Iran is a month from a nuclear bomb. That was the story last week. But read underneath the headline and it’s not so clear.
Experts at The Institute for Science and International Security had issued a report based on another report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to which “in a worst-case breakout estimate,” the Islamic Republic of Iran would have enough enriched uranium for one nuclear weapon in a month.
How accurate is their worst-case breakout estimate? A couple of weeks earlier, Defence Minister Benny Gantz had said that they were two months away. Is his estimate better or did the Iranian centrifuges double their enrichment speed? And what about all the other warnings we’ve heard over the last 20 years about how many months and years the Iranians are from a bomb? No matter how near they seem to get, they’re never quite there.
And of course, being a month away from having enough fissile material for a bomb isn’t the same thing as being a month away from having an actual deployable nuclear weapon. The development of the technology and production capabilities to put that uranium in a warhead which fits on a ballistic missile with the range and guidance system enabling it to hit a target thousands of miles away is another matter entirely. The weaponisation process, Israeli military analysts believe, will take another two years.
So what has changed? The overall Iranian strategy of inching steadily towards becoming a military nuclear power, while trying to minimise the diplomatic, political and economic price, is still the same. But since the leaders in Jerusalem, Washington and Tehran have all been replaced over the past nine months, the way that price is calculated in each capital may have changed as well.
Senior Israeli officials echoed in briefings to the media the warning that Iran is a month away from a bomb. This time, the warning was addressed to domestic ears. The new Israeli government is preparing its public for a major change in strategy.
When the Iranian nuclear deal with the unwieldy name of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was signed in 2015, it was described by then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “a big mistake of historic proportions”. It is now being seen by the Israeli leadership as the lesser of evils when it comes to containing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. In interviews given by both Mr Gantz and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, the ground is being prepared.
“The current U.S. approach of putting the Iran nuclear programme back in a box, I’d accept that,” said the Defence Minister in an interview with the Foreign Policy website. Mr Bennett meanwhile went on the offensive against his predecessor saying that “the gap between rhetoric and speeches and actions is very big”, and that as a result of the Netanyahu policies “Israel inherited a situation in which Iran is at the most advanced point ever in its race to the bomb”.
It bears saying that while this is a dramatic reversal in Israel’s official attitude towards the Iran Deal – from seeing it as a modern-day version to the Munich Agreement of 1938, to an efficient, if imperfect arms-control treaty – it has been the thinking in the Israeli security established all along. And Benny Gantz, as IDF chief of staff back in 2015 and defence minister, hasn’t changed his mind. What has changed is that now he doesn’t have to worry about contradicting the Iran Deal’s biggest opponent, Mr Netanyahu.
“There are lots of problems with the JCPOA,” explains a senior Israeli defence official. “The fact that it didn’t deal with the other areas in which Iran is a threat to the region other than its nuclear programme, and the sunset clause which left it unclear what would happen in another decade.
“But what the deal did do, and quite well from the Israeli perspective, was give us 10 years of stability in which the Iranians would be closely monitored to see they couldn’t build a bomb. Ten years in our region is a long time and we can do a lot in that time. The moment Netanyahu convinced Trump to withdraw from the JCPOA in 2018, we lost that period of stability and since the US had been the one to breach the agreement first, it was easier for the Iranians to get away with breaking it themselves.”
But while in private Israeli officials will admit that they would rather see a return to the JCPOA then another breakdown in the talks, whenever they resume between Iran and the world powers, it’s still a hard sell to the Israeli public.
If Joe Biden’s administration does find a way to rejoin the Iran Deal, Mr Netanyahu as leader of the opposition will be quick to score this a failure of the Bennet government’s diplomacy (even though he himself had failed at convincing the Obama administration not to sign the deal in the first place). The former prime minister’s dominance over the public agenda in the past decade was so strong that a large majority of Israelis, even those who oppose him politically, were convinced that the Iran Deal was disastrous for Israel – they weren’t even aware that the generals and the security chiefs had a much more nuanced view of it. So adopting a much more conciliatory tone towards a possible return to the deal takes some preparation.
The irony is that this time around, it’s far from clear that the US and Iran will agree on terms. Since the Biden administration came in and started its negotiations, both formally in Vienna and through various back-channels, they have proved tougher than Israel expected.
And the same can be said of the Iranians, even before the new president, hardliner Ebrahim Raisi was sworn in six weeks ago.
“Back in 2015, the expectation in Iran was that the agreement would yield a massive boost to the local economy, which didn’t materialise,” says Raz Zimmt, a veteran Iran-watcher at Tel-Aviv University.
“Then in 2018, when Trump withdrew from the deal and applied the ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions, some thought it would topple the Iranian economy.
“That didn’t happen either. So the real question we don’t know now is how eager the Iranians really are to go back to the agreement.
“Sure, it will help their economy, but Supreme Leader Khamenei may be thinking that they can make do with trading with Russia and China and don’t need to limit themselves on nuclear development anymore.”
In this case, there’s what is now being called in Jerusalem and Washington “Plan B” – or as President Biden put it earlier this month in his meeting with Mr Bennett – “if diplomacy fails, we have other options.”
But as American allies have been learning in recent weeks, the Biden administration may be less reliable than expected. Suddenly, a return to the Iran Deal looks like the best option.
