Israel and the Perils of Postponing Preemption - by Dr. Martin Sherman

Israel is approaching a point when it must decide to destroy the capabilities of the Hezbollah, rather than attempting to deter the enemy from using them.

Dr. Martin Sherman..
MiDA..
04 March '18..
Link: http://en.mida.org.il/2018/03/04/perils-postponing-preemption/

No government, if it regards war as inevitable, even if it does not want it, would be so foolish as to wait for the moment which is most convenient for the enemy. – Otto von Bismarck (1815–1890)

Senior IDF officers have publicly warned in the past few days, that the chances of war on Israel’s northern border in 2018 are growing significantly (see for examples here and here.) The specter of renewed fighting presents Israel with a daunting dilemma.

100,000 Missiles Just for Show?

Since the end of the 2006 Lebanon War, poorly conducted—and even more poorly concluded—by the Olmert government, the arsenal of the Iranian terror proxy, Hezbollah has grown exponentially in both the quantity and quality of its weaponry. It is now reportedly over ten times its pre-war size, and vastly enhanced in terms of its precision and destructive capacity.

Indeed, no one even vaguely familiar with the brutal nature of the organization—its gory past, and chilling proclamations of future intent—could even remotely entertain the hopelessly naïve belief that it was stockpiling over 100,000 missiles just for show.

Accordingly then, the working assumption underlying Israel’s strategic planning must be that, at some stage, they will in fact be used against Israel and its civilian population centers. Certainly, any policy discounting such a possibility as implausible would be wildly irresponsible.

As Israeli military sources point out, the likelihood of such a grim scenario has been increased by several other factors, over which Israel has little to no control.

The one is the winding down of the civil war in Syria, in which Hezbollah has been embroiled to support their ally, Bashar al-Assad, who appears to have regained control of much of the country. This allowed Hezbollah forces to begin disengaging from the fighting and to refocus their attention on the hated “Zionist entity” to the south.

The other is the undisguised efforts of Iran to establish a permanent military presence in both Syria and Lebanon. This includes the deployment of troops and the production of weapons in these two client states and the completion of a Shia crescent, creating an effective land bridge from Iran to the Mediterranean coast.

Who Decides When?

Given the assumption that, bolstered by its patron’s pervasive physical presence, Hezbollah will in all likelihood eventually use the vast arsenal at its disposal, the inevitable question is: Will Israel allow its deadly adversary to choose the time, place and circumstances for a major attack against it? Indeed, more to the point, can Israel afford to allow Hezbollah such a choice?

To grasp the consequences of permitting Hezbollah the chance of a large-scale first-strike, it is necessary to understand that the organization now poses a much graver threat than that of an asymmetric war with a guerrilla army, as it did in the past. Thus, a study prepared in July 2017 by a well-known security studies institute warned:

“…military buildups by Iran and Hezbollah – in Syria, and the production of high quality weapons in Lebanon – could mark the start of a new era… and could be seen as an attempt by Iran and Hezbollah to create a symmetrical strategic equation with Israel, if not more than that, i.e., achieving the capability to inflict significant damage to critical military and civilian systems in Israel”.

Accordingly, Hezbollah has become a strategic danger to Israel. While on its own it is clearly unable to invade and conquer large tracts of territory, it is eminently capable of wreaking massive damage on Israel’s civilian population and its strategic infrastructure.

Some Thoughts on Israeli Preemptive Action, Western Reaction

...The Israelis have taken to heart lots of lessons over the last 70 years. They have concluded that often the world quietly wants Israel to deal with existential threats emanating from the Middle East while loudly damning it when it does. They have learned from the experience of the Holocaust that, for good or evil, Jews are on their own and can never again trust in the world’s professed humanity to prevent another Holocaust. And they are convinced that they can also never again err on the side of the probability that national leaders, with deadly weapons in their grasp, do not really mean all the unhinged things they shout and scream about killing Jews.

Victor Davis Hanson..
National Review..
04 August '15..

The Obama administration seems peeved that almost everyone in Israel, left and right, has no use for the present Iranian–American deal to thwart Iran’s efforts to get the bomb.

Indeed, at times John Kerry has hinted darkly that Israel’s opposition to the pact might incur American wrath should the deal be tabled — even though Kerry knows that the polls show a clear majority of Americans being against the proposed agreement while remaining quite supportive of the Jewish state. President Obama, from time to time, suggests that his agreement is being sabotaged by nefarious lobbying groups, big-time check writers, and neoconservative supporters of the Iraq war — all shorthand, apparently, for pushy Jewish groups.

Obama and his negotiators seem surprised that Israelis take quite seriously Iranian leaders’ taunts over the past 35 years that they would like to liquidate the Jewish state and everyone in it. The Israelis, for some reason, remember that well before Hitler came to power, he had bragged about the idea of killing Jews en masse in his sloppily composed autobiographical Mein Kampf. Few in Germany or abroad had taken the raving young Hitler too seriously. Even in the late 1930s, when German Jews were being rounded up and haphazardly killed on German streets by state-sanctioned thugs, most observers considered such activities merely periodic excesses or outbursts from non-governmental Black- and Brownshirts.

The Obama administration, with vast oceans between Tehran and the United States, tsk-tsks over Iranian threats as revolutionary hyperbole served up for domestic consumption. The Israelis, with less than a thousand miles between themselves and Tehran, do not — and cannot. Given the 20th century’s history, Israel has good reason not to trust either the United States or Europe to ensure the security of the Jewish state. Israel has learned from the despicable anti-Semitism now prevalent at the U.N. and from the increasing thuggery directed at Jews in Europe that the world at large would shed crocodile tears over the passing of Israel on the day of its destruction, but, the next day, sigh and get right back to business in a “that was then, this is now” style.

In 1981 the Israelis took out the Iraqi nuclear reactor — sold to Saddam Hussein by France. They were ritually blasted as state terrorists and worse by major U.S. newspapers and at the United Nations — though not by Khomeini’s Iran, which earlier had failed in a preemptive bombing strike to do much damage to the Osirak reactor. Today, in retrospect, most nations are privately glad that the Israelis removed the reactor from a country that had hundreds of years’ worth of natural-gas and oil supplies and no need for nuclear power — and that is now under assault from ISIS.

In 2007, when the Israelis preempted once more, and destroyed the al-Kibar nuclear facility that was under construction in Syria, the world, after initial silence, again in Pavlovian fashion became outraged at such preemptive bombing. The global chorus claimed that there was no intelligence confirming that the North Koreans had helped to launch a Syrian uranium-enrichment plant.

Yet eight years later, most observers abroad once again privately shrug that Bashar Assad most certainly had hired the Koreans to build a nuclear processing plant — and are quietly satisfied that the Israelis took care of it. Note that the al-Kibar site lies in territory now controlled by ISIS. One can imagine a variety of terrifying contemporary scenarios had the Israelis not preempted. Most of those who condemned Israel’s attack would now be worrying about an ISIS improvised explosive device, packed with dirty uranium, that might go off in a major Western city.

In all these cases, the Israelis assumed that Western intelligence about nuclear proliferation in the Middle East was unreliable. They took for granted that Westerners automatically would blame Israelis for any preemptive attack against an Islamic nuclear site. And they likewise concluded that, privately and belatedly, Westerners would eventually be happy that the Israelis had belled the would-be nuclear cat.

Israel Acts in Syria

...The latest strike by the IAF against Hezbollah forces attempting to transfer Syrian weapons to its Iranian proxy army in Lebanon is yet another example of how in the absence of decisive American action, Israel instead is acting to prevent the further deterioration of security in the region.

Tom Wilson..
Commentary Magazine..
25 February '14..

Amid the Obama administration’s increasingly apparent dereliction of duty to America’s role on the world stage, it seems that, in the Middle East at least, Israel is taking on an increased level of responsibility in the effort to halt the proliferation of both weapons of mass destruction and terror groups. This has been particularly apparent when it comes to the ongoing crisis and instability in Syria and the reports today that Israel’s air force carried out strikes against Hezbollah strongholds on the Syrian border so as to disrupt efforts to transfer weapons from Syria into Lebanon.

Given the refusal of the administration to take decisive action in Syria, the ongoing indication that Obama is seeking further withdrawals of U.S. troops–most significantly in Afghanistan–and now the cuts to the defense budget, it is clear that Western allies in the region are going to find themselves increasingly isolated. If this policy is to continue, Israel faces the prospect of being ever more alone in a region descending into worsening turmoil. The concern in places like Syria is not simply restricted to the fear of rogue regimes using stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons against their own people. Rather, with the growing strength of al-Qaeda-linked groups in these conflict zones, there is a real risk of the most devastating weapons falling into the hands of Islamist militants prepared to use them indiscriminately.

It is essentially only on account of Israel that the world does not currently face the unimaginable possibility of a Syria armed with nuclear weapons. Israel is widely understood to have been behind the 2007 strike on the North Korean-abetted nuclear program in Syria. Just as it was Israel that spared us all from the grim reality of life with a nuclear Iraq–no doubt with Saddam still in power to this day–when the Israelis took out Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981. As such, it does not seem unreasonable to speculate that, had it not been for the Obama administration purposefully tying Israel’s hands, the Iranian nuclear threat and the risk of a nuclear domino effect across the region might already have been lifted by now.

For Acting as Point-Man, A Simple “Thank You” Would Suffice For Israel

...Twice, Israel was faced with the prospect of pariah nations acquiring nuclear weapons and twice Israel acted decisively. Had Israel acted with restraint, an overused phrase that has grown threadbare over the years, the Gulf wars would have undoubtedly taken different trajectories and half of Syria would have been rendered uninhabitable for one-thousand years.

Ari Lieberman..
Frontpagemag.com..
06 November '13..

On June 7, 1981 Israel provided the world with a lesson on how to deal with international pariahs. Its fighter jets, F-15s and F-16s, swooped over Iraqi airspace and with extreme precision using conventional iron bombs, destroyed a heavily defended Iraqi nuclear facility near Baghdad. At the time, many commentators, media outlets and politicians condemned Israel for its “aggression.” Over time however, many of those very same commentators came to recognize precocity of Israel’s Osirak operation and it is now well accepted that Israel’s preventive use of force then, thwarted a greater conflagration.

In 2007, Israeli intelligence officials approached the United States with incontrovertible proof that Bashar Assad, with the assistance of North Korea and Iran, was in the final stages of completing an atom bomb facility modeled after a North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear reactor. The United States, already embroiled in two unpopular Middle-Eastern wars vacillated, unsure on how to proceed.

Israel, a nation that sits within the belly of the beast, did not possess the luxury of waiting, contemplating or “assessing” and acted resolutely. On September 6, 2007, Israeli warplanes attacked and destroyed Syria’s Al Kibar nuclear complex turning the WMD plant into an expensive heap of scrap metal.

Twice, Israel was faced with the prospect of pariah nations acquiring nuclear weapons and twice Israel acted decisively. Had Israel acted with restraint, an overused phrase that has grown threadbare over the years, the Gulf wars would have undoubtedly taken different trajectories and half of Syria would have been rendered uninhabitable for one-thousand years.

From Goliath to the Dardanelles, The Case for Pre-Emptive War

Andrew Roberts..
Wall Street Journal..
30 April '13..

When—and it is most probably now a question of when, rather than if—Israel is forced to bomb Iran's uranium enrichment facilities, the Israeli government will immediately face a cacophony of denunciation from the press in America and abroad; the international left; the United Nations General Assembly; 20 secretly delighted but fantastically hypocritical Arab states; some Democratic legislators in Washington, D.C.; and a large assortment of European politicians. Critics will doubtless harp on about international law and claim that no right exists for pre-emptive military action. So it would be wise for friends of Israel to mug up on their ancient and modern history to refute this claim.

The right, indeed the duty, of nations to proactively defend themselves from foes who seek their destruction with new and terrifying weaponry far pre-dates President George W. Bush and Iraq. It goes back earlier than Israel's successful pre-emptive attacks on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 (not to mention other pre-emptive Israeli attacks like the one on the Syrian nuclear program in 2007). It even predates Israel's 1967 pre-emption of massed Arab armies, a move that saved the Jewish state. History is replete with examples when pre-emption was successful, as well as occasions when, because pre-emption wasn't employed, catastrophe struck.

When it became clear that the Emperor Napoleon was about to commandeer the large and formidable Danish navy stationed at Copenhagen in 1807, the British Royal Navy attacked without a declaration of war and either sank, disabled or captured almost the entire fleet. No one screamed about "international law" in those days, of course, any more than statesmen would have cared if they had. Neither did Winston Churchill give any warning to the Ottoman Empire, a German ally, when he ordered the bombardment of the Dardanelles Outer Forts in November 1914, also without a war declaration.

Similarly—though there were plenty of warnings given—Britain was formally at peace with her former ally France in July 1940 when Churchill ordered the sinking of the French fleet harbored near Oran in French Algeria, for which he was rightly cheered to the echo in the House of Commons. The sheer danger of a large naval force falling into Hitler's hands when Britain was fighting for its survival during the Battle of Britain justified the action, and the exigencies of international law could rightly go hang.

Tolerating the terrorizing of our fellow citizens

Gideon Israel..
Times of Israel..
06 November '12..

On Monday the defense ministry proudly announced that the IDF had successfully completed testing an improved version of Iron Dome which will be able to intercept medium range missiles carried by Hezbollah and Syria that can reach the center of the country. At first glance, this is a reason for celebration; but on the second thought, there is nothing to celebrate about. Why not?

Six months ago, as southern Israel was bombarded with more than 200 rockets from Gaza during a period of a few days, and Iron Dome was used at least 56 times, IDF Chief of General Staff Benny Gantz proclaimed, “Quiet will be met with quiet.” Next the Prime Minister chimes in: “Quiet will bring quiet.” In other words, stop attacking us and we won’t bother you, as if that round of rockets was an exception.

This seemingly tactical approach to the Gaza problem is the result of a very clear defense doctrine that has overtaken our military and political leadership and a large part of our nation’s citizenry: Our refusal to root out and deter our enemies. This is exemplified by our conduct of the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead. Even more so, it is demonstrated by the terrible sin of the nation of Israel forsaking the 20,000 citizens of Sderot to be bombed for ten years. Over 10,000 missiles have been lobbed into the South and no end in sight.

This new defense doctrine rejects preemption as a means of disabling our enemies’ capabilities. The purpose of military action has changed, from victory to “sending a message.” Punitive military activity is now authorized by our leadership provided, as everyone who lives in the south knows and as everyone in the north may soon find out, it provides no real deterrence. Never to such an extent have we, as a matter of policy, tolerated the terrorizing of our fellow citizens, and indeed of the entire country.

In Gaza and in Lebanon, our enemies continue to arm and continue to state their intentions toward Israel with complete clarity: our total destruction. Their growing military sophistication provides significant building blocks for the success of their genocidal objective.

Israel and Iran - Why crunch time is coming.

Emanuele Ottolenghi..
The Commentator..
21 August '12..

In recent months, expectations of a coming Israeli pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear installations have become increasingly hyped in the media and the public domain. There is now a well-established assumption among policymakers and analysts that Israel is considering this option and may indeed carry it out before long -- an assumption that public utterances by Israeli leaders have reinforced.

Opposition to an attack notwithstanding, one can easily gauge a sense of impending doom in the words of Israel's Prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his defence minister, Ehud Barak.

And one should take these words seriously -- not just as boisterous rhetoric aimed at forcing others to take action, lest Israel attacks anyway. Israel, after all, is the only country in the world that has ever dared launch a pre-emptive strike against an adversary's nuclear facilities. In fact, it has done so twice, first in Iraq and later in Syria. If one is to judge Israel by precedent, the words of its leaders should be taken neither as bluff nor as empty threats.

On the other hand, Israel's pre-emptive strikes -- Iraq 1981 and Syria 2007 -- occurred early on, before the reactors were operational, against one single target, and with a much lower degree of operational hazard than an operation against Iran would entail. In Iran's case, it might be just as sensible to assume that Israel may be too late.

The debate about a possible Israeli strike, naturally, intersects with a number of policy dilemmas that Israel must face: first, the discussion over Iran's nuclear timeline, one which is at the very heart of Israel's strategic dialogue with the United States; and second, the relationship between Israel and the US -- especially at a time when the impression is that the Obama Administration and Jerusalem are on different pages on this crucial issue.

Might Israel risk its most important friend's support when the chances of success are judged to be slim by most military analysts? Might it be too reckless even for an Israel facing an existential threat to jeopardise its most important strategic relationship during the season of US presidential elections, when a few weeks' wait could spare the kind of fallout that Israel may come to regret?

On the other hand, missing the October window of opportunity for an attack is not just about postponing it for a few weeks -- the first moonless night after US Presidential elections is in mid-November, and by then weather conditions above Iran's skies may make an Israeli operation too risky to succeed until Spring 2013. By then, Iran might cross one of or both of Israel's thresholds -- either by entering what Barak called "a zone of immunity", or by actually acquiring nuclear-weapons' capability. Israel will be too late. It will have to rely on American benevolence to fix the problem -- or find a way to live under the shadow of Iran's nuclear capability.

The reason sanctions fail and the consequences of attacking Iran (or not)

Fresnozionism.org...
06 August '12..





Here’s one cute example of why sanctions against Iran aren’t working:

U.K. investment bank Standard Chartered could be suspended from operating in New York after state finance regulators found hundreds of billions of dollars worth of transactions with Iran…

The state regulator alleges the bank colluded on tens of thousands of transactions totaling more than $250 billion, earning Standard Chartered millions in fees…

SCB’s obvious contempt for U.S. banking regulations was succinctly and unambiguously communicated by SCB’s Group Executive Director in response [to an inquiry by SCB's CEO for the Americas]. As quoted by an SCB New York branch officer, the Group Director caustically replied: “You f—ing Americans. Who are you to tell us, the rest of the world, that we’re not going to deal with Iranians.” — Eric Platt and Linette Lopez, Business Insider

This is is in addition to legal exemptions to sanctions. The three largest importers of Iranian oil, China, Japan and India have been granted exemptions in return for reducing their Iranian oil imports, but not ending them. South Korea, the fourth largest, has temporarily stopped, but intends to resume shortly. Overall, 20 nations have such waivers, and the Iranians claim that 80% of their oil economy is unaffected (probably an exaggeration).

There is no question that the Iranian economy is being hurt by sanctions. But, from the point of view of the regime, it’s a small price to pay to (in their view) make it possible for them to kick the Big Satan out of the Middle East, destroy the Little Satan and ultimately spread the Shiite Islamic revolution throughout the region. If there ever was a game changer, an Iranian nuclear weapon would be one.

Imagine if, in early 1945, the US had faced economic sanctions aimed at the Manhattan Project. Would we have pulled back with success a few months away?

Berkowitz - A Misreading of Law and History on Preemptive Strikes

Peter Berkowitz..
realclearpolitics.com..
11 March '12..

Liberalism these days seems to encourage an illiberal and anti-democratic tendency to turn hard questions of morality and politics into easy questions of law. In accordance with this tendency -- and timed to coincide with the major White House meeting on Iran last week between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -- Bruce Ackerman, a Yale law professor and political scientist, took to the pages of the Los Angeles Times to appeal to the authority of law to end debate about the use of military force to destroy or disable Iran’s nuclear program.

Ackerman maintains that American support for a preemptive strike “would be a violation of both international law and the U.S. Constitution.” Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, according to Ackerman, is unambiguous: “This provision allows states to use military force in self-defense only when responding to an ‘armed attack.’ Preemptive attacks are another matter.”

Preemption, he argues, is foreign to the American constitutional tradition. Apart from the “aberration” of the George W. Bush administration, America has adhered “to a tradition of U.S. statesmanship that began with Secretary of State Daniel Webster,” according to which a state may respond with force only if it confronts, in Webster’s words, “a necessity of self-defense, instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.”

Ackerman cites Ronald Reagan as a prime example. According to Ackerman, Reagan affirmed the Webster test in 1981 when “the United States joined in the U.N. Security Council’s unanimous condemnation of Israel’s preemptive assault on an Iraqi nuclear reactor.”

The Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, Ackerman asserts, represented a unique “departure from this restrictive approach.” The failure to find weapons of mass destruction has legal significance as it “only emphasizes the wisdom of Webster’s insistence that the ‘necessity of self-defense’ be ‘instant’ and ‘overwhelming.’ ”

Ackerman is wrong in both the history and the law.