From the start, there were only two genuine options for stopping Irans nuclear program: a massive American strike or an agreement with the Iranians that included carrots. Anything else is nonsense. When Barak describes how cabinet minister Yuval Steinitz melted and one chief of staff, Benny Gantz, objected and his predecessor, Gabi Ashkenazi, said the army wasnt prepared, he forgets to mention one detail. The entire conceit of an Israeli attack was based from the outset on the horrifically risky preposition that it would drag the United States into war.
It was obvious to all that an Israeli strike was incapable of eliminating Irans nuclear project, but the Americanologist Benjamin Netanyahu and his partner Barak argued that they would succeed in drawing the superpower into war. Gantz, Ashkenazi, cabinet ministers Dan Meridor and Benny Begin refused to be a part of this. They knew that Obamas public declarations about Israels right to defend itself concealed an undeniable red light. Dont you dare attack Iran, senior officials told their Israeli counterparts repeatedly. And it wasn't only John Kerry and Obama, the naive ones.
Barak surely remembers insisting on taking part in a meeting between then-President George W. Bush and then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008. He presumably assumed that Bush would be no match for his own powers of persuasion, but when the discussion was over and he asked the president for bunker-buster bombs, even the president whose middle name is not Hussein gave Barak a look that said, What part of no didnt you understand?
If that story has a bottom line, its this: When the United States recognizes an important interest, nothing will change its mind not Republican money, not AIPAC and not even Netanyahus speeches. Obama did not hesitate to dispatch one of his advisers to initiate a covert dialogue with Iran. The secret channel led to the interim accord and ultimately to the final accord that will be passed by Congress despite Netanyahus opposition.
Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan actually thought there was a third option for foiling the Iranian nuclear program undercover operations that would delay it repeatedly. Dagan accuses Netanyahu of forcing the Americans into reaching an agreement with Iran, by turning the issue into a global crisis. Dagan is a much greater expert than I, but it seems to me that if a country of Irans size wants nuclear weapons there is no way to prevent it.
There were figures in the defense establishment, such as Ilan Mizrahi, national security adviser under Olmert, who said as far back as eight years ago that Israel would have get used to living with a nuclear Iran, just as the United States learned to live with a nuclear Soviet Union. It is unfair, then, to blame Netanyahu for the generous compensation package Iran is getting although he can definitely be accused of arrogance.
It was Netanyahu who, before the 2013 election, declared that Iran would not have a nuclear program by the end of his next term. In 2008, when we were about to broadcast an investigative piece on Netanyahu, who was leader of the opposition, his wife, Sara, called one of the shareholders of Israel's Channel 10 television and shouted at him that only her husband could save Israel from the holocaust Iran was planning and that our investigations could ruin everything.
It's probably true that no Israeli leader could have achieved a better outcome, but only one prime minister devoted his term to the matter, spending billions of dollars and subordinating the defense establishment. To judge by the results, that effort was a failure.
This article was written by Raviv Drucker for haaretz on Sept. 6, 2015.
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