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By RON KAMPEAS<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON (JTA) — How much noise does Israel\u2019s leadership have to make to get the Obama administration to say what it wants to hear about Iran? It\u2019s a question now preoccupying Israel, along with its corollary: How much noise is too much and risks precipitating a crisis between Jerusalem and its closest ally?<\/p>\n
Some Israeli analysts say that pronounced signals from their country\u2019s leadership in recent days that it is readying for a strike against Iran are less an immediate call to arms than a call for an unequivocal commitment from the Obama administration to take the lead in such an attack or to come to Israel\u2019s aid if it goes first.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are at a serious juncture,\u201d said Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. \u201cThe way I understand it, the Israeli leadership is trying to signal to the administration that unless there is a change of tack on the part of Washington concerning the Iranian nuclear program, Israel may have to decide to make its own military move.\u201d<\/p>\n
The signals have included:<\/p>\n
* an interview in Haaretz with a top Israeli official, whom is widely believed to be Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who argued that Israel risks more in the short term by not striking than it does by striking;<\/p>\n
* the appointment to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s Cabinet of Avi Dichter, a former head of Israel\u2019s internal security service, the Shin Bet, to bring the home front up to speed;<\/p>\n
* a series of notices to the Israeli public, including a call to update gas mask equipment and a listing of Tel Aviv underground parking lots that could double as bomb shelters.<\/p>\n
* a series of public statements by Israel\u2019s ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, suggesting that an Israeli strike would reap sufficient rewards to justify it.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne, two, three, four years are a long time in the Middle East — look what\u2019s happened in the last year,\u201d Oren said this week in a Bloomberg News interview, addressing the claim that an Israeli strike would \u201conly\u201d delay Iran and not end the nuclear program.<\/p>\n
A key Israeli fear is that a nuclear Iran would provide an umbrella to hostile forces consolidating their hold along Israel\u2019s borders in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, and possibly in Syria and Egypt as those nations undergo turmoil that threatens to disrupt decades of peace on their borders.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea of these non-state actors on Israel\u2019s borders which may be controlled by a nuclear Iran is a serious threat, the kind of which Israel has not encountered before,\u201d Asher Susser, a senior fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University, said in a conference call organized by the Israel Policy Forum on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Still, Obama administration officials are not yet publicly buying the rhetoric.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t believe they\u2019ve made a decision as to whether or not they will go in and attack Iran at this time,\u201d Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters on Aug. 15. \u201cWith regards to the issue of where we\u2019re at from a diplomatic point of view, the reality is that we still think there is room to continue to negotiate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff, said an Israeli strike would have limited effect.<\/p>\n
\u201cI may not know about all of their capabilities, but I think that it\u2019s a fair characterization to say that they could delay but not destroy Iran\u2019s nuclear capabilities,\u201d Dempsey said at the same briefing.<\/p>\n
Such sanguinity may be out of place, Susser said, adding that the notices to the public regarding homefront preparedness are not feints.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think the Israelis are bluffing,\u201d he said. \u201cThe people are getting the message.\u201d<\/p>\n
The likeliest means to shut down the escalating rhetoric, Susser added, would be for the Obama administration to reassure Israel — and not necessarily in public — that it would convey to Iran that military action was inevitable and not just a possibility if Iran does not stand down.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu and Barak would want to hear \u201ca very firm commitment from the United States that it will use force, not anything less — not \u2018all options are on the table,\u2019 not \u2018any means necessary,\u2019 but that the U.S. will take a clear commitment to use force when the time comes,\u201d he said. \u201cIf the Israelis are convinced that the Americans are not going to take action against Iran, Barak and Netanyahu may very well come to the conclusion that they have to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Obama administration officials over the last several months have lobbied Israel intensely to tamp down talk of a strike, and to wait out a U.S. strategy of exhausting economic and diplomatic pressure as a means of getting Iran to stand down from its suspected nuclear weapons program.<\/p>\n
Yaari said Israel\u2019s leadership was not convinced, noting similar reassurances from successive U.S. administrations regarding North Korea, belied ultimately by that nation\u2019s nuclear tests.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very much on the minds of Barak and Netanyahu that \u2018the United States will not allow North Korea to acquire nuclear weapons\u2019 — and we know the end to that story,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Israelis favor a U.S. lead should it come to military action against Iran, polls show. \u00a0A poll published last week by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University and reported by Bloomberg showed 61 percent of Israelis oppose an Israeli strike without U.S. cooperation. It had a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, a number of Israeli figures have lashed out against Netanyahu and Barak, saying that the government\u2019s ratcheting up of the rhetoric could backfire.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s clear to us that we can\u2019t do it alone,\u201d Israeli President Shimon Peres said in remarks on Israel\u2019s Channel Two that were seen as a rare rebuke to the government from the largely ceremonial office. \u201cIt\u2019s clear to us we have to proceed together with America.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several Likud Knesset members told the media that Peres was speaking out of turn.<\/p>\n
Shaul Mofaz, the leader of the opposition Kadima Party, was more blunt in his assessment of the risks of confronting the United States. In a blistering Knesset speech, he accused Netanyahu of trying to weigh in on the U.S. elections, undercutting Obama in favor of Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu, who has had tense relations with Obama, is seen as close to the Republicans and has a longstanding friendship with Romney.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Prime Minister, you want a crude, rude, unprecedented, reckless and risky intervention in the U.S. elections,\u201d Mofaz said in remarks translated by Globes, the Israeli business daily. \u201cYou are trying to frighten us and terrify us. And in truth, we are scared — scared by your lack of judgment, scared that you both lead and don\u2019t lead, scared that you are executing a dangerous and irresponsible policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meir Javedanfar, an Iran-born Israeli analyst, said that Netanyahu\u2019s talk of war diminished the real results that U.S.-led sanctions were having on the Iranian theocracy\u2019s viability.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think that the ruling echelon in Israel understands that as much as the Iranian regime does not want war; it\u2019s not an existential threat,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat is an existential threat are the sanctions. And the more attention that is diverted from the existential threat of the sanctions, the less the regime needs to address them.\u201d<\/p>\n