Special Report: Nightmares of a Nuclear Neighbor // FAI ONLINE

Early in the morning of December 28, 2021, missiles bombarded the Syrian port of Latakia. Fires raged in the wake of massive explosions, and secondary blasts from struck munitions added to the confusion. In the chaos of the Syrian war, responsibility for these attacks is not always evident. However, as soon as the target was identified—a terminal used to transport advanced munitions from Iran to their proxy militias in the region—Israel became the clear source of the attacks.

The bombing in Latakia was the second Israeli strike in December and the latest of hundreds of airstrikes on Iran-linked targets across the country. Israel has acknowledged that it targets Iranian bases in the region, particularly those close to Israel’s Golan border.

These instances were set against the backdrop of tense negotiations in Vienna, Austria, between Iran on one side and China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK, and the US on the other. These talks are an attempt to revive the 2015 JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), better known as the Iran Nuclear Deal. Israel is not a part of these discussions but will be profoundly affected by its outcome. If diplomatic efforts fail to curb Iranian nuclear ambitions, Israel has made it clear that military options are on the table. For Israel, a nuclear Iran is unthinkable.

Why should Israel be so proactive and intent on disrupting Iranian military presence near its borders and so heavily invested in preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power? As is so often the case, the historical context holds the answer.

History of Hostilities

Iran and Israel have not always been at such odds. Under the leadership of the Shah, Iran was one of the first Muslim countries to recognize the State of Israel in 1948 and open a consulate in Jerusalem. During Israel’s Six-Day War in 1967, Iran was the only country in the Middle East that continued to sell oil to Israel and even increased its oil output when Arab countries refused to sell oil to the West for its support of Israel.

Israel reciprocated Iran’s aid by sharing technology. Teams of Israeli experts provided land and water management training to their Iranian counterparts, helping usher in a series of reforms that caused significant infrastructure development in the 60s and 70s.

The Shah of Iran, left, tours a water drilling project let by an Israeli water development team in the late 1960s.

All this goodwill abruptly ceased with the Islamic revolution in Iran. The Shah was overthrown, and the revolutionaries executed prominent Jewish-Iranians. A mere three days after the success of the Revolution, Yasser Arafat, a leader of the Palestinian cause, visited Tehran and stoked the already strong anti-Israel sentiments of the Islamic Revolution. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini publicly praised Arafat’s vision for a Palestinian state, and the “liberation of Jerusalem” became not a mere political value but a religious imperative. Iran severed all ties with Israel and refused to recognize its legitimacy as a state.

Nevertheless, Israel did not immediately understand the full extent of the change in relational temperature. The year after the Islamic Revolution, 1980, the Iran-Iraq war began. Iraq had attacked Israel in the First Arab Israeli War, the Six-Day War, and the Yom Kippur War, establishing a severe regional threat. Israel, therefore, supplied advisors, military equipment, missile systems, ammunition, and tanks to Iran. At the beginning of the war, 80% of all weapons imported by Iran would be Israeli. In 1981, Israel became an active participant in the war, bombing Iraq’s Osirak Nuclear Reactor.

With the weakening of Iraq after the first Gulf War and the subsequent ascendancy of Iran, the Islamic regime has been much more overt in its hatred of Israel. Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, elected in 1997, called Israel an “illegal state” and a “parasite.” In December 2000, Ayatollah Khamenei called Israel a “cancerous tumor” that should be removed from the region. President Mahmud Ahmadinejad called for Israel “to be wiped off the map.”

Iran has since patiently and strategically positioned itself to realize the goal of both “liberating Jerusalem” from its current Jewish stewardship and also “wiping Israel off the map.” In the 80s and 90s, Iranian-affiliated groups would carry out amateurish, albeit deadly, attacks in the form of suicide bombings and hijackings. The turn of the century saw a leap in Iranian coordination, however. When vacuums of power left entire regions of the Middle East vulnerable to outside control, Iran filled them. Almost all of the territory captured by ISIS in 2014 is now in direct or indirect control of Iranian proxy militias. This Iranian “axis of resistance” has, in addition to its own IRGC forces, Hezbollah, in Lebanon; the Houthis, in Yemen; Hamas and Islamic Jihad, in the Palestinian territories; as well as a myriad of groups across Syria and Iraq.

Not only does Iran control the territory, but it actively arms the groups on Israel’s borders. Hezbollah has at least fourteen thousand missiles and more than a hundred thousand rockets in its arsenal, courtesy of Iran. In May 2021, Islamic Jihad and Hamas fired over 4,360 rockets into Israel, a majority supplied by Iran. From the northeast to the southwest, Iran has slowly closed in on Israel on almost every front.

A Tale of Two Treaties

Though Iran and Israel’s diplomatic relationship has been virtually non-existent for the last forty years and filled with indirect fighting, both sides have managed to avoid open warfare. Iran has been projecting power across the region, mainly through its many affiliated militias. Israel has been trying to disrupt both the flow of weapons to these militias and the technological progress that Iran has made in the nuclear arena.

Israel itself is widely believed to have a nuclear weapon. From the earliest days of statehood, Israel’s Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion believed that a nuclear weapon in Israel would be a vital deterrent, ensuring the survival of the Jewish people in the wake of the Holocaust. Ben-Gurion began a recruitment program, and in 1952 the Israel Atomic Energy Commission was formed.

In 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal Company, an enterprise owned primarily by British and French stakeholders. In response, France and Britain secretly proposed to Israel that Israel attack Egypt and invade Sinai, providing an excuse for the European powers to occupy Egypt in the guise of “peacekeepers” and re-seize the Suez Canal. France would provide a nuclear reactor to Israel, among other guarantees, in exchange for the Israeli attack. Israel was already uneasy at the prospect of the Suez Canal under complete Egyptian control, especially as the Straits of Tiran had been blocked to Israeli shipping since 1950. Director-General of the Ministry of Defense Shimon Peres, Israel’s primary coordinator with the French and British governments at the time, also shared Ben-Gurion’s convictions as to the necessity of Israel possessing a nuclear deterrent. The Suez Crisis ended up humiliating France and the United Kingdom and strengthening Nassar’s hold on both the Suez Canal and Egypt. However, in the end, Israel did get a reactor and shipping rights in the Suez Canal.

Israel’s Negev Nuclear Research Center near the city of Dimona became operational just as the world began to grapple with the massively destabilizing effects the proliferation of nuclear weapons had on international relations. The Cold War was burning hot, and the specter of mutually-assured destruction haunted the global community. One principle seemed to win the day: the fewer nuclear weapons, the better. In 1968, a landmark international treaty to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons was opened for signatures. In 1970, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) went into effect. The NPT first defined the nuclear-weapon states as those who built or tested a nuclear explosive device before January 1, 1967: the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China. Nuclear states agreed to pursue disarmament, with the eventual goal of eliminating nuclear arsenals. Non-nuclear states that signed the treaty agreed not to acquire nuclear weapons in exchange for peaceful nuclear technology. Most of the non-nuclear countries were allied with one of the nuclear states, and therefore under the protection of their ally’s “nuclear umbrella” should the threat of nuclear attack arise. Under the leadership of the Shah, Iran was among the NPT signatories.

However, Israel refrained from joining the NPT, stating that the conditions required would compromise national security. While Israel is widely believed to be among the four non-signatory countries that possess nuclear weapons, Israel has always maintained a strict ambiguity, neither confirming nor denying possessing nuclear weapons. The official statement echoed by several Israeli administrations before and after the NPT was that “Israel will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East.”

The power of the NPT, while extended indefinitely in 1995, has begun to weaken. The US, Russia, and China have all updated their arsenals. The strong alliances that promised “nuclear umbrellas” to non-nuclear states are not as stable as they used to be. The nuclear order, which has held for the last fifty years, seems seriously close to unraveling. Should non-nuclear states develop their own nuclear weapons, nuclear proliferation could quickly get out of control and throw whole regions into disarray.

This prediction is not mere theory—states such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey have both openly stated that they will pursue nuclear weapons development should Iran succeed in building its own.

Nevertheless, neither the threat of nuclear proliferation nor being a signatory to the NPT has dampened Iran’s nuclear ambitions. So the nuclear states, led by the US under the Obama administration, sought to hammer out an updated accord specifically with Iran. Extreme sanctions had been the primary method the US and other countries tried to practically and non-militarily limit Iran’s “malign activity” in the Middle East, to varying degrees of success. However, under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to limit sensitive nuclear activity for a decade and be subject to international inspections in return for ending most economic sanctions.

Israel was not happy with the terms of the JCPOA. First, the expiration of the terms a mere decade after the agreement seemed only to delay the inevitable. Second, most equipment in Iran’s nuclear development would not be destroyed but remain merely unused, making it easy to either dodge international regulation and continue developing weapons or quickly start enrichment again after the terms of the JCPOA expired. Third, the JCPOA had clauses that sought to hold Iran accountable for the other non-nuclear destructive actions it was pursuing in the region—such as transferring heavy arms to Israel’s borders—but the wording and consequences were so vague as to be virtually unenforceable. The ending of sanctions flooded Iran with the means to finance and build up their conventional weapons programs and extend their vast network of militias in the Middle East. In particular, their ballistic missile program outmatched all their opponents in the region. If the goal of the JCPOA was to stop a proliferation chain reaction in the Middle East, it had limited effectiveness in the present and none long-term. If it was to bring some balance to the already tumultuous region, it utterly failed by footing the bill of Iran’s growing axis of resistance.

However, of utmost concern to Israel was that Iran’s possession of a nuclear weapon was an existential threat. Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani had called Israel a “one-bomb state,” saying, “The use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything.” On the other hand, he reasoned, if Israel responded with its nuclear weapon, “it will only harm the Islamic world.” This blunt observation from the Iranian leadership was far from isolated, and Israelis took these statements to heart as a direct threat to their existence.

Despite these concerns, the JCPOA was agreed upon and went into effect in 2015. However, in 2018, under the Trump administration, the US left the JCPOA, citing its ineffectiveness at deterring Iran’s human rights abuses at home and its growing network of terror abroad. The Trump administration returned to sanctions, and Iranian militias took out their frustration by firing missiles at Israel from Syria.

Immediately after the US withdrawal, Tehran began to breach its obligations under the JCPOA openly. They installed equipment only needed for weapons development and enriched uranium to almost weapons-grade. Should Iran reach a level of 90% enrichment, Israel said they would take decisive action. The “breakout time,” or the period until Iran can produce a nuclear weapon, is believed to be mere weeks.

In 2021, the newly elected Biden administration made it a high priority to try and rebuild the JCPOA from scratch. Talks with original parties to the agreement began in Vienna, though they soon were put on hold as Iran went through a presidential election. When Ebrahim Raisi won the presidency, the probability that the talks would be successful seemed even smaller, as the US had already sanctioned Raisi due to his ordering the execution of 5,000 dissidents in 1988. Raisi was a hardliner who swore to increase the strength of the country.

Nevertheless, the talks resumed in late November 2021. But even as negotiations are hammered out, the centrifuges in Iran spin, and soon there might not be anything to negotiate or any non-proliferation benefits to enjoy, however briefly. Israel, in particular, is pessimistic that diplomacy will be effective and has begun serious preparations for what could be the first time that Israel and Iran will be at war.

Wars and Rumors of WAr

In trying to avoid open conflict that would almost certainly trigger a regional battle on multiple fronts, Iran and Israel have instead engaged in a shadow war. Israel has sabotaged Iran’s nuclear program through such means as computer viruses like Stuxnet, which was introduced to Iranian networks by an errant thumb drive left in a parking lot around 2010, which an engineer then picked up and inserted into a computer. The virus targeted centrifuges, altering their spin rate and often breaking them, setting back the Iranian nuclear program years. Iranian hackers have retaliated in the cyberwar by targeting Israeli industrial control systems, web servers, and consumer devices, as well as holding prominent Israeli websites hostage, using them to display propaganda and threats.

Israeli spy operations also uncovered extensive documentation revealing Iranian non-compliance with the NPT. In 2018, a daring spy operation removed crates of Iranian secret documents out of Tehran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed them to the world via a televised press conference, uncovering details on how the Iranian nuclear weapons program could be hidden among other, more innocent research projects.

Israel has also conducted hundreds of strikes on Iranian outposts in Syria, particularly where Iran stockpiles weapons. Iran uses those positions, whether in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, or even Yemen, to launch rockets at Israeli civilian centers or suicide drones at Israeli ships.

Screenshot taken by article author while trying to access the Jerusalem Post website on January 2, 2022. Iranian hackers seized several Israeli websites on the second anniversary of Qassem Suleimani, depicting a missile shooting from Soleimani’s ring, destroying Israel’s nuclear facility near Dimona.

Early in 2020, the United States assassinated Qassem Suleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force and leading personality behind Iran’s regional axis of terror. Four hellfire missiles fell on Suleimani’s car as he drove out of the Baghdad airport. The envoy was destroyed, and Soleimani’s severed hand was identified by the sizeable red-stone ring often photographed on his ring finger. His death was such a grievous loss to Iranian leadership and morale that Iran responded by firing eleven ballistic missiles—each carrying at least a thousand-pound warhead—at the United State’s Al Asad Airbase west of Baghdad. The bombardment dragged on for hours—the most powerful ballistic-missile attack by any nation on American troops.

The accuracy, volume, and intensity of the ballistic missile bombardment on Al Asad were a bit shocking to the Americans and Israelis. For decades, Iran’s rockets and missiles were inaccurate, but Al Asad proved that Iran’s ballistic missiles were a more immediate threat than their nuclear program. With the largest and most diverse arsenal in the Middle East, Iran can fire more missiles than its enemies can hope to shoot down. The Islamic Republic has at least a thousand such missiles at its disposal, with at least a hundred of those capable of striking Israel.

In late 2020, the father of Iran’s nuclear program, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was also assassinated. A satellite connection to trigger a machine gun mounted on a parked pickup truck allowed the killing to be initiated from over a thousand miles away. Iran responded by blocking all international inspections of its nuclear program.

The front page of the Tehran Times, December 15, 2021. (Tehran Times) Responding to talk of IDF strike on nuclear sites, state-affiliated Tehran Times publishes piece saying Israelis need reminder that Iranian forces have a list of targets within Israel.

With this atmosphere of high tension and lack of trust, it is perhaps unsurprising that the talks in Vienna to revive the JCPOA have been difficult and unfruitful so far. If diplomacy continues to stall and Iran accelerates its nuclear program, not only Israel but the world could face a nuclear crisis in 2022.

Given Iran’s rhetoric on the illegitimacy of Israel and ominous predictions of Israel’s destruction, Israel’s position that they will prevent a nuclear Iran by any means possible is understandable. However, Israel has to consider less extreme scenarios than annihilation. If Iran should gain a nuclear weapon, Israel will have to navigate an exponentially more extreme security environment. Israel will become a precarious place to do business, and foreign investors would likely withdraw, crippling the Israeli economy. One of the chief purposes of Israel is to be a place of protection for the Jewish people. With the possibility of a nuclear Iran, this dream of a safe haven turns into a nightmare, where nearly half of the global Jewish population is within range of Tehran’s nuclear missiles.