Ally

by Michael B. Oren

  Yet, among the democracies, only Israel appeared poised to react to that red line’s crossing. Throughout July and August, the press highlighted IDF preparations. Some of these reports even claimed that Israeli jets were stationed secretly in Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia. Defense Secretary Panetta and General Dempsey both came to Israel—rushed might be the better word—to soothe and embrace us. Panetta’s predecessor, Robert Gates, warned that “an American or Israeli military strike on Iran could…prove catastrophic, haunting us for generations.” California senator Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, complained to me about the reported practice jump of three hundred Israeli paratroopers. “It’s part of your buildup,” she charged. “I assure you, Madame Chairman, Israel’s airborne are not about to take Tehran,” I calmly replied. But, inside, my trepidation mounted.

  For months I had listened to Ehud Barak warn that history will brutally judge us—Israelis and Americans both—for estimating that one or two years remained before Iran broke out to nuclear militarization when, in fact, the dash had already occurred. And once completed, the heavy-water facility at Arak would require less than a year to produce a plutonium bomb. Repeatedly, I heard Israeli national security advisor Yaakov Amidror describe the process as “It’s too early, too early,” and then, with a clap of his hands, shout, “Oops, it’s too late!” Like North Korea, Iran would surprise the allies by wakening them one day with the news of a successfully tested nuclear device.

  In terms of the Iranian program’s pace, even weather-wise the summer of 2012 indeed seemed the last opportunity to attack. Yet the very thought of such an operation left me deeply conflicted. On the one hand, I unstintingly believed that Israel had the right and the duty to defend itself—that, by eschewing further diplomacy and deflecting existential threats, Ben-Gurion in 1948 and Eshkol in 1967 had both acted prudently and morally. I knew that maintaining our long-term deterrence power, even more than our daily security needs, was a paramount Israeli interest. On the other hand, though, there was the possible cost, even to my own family. Lia, our daughter, was getting married in Jerusalem that summer and already my relatives were phoning me frantically, asking, “Is it safe to come? We know you know.” I did not, in fact, know, and assuming an almost unbearable onus of responsibility assured them that, yes, everything would be fine.

  That was more than I could say about the U.S.-Israel alliance. By the summer, the two countries were openly quarreling about Iran. At a mid-August meeting in Caesarea with House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Rogers, Netanyahu expressed exasperation with Obama’s policy. “There is no definition of when the knife cuts into the American flesh,” he complained. “American policy now is not to stop Iran but to stop Israel.” He urged the United States to define what it saw as Iran’s “threshold capacity,” and to make clear at which point it would act. “For the first time since Nagasaki and Hiroshima, you can get Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Tel Aviv.”

  I was present at the talk along with Dan Shapiro, who performed his ambassadorial duty by defending the president. The Israeli press turned this into an open altercation with Netanyahu, which I emphatically denied. But I could not gainsay Rogers, a Republican and burly former FBI agent, who later described an “agitated” and “elevated” discussion. “Bibi’s at his wit’s end…with the administration,” he told Detroit radio back home. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Even less refutable was Secretary of State Clinton’s September 9 statement to Bloomberg. “The sanctions…are…by far the best approach to take at this time,” she said. “We’re not setting deadlines.” The remark appeared directed at Netanyahu’s “red line” demand, and the prime minister shot back by accusing the White House of giving Iran precisely what it wanted—time to enrich while endlessly negotiating. “Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.”

  The confrontation reminded me of the earlier spats over the peace process. Back then, I advocated for a “rope-a-dope” approach, involving absorbing the administration’s criticism. My friend David Rothkopf once quipped to me, “The administration gets tough with Israel for being impolite on settlements, and shows flexibility with Iran for building nuclear weapons,” and I thought: if only we could show flexibility on the peace process, we could get tougher on Iran. I also doubted the efficacy of responding publicly to every administration statement on Iran, particularly if the source was not Obama. Quietly, I agreed with Foreign Minister Liberman, who preferred to keep our differences with America confidential and who, quoting from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, said, “When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.” But Netanyahu obviously concluded otherwise. Israel, he felt, had to maintain the pressure on foreign decision makers—Americans included—and the impression of our readiness to act.

  That policy, though, had two unanticipated consequences. The first, in the United States, related to the approaching 2012 presidential elections and allegations that Netanyahu’s outspokenness on Iran was intended to weaken Obama and bolster his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney. The New York Times claimed that Netanyahu had personally briefed Romney on the Iranian issue and consulted with him about ratcheting up sanctions. The report was untrue: Netanyahu had made a short courtesy call to Romney, as well as to the other Republican candidates, after his last meeting with Obama. Iran was never discussed. Yet the accusation stuck and amplified with each tit-for-tat on the nuclear issue. “Understand, what Americans see through the lens of elections, Israelis see through the prism of an existential threat,” I tried to explain to journalists—in vain, for the debate only escalated. “Netanyahu would be wrong to root for Romney,” Jeffrey Goldberg opined. “Barack Obama is the one who’s more likely to confront Iran militarily, should sanctions and negotiations fail.” To which Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal retorted, “We will not have another war in the Middle East…if President Romney orders Iran’s nuclear sites bombed to smithereens.”

  My efforts to keep the Iran issue clear of the elections brought me to the White House office of Deputy National Security Advisor—and close Obama counsel—Denis McDonough. “Morning, everyone,” he said pepping up his sleep-deprived staff. “What are we doing for America today?” Rather than remaining in the air-conditioned interior, he took me for a stroll across the South Lawn, where the temperature hovered above a hundred. Yet the svelte and energetic McDonough scarcely sweated. After we had mutually inquired about our children, he refreshingly turned to me and said, “Let’s face it, we don’t give a shit about one another’s kids. The bottom line is that Bibi and the president are practical men—nothing’s personal here—and nobody should delude himself that the president won’t act.” Then, employing a metaphor that only an ex-American would understand, McDonough assured me that “America wants to move the ball steadily up the field, run down the clock, and make a touchdown.”

  I reported the gist of McDonough’s words to Jerusalem—the president expected the prime minister to trust him on Iran—but they were lost in a rancorous din. The second unintended result of Netanyahu’s pronouncements on the nuclear issue was to spark a public shouting match over the question of an Israeli preemptive strike. This, opponents of the operation argued, would ignite a desperate war with Iran and its regional allies—Syria and Hezbollah—and isolate Israel internationally. Relations with America would be perilously and perhaps permanently strained. For that exorbitant price, Israel would gain only a few years’ delay in Iran’s nuclear activities. In the long run, critics predicted, military action was liable to accelerate the program.

  Leading the opposition was Meir Dagan, the former Mossad chief, who accused Netanyahu and Barak of “adventurism” and “shallowness” in dealing with Israel’s security, and warned of another Yom Kippur War–like catastrophe. “Attacking Iran is the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard,” he said. The press quoted the widely respected former IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashken
azi deeming any Israeli action at this time a “strategic mistake.” Yuval Diskin, the past head of Israel’s Internal Security Service—the renowned Shin Bet—denounced both the prime minister and defense minister as “messianic.”

  Among the most strident of these voices was that of another esteemed former IDF chief—himself born in Tehran—Shaul Mofaz. “Netanyahu is sowing panic in the public in order to divert its attention from social issues,” he warned. Just after landing in Israel for consultations in August, I received instructions to appear on a televised panel that night and offer a counterweight to Mofaz. Only a few months earlier, while he briefly brought his Kadima Party into the coalition, I hosted Mofaz in Washington and brought him to meet the president. Now, stopping at a restaurant en route to the studio and changing into a suit, I prepared to debate him on national TV. “Obama has recognized Israel’s right, as a sovereign country, to defend itself,” I began, sluggish with jet lag. But Mofaz snapped, “Bibi is jeopardizing the lives of our children!” The other panelists, agreeing, piled on.

  The list of security figures opposing Netanyahu lengthened and then peaked with the addition of Ehud Barak. Speaking to the press on September 8, the defense minister appeared to pull back from his previous combativeness on Iran. “In spite of…maintaining Israel’s right to act independently, we have to remember the importance of our partnership with the U.S. and we should do everything possible not to harm it.” A few days later, Barak flew to Chicago—reportedly without Netanyahu’s knowledge—for a confidential conversation in the mayor’s office with Rahm Emanuel. Cynical commentators in the Israeli press speculated that Barak, whose poll numbers indicated he would not be reelected, no longer felt compelled to support Netanyahu. All observers concurred that, when it came to Iran, the prime minister now stood virtually alone.

  —

  I joined him in the flagstone courtyard of the Prime Minister’s Residence in the last week of September. Also present was chief advisor Ron Dermer and Time Warner’s Gary Ginsberg, who had quietly done more for Israel than might ever be known. Together, we sat to draft Netanyahu’s crucial UN General Assembly speech. I knew the subject would once again be Iran, but was unprepared for the angle.

  “I’m going to draw a red line around twenty percent enrichment,” Netanyahu explained. “Right now the Iranians have about 180 kilograms and in a matter of a few months, at most, they can expand that to the 250 kilograms they need for a nuclear arsenal. Think of the uranium like gunpowder. You pack it into a bomb and light the fuse. But if you can’t fill the bomb all the way, it won’t go off. At the point when the Iranians have enough twenty percent uranium to fill the bomb nearly to the top, that’s where I’ll draw the red line.”

  We looked at him quizzically. “Let me show you,” he said. A skilled draftsman from his MIT architecture days, Netanyahu took a piece of paper and a felt-tipped pen and drew a cannonball freestyle. He even added a little fuse. “Here,” he indicated and, exchanging the black pen for a red one, drew a line at 90 percent of the shell.

  “Why don’t you show the drawing during your speech?” Gary suggested, but Netanyahu merely smiled.

  “They’ll compare it to Yosemite Sam,” he predicted and proceeded to draw a decent likeness of the mustachioed, gun-toting Looney Tunes character.

  “No, Mr. Prime Minister,” I respectfully replied. “They’ll compare it to Wile E. Coyote.”

  —

  On Thursday, September 27, Netanyahu stood at the marbled jade podium of the UN General Assembly and delivered his toughest speech yet on Iran. He dismissed the containment policy—“For the ayatollahs, mutually assured destruction is not a deterrent, it’s an inducement”—and denied that diplomacy had achieved any slowdown in Iran’s nuclearization. “Red lines don’t lead to war, red lines prevent war,” he posited. “Faced with a clear red line, Iran will back down.” Then, unfolding a chart, he showed the bomb. Prepared by a graphic artist rather than drawn by the prime minister, the bomb indeed looked cartoonish, complete with a sparkling fuse. Yet nobody in the packed hall as much as giggled as Netanyahu produced an extra-thick red pen and drew his 90 percent line.

  Later, in the VIP suite, Netanyahu received a call from Obama. An audibly relieved president thanked him for the speech, which he deemed courageous and statesmanlike. The two leaders chatted about other subjects as well, all amiably, again referring to each other as “Barack” and “Bibi” and “my friend.” Clearly Obama understood as we did that the red line speech marked not only the upper limit of Iranian enrichment, but the peak of Israel’s threatened attack on Iran. This would now not take place, as so many feared, before the U.S. elections.

  Outside, the media zoomed in on Netanyahu’s bomb sketch. Opinions were divided over whether it represented an ingenious attention-grabbing device or a slick PR trick, much like the “nuclear duck.” True to predictions, the prime minister was not likened to the gun-slinging Yosemite Sam, but to Wile E. Coyote, haplessly holding a fizzling bomb while, with a triumphant “beep beep,” an Iranian Road Runner escaped.

  A vastly more serious debate centered over whether the red-line concept could succeed. Several analysts warned that Iran could now expand its entire program right up to the line and then, in a single movement, cross it to create not one but twenty bombs. But another school noted that Iran’s production of 20 percent–enriched uranium ceased well short of the 250 kilogram mark, and that the red line actually worked. Either way, the reality remained that Iran continued to operate thousands of centrifuges, thicken its stockpiles, and construct long-range missiles. Iran still imperiled Israel’s existence.

  And I was left ambivalent. Part of me agreed with my friend Ari Shavit, who, in his bestselling book My Promised Land, lamented Israel’s failure “to mobilize all of its powers to contend properly with its most dramatic challenge.” Part of me worried about how our restraint in the face of Iranian dangers might be interpreted by other hostile forces. But some part of me experienced relief. Instead of enduring a major crisis, Israel enjoyed one of its quietest summers ever. Lia and her adoring betrothed, Yair, married under a sun-gilded chuppa overlooking the Jerusalem hills. President Peres again honored us with his presence. Together, my American and Israeli families danced ecstatically until dawn.

  Eased as an Israeli father, I was also becalmed as Israel’s ambassador. More than a half century before, I recalled, during the Suez Crisis, the IDF attacked Egypt only a few days before the U.S. elections. An enraged President Eisenhower condemned and nearly sanctioned Israel. President Obama might have reacted with similar fury had Israel preempted Iran before November 2.

  Commentators later posited several explanations for Israel’s forbearance. Some suggested that the loud debate within Israel put the Iranians on high alert and eliminated the advantage of surprise. Others claimed that analysts close to the prime minister predicted a Republican victory, which, they held, would provide for closer U.S.-Israeli cooperation on Iran. And then there were those who insisted that Netanyahu lacked the courage to act and that he was all along bluffing. I was content to say the president had asked for “time and space” to deal with Iran diplomatically, and ally-like, the prime minister had consented.

  —

  A month later, I received an inquiry from The New York Times’s Mark Landler, one of the finest journalists I knew. Reports were circulating of secret face-to-face talks between American and Iranian representatives, Landler informed me, and asked for Israel’s reaction. A quick dial to the Prime Minister’s Office procured the answer: Israel welcomed any steps to resolve the Iranian nuclear threat diplomatically. I duly passed this on to Landler, but, in midsentence, my phone indicated another incoming call from Jerusalem. Putting Landler on hold, I heard a completely different response. Getting back to the understandably irked correspondent, I dictated Israel’s new official line. Landler wrote:

  “Israel’s ambassador to the United States…said the administration had not informed Israel, and that the Israeli government fear
ed Iran would use new talks to ‘advance their nuclear weapons program….We do not think Iran should be rewarded with direct talks, rather that sanctions and all other possible pressures on Iran must be increased.’ ”

  This back-and-forth between Landler and Jerusalem would have been awkward enough if conducted in the Aquarium, behind my desk. Unfortunately, the conversation took place on the water, through the cellphone that I always kept, waterproofed and secured, in my single scull. I was rowing on the Potomac, in the bay between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial, directly in the path of yachts and ferries. One hand held the phone and the other intensely clasped my oars to keep the boat from capsizing. I explained Netanyahu’s anxiety over U.S.-Iranian negotiations that were liable to result in a dangerous deal for Israel. I fought to sound calm, all the while watching the wakes—both real and metaphoric—churn closer.

  How You Doin’, Shimon?

  Whenever someone asked me, “Are you enjoying your job?” I immediately thought of the Iranian issue, media criticism of Israel, and the American Jewish maze, and laughed. Then, after regaining my composure, I spoke about the privilege of serving my country and upholding the world’s most precious alliance. “And, yes,” I admitted, “I do sometimes have fun. I get to hang out with Shimon Peres.”

  In fact, I got to hang out with not one Shimon Peres but three. First, there was the political Peres, the Labor Party apparatchik who in the 1970s championed some of the most radical settlers, and then, starting in the early 1990s, spearheaded the peace process. This was the Peres rejected by the majority of Israelis, who associated him with backstabbing intrigues and who consistently denied him the premiership. I, too, resented this Peres, especially during the Second Intifada, when, with Israeli buses blowing up, he persisted in downplaying Arafat’s role in terror.

  But then there was the second Peres, the historical Peres. The Peres who had made aliya alone, milked cows, and tended sheep before becoming Ben-Gurion’s right-hand defense man during the War of Independence and Israel’s tenuous first decade. This was the Peres who championed the Dimona nuclear reactor, who put the world’s greatest power into the hands of the world’s most vulnerable people.