Ally

by Michael B. Oren

  Why, Israelis asked, even if the IDF were preparing to strike, would our allies want to alert the Iranians? Why, if it sought to avoid war, would the White House allay the war fears that drove much of the world to cooperate with the sanctions?

  Over the course of 2011, the sanctions against Iran kept escalating. Most of the ratcheting up was performed by robust legislators such as Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Ted Deutch in the House, and in the Senate by Robert Menendez and Mark Kirk, who heroically persisted despite suffering a stroke. The sanctions targeted Iran’s oil industry and ability to do business internationally. The results exceeded even the most sanguine Israeli estimates. Iran’s oil exports fell by as much as 80 percent and the value of its national currency plummeted. Iranian businessmen were reduced to bartering for imported goods and a generation of young Iranians was rendered jobless. For the first time since 2009, the possibility arose that the Iranian people might again take to the streets and tear down the Islamic regime.

  The sanctions succeeded in harming Iran’s economy yet the administration resisted congressional attempts to expand them. One reason, officials told me, was America’s need to maintain a united front with the P5+1 and especially with the Russians and the Chinese, who balked at any additional twisting of Iran’s arm. But another explanation held that the president believed he could negotiate an agreement with the Iranians, and feared that further sanctions would drive them from the table. “We have a multi-vector approach,” the State Department averred, “a combination of pressure and talks.” A pattern recurred in which the White House pushed back on sanctions bills and then, once they passed, took credit for them. “When I came into office, Iran was united and the world was divided,” Obama boasted. “And now what we have is a united international community that is saying to Iran, you’ve got to change your ways.”

  Throughout this period, quietly, Israel embarked on a large-scale enhancement of its military capabilities. The cost reportedly ran into the billions. According to the Israeli press, the IDF maneuvered warplanes over Sardinia in early November 2011 and successfully tested a long-range missile. Purposely quoting Obama, Netanyahu reiterated that “Israel must be able to defend itself, by itself, against any threat.”

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  Of all the questions I confronted as ambassador, none was more fateful, more sensitive, and fraught than that of “will Obama act?” Whether publicly, in the media, or behind closed doors, I was constantly pressed to provide an answer. Formulating one required countless hours of careful listening to experts both inside and outside the administration, identifying trends, and piecing together a picture of Obama’s long-range policy. For every think-tank type who guaranteed me that the president would never send U.S. planes against Iran, senior officials promised me that he would. “Never underestimate this guy,” Vice President Biden, pulling me aside at a reception, rasped. “Push comes to shove, he will pull the trigger.”

  In fact, I learned that the White House was host to three schools of thought on Iran. The first held that the United States should support an Israeli attack that, carried out surgically by IDF tactical jets, would cause less collateral damage than a massive strike by U.S. strategic bombers. By contrast, the second school preferred an American strike, which, since the Israelis were anyway likely to drag the United States into a confrontation, would at least complete the job. But others predicted that the Iranians would retaliate for any aggression by blocking the Straits of Hormuz, passageway for a fifth of the world’s oil supply, and threatening those U.S. forces still stationed in the region. As Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Colin Kahl later wrote, “Any war with Iran would be a messy and extraordinarily violent affair, with significant casualties and consequences.” My former colleague at Georgetown, Kahl spoke for the third and most dominant school.

  And still my research continued. Foreign diplomatic sources informed me that, in spite of his stated rejection of any containment of an Iranian bomb, Obama would settle for capping Iran’s ability to make a bomb within one year—the so-called threshold capacity. Other analysts claimed the president regarded Iran as an ascendant and logical power—unlike the feckless, disunited Arabs and those troublemaking Israelis—that could assist in resolving other regional conflicts. I first heard this theory at Georgetown back in 2008, in conversations with think tankers and former State Department officials. They also believed that Iran’s radical Islam was merely an expression of interests and fears that the United States could, with sufficient goodwill, meet and allay.

  Such ideas initially struck me as absurd. After all, even irrational regimes such as Nazi Germany could take rational steps to reach fanatical goals. But Obama, himself, now began describing Iran’s behavior as “strategic” and “not impulsive.” The ayatollahs, he told Jeffrey Goldberg, “have their worldview, and they see their interests, and they respond to costs and benefits….[They] are not North Korea.” Suddenly, it seemed plausible that an America freed of its dependence on Middle Eastern oil and anxious to retreat from the region could view Iran as a dependable ally. The only hurdle remained that pesky nuclear program.

  Finally, after many months of attentiveness, I reached my conclusion. In the absence of a high-profile provocation—an attack on a U.S. aircraft carrier, for example—the United States would not use force against Iran. Rather, the administration would remain committed to diplomatically resolving the Iranian nuclear issue, even at the risk of reaching a deal unacceptable to Israel. And if Israel took matters into its own hands, the White House would keep its distance and offer to defend Israel only if it were counterstruck by a hundred thousand Hez bollah missiles.

  My hypotheses were harsh, especially in light of the nineteen thousand centrifuges now possessed by Iran and its rising stockpile of 20 percent–enriched uranium that could be quickly upgraded by those devices to the 90 percent level needed for nuclear weapons. Brushing aside the IAEA’s warnings about the military nature of Iran’s nuclear program, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proclaimed that “we will not budge an iota from the path we are committed to.” Supreme Leader Khamenei pledged that “the United States and its pawns, the Zionist regime…will be smashed from the inside”—that is, struck by further terror. That was the hair-trigger atmosphere in the first half of 2012, as Iran prepared to enter “the zone of immunity.”

  The term was Ehud Barak’s and it defined that situation in which Iran, having amassed a sufficient quantity of fissile material, moved its nuclear program underground. There, in a small room hidden inside a country half the size of Europe, the Iranians would pack a spherical nuclear device with fifty-five pounds of 90 percent–enriched uranium and prime it with a detonator and a “pusher” designed to maximize the blast. The process, once preventable by striking the Fordow and Natanz sites, would now be virtually impossible to stop. Neutralizing the “zone of immunity” would require carpet-bombing most of Iran.

  At this juncture, precisely, the positions of the United States and Israel could not have been more irreconcilable. Obama believed that bombing Iran would strengthen the regime, set back its nuclear facilities only a few years, and provide it with an excuse for weaponizing. Netanyahu, by contrast, held that that military action would discredit the ayatollahs, much as the Entebbe raid had helped bring down Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. The president reasoned that air strikes could not destroy Iran’s nuclear knowledge, while the prime minister countered that, without centrifuges, that know-how was useless—“a pilot without a plane can’t fly,” he said. The administration predicted that tightened sanctions would drive Iran away from the negotiating table, but the Israeli government insisted that sanctions, alone, would keep it there. Washington warned that war with Iran could ignite a regional firestorm. Jerusalem countered that inaction toward Iran would result in the nuclear armament of many Middle Eastern states and the undermining of global security. Iran, according to Obama, was a pragmatic player with addressable interests. For Netanyahu, Iran was irrational, messianic, and genocidal—“worse,” he said, �
��than fifty North Koreas.”

  Around these precipices I stepped, cautious to stress publicly that America and Israel were determined to deny nuclear weapons to Iran, even if we differed over how to achieve that goal. Off the record, I briefed reporters about the mounting need for a credible military threat against Iran, emphasizing that, paradoxically, the larger that threat the smaller the chances anybody would have to use it. I reminded them that Israel neutralized the nuclear reactor in Iraq and was blamed for the destruction of Syria’s site, but neither case resulted in war. In fact, I stressed, nobody knew for certain what would happen if Iran were attacked, only the results if it were not. Terrorists would get atomic arms, the entire Middle East would go nuclear, and the word nonproliferation would become meaningless.

  I spoke to the journalists on deep background—not for attribution—knowing that my remarks would nevertheless reach and displease the administration. The already-simmering controversy over Iran would soon boil over. While answering press queries on Iran’s zone of immunity, I began to question my own.

  Ducks and Bombs

  Exposure was indeed a concern on the bone-chilling dawn of Sunday, March 4, 2012, as I waited on the tarmac of Andrews Air Force Base. The prime minister would soon arrive for his annual AIPAC speech and his ninth meeting with the president. Media attention focused on both events, anticipating headlines about Iran. I braced myself for that breaking news as much as I did against the wind until Netanyahu’s plane finally touched down.

  “You’re not the first Israeli leader to face this situation,” I began, after bundling into his limousine. The purpose was to bolster him for what might be a tough conversation with Obama, and produced the handiest tool I knew: history. “In 1948, Ben-Gurion had to decide whether or not to declare the State and then be invaded by Arab armies. Those armies again surrounded Israel in 1967, and Eshkol had to decide whether or not to strike first. In both cases, the Americans urged them, ‘Don’t act now, give us more time for diplomacy.’ And both Ben-Gurion and Eshkol replied, ‘No, Israel’s existence is threatened and we must defend ourselves.’ ”

  Netanyahu nodded gravely. “Good precedents,” he said softly, almost absently, but he would cite them several times in his subsequent press interviews.

  The motorcade wound its way through Washington’s specially barricaded intersections, passed the camera-snapping tourists who thought they were photographing Obama. Delivering the prime minister and his entourage at Blair House, I left to hear the president’s speech at AIPAC. Before another record-topping crowd of pro-Israel activists, Obama reaffirmed his willingness to use force against Iran, while also underscoring his preference for diplomacy. “Already, there is too much loose talk of war,” he said to tepid applause. “Now is not the time for bluster.”

  These words seemed to presage a confrontational meeting at the White House the next day. Netanyahu presented Obama with a gift of the book of Esther—read on the Purim holiday celebrated that week—about Jewish survival from a Persian existential threat. And yet the discussion dealt with virtually all the outstanding Middle Eastern issues except Iran. At the traditional luncheon, the Israeli team talked about the need for greater American support for the moderate Syrian opposition and for less backing for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. Obama restated his request for an Israeli apology to Turkey over the 2010 flotilla incident. “He’s not living in the sixteenth century,” Obama said of Turkey’s strongman. “We could do much worse than have a bunch of Erdoğans in the Middle East.”

  Later, the two leaders left for their one-on-one session in the Oval Office, where they undoubtedly tackled the nuclear issue. Still, they emerged three hours later virtually beaming. Obama told reporters that the United States will “always have Israel’s back,” and Netanyahu declared that “America accepts and understands Israel’s position on Iran.”

  No snubs, no lectures—the press remained disappointed until the following night, when Netanyahu delivered his AIPAC speech. The prime minister opened by rebuking those who claimed that the Iranian nuclear program, with its fortified facilities, its highly enriched uranium, and intercontinental missiles, was peaceful. “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, then what is it?” he rhetorically asked. “That’s right, it’s a duck. But this is a nuclear duck.” The audience laughed and applauded, but then went silent when Netanyahu quoted from a declassified U.S. document that I had given him. It described how, in 1944, American Jewish leaders beseeched the Roosevelt administration to bomb the rail lines to Auschwitz. The answer was “no.” Such an operation, the War Department explained, would be “of doubtful efficacy…and might even provoke more vindictive action by the Germans.” The parallels with Iran were patent.

  The “nuclear duck” passage went digitally viral, spliced in with snippets of an affronted Daffy Duck huffing, “I’ve never been more inthulted in my life!” Gary Ginsberg, the Time Warner executive who again helped fine-tune the speech, made me a T-shirt emblazoned with a madcap duck bronco-riding a nuclear warhead that evoked the classic film Dr. Strangelove. But the reference to Auschwitz had darker reverberations. The brilliant scholar Robert Satloff, head of the prestigious Washington Institute for Near East Policy, called me, exasperated. “Do you realize what your boss just did?” Rob chided me. “He made Obama into Roosevelt.”

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  The comparison would have been less problematic if Obama had reciprocally viewed Netanyahu as Churchill. But, rather than acting like historic allies, the United States and Israel lashed out at each other like adversaries. Ehud Barak delayed the holding of the largest-ever U.S.-Israel military maneuvers. Pentagon sources told Jeffrey Goldberg that Barak’s decision was designed to signal American approval for an attack. Refuting this claim, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Martin Dempsey stated that the United States would not be “complicit” in any Israeli strike against Iranian facilities, which action, he estimated, would only set them back a few years. I did my best to explain to the press that the postponement of the joint exercise was for technical, not political, reasons. And a few years was a long time in the Middle East, I added, citing the changes wrought in the single year since the Arab Spring. “Diplomacy hasn’t succeeded,” I told Bloomberg News. “We’ve come to a very critical juncture where important decisions do have to be made.”

  Decisions were indeed made by the P5+1, which, on April 16, resumed negotiations with Iran. Convening first in Istanbul and then in Moscow, the delegates attempted to work out an arrangement based on the reduction of Iran’s 20 percent–enriched stockpile. “Iran’s window to seek and obtain a peaceful resolution will not remain open forever,” the administration routinely declared. The window remained ajar well into June, but admitted no progress.

  Meanwhile, Iran’s disposition hardened. Tehran stated flatly that it would never cease enrichment, never close the subterranean Fordow facility, and never allow international inspectors into the Parchin military site, suspected of conducting nuclear tests. Iran developed new nuclear fuel rods and test-fired missiles into the Persian Gulf. Challenging Obama’s claim that Iran was more isolated than ever, Ahmadinejad convened representatives of the 120 Non-Aligned Movement nations, together with UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, who voted unanimously in favor of Iran’s right to enrich uranium. “With the force of God behind it,” the Iranian president prayed, “we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionism.”

  Iran’s rhetoric against Israel and the Jews also intensified. Ahmadinejad compared the Jewish State to a mosquito and a cancerous tumor—“an insult to humanity”—and his vice president, Mohammed-Reza Rahimi, blamed the Talmud for the global drug trade. Addressing a defense conference in Tehran, military chief Major General Hassan Firouzabadi proclaimed that “the Iranian nation is standing for its cause and that is the full annihilation of Israel.” A report commissioned by Supreme Leader Khamenei called for launching an allout war against Israel within two years, using long-range Iranian missiles capable, the paper
claimed, “of destroying Israel in less than nine minutes.”

  These vicious Iranian words soon translated into murderous action. Starting in February 2012, when an al-Quds Force operative blew off his own legs while trying to bomb an Israeli diplomatic target, Iran masterminded a series of terrorist attacks worldwide. Mossad and foreign intelligence networks subsequently managed to thwart similar strikes against Israelis in Kenya, South Africa, Cyprus, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. But not all of Iran’s aggression could be stopped. A car bomb wounded the wife of Israel’s military attaché in New Delhi. Then, on July 18—exactly eighteen years after Iranian explosives killed eighty-five people at a Jewish center in Buenos Aires—Hezbollah terrorists struck a bus carrying Israeli tourists in Burgas airport in Bulgaria. A bomb planted in the luggage compartment blew burning bodies out of the bus, killing seven and wounding thirty-three.

  If intended to deter Netanyahu, Iran’s genocidal threats and terror campaign only intensified his fury. Characteristically quoting Churchill, he warned of the “slumber of democracies” in the face of looming dangers. He took issue with the P5+1 talks, accusing them of giving Iran a “freebie,” and enabling the centrifuges to keep spinning. He demanded an end to all enrichment by Iran, the removal of its entire stockpile, and the complete dismantling of Fordow. On Canadian television, the prime minister said, “Iran will not stop unless it sees clear determination by the democratic countries of the world and a clear red line.”