Each month the WRT Israel Committee strives to provide our congregants with positive information about our Jewish homeland in Israel to counter the negative imagery that fills mass media. We selected this article from a recent publication of the Jewish Policy Center since it thoroughly presents an aspect of Israeli history, past and present, which is a critical issue today. Iran’s possession of a nuclear weapon, in the hands of a blatantly anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist government would undermine the ability of Israel to maintain itself as a free, Jewish state and unleash a conflagration of epic proportions.
Israel’s Qualitative Military Edge
by Asaf Romirowsky
When the modern State of Israel was founded 61 years ago, David Ben Gurion, its first prime minister, correctly noted that the country could not afford to lose a single war. Consequently, Israel has worked to maintain a high level of military deterrence against the many Arab countries and Islamist groups that seek its destruction.
The mere belief that Israel possesses a nuclear program has served as an important deterrent in recent decades. While terror groups have picked fights with Israel, no state (with the possible exception of Iraq in 1991) has attempted to engage in a direct war with Israel since 1973.
Now that Iran appears to be on the verge of nuclear weapons, the Israeli military establishment must now consider a critical question: will its qualitative military edge hold?
The Upper Hand
From what is now known of the Israeli nuclear program, the project began in 1958. The nucleus of the research and development program was in the Southern Israeli town of Dimona. By the end of the year 1960, as Avner Cohen details in his book Israel and the Bomb, CIA director Allen Dulles informed the National Security Council that he believed the Israelis would be able produce nuclear weapons within a decade. But the CIA’s estimates were off by about five years. It is now known that Israel developed its first nuclear weapon in 1966.
U.S.-Israeli Ties
The Kennedy and Johnson administrations were initially wary of Israel’s nuclear ambitions. Both administrations initiated a program whereby the U.S. conducted annual visits to Dimona, in an attempt to control the program. In 1966, Israel reached the nuclear threshold, but it decided not to conduct an atomic test.
By 1968, Johnson and Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol were at odds over the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Johnson sought for Israel to become a signatory. Israel, however, adopted a policy of “nuclear ambiguity,” and vowed that it would not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East. This is a policy that it still holds today.
The deliberately ambiguous Israeli strategy was three pronged: reassuring Israeli society in tough times; making the Arabs think twice before they thought about attacking; and giving allied countries the comfortable option of not taking a definitive position on Israel's nuclear capability.
Under the Nixon Administration (1969-1973), Israel's ambiguity was not challenged. Yitzchak Rabin, who at the time served as Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., told Nixon's national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, that Israel had no intention of signing the NPT. Nixon and Kissinger, both skeptical of the NPT, did not take issue with this position. Accepting Israel's policy of nuclear ambiguity subsequently became a cornerstone of U.S. policy though the Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan Administrations.
Preventing Nuclear Challengers:
An Attack on Iran?
Iran is the most recent Israeli enemy to attempt to challenge Israel’s edge. The difference is that Tehran has learned from the mistakes of Iraq and Syria. The Islamic Republic has spread its facilities throughout the country. Moreover, the facilities are hardened and subterranean, making them more impervious to attack. Israel, according to a plethora of media reports, is mulling an attack on those sites, as a means to maintain its qualitative edge, and to defuse a radical regime whose president has vowed to “wipe Israel off the map.”
While the attacks Israel mounted against nuclear capabilities in 1981 and 2007 were complex in their own right, an attack on Iran would be even more so. Attacking Iran’s nuclear program would require Israel to hit more than a dozen targets, including possibly moving convoys. The main target sites include: Natanz, where thousands of centrifuges produce enriched uranium; Isfahan, where 250 tons of gas are stored in tunnels; and Arak, the location of the heavy water reactor that produces plutonium. But there could be more than a dozen other sites, according to press reports.
For the moment, Israel is sitting tight. It is giving the Barack Obama Administration the time it has requested to enable its policy of engagement to work. Israel also hopes that punishing multilateral sanctions and the subsequent fallout in the weakened Iranian economy may yet convince the Iranians to back down from their nuclear program.
However, the Israelis know the stakes, and will not leave the country's fate to chance. Given Iran's track record of sowing regional instability, embracing radical ideologies, and supporting terrorist organizations, Israel has indicated clearly that it has no plans to stand aside if the Iranians get close to completing their program. Indeed, with no other options, the Israelis will almost certainly attack.
A Tale of Two Programs
The Iranian program, though it is not complete, already poses a threat to the region. Iran’s vows to attack Israel, not to mention the fear that has spread throughout the Arab world, strongly indicate that such a program would be a danger.
Israel’s nuclear program stands in sharp contrast to the advancing Iranian one. While Israel's arsenal serves as a deterrent, it has never been a destabilizing factor in the Middle East. Indeed, Israel's policy of nuclear ambiguity is likely responsible for the sharp drop in state-to-state conflicts in recent decades.
About the author: Middle East analyst Asaf Romirowsky is the former Manager of Israel and Middle East Affairs at the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia as well as an Adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Forum. Mr. Romirowsky, is a former Israel Defense Force (IDF) International Relations liaison officer in the West Bank, currently serves as an IDF reserve liaison officer to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. He holds a B.A. in Middle East Affairs and Contemporary Jewish History and from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an M.A. in International Relations and Middle East Affairs from Villanova University, where he focused on the differences and similarities between the Mitchell Report in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the Good
Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. http://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/1531/israel-qualitative-military-edge