October 10, 2012 By
Why, in his speech to the UN General Assembly
late last month, did Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu push back
the crunch time for Iran’s nuclear program to next spring or summer?
The extended deadline came as a surprise considering that Netanyahu and
his defense minister Ehud Barak had been saying for almost a year that
time was running out fast, and implying that 2012 was the year of
decision.
Since Netanyahu’s speech it has been variously claimed that he pushed
back the deadline because of successful sabotage of Iran’s Fordo
enrichment plant; because of too much opposition to a strike in the
Israeli cabinet and top brass; or because Netanyahu expected Barack
Obama to win on November 6 and saw improving relations with him as
Israel’s cardinal strategic interest at the moment.
On Tuesday Amos Harel, defense analyst of Haaretz, offered
still another take on the matter. Iran, he said, has been diverting
enough of its enriched uranium for scientific purposes—specifically,
making fuel rods for producing medical isotopes—that it won’t have
enough bomb-grade uranium for another eight months.
The International Atomic Energy Agency’s report in August had already
said Iran was diverting enriched uranium for that other purpose. Now,
says Harel, “defense sources” have further information to confirm that.
If so, why would Iran be slowing down its bomb program? Harel says
it’s “an attempt to reduce international pressure”—thereby allowing
Netanyahu and Israel to breathe a tad easier for now.
Typically, though, another report appearing on the same day puts Iran
much closer to the finish line—though with a catch. Washington’s
Institute for Science and International Security now says Iran could have enough material for a bomb in two to four months—definitely sooner than Netanyahu’s spring deadline.
And if the centrifuges at Fordo—now idle—start operating again, Iran
could even, says the ISIS, have enough enriched uranium in three or four
weeks.
On the other hand, the ISIS believes that, in any case, it would take
Iran much longer to come up with a warhead: Iran would need “many
additional months to manufacture a nuclear device suitable for
underground testing and even longer to make a reliable warhead for a
ballistic missile.”
In still another piece appearing on Tuesday, nuclear-weapons expert
Prof. Graham Allison of Harvard takes a similar line. While Netanyahu’s
timeline of next spring is “essentially correct,” Allison claims
Iran would then have to launch a crash program to build the other
components of a weapon. That, in turn, would entail ejecting the IAEA
inspectors and giving the U.S. and Israel plenty of time—a few months—to
act.
A scenario that, in Allison’s view, would make no sense for Iran;
instead it would “wait until it has amassed enough material for a
half-dozen bombs—allowing it to test one and credibly claim to have a
nuclear deterrent against attack.” For that, says Allison, Iran would need at least two years.
In claiming, then, in his UN speech that the West’s red line should
be enough Iranian enriched uranium for a single bomb, was Netanyahu
being unduly alarmist?
The answer may lie in an interview that appeared in Foreign Policy’s The Cable on Friday with Netanyahu envoy Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S.
Shoval reaffirmed to interviewer Josh Rogin: “Israel doesn’t set
dates, but if by a certain point the sanctions have not achieved the
desired results, then other measures will have to be very practically
considered…. We talk in terms of 6 to 8 months.”
He added: “Israel doesn’t pretend that it can totally eliminate
Iran’s nuclear program…. But the general view in Israel is that we could
stop the Iranian effort for 3 to 5 years. Well, in the Middle East 3 to
5 years is not such a short time, as we have seen. And the Americans
could get into the game if they want to, within that delay.”
Most revealingly, Rogin reports that Shoval said Israel’s red line
“is when the Iranians have produced enough fissionable material from
which they can produce at least a dirty bomb within a short time….”
Setting off a dirty bomb in a city, of course, would not require the
additional components mentioned by the ISIS and by Allison. For large
countries, that threat may seem tolerable. For Israel—where a single
dirty bomb could cause widespread panic in Tel Aviv and make much of it
uninhabitable for years—it would not be.
Netanyahu’s announcement Tuesday night that Israel, too, is going to
elections—which he’s expected to win handily—can put him in a stronger
position, with a stronger coalition, to act against Iran later in 2013
if it proves necessary. And, it should be added—since much remains
speculative—if it hasn’t been done already.
Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com
URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/understanding-israels-red-line/
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