Benny Morris: Why Iran should not be complacent about its nukes

Benny Morris is a reputable Israeli historian who has changed his views over time. Once pretty much anti-Israel, he changed his mind and is now sympathetic to his country about the war, though he still dislikes Netanytahu and settlements in the West Bank. Still, his views on the war have been quite sensible, and in this Quillette article he explains why, despite Israel’s promise not to attack Iran’s nuclear programs or oil and gas fields, Iran should not be complacent. Click the headline to read.

During the latest Iranian barrage of missiles, to which Israel hasn’t yet responded. several of them actually landed, defying Israel’s two anti-missile systems. (Fortunately, nobody was killed.)  In a generous response, the U.S. agreed—and some kind of deal must have been struck—to provide Israel with some Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptor batteries designed to take down incoming ballistic missiles. Along with the batteries came about 100 U.S. soldiers to set up and train the IDF how to use the interceptors.  According to Morris, this “gift” may explain why Israel hasn’t yet retaliated against Iran.  He also posits that the upcoming American elections explain the delay, and that makes sense, though I still dislike Biden trying to dictate Israel’s foreign policy to help keep Democrats in power:

But the upcoming elections themselves may be the major strategic cause of the delay in the Israeli retaliation. The Biden Administration has been loath to be sucked into another Middle Eastern war, given the bloody nose America received in the last two such wars—the “forever” wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—and Washington suspects that Israel is bent on drawing the United States, against its will, into a campaign to demolish the Iranian nuclear project, which Israel believes ultimately threatens its existence.

So what about Iran’s nukes? The U.S. has always said it won’t allow Iran to have a nuclear program, but not it appears to be protecting it. And yet the existence of Iranian nuclear weapons is a clear existential threat to Israel. Morris posits that this will all shake out after the election, whoever is elected, and then Israel can indeed go after the nukes:

Netanyahu certainly favours a Trump victory on 5 November, partly because Trump and the Republicans can be expected to be less critical of Israel’s war-making in Gaza and Lebanon, which has resulted in many civilian Arab casualties, which the left-wing of the Democratic Party regards—or pretends to regard—as unwarranted and inhumane. But Netanyahu also knows that, whoever wins on 5 November, Biden will remain in power and call the shots in American–Israeli relations until 20 January 2025, when he steps down from the presidency. During the interim, 5 November–20 January, Israel will still need an American veto in the UN Security Council, where the country could potentially veto anti-Israeli sanctions, and Israel will still need, perhaps more than ever, continued American munitions supplies,—principally tank and artillery shells and missiles of various types. (The year-long war in Gaza and along the Israel–Lebanon border has sorely depleted IDF stockpiles. Last week, the Israeli Defence Ministry reportedly instituted measures to curtail shell usage in the ongoing ground campaigns against Hamas and Hezbollah.)

Hence, if Israel launches its retaliatory operation against Iran before the US elections, Israel must take American sensibilities into account. Israel may adopt a two-step strategy: hit some non-oil and non-nuclear Iranian sites in the coming days and, after Iran retaliates as it has promised it would, hit the oil and nuclear sites after 5 November. After that date, the US will have a new president-elect, and the fear that Israel’s actions could hurt Kamala Harris’s chances of being elected will no longer pertain. Indeed, both Israel and Biden might view the two and a half months after 5 November as a golden window of opportunity in which to destroy the Iranian nuclear project at last—something that Israel appears to believe it is incapable of doing without major American assistance.

In other words, it is possible that while Israel has been putting up a show of delaying the retaliation against Iran for immediate, pragmatic reasons, in fact it is simply waiting until after 5 November, at which point it can go after whichever targets it believes are crucial to victory and to saving the country from eventual nuclear destruction by Iran, without fear of arousing Biden’s anger. Iran is said to be only a year or two away from producing nuclear bombs and has already accumulated large amounts of enriched uranium needed for nuclear weaponry. The thinking among some Israelis is that following 5 November, Biden  may be more amenable to joining in an Israeli assault on Iran’s critical facilities and nuclear installations or at least might condone such an attack.

In the meantime, Iran has become weaker because of bad decisions, making it more vulnerable to attack and eroding its ability to respond:

. . . . For the past twenty years, Iran has attacked and subverted its enemies through the agile use of catspaws or proxies. It used Hezbollah operatives to strike at Jewish and Israeli targets in Israel and abroad; it used Yemeni Houthi rebels to hit Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates; and it employed Shi’ite militias to subvert Sunni governance and the American presence in Iraq. It probably also had a clandestine hand in arranging for the US defeat in Afghanistan. By using its proxies and by emitting continual bluster about its own prowess, Tehran’s leaders have prevented the victims of its terrorism and subversion from targeting Iran itself. It has always openly declared that its intention and goal is to destroy the Jewish state. But it has avoided supplying Israel with an excuse that would give it international legitimacy in striking at Iran directly. Instead, Iran has continued to defer the ultimate showdown with Israel, waiting for the day when it will have a nuclear arsenal that surpasses or at least equals Israel’s.

Over the years, Iran has subsidised Hezbollah to the tune of many billions of dollars and packed its arsenals with tens of thousands of rockets, some of them accurate and long-range, as a deterrent against a possible Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities—such an Israeli assault would be countered by massive rocketing of Tel Aviv. But since 8 October, and especially during the past month, Hezbollah’s power has been substantially downgraded by Israeli attacks on its leadership and rocket arsenal, and Iran has largely lost this deterrent against Israeli attack. Iran is probably rueing the fact that it—and Hezbollah, probably on its orders—failed to join Hamas’s assault on Israel on 7 October, and regretting having subsequently endorsed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s decision to mount a somewhat symbolic low-level rocketing of northern Israel in a show of solidarity with Hamas. The daily rocketing, together with the threat of a ground assault on Israel’s northern border settlements à la 7 October, certainly siphoned Israeli troops and air power away from Israel’s battle with Hamas. But it also resulted, in the end, in Israel’s savaging of Hezbollah, especially since the end of September.

In other words, Iran was using Hezbollah (as it used Hamas) as a proxy for destroying Israel.

Until last April that is, when it couldn’t help itself, and launched some 400 rockets, cruise missiles, and drones at Israel from Iranian soil in retaliation for the targeted Israeli assassination in Damascus of the IRGC general in charge of operations in Syria and Lebanon. And, on 1 October—perhaps encouraged by Israel’s absurdly weak response to the April attack—Iran did the same thing again, launching some 200 ballistic missiles at IAF and Mossad bases following the Israeli assassinations of yet another IRGC general, and of Hamas’s political head, Ismail Haniyeh, and Nasrallah himself. And now Iran, still bereft of nuclear weapons, and largely bereft of the Hezbollah deterrent, is facing retaliation from Israel and possibly from America.

In this scenario, Israel would indeed be able to bankrupt Iran by destroying its petroleum fields, or make it toothless by destroying its nuclear program.

But there are three problems. First, the U.S. has just told Israel it has to provide more humanitarian aid to northern Gaza (most of which will of course go to Hamas), or face a boycott of weapons from America. Second, Israel won’t be able to destroy Iran’s nuclear program without America’s help: including the use of long-range bombers and huge bunker-buster bombs. Finally, if Harris is elected—and that’s no longer as unlikely as it seemed—I strongly doubt that she’d approve U.S. aid or help for Israel in the two major types of attacks that would damage Iran. Indeed, even Biden may not okay that.  So I’m not sure that Morris’s ruminations will become reality. But what do I know—I’m a scientist, not a historian, politician, or diplomat.