Increased Israel chatter on Iran is about sending a message to Washington

By Ron Kampeas

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

WASHINGTON – How much noise does Israel’s leadership have to make to get the Obama administration to say what it wants to hear about Iran?

It’s a question now preoccupying Israel, along with its corollary: How much noise is too much and risks precipitating a crisis between Jerusalem and its closest ally?

Some Israeli analysts say that pronounced signals from their country’s leadership in recent days that it is readying for a strike against Iran are less an immediate call to arms than a call for an unequivocal commitment from the Obama administration to take the lead in such an attack or to come to Israel’s aid if it goes first.

“We are at a serious juncture,” said Ehud Yaari, an Israel-based fellow for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The way I understand it, the Israeli leadership is trying to signal to the administration that unless there is a change of tack on the part of Washington concerning the Iranian nuclear program, Israel may have to decide to make its own military move.”

The signals have included:

• An interview in Haaretz with a top Israeli official, whom is widely believed to be Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who argued that Israel risks more in the short term by not striking than it does by striking.

• The appointment to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet of Avi Dichter, a former head of Israel’s internal security service, the Shin Bet, to bring the home front up to speed.

• A series of notices to the Israeli public, including a call to update gas mask equipment and a listing of Tel Aviv underground parking lots that could double as bomb shelters.

• A series of public statements by Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, suggesting that an Israeli strike would reap sufficient rewards to justify it.

“One, two, three, four years are a long time in the Middle East – look what’s happened in the last year,” Oren said this week in a Bloomberg News interview, addressing the claim that an Israeli strike would “only” delay Iran and not end the nuclear program.

A key Israeli fear is that a nuclear Iran would provide an umbrella to hostile forces consolidating their hold along Israel’s borders in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, and possibly in Syria and Egypt as those nations undergo turmoil that threatens to disrupt decades of peace on their borders.

“The idea of these non-state actors on Israel’s borders which may be controlled by a nuclear Iran is a serious threat, the kind of which Israel has not encountered before,” Asher Susser, a senior fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University, said in a conference call organized by the Israel Policy Forum on Thursday.

Still, Obama administration officials are not yet publicly buying the rhetoric.

“I don’t believe they’ve made a decision as to whether or not they will go in and attack Iran at this time,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told reporters on Aug. 15. “With regards to the issue of where we’re at from a diplomatic point of view, the reality is that we still think there is room to continue to negotiate.”

Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff, said an Israeli strike would have limited effect.

“I may not know about all of their capabilities, but I think that it’s a fair characterization to say that they could delay but not destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities,” Dempsey said at the same briefing.