A FLURRY of Israeli media reports about cabinet discusions of an attack on Iran, a Guardianstory that Britain is preparing to assist an "inevitable" US strike, an Israeli ballistic missile test, a mass civil defence exercise mimicking a missile attack... Tension is being ratcheted up. But is it just sabre rattling? Another familiar war of words? Or real preparations for the real thing? In truth it's a distinction that doesn't matter – there is a real possibility that an unstoppable momentum will tip the former into the latter. A dangerous game is being played.
Israeli and international media are reporting that prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and defence minister Ehud Barak are trying to persuade a reluctant majority in the cabinet to support a preemptive missile strike against Iran to take out its developing nuclear weapons capacity. That they have persuaded foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman to back them. That new evidence will be provided next week by the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, of unprecedented levels of research activity with few applications other than the development of weapons. That ground lost by its programme after a cyber attack last year has been made up. And we should not be under any illusion, denials notwithstanding, that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons.
Israel’s increasingly aggressive stance on the regional stage is also reflected in its disproportionate response to the Unesco decision to admit the Palestinians to full membership. Punishment includes freezing Unesco funding, a speeding up of settlement building in the occupied West Bank and around Jerusalem, and a freeze on tax transfers to the Palestinian Authority. The latter gesture is particularly counterproductive as it will deprive the authority of the means to pay the very security forces on whom Israel depends to circumscribe Hamas.
Some of the shapes being thrown by Netanyahu on Iran, however, may have more to do with trying to bounce the US itself into attacking Iran – it alone is probably capable of doing the job thoroughly. Barak is reported to have told Washington that if the US does not bomb Iran, Israel will. But an attack, which could provoke a bloody regional conflagration, is not the only alternative. A combination of external pressure on Iran to return to meaningful talks and old-fashioned nuclear deterrence – a warning of devastating retaliation should it use nuclear weapons – remain a viable strategy. The US, without whose sanction Israel may not dare act, must insist that its ally hold its hand.