When asked when the wars in
Iraq or
Afghanistan might end, retired Gen.
David Petraeus would deploy a useful quip. "The enemy gets a vote," he would say, meaning that both sides need to agree to stop fighting.
There is a corollary to Petraeus's adage that is relevant not to war but to peace agreements: The allies get a vote, too.
In the context of the 2015 nuclear agreement with
Iran, the allies include
Israel, which was not a party to the deal but is almost certainly responsible for last weekend's assassination of
Iran's top nuclear weapons scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Israel has repeatedly declined comment on the Fakrhizadeh operation, which comes after a string of Israeli sabotage actions over
the summer against some of
Iran's most sensitive nuclear sites. Last month, it was reported that Israeli teams killed
al-Qaida's deputy outside of
Tehran. When Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu announced to the world that Israeli operatives had stolen reams of detailed Iranian schematics and plans for building a nuclear
weapon in 2018, he urged the audience to remember Fakhrizadeh's name, revealing a memo from the late scientist describing
covert nuclear activities.
Since the news broke of the assassination, the
European Union as well as several former officials of the Barack Obama administration have issued condemnations. Former CIA director
John Brennan, for example, mused that if a foreign country was responsible, it would be "an act of state-sponsored terrorism."
That's myopic.
To start,
Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons poses an existential threat to
Israel and Gulf Arab states such as the
United Arab Emirates. It's not that
Iran would launch a first strike against one of these nations. Rather, it's that all of
Iran's other destabilizing actions — supporting terrorists, arming regional insurgents, building up a long-range missile capability
— would be much harder to deter if
Iran possessed an atomic weapon.
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In this sense, it's mistaken to view
Israel's likely strike against Fakhrizadeh through the lens of its effect on President-elect
Joe Biden's goal of reentering the
Iran nuclear deal and negotiating a stronger follow-on agreement.
Israel has already proved it has extraordinary intelligence capabilities inside
Iran. But the opportunity to take out a high-value target such as Fakhrizadeh does not come along often. It's more likely that
the opportunity presented itself and
Israel pounced.
More important,
Israel has showed in the last three years that it is willing to use its intelligence capabilities to stymie
Iran's nuclear program.
Israel killed some nuclear scientists inside
Iran during negotiations over
Iran's nuclear program. Back then, most observers believed that
Israel's only chance to destroy
Iran's nuclear infrastructure was an overt action, such as a missile strike, drone attack or bombing run. The explosions at Iranian
sites over the summer suggest
Israel can accomplish much of this task through intelligence operations.
The upshot is that any future deal with
Iran will have to address
Israel's security needs. That is not what happened five years ago. The tensions of the nuclear deal became so dramatic that in 2015,
Netanyahu addressed a joint session of
Congress to make the case against the deal Obama was negotiating. Netanyahu was willing to risk
Israel's most important alliance to oppose a deal that he believed imperiled his country's future. So it's highly unlikely that
Israel would be willing to end its activities in
Iran so the
U.S. can rejoin that same deeply flawed nuclear agreement.
Israel may agree not to launch any strikes for a time, such as the first few months of the Biden administration. But it won't give
up the capability to strike inside
Iran unless
Iran agrees to abandon the aspects of its nuclear program suitable for building bombs. If Biden is smart, he will use this dynamic
to his advantage as he tests
Iran's willingness to negotiate.
Israel's sabotage and assassinations have not destroyed
Iran's nuclear program. But they have set it back. As the architect of that program, Fakhrizadeh will be hard to replace. What will
be even harder for the regime, however, is persuading its other scientists that they will be safe if they continue the quest
for a nuclear weapon.
(COMMENT, BELOW)
Eli Lake is a Bloomberg View columnist who writes about politics and foreign affairs. He was previously the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast. Lake also covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI, and was a contributing editor at the New Republic.