from August 27
to 30 failed to make an American ultimatum to Iran, as
demanded by Netanyahu, a central theme of the
convention. The only major foreign policy figure to
speak at the convention was Condoleezza Rice, who had
been reviled by the neoconservative allies of Israel
for favouring diplomatic engagement with Iran.

Obama and other senior US officials had clearly decided
it was time to cut off Netanyahu's ham-handed effort at
pressure on US policy at the knees. In an interview
with Bloomberg Radio on September 9 Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton declared, "We're not setting
deadlines". And when Netanyahu pushed Obama in a phone
conversation on September 11 to adopt his "red line" -
a threat to attack Iran if it refused to comply with
demands by the P5+1 - Obama flatly rejected the demand,
according to American sources. Three days later,
Panetta told Foreign Policy magazine, "Red lines are
kind of political arguments that are used to put people
in a corner".

Asked by CBS 60 Minutes on September 24 whether he felt
any pressure from Netanyahu's efforts to change US
policy toward Iran, Obama replied that the only
pressure he felt was to "do what is right for the
American people, then added, "And I am going to block
out any noise that's out there".

And in an unmistakable signal by Obama that Netanyahu
should end his meddling in US politics and policy, the
White House even rebuffed a Netanyahu request for a
meeting during his upcoming US trip, as the Israelis
leaked to the news media.

Haaretz editor Aluf Benn has suggested that Netanyahu's
UN speech reflected not only the Obama administration's
rebuff but the realities of Israeli public opinion. He
wrote that the Prime Minister had tailored his speech
to polls showing that Israelis wanted the US to handle
the problem of Iran, not Israel. Benn summarised the
public's verdict: "Not now and not alone".

Netanyahu will no doubt campaign for re-election at
home by demonising Iran as an "existential threat" and
will continue to say that "all options are on the
table". But his effort to convince the world that he is
seriously contemplating an attack on Iran has run its
course. Netanyahu badly miscalculated his leverage over
US policy, and with Obama now widening his lead in the
polls, the extraordinary series of events in September
may indicate how US-Israeli relations on Iran will
develop in 2013 and beyond.

An Obama who is no longer intimidated by Netanyahu or
the Israeli lobby might finally be willing to make a
serious effort to find a diplomatic solution to the
conflict over Iran's nuclear programme for the first
time. Netanyahu's failure could provide the first real
break in the long chain of actions and reactions that
has led to the present contest of wills with Iran.

Gareth Porter is an independent investigative
journalist and historian specialising in US national
security policy and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize
for journalism.

The views expressed in this article are the author's
own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's
editorial policy.

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