Israel
Report: Israeli military instructed to prepare for possible Trump strike on Iran
Over the past few weeks, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been instructed to prepare for the possibility that the U.S. will conduct a military strike against Iran before President Donald Trump leaves office, senior Israeli officials told Barak Ravid of Axios, according to a report published Wednesday.
According to the report, the Israeli government ordered the IDF to commence the preparations not because of any intelligence or assessment indicating that Trump will order such a strike, but because senior Israeli officials anticipate “a very sensitive period” ahead of Biden’s inauguration on January 20.
Additionally, the report detailed that the IDF’s preparedness measures relate to possible Iranian retaliation against Israel directly or through Iranian proxies in Syria, Gaza and Lebanon, the Israeli officials said.
Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a surprise trip to Israel, where he visited the controversial settlements in the Israeli areas of the West Bank and Golan Heights, in an unprecedented move for a sitting U.S. secretary of state. Golan Heights in particular is disputed between Israel and neighboring Syria and the region is also bordered by Lebanon to the north. During the trip, the topic of Iran was discussed.
The Axios article mentioned that The New York Times reported last week that Trump, in a meeting with senior members of his national security team, brought up the idea of possibly striking Iran’s uranium enrichment facility in Natanz.
The Times reported that Trump presented the idea after a briefing on an International Atomic Energy Agency report about Iran’s growing stockpiles of enriched uranium, but that high-ranking officials warned him about the dangers of escalating regional tensions. Those high-ranking officials were reported to include Vice President Mike Pence and Pompeo. The president also reportedly seemed convinced that striking Iran directly would be too big of a risk, but has considered alternate options, per The Times.
State Department officials traveling with Pompeo last week to many Gulf countries to discuss Iran told reporters “all options are on the table.” During that Gulf tour, U.S. Central Command announced that B-52 strategic bombers had conducted a “short-notice, long-range mission into the Middle East to deter aggression and reassure U.S. partners and allies,” which Axios noted was seen as another signal to Iran.
Israeli officials also told Axios that, during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Sunday meeting in Saudi Arabia with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the main topic was Iran, the Saudis’ biggest rival in the region.
Even some Iranian figures are saying that a U.S. attack against it would have explosive consequences. Hossein Dehghan, an adviser to Iran’s leader and a possible candidate in Iran’s upcoming presidential elections, last week told the Associated Press that such a strike against Iran could set off a “full-fledged war” in the wider region.
Moreover, senior Israeli officials told Axios they expect the United States will notify Israel ahead of any U.S. strike against Iran. These officials, however, are reportedly concerned that such a warning from the U.S. won’t be sufficient to fully prepare. The Israeli government thus ordered the IDF to begin taking preparatory steps just in case such a scenario were to occur, Axios reported.
You can follow Douglas Braff on Twitter @Douglas_P_Braff.
Iran kicked out one-third of its nuclear inspectors. The Biden administration is on the verge of getting Iran to release five hostages in exchange for unfreezing $6 billion of Iranian cash, and potentially five Iranian prisoners held in US custody. As Iran is on the march, a breakthrough in Middle East peace can’t come fast enough.
The best way to check Iranian ambitions in the region would be the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. While such a deal would be “tectonic,” the Biden administration is destroying the prospects for normalization because it continues to be obsessed with linking the deal to Palestinian nationalism.
More than any of the known Palestinian demands to date, the Biden administration is fixated on Palestinian statehood. And the administration continues to browbeat Israel on that point. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has recently claimed that both Saudi Arabia and the Biden administration view a two-state solution an important piece to any deal. Previously, Blinken told Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, Ron Dermer, that Israel would be “misreading the situation” if it doesn’t think that significant concessions to the Palestinians would be required to broker a Saudi-Israel deal. White House National Security Council spokesman Jake Sullivan also told Dermer that that Israel will need to give significant concessions to the Palestinians so that the Biden administration can sell the deal to Democrats in Congress.
One unconfirmed Saudi press report stated that the Saudis have walked away from talks, due to concerns that Israel wouldn’t agree to placate the Palestinians. However, both an American and an Israeli official have asserted that that report is false.
What is more likely is that the Saudis are taking a pragmatic, not absolutist, approach to a Palestinian track. According to an unnamed Arab official who is familiar with recent talks between Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority (PA) earlier this month, Saudi Arabia is now communicating to the PA that it is willing to abandon the two-state solution as a pre-condition for normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and that the PA needs to acclimate its demands to that fact. Additionally, Saudi Arabia has proposed to re-start aid to the PA, halted since 2016, in efforts to get the PA to at least tacitly support normalization.
The Israeli response to Palestinian nationalism is much more publicly opposed. Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi has rejected the idea of Palestinian statehood as part of the deal. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said the concept of Israeli concessions to the Palestinians as a part of normalization is “a fiction” as such a deal “has nothing to do with Judea and Samaria [commonly referred to in the West as the ‘West Bank’].”
Israel’s hostility to Palestinian nationalism is well founded. As the Oslo Accords turn 30 years old, the so called “peace process” has failed to bring peace to Israel, as Israel has had to defend itself against at least five warsand countless smaller violent conflicts against the Palestinians since 1993. PA President Mahmoud Abbas continued to show his true bigoted face with a recent anti-Semitic diatribe, part and parcel of the systemic anti-Semitism and incitement to violence of the PA.
The Biden administration continues to stand in the way of Saudi Arabia’s normalization of relations with Israel, as it continues to pursue maximalist demands on Palestinian statehood. This is a non-starter for Israel, and not a top concern for Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, like Israel, is primarily focused on using the deal to leverage its strength against Iran – as Saudi Arabia is looking to secure US support for advanced weapons, a NATO-like alliance, and civilian nuclear energy. In order to make a sustainable counterweight against Iranian aggression, the Biden administration must jettison its demands for Palestinian statehood, and at the very least answer Saudi concerns with a serious counter-offer. Failure to buttress Israel, Saudi Arabia and our Gulf allies will likely result in a resurgent Iran.
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