Tag Archive for: Israel

Signs of stability and potential conflict amid revived Iran nuclear talks

As the year draws to a close, the Persian Gulf region as a critical component of the wider Middle East remains in the throes of certain shifts towards relative stability and potential conflict. Relations between the northern and southern zones of the Gulf appear to be improving. Yet tensions between Iran and Israel and between the US and Iran are on the rise. Whether they develop into a confrontation will depend on the outcome of the Vienna negotiations to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA).

The US’s Afghanistan fiasco has pleased Iran but alarmed its Arab neighbours. While uncomfortable with the return to power of the Pakistan-backed, extremist Sunni Islamic Taliban, the leadership of the predominantly Shia Islamic Iran could not but view the US defeat as a serious blow to America’s ‘hegemonic’ presence in its neighbourhood. It has emboldened the new, hardline President Ebrahim Raisi to drive a tougher bargain in the Vienna negotiations.

This development, plus the indirect US–Iran talks to rejuvenate the JCPOA, has led Washington’s regional Arab allies to wonder about America’s role as a security provider and Israel to worry about any possible breakthrough in Vienna that could benefit its arch foe. Israel abhors Iran’s nuclear program and defence capability as well as its regional influence from Iraq and Syria to Lebanon and Yemen. Like US President Joe Biden’s administration, the Saudi leadership and some of its partners in the Gulf Cooperation Council share Israel’s concerns but view diplomacy as the best option for the time being.

Concurrently, there are fresh efforts afoot to improve relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia and its allies in the GCC, the United Arab Emirates in particular. Mediated by the Iraqi government, over which Tehran’s influence stands high, a Saudi–Iran dialogue has resumed for possible restoration of ties, which Riyadh severed in January 2016, accusing Tehran of predatory behaviour in the region. This comes against the backdrop where neither Saudi pressure nor that of former US president Donald Trump—who withdrew the US from the JCPOA in May 2018, imposed severe sanctions on Iran and vigorously pursued an anti-Iran Arab–Israeli front—paid off. Tehran managed to weather the pressure by strengthening its relations with Russia and China and through other counter-containment measures. Riyadh and Tehran now seem to be prone to reaching a modus vivendi as an alternative to the hostility that has not advantaged either side.

The same goes for Saudi Arabia’s close GCC partner and growing economic competitor, the UAE. Despite its strategic ties with the US, as in the case of Saudi Arabia, and normalisation of relations with Israel since last year, Abu Dhabi has lately sought to assure Tehran of friendly relations. Its national security adviser’s recent visit to Tehran underpinned this development. In the process, the UAE’s position as Iran’s leading trading partner has been instrumental.

Concurrently, Saudi–UAE relations with Turkey, which is a close ally of Qatar and has good neighbourly relations with Iran despite their differences in Syria, seem to be an upward trend. All parties have lately made friendly overtures, despite the killing of the Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, by Saudi agents in October 2018, remaining a point of contention in Ankara’s dealings with Riyadh.

However, these hopeful signs are balanced by two countering developments. One is the rising tension between Iran and Israel. Israel is opposed to revival of the JCPOA on the grounds that the agreement in any form wouldn’t necessarily halt Iran’s efforts to become a military nuclear power, despite Tehran’s repeated denial. It wants to preserve its status as the only actor with nuclear weapons in the Middle East. The new, right-wing Israeli prime minister, Neftali Bennet, like his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, has warned the Biden administration that, if necessary, Israel will act alone to destroy Iranian nuclear capability.

The other is that Israel’s burgeoning strategic ties with the UAE and Bahrain (both backed by Saudi Arabia) attest that these Arab states still regard Iran as the main threat. In confirming this threat, de facto Saudi ruler Mohammad bin Salman unprecedentedly declared at the mid-December GCC summit that an attack on one of the organisation’s members was an attack on all.

Meanwhile, Israel and the GCC states—minus Qatar, which has good working relations with Iran and strategic ties with Turkey—are very watchful of the outcome of the Vienna negotiations. The JCPOA’s future hangs in the balance.

The Raisi administration has hardened its position compared to that led by moderate and anti-extremist Hassan Rouhani. In return for Iran’s full compliance with the agreement, it has demanded that all US nuclear-related and non-nuclear-related sanctions be lifted, US$10 billion in frozen Iranian assets be released and a guarantee be given that subsequent US administrations won’t violate the agreement as Trump did.

The US has insisted on mutual compliance based on America lifting only the nuclear-related sanctions (not the sanctions related to human rights and terrorism) stage by stage as Tehran demonstrates its compliance. Washington and its European allies and signatories to the JCPOA—the UK, France and Germany—have claimed that Tehran is basically playing for time to enable it to go beyond its current level of 60% uranium enrichment (way above the 3.7% permitted under the JCPOA) to more than 90% for weapons production.

At the same time, Biden and Raisi are under pressure to reach a deal for different reasons. Biden wants to reduce America’s preoccupation with Iran in favour of focusing on more pressing domestic issues and competition with China and Russia. He doesn’t want to get the US involved in another Middle East conflict. Raisi knows that while the Iranian state has survived the sanctions, Iranian society has paid a heavy price for it. It would be remiss of him to overlook either this issue and or the shrinking popular base of the Islamic regime. He is also urged by Iran’s two powerful supporters and signatories to the JCPOA, Russia and China, to reach a deal.

The question of whether a revised JCPOA deal eventuates will be crucial to the prospects of peace and conflict in the Middle East. If the Vienna talks fail, Washington has said that all other options, including military action, are on the table. Israel couldn’t be more pleased with such an outcome. The prevailing situation is pregnant with both hopeful signs and potential for conflict in the Gulf. If it ends up in a conflict, it would be very costly not only for Iran but also for the entire region. Tehran has the capability to turn a military assault on it into a regional inferno.

Tolerating a nuclear Iran?

In 1977, Israel’s deputy prime minister, Yigael Yadin, asked Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat, who was on his historic trip to Jerusalem, why the Egyptian army had not proceeded to the Sinai passes during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. ‘You have nuclear arms, haven’t you heard,’ was Sadat’s reply.

Of course, Israel’s nuclear capabilities were the stuff of rumour. To this day, Israel has never officially confirmed the existence of a nuclear program. Yet Israel’s worst-kept secret has long shaped the region’s politics, including by deterring its enemies. But can it deter Iran?

In 1967, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, and Shimon Peres, who would later serve as both prime minister and president, argued for Israel to test a primitive nuclear device, in order to deter an Egyptian attack. At the time, Israel was virtually on its own in a hostile neighbourhood. France—which had been its main arms supplier—had recently deserted it, and Israel had not yet achieved its current strategic intimacy with the United States. Ben-Gurion’s position reflected his view that Israel was an intrinsically fragile entity surrounded by mortal enemies with which war was inadvisable absent the backing of a major foreign power.

Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon and Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin—all principled opponents of nuclearisation in the Middle East—recognised the country’s precarious position but resisted the temptation to demonstrate a nuclear capability. When, during the dark days of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Defence Minister Moshe Dayan revived the proposal, Israel’s leaders again resisted the temptation to flaunt—let alone deploy—nuclear weapons.

Nearly half a century later, Israel has fewer enemies in the region, having made peace with several of its neighbours. But it has gained a powerful new one in Iran, since that country’s 1979 Islamic revolution. And some are arguing that in order to deter Iran from pursuing its nuclear program, Israel should abandon its policy of ‘nuclear opacity’.

But if Israel announces its capabilities and Iran persists in its nuclear drive anyway, would Israel really mount a nuclear response against what is clearly a strategic challenge but certainly not an existential threat? Moreover, Israel’s acknowledgement of its nuclear arsenal might lend legitimacy to Iran’s own quest for nuclear weapons and encourage other regional powers, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, to follow suit.

The risks are apocalyptic. The kind of mutual deterrence that existed during the Cold War, or even today in the binary India–Pakistan conflict, would not work in the Middle East, a dysfunctional region where non-state actors and unstable regimes abound.

Iran has been dogged in its nuclear efforts. It has endured years of crippling economic sanctions, ultra-sophisticated Israeli cyber warfare against its strategic infrastructure, assassinations of its nuclear scientists, and attacks on its military targets across the Middle East.

Yet Iran is now closer than ever to mastering the full nuclear fuel cycle. It has also managed to maintain its proxy armies throughout the Middle East, and to extend its strategic influence from Yemen through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon.

Israel’s ‘Begin doctrine’—a counter-proliferation policy focused on using pre-emptive strikes to halt potential enemies’ development of weapons of mass destruction—will not stop Iran. A decade ago, Israel spent billions of dollars on preparations for a massive strike on Iran’s nuclear installations. But that strike never materialised.

Israeli air strikes did destroy Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 and a similar installation in Syria in 2007. But those were surgical operations. Using air strikes to destroy Iran’s well-dispersed, well-camouflaged and well-protected nuclear installations is unrealistic, and the effort would almost certainly lead to a major war.

While Israel’s military capabilities are unmatched by any other Middle Eastern power, it would still face serious threats. Iran would certainly respond to an attack on its nuclear installations by retaliating against Israeli targets, and perhaps against the countries that allowed Israel to use their airspace to reach Iran.

Meanwhile, Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, would begin to deploy its 150,000 missiles and rockets, which can reach every corner of Israel. Israel’s vulnerable home front, and possibly some of its vital infrastructure, would be hit hard before its air force neutralised Hezbollah—likely razing Lebanon in the process.

An international agreement is probably Israel’s—and the world’s—best hope for preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power. But while that is precisely what negotiators are currently attempting to achieve in Vienna, Iran has taken a tough bargaining position.

That is not entirely unjustified. After all, it was the United States (with Israel’s complicity) that withdrew unilaterally from the 2015 nuclear agreement in 2018, even though Iran had not violated its obligations. And Europe failed to keep its promise to help Iran bypass the sanctions the US subsequently reimposed. Furthermore, Iran’s interlocutors in Vienna—the countries that are preaching against proliferation—are mostly nuclear powers themselves.

This perceived hypocrisy likely reinforces Iranian leaders’ belief that the real danger lies in not developing nuclear weapons. If Ukraine had not surrendered its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal (then the world’s third largest) in 1994, in exchange for American assurances that Russia would respect its sovereignty, it might still have Crimea, and it might not be watching with concern as Russian troops mass on its border. Likewise, a nuclear-armed Iraq would not have been attacked by the US and its allies in 2003. North Korea’s nuclear capabilities have so far kept it immune from such an attack.

With this in mind, Iran’s leaders might be thinking like Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was 50 years ago. Pakistanis, Bhutto declared, would ‘eat grass, even go hungry’ if that is what it took to develop their own nuclear bomb.

The talks in Vienna can still lead to an agreement. But, with Iran’s leaders largely convinced that a nuclear weapon is their best protection, the only durable way to prevent Iran from mastering the enrichment cycle and, ultimately, building an operational nuclear weapon probably lies in regime change. This was the position of key intelligence authorities in Israel a generation ago, when Iran’s nuclear program was still in its infancy. Given how resilient the Islamic Republic has proven to be, it seems that the world may well eventually have to tolerate an Iranian nuclear bomb, just as it has learned to live with the Indian and Pakistani arsenals.

Terrorism and China in focus at Be’er Sheva Dialogue

Israel and Australia face rapidly changing security environments with growing militarisation in their regions. Both are targets for terrorist attacks and are trying to meet the challenges of a more belligerent China.

Against this reality, delegations from Australia and Israel met online in November for the seventh annual Be’er Sheva Dialogue to discuss how the two nations can work together on areas of common strategic interest.

The dialogue is a partnership between ASPI and the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Reichman University and brings together officials, parliamentarians and analysts.

There was considerable agreement on the view that China was an increasingly intrusive and aggressive power in both the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East, but the perspectives on this from Israel and Australia were fundamentally different.

For Australian policymakers, the world was viewed through the prisms of Chinese power and the partnerships that help manage it, such as AUKUS, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and a string of other multilateral relationships.

For Israel, Iran is the wolf nearest the sled and the state that poses an existential risk through its continued nuclear-weapon ambitions and its cultivation, support and direction of violent proxy actors, notably Hamas and Hezbollah. They share the Iranian regime’s desire to obliterate the state of Israel.

How Beijing relates to Iran, Israel and other important Middle Eastern states is what makes China important to Israel. And how the engagement of the United States and of European powers with Iran and China either empowers or contains Iranian aggression is key here.

With these different prisms, there’s considerable opportunity for Australians and Israelis to implement policies and strategies that work for each nation and for the two nations collectively. Already, Israel has acted to stop sharing military technology with Beijing because of the now clear trajectory of the policies of the US and other security partners on China under Xi Jinping.

But the intermingled nature of the China challenge, with its strategic, technological and economic issues, means that things just aren’t that simple, for either Australia or Israel.

Beijing sees opportunities to expand its presence in the Middle East as the US confronts China more systemically in the Indo-Pacific. This illustrates the abiding dilemma of the US when it seeks to reprioritise and refocus geographically because it raises the prospects of creating pressure points to be used against it elsewhere. That kind of dilemma will become more familiar to China as it seeks more power and influence beyond its immediate region.

Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton said geography alone had never determined Australia’s strategic focus and Australia was more secure when Israel was safe behind secure, internationally recognised borders. Dutton observed that the two states were experiencing ‘grey-zone’ activities falling short of armed conflict but designed to irritate, intimidate and injure. These included cyberattacks, trade interference, campaigns of disinformation, use of paramilitary forces and militarisation of disputed features.

Australian and Israeli defence officials began strategic talks in 2018, and in 2019 Australia appointed a defence attaché in Tel Aviv. The nations had agreed to cooperate closely on cyber issues. ‘We’re friends, and we’ve always stood together and always will,’ Dutton said.

Israel’s deputy prime minister and defence minister, Benny Gantz, said the dialogue highlighted strong strategic ties based on shared democratic values and common interests. He said there was scope to expand defence cooperation in research and development and in industry and highlighted Australia’s contribution to regional stability through peacekeeping.

Gantz said Iran was the biggest exporter of terrorism globally and regionally, and its pursuit of nuclear weapons threatened Israel. Iran was expanding its radical ideology, weapons, funding and manpower across the Middle East and he urged the international community to act.

He noted that Israel was building the city of Be’er Sheva as the Middle Eastern cyber centre and said the more Israel could strengthen its economy and security the more it could expand its relations with regional countries. The minister thanked Australia for supporting the Abraham Accords and suggested they should be expanded to additional states.

Participants discussed how the Taliban victory had boosted extremist movements globally. Afghanistan could face increasing internal conflict among the Taliban, Islamic State Khorasan and al-Qaeda-linked groups and become a magnet for foreign fighters who would ultimately seek to rebuild their ability to strike Western targets.

If the Taliban did consolidate control, it could run its extremist-state version of sharia law, and it could reach into Middle Eastern and Indo-Pacific politics in odd ways. A Taliban state recognising Hamas as the legitimate governing entity in Gaza and the West Bank or recognising violent separatist movements wanting to establish caliphates in Southeast Asia are two examples.

To Israel, the big winners from the Taliban victory were Pakistan and Iran.

An Australian delegate said the motivational boost to Islamist groups wouldn’t automatically translate to strategic momentum unless that was allowed to happen. And Russia, India, China and Iran would all have to focus more time and energy on managing their own interests and their relationships with each other in and around Afghanistan.

A striking observation about the future of terrorism and extremism that floated across the dialogue was on how the strange partnerships emerging with far-right groups inspired by the Taliban and Islamists were making a more dispersed, interlinked and amorphous threat. Far-right extremists praised the Taliban for their policies and behaviour towards women and celebrated the masculine warrior pictures propagated about Taliban fighters. They saw some parallels with ‘nativist’ behaviours they want in their own countries.

While Islamist terrorist violence would remain dangerous and damaging, an increase in far-right terrorist violence was in some ways a harder problem for governments. Some of the rhetoric and narratives they use is close to mainstream political debates and narratives, and they can directly threaten democratic institutions, creating the classic counterterrorism dilemma—how to defend democracy while not allowing terrorism to erode it.

Even if the level of violence from far-right attacks remains less dangerous than historical mass-casualty attacks, this appropriation of a domestic political narrative or worldview can be divisive and corrosive in democratic societies. The same will be true in a world of increasing violence and extremism over, say, environmental or climate change concerns.

Israelis welcomed Australia’s listing of Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation but expressed concern about what they saw as a rushed attempt by the US to revive the nuclear agreement despite Iran’s belligerence.

While Australians felt their nation was ‘the canary in the coalmine’ of China’s coercion, Israelis said they were just beginning to grapple with how China’s superpower status would play out in the Middle East. China is Israel’s third biggest trading partner after the US and the EU and has a strong interest in Israeli technology.

Several delegates said that in Europe, Britain and the US, Xi had driven a shift from a positive to a negative view of China. The development of both the Quad and AUKUS could be credited to him.

There was concern that China’s power and influence in the Middle East were growing as countries increasingly looked to Beijing as a long-term partner amid perceptions that the US was withdrawing from the region. Almost half of China’s energy needs comes from the region, particularly Iran. It has invested heavily in ports and infrastructure, including a new terminal at Israel’s Haifa port, operated by the state-owned Shanghai International Port Group.

China had a strategic ally in Iran, which was using China to bypass sanctions. In March, Beijing and Tehran signed a 25-year strategic agreement that’s likely to see China helping to develop Iran’s military capacities. China’s relations with Saudi Arabia and Gulf states are growing.

Because of concerns in Washington about China’s growing engagement with Israel, Israel has moved its foreign investment vetting committee to the National Security Council, under Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s control.

Both delegations were concerned that President Joe Biden was continuing the trend of recent administrations by diminishing the US presence in the Middle East. While Australia was concerned about China, and Israel mainly about Iran, the common denominator was doubts about America’s staying power.

It was suggested that Australia should work more closely with Israel in the Pacific islands region, given the goodwill there towards Israel. Israel could work with Australia on water and agriculture projects in the islands and it might establish an incubator for app development. With many blockchain projects and digital currencies being developed in the region, Israel could help strengthen e-commerce security systems. The Israel Defense Forces could help train militaries in Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Tonga.

With the Quad grouping of Australia, India, Japan and the US gaining momentum and emphasising critical technologies, Israel could contribute to its work. Israel is already working on critical technologies in ‘another Quad’ with the US, India and the United Arab Emirates.

The barriers to entry to the Quad are likely to be lower than for AUKUS, which is made up of some members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group. Israel could collaborate with AUKUS in areas such as cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.

Britain and Israel have agreed to deepen ties in areas such as cybersecurity, AI and quantum computing and an AUKUS-plus agreement between Australia and Israel could be based on that model to jointly deliver new capabilities. It would be timely to refresh Australia’s 2017 defence memorandum of understanding with Israel.

The Australians called for a ministerial meeting soon to set the terms for closer defence and security cooperation and urged Israel to join ASPI’s 2022 Sydney Dialogue that’s focused on emerging, critical and cyber technologies.

Shadowy war between Iran and Israel at risk of escalation

Iran and Israel have been at loggerheads since the transformation of Iran into an Islamic republic more than four decades ago and each has persistently viewed the other as a major threat to its national security. Iranian leaders have denounced Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands and stood by the Palestinian cause. Their Israeli counterparts have vigorously sought to stunt Iran’s regional influence and nuclear program, while preserving Israel’s status as the only nuclear power in the Middle East.

In recent years, the two protagonists have engaged in a shadowy war. Iran’s new hardline president-elect, Ebrahim Raisi, and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett now insert a new catalyst into the hostile relations.

Raisi is an ardent follower of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, and holds a common position with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in his opposition to Israel. He has reaffirmed his longstanding view of Israel as a cruel occupier of the Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem, the third holiest site of Islam after Mecca and Medina. Under his presidency, there will be no change in Iran’s position that Israel is a dangerous threat.

Meanwhile, Bennett has proved to be as anti-Iranian as his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu. He has decried Raisi’s election, declaring that ‘A regime of brutal hangmen must never be allowed to have weapons of mass destruction.’ Bennett has strongly urged the Biden administration not to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA), from which former US President Donald Trump withdrew in May 2018 while imposing debilitating sanctions on Iran as a regional menace.

Bennett has vowed, like Netanyahu before him, to do whatever’s possible to prevent Iran from acquiring a military nuclear capability, even if it means that Israel has to act on its own. Tehran has repeatedly asserted that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

The current nuclear negotiations in Vienna, involving indirect talks between Iranian and American delegations, have not yet resulted in a tangible outcome. But both Tehran and Washington have said that they’re headed in the right direction. Raisi has given cautious support to the talks, as has Khamenei, although with a firm expression of distrust in the US through Raisi’s ruling out of any meeting with Biden. In the likely event that the negotiations result in the JCPOA’s revival, based on Iran restoring all its commitments to the deal and the US dropping its sanctions, Israeli–Iranian hostility could escalate.

The two regional foes have conducted clandestine operations against each other for years. Israel has repeatedly targeted Iranian forces and those of Iran’s allies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, and has reportedly been behind the assassination of Iran’s nuclear scientists and sophisticated cyberattacks on Iranian nuclear facilities. It has also allegedly attacked Iranian vessels, with the latest being the Iranian ship MV Savis in the Red Sea in April. That episode, which occurred on the first day of the Vienna talks, could be seen as signalling Israel’s opposition.

Iran has not only been supporting Hezbollah and the Palestinian Islamist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza as formidable foes of Israel, but it has also targeted Israeli or Israeli-related assets, including ships, whenever and wherever possible. Early this year, the Israeli cargo ship MV Helios was badly damaged in an explosion while passing through the Gulf of Oman, where Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has combat capability. Israel blamed the IRGC, despite Tehran’s denial.

The prevailing situation carries the threat of a major Israeli–Iranian confrontation by either intention or miscalculation, which would be disastrous not only for the two protagonists, but also for the region and beyond. Despite the Biden administration’s desire to avoid involving the US in another war in the Middle East, if war were to break out between Israel and Iran, Washington would find it obligatory to support the Jewish state under the US–Israel Strategic Partnership Act. Russia and China can be expected to make a common anti-US cause with Iran as their close strategic friend.

A resolution of the dispute over the JCPOA would cut both ways. It could restore the agreement to the benefit of not only Iran but also the other signatories—the US, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China—which regard it as the best means to curb any military nuclear ambitions that Tehran may have. At the same time, it could propel Israel to escalate confrontation with Iran—something that the Biden administration must make sure does not happen.

How to prevent another Gaza conflict

The Israel–Hamas conflagration of 10–21 May, the fourth such conflict since 2008, has been over for almost two months.

Diplomatic drama and manoeuvrings continue in its aftermath: incendiary balloon attacks from Gaza sparking Israeli retaliation, ceasefire talks mediated by Cairo including discussion of possible prisoner exchanges, intra-Palestinian unrest, and ongoing negotiations on arrangements for international efforts to reconstruct the damaged areas of Gaza.

It seems appropriate to now review the conflict and its aftermath, with an eye to preventing the civilians of Israel and Gaza from having to suffer through yet further rounds.

Both sides claimed victory. Israel says it killed around 215 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters, including 25 commanders, and destroyed countless military assets, including rockets, launchers and other equipment, offices and headquarters, about 100 kilometres of military tunnels, and much more.

Hamas claimed victory because it could still fire rockets up to the ceasefire on 21 May and because it caused significant damage and injury in Israel, including 13 deaths. Hamas also hoped to achieve some broader strategic aims in the context of its overall goal to ultimately see Israel’s demise.

One was to sour relations between Israel’s Jews and Arabs just when they were warming to the extent that it seemed, for the first time, an Israeli Arab political party would join a governing coalition.

Hamas also sought to drive a wedge between Israel and the Arab countries with which it normalised relations under the Abraham Accords and to stop more joining. And Hamas wanted to establish dominance in Palestinian politics, as the party that stands up for Jerusalem.

On the first two, it appears to have largely failed. The Islamist Ra’am party joined the new Israeli government, and the Abraham Accords remain intact, as evidenced by Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid’s historic visit to the United Arab Emirates last month.

However, on the goal of strengthening Hamas’s status in Palestinian politics, both polls and the unrest directed against Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas suggest the group’s efforts largely succeeded.

Hamas would also no doubt have also drawn satisfaction and comfort from the condemnation of Israel in much international media and from many political and other public figures, despite Hamas being the party committing a double war crime by firing more than 4,000 rockets indiscriminately at Israeli civilians while hiding behind those in Gaza.

Despite the mixed results, Hamas felt it had good reasons for initiating the conflict, first using a long-running and complex property dispute in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of Jerusalem to incite Palestinian worshippers at the al-Aqsa Mosque to arm themselves with rocks and petrol bombs and riot, and then using Israel’s countermeasures to justify firing hundreds of rockets, to which Israel had to respond.

I haven’t included the civilians tragically killed in Gaza as a negative for Hamas, because, horrifyingly, Hamas regards civilian deaths as a positive. Every civilian death puts pressure on Israel, despite the Israel Defence Forces’ efforts to avoid them by warning people to flee before bombing buildings and often aborting raids when civilians were in the area.

The tallies of alleged civilian deaths in Gaza being widely bandied about should be taken with a healthy dose of salt, given the source is the Gaza Health Ministry run by the same Hamas terror organisation that deliberately put them in harm’s way. It’s also important to note that at least 650 Hamas rockets fell short, landing in Gaza and often killing civilians.

To be clear, Israel was legally entitled under the laws of war to target Hamas military assets to stop it firing rockets indiscriminately into Israel, wherever they were situated, provided it only used the force necessary to achieve its legitimate military objectives.

The damage to Gaza must be repaired, but only by sidelining Hamas which after past wars has diverted aid funds into weapons and diverted reconstruction materials, such as concrete, into its military infrastructure, including tunnels.

The oft-cited means to end all violence, a two-state peace, is currently unattainable. Polls show a majority of Israelis support a two-state peace as an eventual outcome. But their faith in such an outcome has been shattered by many factors, including the Second Intifada, the rejection by the Palestinian leadership of statehood offers in 2000, 2001 and 2008, the refusal to negotiate in good faith since, and the insistence of the Palestinian Authority on paying generous pensions to terrorists in Israeli jails and to the families of terrorists who were killed.

A further concern is that Hamas turned Gaza into a terror enclave after Israel fully withdrew in 2005. Were the same to happen in the West Bank, adjacent to Israel’s population and industrial centres, the whole country could easily be held hostage.

Contrary to widely circulated claims, Israeli West Bank settlements are no more a major impediment to peace today that they were in 2008, when then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered a proposal which met all the criteria for a two-state solution envisioned by the international community. Settlement boundaries haven’t expanded for 20 years and construction within them has actually slowed over the past decade, not even keeping up with natural growth.

The key to preventing yet another Gaza conflict is for the international community to make it abundantly clear to Hamas that it will never again benefit or be protected if it initiates conflict with Israel. If this is not done, Hamas will simply start another outbreak at a time which suits its maximalist goals.

Crucially, Hamas wouldn’t have its rocket arsenal without Iran, which is behind everything Hamas does. Iran and its proxies are responsible for most Middle East conflicts, so any US negotiations to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal and lift sanctions must be conditional on Iran ceasing to sponsor terror and undermine its neighbours. Otherwise, it’s not a matter of whether there will be further Israel–Hamas fighting, but when.

What to do about Gaza

Gaza has long been one of those geopolitical problems that everyone wishes would just disappear. Israel, certainly, would prefer to seal off the Palestinian enclave—both from its own territory and from its collective mind. And notwithstanding occasional utterances to the contrary, Egypt tends to feel the same way. Whenever there’s renewed talk of pursuing peace in the region, Gaza is almost always the issue that is left on the back burner.

True, humanitarian and relief agencies regularly issue detailed reports about the dire conditions facing Gaza’s two million inhabitants; they are trapped in one of the most densely populated, under-resourced places on earth. Still, the audience for this accounting of deprivation and despair tends to dwindle whenever some new humanitarian crisis emerges elsewhere and commands the world’s attention. A lasting solution to Gaza’s misery thus remains forever out of sight.

The current outbreak of violence is following a familiar pattern: Hamas and its allies are firing barrages of rockets into Israel, which is responding with waves of air strikes. After each such conflict—the last major one was in 2014—the situation returns to the broken status quo. The international community soon returns to business as usual, the humanitarian situation in Gaza deteriorates ever further and the cycle eventually repeats.

When I visited Gaza in early 2009, one of these spasms of violence had just ended. Militant extremists and innocent civilians alike had been killed, and innocent civilians had been under attack in Israel. While there, I saw the devastation in the hardest-hit parts of the northern Gaza Strip and spoke with Palestinian business leaders who had been trying to offer Gazans hope by building bridges with their partners in Israel. The futility of these cyclical conflicts was as clear then as it is now.

My hope this time is that after the rockets and the air strikes have ceased, there will be courageous peacemakers who do not shy away from taking the steps needed to break the pattern of hopelessness. That will require much more than another ceasefire. There needs to be a process for working towards peace and a viable political settlement.

Israel has imposed a tight land, air and sea blockade on Gaza since 2007, with the goal of ending Hamas’s rule there. The objective is laudable, but the methods have been counterproductive and the policy overall has obviously failed. Hamas still rules, and it has still managed to procure thousands of rockets. Gaza is now a breeding ground for terrorists, many of whom may see no other option.

Devising a viable solution will not be easy, of course, but I believe it is possible with a long-term process based on four principles. The aim should be an agreement that both stops the rocketing, bombing, tunnelling and killing, and establishes a foundation for a more comprehensive peace agreement in the future.

To that end, the first principle is that the blockade must end. This policy has destroyed Gaza’s economy. With foreign trade all but impossible, the territory has become dependent on smuggling and those operations are naturally controlled by Hamas. Smuggling has both filled Hamas’s coffers and allowed it to obtain most of the items that Israel has been trying to block—not least rockets and components for building them.

Second, Israel’s legitimate security concerns must be addressed. After all, no country can tolerate being subjected to indiscriminate rocket attacks. But Israel also must recognise that its policy of unyielding defence has failed. It will need to become more open to efforts by the international community—namely, the United Nations, the European Union and the United States—to create a better arrangement for addressing its legitimate security interests.

Third, Gaza must become a part of the internationally recognised Palestinian administration. Any package of aid and reconstruction funds after the fighting is over must be conditional on free and fair elections being held in Gaza and the West Bank.

Last, the viability of a long-term solution requires affirming the future state of Palestine’s use of Gaza for access to the Mediterranean, which will be its primary gateway to the world. Accordingly, Gaza will need its own port and airport, as well as a connection to the West Bank (arranged in such a way as not to threaten Israeli security).

Much of the debate right now is focused on assigning blame for the latest wave of violence and suffering. A more constructive, albeit difficult, approach would be to acknowledge that both sides are right in important respects. That would allow everyone to start focusing on the goal of a long-term agreement based on the four principles outlined above.

With that, Gaza’s latest unnecessary war could finally lead to a necessary peace. My hope is that I will return to Gaza one day and see entrepreneurs building businesses and bridges to the world economy, and bringing jobs to young people who might otherwise see no alternative to extremism. Palestinians—and Israelis—deserve no less.

Cancelled elections overshadowed by renewed Israeli–Palestinian conflict

Frustration over President Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to delay what would have been the first legislative elections to be held in the Palestinian Territories in 15 years has been overshadowed by fears made real of renewed Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What began as protests in early April over the blocking of Palestinian gatherings during Ramadan and the eviction of Palestinians from their homes to make way for settlers in East Jerusalem has erupted into widescale violence, culminating in rocket attacks on Israel and retaliatory Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.

Amid the conflict, there can be little doubt that both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas in Gaza saw the unrest as an opportunity to embolden their respective positions. For Netanyahu, the firing of rockets into Israel by Hamas was the crossing of a ‘red line’ from which there was no turning back, with escalation in the form of retaliatory airstrikes a means for Netanyahu to reaffirm both Israel’s authority in Jerusalem and his leadership of the country. For Hamas, the issue of eviction in East Jerusalem was an opportunity for it to wedge Abbas’s Fatah party, which has all but disappeared from the political stage.

By delaying the elections Abbas feared he’d lose, the embattled Fatah leader has played into the hands of Hamas. Abbas has said that elections can’t be held until Israel agrees to allow Palestinians in East Jerusalem the right to vote. However, in reality, Abbas and Fatah more broadly have little capacity to shape affairs in Jerusalem, let alone negotiate with Israel, coordinate with the international community or ensure security for Palestinians. Hamas has claimed the delay is evidence of Fatah’s corrupt style of governance and a grab for power by Abbas. And in its intention to intensify its retaliatory efforts against Israel in the current crisis, Hamas is positioning itself to be the true heart of Palestinian resistance.

The truth is that elections in this part of the world have never been easy and while Israel has the capacity to undermine genuinely free elections, the Palestinian leadership has a responsibility to support the fundamental freedoms of its people. In the legislative elections of 25 January 2006, Palestinians demonstrated that they had the institutions in place to run free and fair elections.

Irrespective of the inherent difficulties in running elections under occupation, the independently run Palestinian Central Elections Commission managed a successful electoral process in accordance with internationally accepted standards. While Hamas’s victory at the ballot box came as a shock to many, the election commission’s efforts garnered public trust and the praise of the international community. It was also the assurances made by key figures, notably Abbas, alongside international pressure that facilitated the resolution of problematic issues, such as voting rights in East Jerusalem, and ensured that elections were held as scheduled.

The opportunity lost currently is that which is faced by ordinary Palestinians keen to institute democratic governance in long overdue elections. The registration of 2.6 million out of 2.8 million eligible voters for this month’s now-cancelled elections attests to Palestinians’ desire to determine a political future of their own making. The emergence of new political groups not aligned to traditional power blocs is also promising. Close to a third of the 1,400 registered candidates were women and 39% were under the age of 40.

The EU has called for a new election date to be set without delay and the US State Department has said ‘the exercise of democratic elections is a matter for the Palestinian people and for the Palestinian leadership to determine’. In the unfolding crisis, the re-scheduling of elections couldn’t be further from view, however. Netanyahu’s announcement that Israel is ‘at the height of a weighty campaign’ does little but guarantee a further deterioration of the situation. The tragedy is the loss and suffering that Israelis and Palestinians will continue to endure in the days ahead.

The end of Israel’s illusion

The sudden eruption of war outside and inside Israel’s borders has shocked a complacent nation. Throughout Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-year premiership, the Palestinian problem was buried and forgotten. The recent Abraham Accords, establishing diplomatic relations with four Arab states, seemed to weaken the Palestinian cause further. Now it’s re-emerged with a vengeance.

Wars can be triggered by an isolated incident, but their cause is always deeper. In this case, the trigger, the eviction of Palestinians in favour of Israeli nationalists in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem, touched all the sensitive nerves of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem, its humiliating control of access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the ever-present memory of the 1948 Nakba (the displacement of 700,000 Palestinians when Israel was founded), and the grievances of Israel’s Arab minority are all fuelling the current flare-up.

It may be true that the contested real estate in Sheikh Jarrah did belong to a Jewish family before 1948. But Palestinians saw the incident as part of Israel’s unrelenting drive to ‘Judaize’ Jerusalem, and a striking injustice, because the state of Israel was built partly on the abandoned properties of Palestinian refugees. While Jews are entitled to reclaim property they owned before Israel’s founding, Palestinians may not. Those facing eviction in Sheikh Jarrah cannot recover the homes in Jaffa and Haifa that they once owned.

On the face of it, the latest escalation of violence is following the template of all inter-ethnic wars. Muslims observing Ramadan shouted nationalist slogans and clashed with Israeli right-wing groups chanting ‘death to the Arabs’. The Israelis haughtily marched with their national flag on Jerusalem Day, marking Israel’s capture in 1967 of East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, the site of the biblical Second Temple, and of Al-Aqsa, completed in the year 705. Battles in and around the Al-Aqsa compound erupted, with worshippers inside throwing stones at the Israeli police, who responded by firing rubber-tipped bullets and other projectiles, wounding hundreds.

But the young Arab protesters could claim victory, for they forced the postponement of an Israeli Supreme Court ruling on the evictions in Sheikh Jarrah. They also forced the police to change the route of the Jerusalem Day march away from the Muslim quarter in the old city.

The flare-up spilled over into pre-1967 Israel, where Islamist groups incited young Israeli Arabs. Mixed Jewish-Arab cities that were supposed to be exemplars of coexistence, such as Acre, Ramla, Jaffa and Lod, erupted in an orgy of violence and vandalism. Lod was practically taken over by gangs of young Arabs. This was a pogrom, said Jewish residents. An old Jewish woman spoke of memories of Kristallnacht. The mayor of Lod drew the same comparison.

But Jerusalem has emerged as the crucible of conflict. It offered Hamas a golden opportunity to assert its predominance over Israel’s collaborators in the West Bank’s Palestinian Authority and sweep away PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s moribund leadership. Under Israeli pressure, Abbas had just cancelled legislative elections for fear that Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2006, would win and extend its control to the West Bank.

Abbas framed his decision as a protest against Israel’s refusal to allow the Palestinians in East Jerusalem to participate in the elections. But the truth is that the PA’s presence in East Jerusalem had practically vanished, with the vacuum filled by a mostly secular young Palestinian generation that turned the Temple Mount (Haram Al-Sharif to Muslims) into the symbol of their resistance to Israeli occupation.

In the current eruption of violence, Hamas connected all the dots needed to gain primacy in the Palestinian national movement. It positioned itself as the protector of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, as the spearhead of the Palestinians’ national and religious struggle against the Israeli-Jewish occupier, and as the voice of the Arab minority in Israel proper.

Israelis and their complacent government were caught off guard. Hamas conducted an unprecedentedly massive rocket attack on Israeli cities. They even launched salvos at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, sending half the country’s population to shelters. Israelis were left to wonder how their vulnerable home front could withstand a war with Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia across the border in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah has an arsenal of 150,000 rockets and missiles many times more lethal than Hamas’s.

To make its case, Hamas was willing to pay a high price. Israel’s punitive airstrikes on Gaza have been devastating, targeting Hamas military commanders with brutal efficiency. But Hamas knows that in the asymmetric wars of this era, a militia hidden among 2 million civilians in one of the world’s most densely populated areas has practical immunity from defeat. It also knows that the war’s reverberation throughout the region will force neighbours like Egypt and Hamas’s patron, Qatar, to mediate a ceasefire.

From the debris of Gaza, Hamas will then claim victory, not necessarily on the battlefield, but in the minds of its people. At that point, it will have achieved its main objectives: an utterly discredited PA and heightened prestige as the ultimate protector of Islam’s holy shrines in Jerusalem.

Paradoxically, Netanyahu has no interest in destroying Hamas. Quite the contrary: he has struck an unwritten deal with it against Abbas’s PA, which his governments have consistently done all they could to weaken and humiliate. A Hamas Islamic state in Gaza offers Netanyahu the ideal pretext to reject peace negotiations and a two-state solution. Netanyahu even allowed Qatar to keep Gaza functioning by paying the salaries of Hamas’s functionaries.

Israel certainly cannot claim victory. The fragile coexistence between Jews and Arabs within its borders has been shaken. The prevailing consensus among Israelis that Palestinian nationalism had been defeated—and thus that a political solution to the conflict was no longer necessary—lies in tatters. And even as the violence escalates, it has become clear to both sides that the era of glorious wars and victories is over.

Attack on Iranian facility could derail talks to restart nuclear deal

On 11 April, Iran’s nuclear reprocessing facility at Natanz suffered a major sabotage attack that has probably set the country’s nuclear enrichment program back at least nine months. On the same day, the Israeli public broadcaster Kan, citing unnamed Israeli and US intelligence sources, reported that Israel was behind the attack and that ‘Mossad was involved.’ A New York Times report, citing anonymous American and Israeli officials, also claimed that Israel was behind the ‘large explosion that completely destroyed the heavily protected internal power system that supplies the underground centrifuges that enrich uranium’.

On 12 April, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif put the blame squarely on Israel and declared that ‘the Zionists want to take revenge on the Iranian people for their success in lifting the oppressive sanctions, but we will not allow it and we will take revenge on the Zionists themselves’. He went on to say, ‘The latest attack at the Natanz nuclear facilities and sanctions will not give the United States leverage in talks to restore Iran’s nuclear deal.’ He declared that Iran is ready to come back into full compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) once the US has lifted all of its unilateral sanctions. ‘But the Americans should know that neither sanctions nor acts of sabotage will give them negotiation tools and these acts will only make the situation more difficult for them.’

The incident at the Natanz nuclear site occurred on the same day that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met his Israeli counterpart Benny Gantz in Tel Aviv. Austin made no mention of Iran in his public remarks but stated clearly that the Biden administration would continue to ensure the Jewish state’s ‘qualitative military edge’ in the Middle East as part of a ‘strong commitment to Israel and the Israeli people’. He went on to declare that during his meeting with Gantz he had ‘reaffirmed [that] our commitment to Israel is enduring and it is ironclad’.

While Austin’s visit may have been just a coincidence, the timing of the explosion at Natanz makes it extremely likely that Israel was responsible. This act of ‘nuclear terrorism’, as it has been called by the Iranian regime, has coincided with talks in Vienna between Iran and the other parties to the JCPOA aimed at facilitating America’s return to the treaty, ending sanctions imposed on Iran by the Trump administration, and bringing Iran back into compliance with the restrictions imposed on its nuclear program by the JCPOA.

These negotiations have reached a crucial stage. The technical-level meetings held last week that set up two working groups—one to list the US sanctions imposed in 2018 that would need to be lifted and the other to gauge what measures Iran must adopt to return to full compliance with the treaty—ended on an optimistic note. Talks resumed this week that by all accounts had been heading in a positive direction.

These developments should be put in the context of the encouraging statements made by both the Iranian regime and the Biden administration. US President Joe Biden promised to return to the nuclear deal even before assuming office so long as Iran also came back into compliance. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Zarif have made equally positive statements regarding the prospects of the US returning to the deal and lifting sanctions against Iran. Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, in her very first press conference, clearly stated that the new administration intended to constrain Iran through diplomacy, not sanctions, and reaffirmed Biden’s position that he would be willing to return to the JCPOA if Tehran does the same.

The Iranian regime also signalled that it would be willing to honour the agreement and reverse the steps undertaken recently if the US withdrew all sanctions. Hours before Biden’s inauguration, Zarif reiterated Iran’s readiness to return to the JCPOA, but went on to say, ‘We are not in a hurry … If they lift the sanctions and comply with their obligations, we will also fulfill our obligations.’

The implementation of these pledges is not as easy as it sounds and both sides are engaged in an intricate dance to balance their interests against each other and work out a timetable that would provide simultaneity of actions and satisfy both Tehran and Washington. Nevertheless, both sides appear sincere in their intention to eventually comply with the JCPOA provisions, including the lifting of sanctions. The impending presidential election in Iran has made the return to the deal all the more imperative because the election of a hardliner is likely to make negotiations far more difficult.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that he opposes the revival of the nuclear deal. Removal of sanctions is likely to improve the economic situation in Iran primarily by returning Iranian oil exports to pre-sanctions levels. It will also facilitate foreign firms investing in Iran and generally improve Tehran’s international standing. This is anathema to Israel, which considers Iran its mortal enemy. For his part, Netanyahu assumes that a confrontation with the Biden administration on the nuclear deal will improve his chances of getting reappointed as prime minister, which is essential to him as he faces multiple cases of fraudulent behaviour. Derailing the Vienna meetings and preventing a rapprochement between the US and Iran are thus very high on Netanyahu’s and Israel’s agenda.

All of these factors clearly point to Israel’s authorship of the Natanz explosion. The incident has the potential to derail the Vienna talks and bolster Netanyahu’s image as the only Israeli leader capable of putting a brake on Iran’s nuclear program as well as standing up to Washington on an issue which many Israelis consider to be of existential importance to their country’s security.

Has Netanyahu’s Iran gamble backfired?

Israelis will go to the polls on Tuesday for the fourth time in two years, with the future of their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, hanging in the balance. Public opposition to Netanyahu has only intensified in the past year because of his divisive politics and poor management of the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet his political survival owes much to the public perception that only he can be trusted when it comes to Israel’s security.

Netanyahu’s no-holds-barred opposition to Iran’s nuclear program and regional entrenchment has won him much support in Israel. Opinion polls over recent years demonstrate a broad consensus among Israelis against the Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA. Although the agreement was flawed in its recognition of Iran’s right to nuclear enrichment and the temporary nature of the constraints it imposed, it still had the benefit of distancing Iran from a bomb for 10 to 15 years and included unprecedented verification and monitoring of nuclear sites.

Yet Israel’s prime minister believes that the agreement emboldened Iran by lifting sanctions that discouraged its regional malfeasance. Netanyahu’s deeply controversial appearance before the US Congress in March 2015 in which he attacked the planned nuclear deal with Iran was without precedent. His government is now continuing the same line of attack as the new US administration explores the possibility of rejoining the nuclear deal with Iran.

According to the outgoing deputy head of the Mossad, identified only as ‘A’, Netanyahu’s exposure of a nuclear archive captured in Iran was a key factor in persuading US President Donald Trump administration to withdraw from the nuclear deal in May 2018. The revelation of the archive confirmed suspicions that the Iranians had been working on a military nuclear program up until 2003. However, it didn’t provide evidence that the Iranians were violating the JCPOA.

With the US out of the deal and a new raft of sanctions imposed against Iran, a strong consensus emerged in Israel supporting the Trump administration’s action. Following the US assassination of top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, there was a widespread perception that Iran’s credibility and deterrent power had suffered. As internal opposition to the Iranian regime increased amid the growing pain of sanctions, criticism within Israel of Netanyahu’s decision to derail the Iran nuclear deal was muted.

However, the warning signs were there. The late Meir Dagan, a former Mossad chief, argued in 2015 that Netanyahu was causing Israel strategic harm by treating the Iran nuclear threat as an Israeli problem when the danger posed by Tehran was clearly a global one that required Israel to keep a low profile. Previous Israeli prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert had understood this. Indeed, it was Netanyahu’s threats to bomb Iran that accelerated the efforts of the US and European countries to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran in the first place.

In 2015, many in the Israeli defence establishment welcomed the JCPOA. Lieutenant-General Gadi Eisenkot, then chief of the general staff of the Israel Defense Forces, described the nuclear agreement as a ‘strategic turning point’ that brought risks but also opportunities for Israel. Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission, the body advising the government on nuclear issues, maintained that the agreement’s inspection measures and restrictions on Iranian plutonium and uranium enrichment were sufficient to prevent Iran from producing a nuclear bomb. At the time, the IDF top brass were sanguine enough about the agreement to take the view that a delayed nuclear threat now provided Israel with space to switch its attention to Iran’s heightened presence in Syria and the threat from Hezbollah.

When the Trump administration threatened to withdraw from the deal, significant concerns were raised in Israel over the dangers that would bring. Opposition leader Yair Lapid, a critic of the agreement, maintained that it would be preferable for the US to stay in it and negotiate changes to its provisions. In January 2018, even fierce critics of the deal, such as the hawkish former defence minister Moshe Yaalon, warned that the costs of a US withdrawal would be greater than the benefits. Throughout, Israel’s defence establishment agreed that Iran had strictly adhered to the JCPOA during the period when the US was a party to it.

Yet Netanyahu chose to ignore the warnings and moved ahead in tandem with the Trump administration to incapacitate the deal. He has surrounded himself by yes men who support his position on Iran, such as Mossad director Yossi Cohen, a Netanyahu confidant and former national security adviser. As a result, critics of Netanyahu’s Iran policy have been marginalised. In the meantime, the unravelling of the nuclear agreement has resulted in the erosion of the restrictions that had shackled Iran’s nuclear activity.

In an explosive interview in Israel’s Yediot Ahronoth newspaper on 5 March, the outgoing deputy head of Mossad claimed that the situation now was worse than it was when the nuclear agreement was reached in 2015. Iran has stockpiled large amounts of enriched uranium, is rebuilding its nuclear facilities and blocking access to international inspectors, and has not stopped its regional expansion.

In the same interview, it was pointed out that Netanyahu made the mistake of trying to include Iran’s missiles, regional entrenchment and terrorism as part of any negotiations with Tehran, which in turn made the existential nuclear threat a lower priority. As a result, just as Israelis are about to go to the polls, Iran is closer than ever to obtaining a nuclear weapon. Netanyahu has acquired a global reputation as the leading opponent of Iran’s nuclear program, yet a major part of his legacy could become associated in time with Tehran’s possible emergence as a nuclear-armed state.