Chuck Freilich
Haaretz, Dec. 26, 2021
“Given its more modest capabilities, Israel’s national security strategy has always focused on a combination of deterrence and limited military victories designed to play for time, in the hope that the problem of the hour would somehow resolve itself in the future.”
As the prospects for a renewed nuclear deal with Iran fade, at least for now, the international and Israeli media have been replete with reports of Israel’s inability to destroy the Iranian nuclear program and ostensible lack of a military option. Various experts, including former and current Israeli officials, have all opined.
By framing the issue as the ability or inability to achieve a “knockout blow,” one that puts an end to Iran’s nuclear program, these reports miss the point. That would probably not be Israel’s objective.
Up until around 2010, probably earlier, this might have still been possible, but Iran now has the necessary knowledge to reconstitute the program after an attack and even the U.S. can no longer simply put an end to it by military means. A successful attack could aspire today, at most, to achieve a significant delay, and even that is probably something that only the U.S. could do.
Chuck Freilich, a former deputy Israeli national security adviser, teaches political science at Columbia and Tel Aviv universities. He is the author of “Israeli National Security: A New Strategy for an Era of Change” (Oxford University Press)” and the forthcoming “Israel and the Cyber Threat: How the Startup Nation Became a Global Cyber Power.” Twitter: @FreilichChuck
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