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Volume 16 | No.
1 | April 2013
Leading from Behind:

The “Obama Doctrine” and US Policy in the Middle East
| Sanford Lakoff
Eleven Years to the Arab Peace Initiative:
Time for an Israeli Regional Strategy
| Ilai Alon and Gilead Sher
The Emergence of the Sunni Axis in the Middle East
| Yoel Guzansky and Gallia Lindenstrauss
Islam and Democracy: Can the Two Walk Together?
| Yoav Rosenberg
The US and Israel on Iran: Whither the (Dis)Agreement?
| Ephraim Kam
Walking a Fine Line: Israel, India, and Iran
| Yiftah S. Shapir
Response Essays
Civilian Casualties of a Military Strike in Iran
| Ephraim Asculai
If it Comes to Force: A Credible Cost-Benefit Analysis
of the Military Option against Iran
| Amos Yadlin, Emily B. Landau, and Avner Golov
‫המכון למחקרי ביטחון לאומי‬

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The Institute for National Security Studies
Incorporating the Jaffee
Center for Strategic Studies d
Strategic
Assessment
Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013
Contents
Abstracts | 3
Leading from Behind: The “Obama Doctrine” and

US Policy in the Middle East | 7
Sanford Lakoff
Time for an Israeli Regional Strategy | 21
Ilai Alon and Gilead Sher
The Emergence of the Sunni Axis in the Middle East | 37
Yoel Guzansky and Gallia Lindenstrauss
Islam and Democracy: Can the Two Walk Together? | 49
Yoav Rosenberg
The US and Israel on Iran: Whither the (Dis)Agreement? | 61
Ephraim Kam
Walking a Fine Line: Israel, India, and Iran | 75
Yiftah S. Shapir
Response Essays
Civilian Casualties of a Military Strike in Iran | 87
Ephraim Asculai
If it Comes to Force: A Credible Cost-Benefit Analysis
of the Military Option against Iran | 95
Amos Yadlin, Emily B. Landau, and Avner Golov
Strategic The purpose of Strategic Assessment is to stimulate and
enrich the public debate on issues that are, or should be,
Assessment on Israel’s national security agenda.
Strategic Assessment is a quarterly publication comprising
policy-oriented articles written by INSS researchers and
guest contributors. The views presented here are those of
the authors alone.
The Institute for National Security Studies is a public
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Editor in Chief
Amos Yadlin
Editor
Mark A. Heller
Associate Editor
Judith Rosen
Managing Editor
Moshe Grundman
Editorial Board
Shlomo Brom, Moshe Grundman, Yoel Guzansky,
Mark A. Heller, Ephraim Kam, Anat Kurz, Gallia Lindenstrauss,
Judith Rosen, Amos Yadlin
Editorial Advisory Board

Dan Ben-David, Azar Gat, Efraim Halevy, Tamar Hermann,
Itamar Rabinovich, , Shimon Shamir, Gabi Sheffer, Emmanual Sivan,
Shimon Stein, Asher Susser, Eyal Zisser
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Abstracts
Leading from Behind: The “Obama Doctrine” and US Policy in
the Middle East / Sanford Lakoff
Barack Obama has not announced an “Obama Doctrine,” but one may
well be emerging in his second term, judging by his appointments, the
drawdown of US commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and projected
defense cuts. It calls for a lowered profile in world affairs, focused on
responding militarily only to direct threats to national security – without
resorting to ground troops apart from special forces – and otherwise for
“strategic partnerships” with friendly states and “coercive diplomacy”
toward hostile states. Challenges posed by Syria and Iran will test
especially acutely whether and how the doctrine will be applied in the
Middle East.
Eleven Years to the Arab Peace Initiative: Time for an Israeli

Regional Strategy / Ilai Alon and Gilead Sher
Israel should recognize the Arab Peace Initiative as a regional-international
platform for multilateral dialogue with the Arab world and a basis for
engagement with any of the Arab League member states, provided that
this occurs in parallel with progress in the negotiations toward a political
settlement with the Palestinians. Mere recognition of the initiative as a
single, isolated step does nothing. In combination with negotiations for
an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, however, it is a sound, realistic way
to ensure Israel’s national interests, first and foremost, outlining the
borders of Israel as the secure, democratic state of the Jewish people.
The Emergence of the Sunni Axis in the Middle East

/ Yoel Guzansky and Gallia Lindenstrauss
The upheaval in the Arab world has shaped a new Middle East geopolitical
landscape, with changes in the composition and cohesion of the “radical
axis.” It has also sparked the formation of an Arab-Turkish/monarchial-
republican Sunni axis, which is challenging Iran’s power and influence in
the region. The members of this axis share a desire for Assad’s fall and a
growing opposition to Iran. In addition to these common points, there are
Strategic Assessment | Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013 3

Abstracts
4
also several points of friction between the members of the Sunni axis, fed
Strategic Assessment | Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013
in part by historical tension and divergent perspectives on the emerging

regional environment. While the strengthening of the Sunni axis at
the expense of the Shiite axis is a positive development for Israel, the
Sunni countries also largely represent and support an Islamic ideology,
sometimes in an extreme version that vehemently opposes Israel.
Islam and Democracy: Can the Two Walk Together?

/ Yoav Rosenberg
Political observers of the turmoil in the Middle East tend at times to
confuse basic concepts in political philosophy and thereby limit the
ability to assess the significance of these events and what they portend.
This article focuses on the important distinction between Kantian
enlightenment, which elevates human sovereignty and helped give rise
to the secular, liberal democratic form of government, and the concept of
democracy itself, created in the days of the Greeks years before there was
any thought as to secularization and liberalism. The important distinction
between the concept of democracy and the concept of secular liberalism
invites new analyses that may also envision a true Islamic democracy in
Middle East countries.
The US and Israel on Iran: Whither the (Dis)Agreement?

/ Ephraim Kam
The Iranian nuclear program has been a principal issue in discussions
between the American and Israeli governments in recent years. The
intensive contacts and American statements indicate that there are
differences of approach between the two sides. While the American and
Israeli governments are quite close in their perceptions of the Iranian
nuclear threat and have shared objectives in this regard, a concrete
dispute between them has developed as to how to meet the threat,
particularly concerning a military operation in Iran. This article examines
where the two governments agree and where they diverge in how they
define objectives concerning Iran and how they would design an answer
to the threat.
Walking a Fine Line: Israel, India, and Iran / Yiftah S. Shapir

Since Israel and India established diplomatic relations, economic and
defense ties between the two countries have grown stronger, but the
Abstracts
5
ties have not developed into a true strategic partnership. At the same

time, India’s close relations with Iran are one of the obstacles to the
development of relations with Israel. How do the two relationships affect
each other? A close look reveals that India is attempting to walk a fine line:
to maintain its ties and essential interests with Iran, which is an energy
supplier and an important land bridge to central Asia and has cultural
and historical importance to India, and at the same time, to preserve its
important strategic ties with the United States and with Israel.
Civilian Casualties of a Military Strike in Iran / Ephraim Asculai

This paper is a critique of a report published by the University of Utah,
recommending the adoption of regime change as the preferred solution
for the Iran nuclear issue, as compared with the diplomatic and military
routes. According to this report, the number of casualties resulting
from a military attack on Iran’s nuclear installations is so large as to be
prohibitive from a humanitarian point of view. The faulty assumptions in
the calculations include the possible bombing of the Bushehr reactor and
the vulnerability to attack of the uranium compounds. At the same time,
regime change does not appear to be imminent.
If it Comes to Force: A Credible Cost-Benefit Analysis of the

Military Option against Iran / Amos Yadlin, Emily B. Landau, and
Avner Golov
A study published in 2012 by the Iran Project seeks to create the basis for
an informed discussion regarding the option of a military strike against
Iran. However, the tenor of the report, its structure, and its analytical
lapses stress in the main the risks of the military option to American
interests. This article agrees that a military attack on Iran must be the
last option in an attempt to prevent Iran from going nuclear. A resolution
through negotiations is the preferred solution. Nevertheless, there are
several major flaws in the report – in how the subject is presented, the
analysis, and consequently the conclusions. This article addresses these
lapses and presents a more balanced assessment of the issue.
Leading from Behind:
The “Obama Doctrine” and US Policy in
the Middle East
Sanford Lakoff
Under the United States constitution, Congress is empowered to make

laws, raise revenue, declare war, and accept treaties. The president
is authorized only to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,”
conduct diplomacy, and serve as commander-in-chief of the armed
forces. In the modern era, however, the chief executive has come to be
expected to set the national agenda, especially in foreign policy, even
to the extent that Congress’s war-making power is honored more in the
breach than the observance.1 Some presidents have announced their
policies by promulgating strategic “doctrines” – the precedent having
been set by James Monroe in 1823 and revived in recent times by Truman,
Eisenhower, Carter, Reagan, and George W. Bush.2
Barack Obama has yet to follow their example: no “Obama Doctrine”
has been articulated by the President or authoritatively attributed to him.
But something that could pass for one is now emerging early in his second
term.3 No longer hampered by fears of being attacked by Republicans for
retreating from America’s role of global leadership or of losing support
from Democratic constituencies needed for his reelection (including
Jewish voters and campaign contributors), he is freer now to put his
own stamp on foreign policy, and his intentions are becoming clear.
They portend a distinctly lowered posture for the United States in world
affairs, except when its security is directly threatened, in contrast to the
neo-conservative view of America as the global champion of freedom
Professor Sanford Lakoff is the Dickson Professor Emeritus of Political Science at

the University of California San Diego.

Sanford Lakoff | Leading from Behind
8
and democracy that embroiled the previous administration in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
Instead of trying to impose a pax Americana, this administration is
content to “lead from behind,” as one advisor reportedly described the
American role in NATO’s Libyan intervention. The means with which
this unstated doctrine is being implemented are twofold, combining
formal or informal alliances referred to as “strategic partnerships” with
“coercive diplomacy” toward hostile states.
The partnerships entail forward basing of military assets, economic
and military assistance, joint military exercises, intelligence sharing,
and policy coordination. Military assistance includes the gift or sale of
advanced weapons and unarmed drones and the deployment of several
types of anti-ballistic missiles: the Patriot batteries provided openly to
Turkey and secretly to Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and
Bahrain; the ship-based Aegis stationed in the Persian Gulf and adopted
by Japan; and the ground-based Arrow developed jointly with Israel.
Coercive diplomacy takes the form of economic sanctions coupled
with offers to negotiate; promotion and support for Security Council
resolutions (such as those adopted to constrain Iran and North Korea);
logistical support for allies; and covert activities like cyber warfare.
When American security is deemed to require the use of force, or when
humanitarian intervention is supported by international consensus,
direct military engagement will be limited to the use of missiles and air
warfare. Full scale military action with “boots on the ground” is to be
avoided at virtually all cost, lest it lead to more quagmires like Vietnam,
Iraq, and Afghanistan. Direct combat missions will be undertaken against
terrorists, but by drone attacks and special forces. Military resources no
longer necessary to this change of strategy, such as nuclear weapons and
launch platforms, large contingents of military manpower, domestic
and overseas bases, and weapons designed for conventional naval and
ground warfare, will be slated for reduced support.
While other regions will also feel the effects of this effort to follow a
more consistent foreign policy – the administration’s announced “pivot
to Asia” will make it especially relevant there – the Middle East will be
significantly affected, if only by being treated with “benign neglect.” To
be sure, Obama may yet discover, as have American presidents before
him, that the best-laid plans of a global superpower are sometimes upset
by the need to respond to unanticipated crises,4 or that “mission creep” is
9
hard to avoid once even limited force is committed. But at least the new

design is moving from the background of the first term to the foreground
of the second.
From the First Term to the Second

The contrast between the mixed messages sent on foreign policy in
Obama’s first term and the more coherent approach now emerging is
evident in the appointments the President has made to key positions.
On taking office, Obama named Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State,
even though she had voted as a senator to authorize the use of force in
Iraq that he had opposed. He retained Robert Gates, a holdover from
the previous administration and another supporter of the Iraq wars, as
Secretary of Defense, and drew John O. Brennan from the CIA to serve
as his counterterrorism advisor. General David H. Petraeus, the architect
of Bush’s surge policy, was kept on in Iraq and then sent to Afghanistan
in 2010 before being named director of the CIA. There may well have
been political calculations behind several of these appointments – the
nominees were sure to attract strong bi-partisan support in Congress and
the Clinton appointment healed the wounded feelings of her primary
supporters – but collectively they sent a strong signal of continuity.
With the second term underway, Clinton has been replaced in
Foggy Bottom by John Kerry; Chuck Hagel heads the Pentagon; and
Brennan has returned to the CIA as its director. Kerry and Hagel, who
both served in Vietnam before becoming outspoken critics of that war,
are well known for agreeing with Obama that Obama’s second term
military engagement should be avoided if at all
will likely better express
possible. Hagel was nominated by Obama despite
his original intention to
opposition aroused by his previous criticisms of
Israel and the “Jewish lobby” and his objections to reframe America’s role
the “surge” in Iraq and sanctions on Iran. Brennan in the world from neo-
has championed the “light footprint” strategy of Wilsonian champion of
limiting America interventions wherever possible. liberty and democracy to
These appointments show, as the New York Times
superpower-of-last-resort.
Washington correspondent reported, that Obama
“has sided, without quite saying so, with Vice President Joseph R. Biden,
Jr.’s view – argued, for the most part in the confines of the White House
– that caution, covert action and a modest American military footprint
around the world fit the geopolitical moment.”5
10
To a considerable extent, this change of perspective arises more out
of the change in circumstances between the first term and the second
than out of an evolution in Obama’s thinking. During the first term,
Obama gave voice to views that are now evident in his appointments, but
proceeded much more cautiously in foreign policy than on the domestic
front. He had taken office in 2009 with no experience in foreign relations
or prior study of world affairs. He had taught constitutional law, worked
as a community organizer, and served briefly in a state legislature and
as a senator. He did not have an advisor on foreign policy to rely on
comparable to Dean Acheson, John Foster Dulles, Henry Kissinger, or
Zbigniew Brzezinski, or a school of foreign policy “wonks” like the neo-
Conservative “Vulcans”6 of the previous administration. In the primary
campaign Hillary Clinton warned that in foreign policy he would have to
learn on the job, and the first term was rife with chastening experience.
Instead of redirecting American foreign policy, Obama usually found
himself sustaining inherited commitments. In Iraq, he reluctantly
agreed to maintain the counterinsurgency approach begun under his
predecessor. In Afghanistan, he overrode the recommendation of Vice
President Biden that American operations in Afghanistan be restricted to
the border area with Pakistan where al-Qaeda was continuing to operate,
accepting his generals’ recommendation instead for another surge. While
he ordered an end to “enhanced interrogation,” a euphemism for the use
of harsh measures including water-boarding, he broke a promise to close
the detention facility at Guantanamo.
A major reason Obama opted for continuity in foreign policy is that he
was compelled to deal with a domestic crisis. He came into office calling
for a “politics of hope” – hope not only for a better domestic America but
a more peaceful and cooperative world. But because he was confronted
by a recession far more serious than anticipated, he had to stabilize the
financial sector by injecting federal funds into the major banks, bail out
two of the big three automobile manufacturers, and persuade Congress
to pass an $800 billion stimulus bill. Unwilling to sacrifice his reform
agenda, he pressed to obtain passage of the Affordable Care Act, and
paid a high price as it dragged out in the legislature. In 2010 the voters
blamed him for failing to reverse the recession and elected a Republican-
dominated House that stymied his agenda for the next two years. He had
to deal with two wars, one of which, in Iraq, he had opposed, and the
other, in Afghanistan, he had approved of as a “war of choice” but which
11
had become a war for control of the country rather than only against

al-Qaeda.
At the same time, he sought to define a new approach in foreign policy
reflecting his own liberal outlook, emphasizing conciliation rather than
confrontation. It was as if in foreign policy he was recapitulating his role
as a community organizer in Chicago, now on a world stage. As the son
of a Muslim father who bears his father’s middle name of Hussein and
attended a mainly Muslim primary school in Indonesia, he saw himself
as uniquely qualified to improve America’s relations with the Islamic
world. Thus the 2009 Cairo speech in which he admitted that the United
States had made mistakes in the region extended an “open hand” to
Iran and acknowledged the plight of the Palestinians. He appointed an
ambassador to Damascus – the first sent there since his predecessor
was withdrawn in 2005 when Syria was accused of complicity in the
assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri – and followed
through on a campaign pledge to reopen a dialogue with Bashar al-Assad.
He also sought to “push a reset button” on relations with Russia by
withdrawing ABM deployments planned for central Europe in deference
to President Vladimir Putin’s claim that they would diminish the
credibility of Russian deterrence. He made friendly overtures to China,
resisting calls to criticize Beijing’s repression of domestic dissent or to
demand a crackdown on industrial espionage and piracy. During the
2008 campaign he criticized China for artificially depressing the value of
its currency to boost exports at the expense of American jobs, but once
in office he held back from formally branding the country a currency
manipulator, so as not to have to endorse Congressional demands for
retaliation. In exchange for China’s continued purchase of American
treasury notes, Obama maintained economic ties that made the United
States the largest single market for Chinese exports. He launched an
effort to address the problem of North Korea’s nuclear proliferation
and the export of nuclear and ballistic missile technology by enlisting
Chinese cooperation, but when he found that Beijing would not risk
causing the collapse of the Pyongyang regime by withholding aid critical
to its survival, he chose not to threaten unilateral action but instead opted
for “strategic patience.”
Continuity was evident as well in his approach to the problem of
terrorism, except for his order that no further reference be made to
the “war on terror,” George W. Bush’s rubric.7 Obama continued the
12
emphasis on Homeland Security, combining it with an effort to close the
southern border to illegal immigration. He pursued efforts against the

al-Qaeda leadership begun under the previous administration, initiating
new measures to interfere with its fundraising and communications
operations, and ordered the brilliantly planned and executed mission
that killed Bin Laden in 2011. But the use of special forces and of drone
aircraft for surveillance and targeted assassination was begun earlier and
was only accelerated by Obama.
In the Middle East, the main focus of Obama’s first term was on the
unfinished business of Iraq. Once the surge seemed to succeed in blunting
threats to the survival of Iraq’s elected government, Obama pressed for
disengagement, even to the extent of not pressuring the Iraqi government
to accept the large residual force his field commanders thought would
be needed to assure stability. Caution was also the watchword when the
Arab Spring broke out. The White House took no moves to protect the
regime in Tunisia or that of Husni Mubarak in Egypt, a close American
ally, and expressed support for the protestors. When the call for
reform spread to Bahrain, where the US Fifth Fleet is headquartered,
the administration ignored requests for intervention. With respect
to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Obama continued the policy begun
under previous administrations of encouraging a two-state solution by
appointing Senator George Mitchell as a mediator. He had previously
come to believe in the need to assure security for
What the putative Israel and statehood for the Palestinians. As his
Obama Doctrine means biographer David Remnick pointed out, “Obama’s
for the Middle East is views are not mysterious. His political home is
that people in regions Hyde Park, on the South Side of Chicago, where
he came to know liberal Zionists and Palestinian
where instability is the
academics, and to understand both the necessity of
rule will have to fend a Jewish state after the Second World War and the
for themselves unless tragedy and the depths of Palestinian suffering.”8
that instability poses Perhaps not surprisingly, the politics of
a direct threat to the hope suffered one rebuff after another virtually
everywhere, most blatantly from Khamenei in
United States.
Iran, but also from Mahmoud Abbas, Benjamin
Netanyahu, Assad, Putin, the military in Pakistan, and the cartoonish
dynasts of North Korea. Even the rebellious youth of the Arab Spring
praised by Obama found fault with Washington for its previous support of
13
the tyrants they were overthrowing. Apart from effects of the spectacular

success of the killing of Bin Laden, none of the efforts to improve
America’s image or promote cooperation bore fruit. Most Muslims were
less favorable toward the United States in the closing months of Obama’s
first term than they had been when he took office.9 The Russians remained
unwilling to cooperate in pressuring Iran to give up its effort to develop
nuclear weapons or in imposing UN sanctions on the Assad regime in
Syria. The North Koreans defied the United States by continuing to test
missiles and nuclear explosives. The Chinese government, pandering
to nationalist sentiment, has pressed territorial claims in the South
China and East China Seas, much to the consternation of neighboring
American allies, and is developing power-projection capabilities at sea
and in space, provoking countermoves by the United States.
Obama made two striking departures from his policy of continuity.
One came late in his first term when he decided to order intervention in
Libya based upon a UN Security Council resolution. The effort was made
in cooperation with NATO allies and friendly Arab states and stopped
short of the use of ground troops. Compared to the estimated trillion-
dollar cost of the war in Iraq and the $500 billion cost of Afghanistan, it cost
comparatively little ($1.1 billion) as military spending goes. At the time,
this initiative seemed as though it might be a harbinger of a new policy of
humanitarian engagement, comparable to Bill Clinton’s intervention to
stop “ethnic cleansing” in Yugoslavia, and reflecting a similar willingness
to use American force to prevent butchery by authoritarian regimes.
The other notable change was his decision to declare unambiguously
that the United States would not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons.
This decision was implemented, in keeping with the reliance on coercive
diplomacy, by a carrot and stick approach involving both an offer to
negotiate and the imposition of stiff economic sanctions, along with
covert operations. The administration took the lead in creating a coalition
of nations willing to impose tight economic sanctions and reportedly
cooperated with Israel in “Olympic Games,” the cyber attack on Iran’s
nuclear facilities. Although China, Russia, Turkey, and others were
allowed to evade complete adherence to sanctions, the administration’s
efforts succeeded well enough to do considerable damage to the Iranian
economy. This decision is in keeping with what may be emerging as the
Obama Doctrine, because at the same time that it threatens the ultimate
use of force – presumably in the form of surgical strikes at Iran’s nuclear
14
installations -- it does not require invasion or a strategy calling for regime
change and “nation-building” under occupation.
The Syrian Conundrum

Much to the consternation of both liberals and conservatives who have
called for American intervention in Syria as a way of helping to bring
down a brutal dictatorship, weaken Iran, and isolate Hizbollah, Libya has
so far not proven to be a precedent for Syria. The initial rationale given
by the administration for the decision not to engage in Syria was that this
time there was no Security Council authorization, due to vetoes by Russia
and China. Spokesmen added other considerations: The opposition was
fragmented; some elements in it were al-Qaeda volunteers; even more
were supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. The council formed to serve
as a government in exile was highly fractious and had only tenuous links
to the groups actually fighting against the regime. The Syrian military
was a far more formidable force than Qaddafi’s mercenaries. No “light
footprint” or stealth campaign was possible, and Syria’s air defenses
would complicate any effort to impose no fly zones. And what would
happen once the regime fell? Would an anti-Western Islamist regime
come to power? Would the country become sharply divided among
sectarian or ethnic enclaves? Would there be a bloodbath against the
Alawites that would compel an occupation?
In view of these inhibiting factors, Obama opted to provide
humanitarian aid and encourage the formation of a unified opposition,
but has not taken any actions, apart from economic sanctions, to stop
the slaughter. In response to Israeli intelligence reports showing that
the regime was using chemical weapons, the United States and its allies,
along with the Russians, warned Assad that any resort to chemical
weapons would trigger intervention. But when the military chiefs and
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, with the support of Secretary Clinton,
proposed a plan for supplying arms to carefully vetted rebel forces, the
White House demurred. The lesson of this failure to do more in Syria
may well be that Libya was a kind of black swan – an unusual instance
where humanitarian intervention could be accomplished by airpower in
a multilateral effort with UN backing in which the United States could
“lead from behind” and not become inextricably entangled.
15
Toward the New Strategy

The administration’s most immediate concerns overseas involve
accelerating the drawdown of troops from Afghanistan and pursuing
the carrot and stick approach toward Iran. Longer term, the issue for
the executive and Congress is how to cut the military budget to help
address the national debt. Already large at $16 trillion, the projected
debt increase is becoming a central preoccupation of American politics
and government. Admiral Mike Mullen, the former chair of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, has called it the most serious national security problem
the nation faces. In 2007 it was 36 percent of GDP; the Congressional
Budget Office now projects that it will rise to at least 77 percent by 2023
– far more than the average of 39 percent experienced between 1973 and
2012.10 The largest contributors to the projected rise are from welfare (or
entitlement) programs, which are projected to rise with the aging of the
population. But cutting “discretionary spending” on Social Security and
Medicare is a highly unpopular option. In one poll, Americans opposed
any cuts to Medicare by a margin of 70 percent to 25 percent. The defense
budget is therefore a high value target, even though the savings now
contemplated will not solve the debt problem. It remains to be seen
This budget, at its 2012 level of $700 billion, is
whether and how a
“equivalent to the combined spending of the next
strategy of “leading from
twenty largest military powers.”11 Even apart from
the draconian cuts that would ensue if the looming behind” can succeed
budgetary sequester is allowed to take effect, against Iran, and whether,
Obama is proposing to cut Pentagon spending by if all other means fail,
$350 billion over the next decade, reducing it to Obama will carry out
about $550 billion annually, or about 3-4 percent
his pledge, either by
of GDP, well below Cold War peaks but close to
recent levels. The size of the active-duty military ordering a surgical strike
would be cut from 1.5 million to 1.4 million. The against Iran’s nuclear
plan would “defer, but not appreciably scale back, facilities or giving the
various procurement programs . . . eliminate some “green light” to an
ships and airlifters; reduce Air Force combat
Israeli strike.
aircraft units by roughly 10 percent; bring home
two of the four Army brigades in Europe,” and make modest changes
in military pay and benefits. If Congress approves, there would be more
rounds of base closures. The Congressional Budget Office has recently
16
warned, however, that the Pentagon will need $500 billion more over the
next decade than it estimates.12

Given the administration’s stated objectives, the key personnel
appointments, and the budgetary pressures, it seems predictable that
Obama’s second term will better express his original intention to reframe
America’s role in the world from neo-Wilsonian champion of liberty
and democracy to superpower-of-last-resort. The days when American
intervention in global hot spots could be either hoped for or feared may
well be past. As the conservative columnist Ross Douthat has observed,
“Like the once-hawkish Hagel, Obama has largely rejected Bush’s
strategic vision of America as the agent of a sweeping transformation
of the Middle East, and retreated from the military commitments that
this revolutionary vision required. And with this retreat has come a
willingness to make substantial cuts in the Pentagon’s budget – cuts that
Hagel will be expected to oversee.”13
Access to Middle Eastern oil remains a concern, but one that is
diminishing in importance. The United States currently imports about
23 percent of its oil from the Arab Middle East (including 1.2 millions of
barrels a day from Saudi Arabia in August 2012),14 but is taking big strides
to reduce oil dependency by exploiting domestic and other continental
oil and natural gas resources. One aircraft carrier group will continue to
be stationed in the Persian Gulf, down from the two that have been there
for the past two years.
What the putative Obama Doctrine means for the Middle East (and
by extension for Afghanistan and Pakistan) is that people in regions
where instability is the rule will have to fend for themselves unless that
instability poses a direct threat to the United States. Terrorists whose
targets do not extend to the United States will not be directly engaged.15
If Afghanistan’s central government loses control of parts of the country
once NATO forces are almost all withdrawn, the United States will
not return in force, unless those uncontrolled areas should become
sanctuaries for al-Qaeda. Military aid will be provided to Pakistan even
if it does not act aggressively against its own Taliban. The United States
would intervene directly only if Pakistan was threatened with loss of
control of its nuclear weapons.
If Iraq breaks apart, Obama is hardly likely to want to return American
forces to restore unity. If Syria disintegrates into a weakened state with
sectarian enclaves like Iraq and Lebanon, American Marines will not
17
ride to the rescue, unless there is a risk that Syria’s chemical weapons

could fall into the wrong hands. In Yemen, the United States will rely
on drone attacks against al-Qaeda forces but will not use military forces
to reestablish the central government. Where, as in the case of French
intervention in Mali this year, American allies are willing to send in
troops to fight against Islamist terrorists, the United States will provide
air support and either donate or sell war materiel. If Egypt, Libya, or
Tunisia falters in making a transition from authoritarianism to incipient
democracy, the United States will express concern but resist calls to
intervene. Nor will Washington withdraw support from the cooperative
authoritarian regimes threatened by the spread of the Arab Spring, lest
they be replaced by anti-American governments or anarchic conditions
that can allow anti-Western terrorists to find new havens.
Obama has strongly reiterated his call for a two-state solution to
the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, but if the parties cannot
come to terms, the administration will likely adopt a fallback position
aimed at preventing the current situation from deteriorating. The United
States will continue to provide military aid to Israel and economic and
humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. Secretary Hagel’s earlier proposal
that Hamas be engaged is unlikely to be taken seriously, inasmuch as the
President has made very clear that he considers Hamas a terrorist group
and holds it responsible for provoking armed conflicts with Israel. Any
effort by Israel to annex territory on the West Bank will meet with strong
disapproval, quite possibly with a refusal to veto a Security Council
condemnation.
The largest unknown concerns Iran. In March of 2012 Obama
stated flatly in a speech at the AIPAC conference that the United States
would not permit Iran to develop a nuclear weapon and that he would
be prepared to use force as a last resort: “As I’ve made clear time and
time again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use
force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests.”
Shimon Peres has expressed confidence that “in the end, if none of this
works, then President Obama will use military power against Iran. I am
sure of it.”16 But leading members of the American military and foreign
policy establishment (including the new Defense Secretary) have
expressed grave reservations about any use of American military force
against Iran. It remains to be seen whether and how a strategy of “leading
from behind” can succeed against an adversary capable of resisting non-
18
military pressures and whether, if all other means fail, Obama will carry
out his pledge, either by ordering a surgical strike against Iran’s nuclear
facilities or giving the “green light” to an Israeli strike. If Iran can be
persuaded by a combination of sanctions and diplomacy to step back
from the nuclear bomb threshold and accept unimpeded inspections,
Obama will gain considerable political capital among both Arabs and
Israelis, which he could conceivably use to promote pacification and
reform throughout the region.
With the potential exception of Iran, however, the “Obama Doctrine”
calls for America to focus on nation-building at home rather than
adventures abroad, the Middle East included. If major change is to come
to the region, it will presumably have to come from within – unless
internal turmoil is deemed to pose a grave and imminent threat to a vital
American national interest. The challenges of civil war in Syria and Iran’s
nuclear ambitions will pose especially acute tests of whether and how the
doctrine will be applied.
Notes
1 Congress last issued a Declaration of War in 1942. All subsequent American
military engagements have been initiated by the president either with
Congressional authorization in the form of resolutions or in pursuance of
United Nations Security Council resolutions. The War Powers Resolution
of 1973, passed by a supermajority in both Houses over a presidential veto,
requires that the president notify Congress within 48 hours of any dispatch
of American forces into action abroad, and that such forces be withdrawn
within 60 days (with a further 30 days allowed for full withdrawal) unless
their mission is authorized by a resolution or a declaration of war. In
launching an air war against the Libyan regime in 2011 in cooperation with
NATO allies, President Barack Obama relied on Security Council Resolution
1973 authorizing “all necessary measures” (short of the use of foreign ground
troops) to end attacks on civilians in Libya, bypassing Congress to keep
American air forces in action beyond the 60-day limit.
2 The functional virtues of such doctrines were well explained by Henry
Kissinger: “In the American system of government, in which the president is
the only nationally elected official, coherence in foreign policy emerges – if
at all – from presidential pronouncements. These serve as the most effective
directive to the sprawling and self-willed bureaucracy and supply the criteria
for public or Congressional debates.” Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), p. 765.
3 “Perhaps the most striking feature of three and a half enormously
consequential years in the redirection of American power has been the slow
19
emergence of an Obama Doctrine, a redefinition of the circumstances under

which the United States will use diplomacy, coercion, and force to change
the world around it.” David E. Sanger, Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret
Wars and Surprising Use of American Power (New York: Crown, 2012), p. xiv.
4 The record is strewn with examples of diversions from strategic templates,
from the outbreak of the Korean conflict in 1950 – a region famously declared
outside the US “defense perimeter” – to the supposedly “peripheral” conflict
in Vietnam and the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973 that drew the Cold
War out of the European framework in which it was originally cast.
5 David E. Sanger, “Obama Nominees in Step on Light Footprint,” New York
Times, January 8, 2013.
6 See James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New
York: Viking, 2004).
7 At the outset of the new administration’s term, instructions were issued to
all government departments that they were not to refer to a “war on terror”
or to “the long war” but to “overseas contingency operations.” The new head
of Homeland Security used another even shorter-lived euphemism: “man-
caused disasters.”
8 The New Yorker, March 21, 2011.
9 Pew Research Global Attitudes Project, May 17, 2011.
10 Commentary by Doug Elmendorf, Congressional Budget Office, February 6,
2013.
11 Sanger, Confront and Conceal, p. 418. Emphasis in the original.
12 Michael E. O’Hanlon, “Getting Real on Defense Cuts,” Politico, July 22, 2012.
13 “The Obama Synthesis,” New York Times, January 12, 2013.
14 Seth G. Jones, “The Mirage of the Arab Spring,” Foreign Affairs (January/
February 2013), p. 62.
15 The Obama administration’s attitude reflects “a broad consensus in Western
capitals,” Time magazine reported, apropos the French intervention in Mali
in 2013, about how terrorism should be fought around the world: “Assist,
yes; pay, sure; send in drones, planes and even small amounts of troops if
you have to. But over the long term, let the locals sort it out.” Alex Perry/
Bamako, “In and Out of Africa,” February 4, 2013, p. 22.
16 Ronen Bergman, “A Conversation with Shimon Peres,” New York Times
magazine, January 13, 2013.
Time for an Israeli Regional Strategy
Ilai Alon and Gilead Sher
The Arab-Israeli conflict is, or must be, a high priority on the agenda of
the new Israeli government. As such, the government must engage in a
smart and ongoing process that includes negotiations for a permanent
settlement, interim agreements, regional dialogue, and constructive
unilateral steps that will lead to a reality of two states for two peoples.
In such a process, which would be overseen by the United States and/
or the Quartet, there would be a clear advantage to relying on existing
official international frameworks: the Clinton parameters, the Roadmap,
and the Arab Peace Initiative.
Much has been written about the initiative since it was launched.1
This article focuses on significant trends related to the initiative and
considerations for and against an announcement by Israel that it is
prepared to open a multilateral channel and use the initiative as a basis
for negotiations. We contend that Israel should recognize the Arab Peace
Initiative as a regional-international platform for multilateral dialogue
with the Arab world and a basis for engagement with any of the Arab
League member states, provided that this is in parallel with progress
in the negotiations toward a political settlement with the Palestinians.
Mere recognition of the initiative as a single, isolated step does nothing.
In combination with negotiations for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement,
however, it is a sound, realistic way to ensure Israel’s national interests,
first and foremost, outlining the borders of Israel as the secure, democratic
state of the Jewish people.
Professor Ilai Alon is a member of the Philosophy Department at Tel Aviv

University. Gilead Sher is a senior research fellow at INSS.

Ilai Alon and Gilead Sher | Eleven Years to the Arab Peace Initiative
22
From both political and security perspectives, the status quo in the
Arab-Israeli conflict is dangerous for Israel. The changes that have taken
place in recent years in the nature of the armed conflict and the threats
to the home front, as well as the military capabilities of the hostile non-
state organizations, all require an ongoing assessment of the balance of
qualitative and military supremacy in the region. Negotiations with the
Palestinians and a comprehensive regional political process could help
remove several of the most problematic actors from the circle of threats
to Israel.
Israel’s continued procrastination and avoidance of the initiative
will limit even further the practical possibility of ending the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict with an agreement on the basis of a two-state solution.
It is precisely because of the developments in the region that Israel ought
now to signal that it is prepared to engage in regional negotiations with
the turbulent Arab world. Recognizing the initiative and launching
a dialogue could make a contribution in several areas. First, it could
contribute to improved stability in the Middle East by strengthening the
standing of the United States in the region. Second, if the discourse based
on the initiative is accompanied by progress on the Israeli-Palestinian
channel, the danger of a bi-national state will be reduced. Third, it will
help strengthen Israel and the moderate Western-Sunni axis against Iran
and its proxies.
By recognizing the initiative Israel stands to benefit at the bilateral and
multilateral negotiating tables. While this of course is not guaranteed,
the likelihood that Israel and third parties such as the United States will
receive some benefits will increase with progress toward an agreement
with the Palestinians.
A Brief Historical Overview

The roots of the Arab Peace Initiative date back to Saudi King Fahd’s peace
initiative in 1981. The Fahd initiative demanded an Israeli withdrawal to
the 1967 lines, dismantling of settlements, freedom of worship for all
religions, the Palestinians’ right to determine their destiny, compensation
for those refugees who did not wish to return to Israel, United Nations
monitoring of the territories for a number of months, establishment
of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, and international
guarantees for implementation of the plan.
23
This version expired on the day that the Saudi initiative was adopted

at the Arab League summit in Beirut in March 2002, at the initiative of
Abdullah, who was later crowned Saudi king. With the determined
intervention of Jordan through then-Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher,
the following principles were affirmed:
a. A full Israeli withdrawal from the territories conquered in 1967.
b. A sovereign, independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its
capital.
c. A just and agreed-upon solution to the refugee problem that does
not compel the Arab countries hosting them to absorb them. In other
documents published by the Arab League summit meeting in 2002,
the demand for the “right of return” of the Palestinian refugees was
emphasized.
d. In exchange, Arab League members will consider the Arab-Israeli
conflict ended, guarantee security for all countries in the region, and
establish normal relations with Israel.
In 2002, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon objected to the initiative,
which was publicized at the time of the terrorist attack at the Park Hotel
and Operation Defensive Shield that followed. Sharon had already
claimed that the initiative annulled UN Security Council resolutions 242
and 338 and thus the need for negotiations, and that it was tantamount
to “all or nothing.”2 In 2006, reports surfaced of secret contacts between
then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Saudi King Abdullah,3 and later
reports stated that in 2007, Olmert refused an invitation to address the
Arab League in Hebrew.4 In 2007, then-Deputy Prime Minister Shimon
Peres spoke about this issue,5 as did Benjamin Netanyahu; Foreign
Minister Avigdor Lieberman commented on the subject in 2009. Peres6
and Olmert7 demanded changes in advance. In 2007, New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman8 joined the attempt to put out unofficial
feelers on the possibility of changes, and former US National Security
Advisors Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski did so as well in 2008.9
Arab sources such as Jordan’s King Abdullah10 and the official website of
the Palestinian Authority,11 as well as European Union officials,12 rejected
the negative arguments made in Israel.
The “Against” in Israel

In the public debate in Israel, two sets of arguments arose against
recognizing the initiative. The first consisted of principled objections, for
24
example: the initiative was an exercise in public relations connected to
the involvement of Saudi subjects in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade
Center. Therefore, it was not a genuine offer, and in fact, it had already
failed. Alternatively, some identified it as part of the “phases plan,” and
since it was fundamentally opposed to Islamic faith and ideology, was
necessarily only temporary.
It was also argued that the initiative is a diktat that makes what the
Arabs give conditional on Israel’s surrendering in advance to Palestinian
and Syrian positions, rather than an invitation to negotiations with the
Arab League as a whole. Even the few benefits that the initiative offers
involve unjustified Israeli concessions, including on the refugee issue,
worded so that it is nothing more than a cover for demanding the right of
return and accepting the Arab position on the issue of Jerusalem. Israeli
public opinion will not accept the demand to withdraw to the 1967 lines
on all fronts. Finally, claim the critics, Israel’s experience shows that
concessions have only come to hurt Israel.
The second set includes circumstantial arguments, such as: a strong
Israel must not change the favorable status quo by recognizing the
initiative, which fundamentally fails to provide security. Arab leaders
cannot stand behind their promises regarding
It is precisely because of the initiative. The Palestinian issue, which is at
the developments in the the heart of the initiative, is not now on the Arab
region that Israel ought agenda or the global agenda, and even if it were, the
split between Hamas and Fatah does not present
now to signal that it is
Israel with a responsible, legitimate, and stable
prepared to engage in
leadership. The Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian
regional negotiations world is in a state of instability that does not allow
with the turbulent Israel to take risks. Historically, the negotiations
Arab world. with the Palestinians have reached an impasse not
because of Israel but because of the Palestinians,
and the Arab states have not worked hard enough to convince Israelis of
the genuine nature of the initiative, for example, by having their leaders
pay a visit to Israel.
Trends
Over the years, more Palestinians than Israelis have expressed support
for the Arab Peace Initiative.13 In 2008, the figures were 67 percent and 39
percent, respectively.14 The figure for Palestinians was similar in 2009,15
25
and in 2012 it rose to nearly 75 percent among the Palestinian16 and 50

percent among the Israeli publics. Similarly, in spite of the political and
religious upheavals rocking the Middle East, the Arab League has ratified
the initiative almost every year in the past decade. At its summit meeting
in Doha in March 2013, the Arab initiative was mentioned as one of the
anchors of Arab League policy.17 However, there is no guarantee that this
will continue to be the case in the future.
Over the years, the conditions set by the Arab League states have
softened. The main changes are as follows:
a. Refugees: from insistence on the right of return to wording that makes
negotiations possible. Some interpret this as meaning Israeli veto
rights. In contrast, at the summit meeting in Baghdad in 2012, a demand
on the right of return returned in paragraph 12 of the Declaration of
Baghdad, along with a repetition of the need for agreement among the
sides on the issue. This demand, problematic from Israel’s point of
view, is not stated explicitly in the summit meeting’s decisions.18
b. The Arab commitments: normalization, peace, and an end to the
conflict.
c. The Arab demand for sovereignty over Jerusalem: from “Jerusalem”
to “East Jerusalem.”
Diverging from the statements of several Arab politicians,19 we
believe that the initiative is not a diktat but an invitation to negotiations
on the basis of several principles.20 In the announcement of the 2013
Doha summit, the Arab League issued a call to return to the negotiating
table and did not make the peace process conditional on acceptance of
the initiative as a diktat.21 In earlier stages, in 2005, official and unofficial
discussions were held in Algeria among the Arab League states as to
the possibility that Israel would make changes to the wording of the
initiative. This possibility was rejected, and the rejection was reiterated
in comments by Arab statesmen such as Syrian Foreign Minister Walid
Muallem in 2009.22 However, on the eve of the 2007 summit meeting,
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal declared that Arab leaders must be
prepared to make changes in the initiative.23 There were reports of such
attempts again two years later,24 and during preparation of this article, a
report was published to the effect that an Arab League delegation would
go to the United States with a new version of the peace plan that does not
rule out the possibility of changes.25
26
Arab Positions on the Initiative
The Arab Peace Initiative is an Arab interest, and therefore it can be

assumed that the threats to remove it from the Middle East political
agenda are empty. On the other hand, it is possible that public opinion,
which is growing stronger in Arab states, identifies the interest as
promoting only the regimes, and that it will call for the initiative to be
annulled.
At this time, there are three main Arab positions concerning the
initiative: a demand to remove it from the agenda, an ultimatum to Israel,
and support for maintaining the initiative for a limited time.
The Demand to Withdraw or Reconsider the Initiative

There are three threats to the continued viability of the initiative. One
comprises specific positions that oppose it. Kuwait is seeking to withdraw
from the initiative because of the Turkish flotilla event,26 as is Qatar,27 and
Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb of al-Azhar University in Cairo called last year
for an emergency meeting of Islamic states in Mecca in order to withdraw
from the Arab Peace Initiative completely, which “was received very
badly” by Israel.28
In April 2012, former Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmad
Qurei (Abu Alaa) called for the Arab initiative to be reexamined on its
tenth anniversary,29 and Hamas, whose position
It is possible that Arab was presented by Dr. Salah al-Bardawil, stated
public opinion, which that reviving the peace initiative meant that the
is growing stronger in Arabs were avoiding resisting the occupation.30
Marwan Muasher, one of the people behind the
Arab states, identifies the
Arab initiative and the man who as Jordanian
initiative as promoting
foreign minister made the final polishes, spoke in
only the regimes, and November 2011 of pressures from the Arab general
that it will call for it to public, which objects to continuation of the status
be annulled. quo on the Palestinian problem. Recently, Muasher
stated that if the initiative failed, this would spell
the end of the two-state solution.
The second threat is inherent in the trend toward a decline in the
number of Arab states that are partners in the initiative, and the third
threat is the aging of the engineer of the initiative, Saudi King Abdullah.31
27
An Ultimatum to Israel

Some Arabs have stressed that the initiative will not be on the table
forever. Even Marwan Muasher has stated,32 along with other Arab figures
such as Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani, chairman of the Arab
League Follow-Up Committee (2012), that it must not be assumed that
the initiative will be viable forever. Although such warnings have been
heard in the past, the situation today may be fundamentally different,
especially because autocratic rulers in the Arab world no longer have a
monopoly on decision making, and the “Arab street” and the public play
a role.
Support
At the same time, various Arab statesmen have supported the initiative
publicly and maintained that it is still a viable option. In 2007, it was
even claimed that Iran supported it, though not publicly or officially.33
Iraqi President Nuri al-Maliki expressed support for the initiative in June
2009,34 as did the Jordanian foreign minister.35 In Doha in 2010, Mahmoud
Abbas stated that he opposed withdrawing from the initiative.36 Munib
al-Masri, an influential Palestinian businessman, held a similar opinion,37
and even Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir agreed.38 At the summit
meeting in Baghdad in 2012, Islamist Tunisia joined in, and this year,
at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Jordan’s King Abdullah called
upon the government of Israel to accept the initiative. Among his reasons
was the fear that it would be easier for Israel to create facts on the ground
if the Palestinian issue were no longer on the world’s agenda.39
Possible Ramifications
The Palestinian Authority and Hamas
It can be assumed that the Palestinian Authority’s interest in the
Arab initiative has increased in light of the internal struggle between
Fatah and Hamas, especially when Khaled Mashal hinted that he
was prepared to reach an agreement and recognize Israel.40 Beyond
the political consequences of Israel’s recognizing the initiative while
advancing political negotiations, there could be political advantages for
the Palestinian Authority, such as release of Palestinian prisoners from
Fatah – a recurring issue that recently sparked renewed unrest in the
West Bank.41
28
The Hamas response to the initiative has not been uniform. In
2006, Mashal and Mahmoud al-Zahar expressed lukewarm support

for it, and when Hamas rejected the initiative, Arab states pressured
the organization to accept it. Given that there have been changes in
statements by some of Hamas’s leaders who now favor reaching some
kind of agreement with Israel, Israeli recognition of the initiative could
encourage this trend.
The International Community

US Secretary of Sate John Kerry reportedly intends to place the Arab
initiative on the negotiations agenda between Israel and the Palestinians.42
It has been reported that he is aiming for a coalition of states, including
Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, and the Gulf states that will support restarting
the peace process, inter alia on the basis of the initiative, and that he
is seeking to persuade Arab League states to take steps to normalize
relations with Israel.43
During President Obama’s first term, Special Middle East Envoy
George Mitchell stated in closed forums immediately after his
appointment that the Arab initiative would be one of the pillars of US
policy in the region. A similarly positive attitude was expressed in 2009
in their previous positions by Kerry himself and by current Defense
Secretary Chuck Hagel.
Other international players have supported the initiative from the
outset and have not changed their positions (the Quartet in April 2003;
the UN secretary general in 2007). The European Union has reiterated
its support for the initiative (Catherine Ashton, High Representative of
the European Union for foreign affairs and security policy, and Russian
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov).44 In November 2012, foreign ministers
of Arab League states and the EU published a joint declaration, and in
December 2012, EU foreign ministers issued a statement of support for
the initiative. In March, Russia reiterated its support for the plan, and
even China expressed support for the peace process on the basis of
various plans, including the Arab initiative.45
The US withdrawal from Iraq and the expected withdrawal from
Afghanistan next year are interpreted as a victory for the extremists in
the Muslim world, both Sunni and Shiite. Progressing to an agreement on
the Israeli-Palestinian track, together with encouraging dialogue between
Israel and the members of the Arab League on the basis of the Arab Peace
29
Initiative, could mitigate this perception and strengthen the position of

the United States.
The Arab World

Polls conducted on the Arab street indicate that the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict occupies a minimal amount of public attention. Domestic issues
– social, and in particular, economic – take precedence.46 Perhaps it is
precisely such a situation that would allow an agreement to be reached
with the Palestinians, Syria, and Lebanon at a lower cost than under
other circumstances.
Furthermore, in addition to the nuclear issue, Israel shares an interest
with most Arab states on the subject of Iranian activity in the region.47
These states are challenged religiously and politically by Iranian Shiite
aggression in Iraq (which is controlled by Shiites); in Lebanon, where
Hizbollah, with military and economic autonomy, is a partner of the state
leadership; in Saudi Arabia, where the Shiite minority in the oil regions
of the eastern part of the kingdom constitutes a domestic threat; and
in Yemen, where early this year, an Iranian ship that was attempting to
deliver arms to the Shiite rebels was intercepted.48 Finally, recognizing the
initiative as a comprehensive regional political framework has a chance
of minimizing the damage from Hizbollah and other such organizations.
Policy Recommendations
The advantages Israel could gain from conducting a multilateral channel
for dialogue while recognizing the Arab Peace Initiative as a leading
platform for tangible progress toward a political agreement with the
Palestinians would be manifested on several levels. Israel’s international
standing could improve if it is positioned as a key influential player that
has the ability to provide a weighty political benefit and bolster the image
of the United States, which would help the US rehabilitate its standing in
the Middle East and the Islamic and Arab worlds. A dialogue with leaders
of Arab League member states, which has never wielded much influence,
could bring the political discussion in the region back from the religious,
where it has inclined since the onset of the Arab Spring, to the political.
Another possible consequence is assistance in strengthening the Sunnis
in their struggle against the Shiites and the weakening of the Palestinian
card in the Iranian49 and Hizbollah arsenal.
30
Therefore, Israel should initiate secret talks with several heads
of states in the Arab League to prepare an official statement on Israeli

willingness to recognize the initiative as a basis for negotiations. Among
the items on the agenda are agreement on a comprehensive multilateral
framework for negotiations; agreement on substantive steps and
formative measures by Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinians, and by Arab states
toward Israel; agreement on the identity of a third party that will act as
a mediator concerning the details; mutual assistance regarding public
opinion; and agreement on a policy toward non-state organizations and
toward various publics. In the second stage, Israel, in coordination with
heads of Arab League member states, should conduct secret talks with
these organizations in order to clarify their positions in the event that
Israel recognizes the initiative.
In the text of the initiative itself, the only condition mentioned
concerns Arab “compensation” for Israel’s fulfillment of the Arab
League’s conditions, and not for reaching a preliminary agreement with
the Palestinians. This is a position expressed by Amr Moussa, among
others, at the political-economic Ambrosetti Forum in September 2010.50
When these phases are completed, non-governmental actors will
launch a broad public relations campaign among the Israeli public while
highlighting the increase in the number of supporters of the initiative.
After this campaign, an official Israeli announcement can recognize the
initiative as an opening for negotiations, and a proposal will be made
concerning the time and place for such a dialogue. It may be advisable to
include Turkey among the third party delegation, especially in light of the
positions it has expressed in the past in favor of the initiative,51 and after
the thaw in Israeli-Turkish diplomatic relations.
In the framework of a smart, stable, and ongoing process, which
includes concomitant negotiations for a permanent settlement, interim
agreements, regional dialogue, and constructive unilateral steps, it is
appropriate for Israel to recognize the Arab Peace Initiative as a regional
and international platform for dialogue with the Arab world and as a
basis for negotiations with Arab League states. The risks in such a policy
are smaller than the gains that can be expected from its success – first and
foremost, shaping of the borders of Israel as the secure, democratic state
of the Jewish people.
31
Notes

1 See, for example, “Document: Arab Peace Initiative,” Middle East Policy 9, no.
2 (2002): 25; Joshua Teitelbaum, The Arab Peace Initiative: A Primer and Future
Prospects (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2009), http://www.
jcpa.org/text/Arab-Peace-Initiative.pdf; Yossi Alpher, “The Arab Peace Plan:
Seize a Diplomatic Opportunity – The Strategic Interest,” Forward, June 6,
2007, http://forward.com/articles/10892/; Kobi Michael, ed., The Arab Peace
Initiative: An Historic Opportunity? Background, Meanings, and Possible Avenues
of Exploration (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, 2007); Henry
Siegman, “The Underlying Risks in Missing the Arab Peace Initiative,”
Common Ground News Service, April 26, 2007 (Jerusalem: bitterlemons-api.
org); Marwan Muasher, The Arab Center: The Promise of Moderation (London:
Yale University Press, 2008); Gabrielle Rifkind, “The Arab Peace Initiative:
Why Now?” (Oxford: Oxford Research Group, 2008); Mohammed S. Dajani
Daoudi, “The Arab Peace Initiative,” Cross Currents 59, no. 4 (2009): 532-39;
Alon Ben‐Meir, “The Arab Peace Initiative: Now or Never,” Digest of Middle
East Studies, 19, no. 2 (2010): 228-33; Yossi Alpher, Ghassan Khatib, and
Charmaine Seitz, eds., The Bitterlemons Guide to the Arab Peace Initiative: New
Thinking on a Key Middle East Proposal (Jerusalem: bitterlemons-pi.org, 2011),
http://www.bitterlemons-books.org/books/Bitterlemons_API_book_2011.
pdf; Ron Pundak and Saeb Bamya, “From the Arab Peace Initiative to the
Arab Spring and Back: A Historic Initiative, A Changing Region,” in The
Arab Peace Initiative and Israeli-Palestinian Peace: The Political Economy of a New
Period, ed. Arie Arnon and Saeb Bamya (Aix Group, March 2012).
2 Gil Hoffman, “Sharon Warns Saudi Plan May be Arab Plot,” Jerusalem Post,
March 4, 2002, http://web.archive.org/web/20040203094239/http:/www.
jpost.com/Editions/2002/03/04/News/News.44486.html.
3 Sarah Yizraeli, “Saudi-Israel Dialogue: What Lies Ahead?” Strategic
Assessment 10, no. 2 (2007): 71-78, http://www.inss.org.il/publications.
php?cat=21&incat=&read=261.
4 Akiva Eldar, “New Revelations: Olmert Refused to Address Arab Leaders
and Express Support for Peace Initiative,” Haaretz, August 9, 2012, http://
www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/1.1797572.
5 “Israel to Offer Counterproposal to Arab Peace Initiative, Peres Says,” USA
Today, May 20, 2007, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-05-
20-mideast_N.htm.
6 “Response of FM Peres to the Decisions of the Arab Summit in Beirut,” Israel
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, March 28, 2002, http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/
pressroom/2002/pages/response%20of%20fm%20peres%20to%20the%20
decisions%20of%20the%20arab.aspx.
7 “Olmert Hails Arab Peace Offer as ‘Revolutionary Change,’” CBC News,
March 30, 2007, http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2007/03/30/olmert-
summit-070330.html.
32
8 Thomas L. Friedman, “Abdullah’s Chance,” New York Times, March 23, 2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/23/opinion/23friedman.html?_r=0.
9 Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Middle East Priorities for
January 21,” Washington Post, November 21, 2008.
10 Juan Miguel Munoz, “Interview with His Majesty King Abdullah II,” El Pais,
October 18, 2008, website of His Majesty King Abdullah II ibn al Hussein,
Press Room Interviews, http://www.kingabdullah.jo/index.php/en_US/
interviews/view/id/351/videoDisplay/0.html.
11 Palestine Liberation Organization, Negotiations Affairs Department, “The
Arab Peace Initiative: Frequently Asked Questions,” http://www.nad-plo.
org/etemplate.php?id=157. 2013.
12 Eduard Soler i Lecha, “The EU and the Arab Peace Initiative: Promoting a
Regional Approach,” Israeli-European Policy Network, July 2010, http://
www.macro.org.il/lib/8582848.pdf.
13 Ghassan Khatib, “Consistent Support,” in Bitterlemons Guide, pp. 27ff.
14 Angus Reid Public Opinion, Palestinians, Israelis at Odds Over Saudi Plan, June
17, 2008, http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/32449/Palestinians_Israelis_at_
Odds_over_Saudi_Plan/.
15 International Peace Institute, September 23, 2009, http://www.charney
research.com/2009Sep23_IPI_Poll_findings_on_PalestinePeacePlan.htm.
16 “Sure enough, when we ran a poll on the Arab Peace Initiative across the
Arab world, we found that almost three-quarters of all Arabs support a
solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict that would lead to the establishment of
a Palestinian state alongside Israel.” James J. Zogby, “Arab Peace Initiative
10 Years On,” Miftah.org, Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global
Dialogue and Democracy, March 27, 2012, http://miftah.org/Display.
cfm?DocId=24621&CategoryId=5.
17 Doha Declaration, http://www.lasportal.org/wps/wcm/connect/706398004
f08e22bb430be5cbcbea77a/24.pdf?MOD=AJPERES.
18 There were also similar differences in wording in previous summit meetings.
19 Or, for example, Amr Moussa: “The Arab Peace Initiative is not a bargaining
chip. There will be no derogation from its principles. It is a collective
position that reflects a deep belief in and a genuine quest for peace.” See
Amr Moussa, “We Come in Peace,” in Bitterlemons Guide, p. 25; or Israeli
analysts, e.g., Teitelbaum, The Arab Peace Initiative.
20 See Daoudi, “The Arab Peace Initiative,” p. 539.
21 “We praise the role played by the Arab Peace Initiative committee,
headed by Qatar, and the efforts it has invested in focused activity with
the permanent members of the UN Security Council and the European
Union for the purpose of reaching a solution through the launching of
serious negotiations in a [binding] temporary framework for starting and
ending it while using defined mechanisms that will bring about a just and
comprehensive peace in the region” (p. 5).
22 Al-Hayat, May 8, 2009.
33
23 CNN, April 25, 2007, in Arabic.

24 “Arab states are revising elements of a 2002 peace plan to encourage Israel
to agree to the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state, the
London-based paper al-Quds al-Arabi reported Wednesday.” Yoav Stern,
“‘Arabs Revising Peace Plan to Win Israel Backing for Two States’; Arab
Paper: Countries Amending Clause on ‘Right Of Return’; Yishai: Peace Talks
Impossible until Gaza Fighting Ends,” Haaretz, May 6, 2009.
25 Maan News Agency, “Arab League Delegation to Submit New Peace
Proposal to U.S.,” January 23, 2013, http://maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.
aspx?ID=560363; Laura Rozen, “Arab League to Meet with Kerry to Revive
Arab-Israel Peace Initiative,” The Back Channel, April 18, 2013, http://
backchannel.al-monitor.com/index.php/2013/04/5024/arab-league-may-
reissue-arab-israel-peace-initiative-at-meeting-with-kerry-april-29/.
26 Arab Times, June 1, 2011.
27 “Qatar Urges Arab Peace Offer Review, Brands Quartet Failure,” Naharnet,
December 9, 2012, http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/63938-qatar-urges-
arab-peace-offer-review-brands-quartet-failure.
28 “Al-Azhar Calls for the Withdrawal of the Arab Peace Initiative and for
Muslims to Unite in order to Find Practical Solutions to the Challenges
Facing the Umma,” Menara, August 13, 2012, http://www.menara.ma/
ar/2012/08/13/223592.html.
29 Ahmad Qurei, “Ten Years of the Peace Initiative. Until When?” al-Quds Al-Arabi,
April 3, 2012, http://www.alquds.co.uk/index.asp?fname=data/2012/04/04-
03/03qpt972.htm.
30 “Attempting to Revive the Peace Initiative is Escape from Facing the
Occupation,” El-Raaed.
31 Marwan Muasher, “The Death of the Arab Peace Initiative?” The
Atlantic, November 23, 2011, http://www.theatlantic.com/international/
archive/2011/11/the-death-of-the-arab-peace-initiative/248910/.
32 Akiva Elda, “Muasher: Obama Should Try to Solve Conflict in a ‘Few
Months,’” al-Monitor, February 21, 2013, http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/
originals/2013/02/the-arab-peace-initiative-the-last-chance-for-a-two-state-s.
html.
33 Tim Butcher, “Teheran Backs Arab Peace Plan, Say Saudis,” Telegraph, March
5, 2007.
34 “Al-Maliki at Cairo Press Conference: Arab Peace Initiative Remains the
Essence of Negotiations,” al-Kufiyah Press, June 24, 2009.
35 “[Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser] Judeh said the Arab Peace Initiative is
important and stressed the need [for] building on this initiative.” UPI , “FM
Takes Part in Meeting of Arab Peace Initiative Committee,” January 8, 2013,
http://www.breitbart.com/system/wire/upi201301081577-190008-.
36 “Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, for his part, told the meeting in
Doha that he was opposed to a withdrawal of the offer, warning that it could
lead to regional conflict.” See “Qatar Urges Arab Peace Offer Review, Brands
34
Quartet Failure,” Naharnet, December 9, 2012, http://www.naharnet.com/
stories/en/63938.
37 “Munib al-Masri Reveals Palestinian Initiative to Revive Arab Peace Plan,” Wafa,
July 31, 2012, http://www.wafa.ps/arabic/index.php?action=detail&id=136170.
38 “Al-Bashir: We Wish for the Success of Islamic Leaders in Solving Crises in
Arab Countries,” Asharq al-Arabi, August 16, 2012, http://asharqalarabi.org.
uk/barq/b-qiraat-72.htm.
39 “A Palestinian Initiative for the Revification of the Arab Peace Initiative,”
Wafa, Palestinian News and Info Agency, http://www.wafa.ps/arabic/
index.php?action=detail&id=13617; http://www.kingabdullah.jo/index/
php/en_US/interviews/view/id/351/videoDisplay/0.html.
40 Eric Silver, “Hamas Softens Israel Stance in Calls for Palestinian State,”
Independent, January 10, 2007, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/
world/middle-east/hamas-softens-israel-stance-in-calls-for-palestinian-
state-431624.html.
41 Thus, for example, in late February of this year, there were riots throughout
the West Bank and especially in the Hebron area as a result of the death of
security prisoner Arafat Jaradat, which gave expression to the demand to
release security prisoners.
42 Asher Zeiger and Times of Israel staff, “Kerry Expected to Revive 2002 Saudi
Peace Initiative,” Times of Israel, March 20, 2013, http://www.timesofisrael.
com/kerry-expected-to-revive-2002-saudi-peace-initiative/.
43 Barak Ravid, “Peres to Obama: Coalition will Make it Difficult for Netanyahu
to Make Progress in Negotiations,” Haaretz, March 22, 2013, http://
www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/peres-to-obama-coalition-
will-make-it-difficult-for-netanyahu-to-make-progress-in-negotiations.
premium-1.511252.
44 Joint Statement by the EU High Representative Catherine Ashton and the
Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov on Middle East
Peace Process, Brussels, December 21, 2012, http://www.consilium.europa.
eu/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/EN/foraff/134545.pdf.
45 “China Urges Israel to Remove Obstacles to Peace Talks: UN Envoy,” Xinhua,
December 20, 2012, http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/751320.shtml.
46
Country Subject Order of Percentage Source
importance who agree
Lebanon Foreign 1 23.6 Sami Atallah, “Lebanon
intervention Country Report,”
September 2012, Arab
Barometer II, http://
www.arabbarometer.
org/sites/default/files/
countyreportlebanon2.
pdf, p. 22.
Palestinian issue 2 20.5
35
Country Subject Order of Percentage Source

importance who agree
Algeria Corruption 1 22.4 http://www.
arabbarometer.org/
sites/default/files/
countyreportyAlgeriaII.
pdf, p. 24.
Palestine 4 12.4
Egypt Economy 1 37 http://www.
arabbarometer.org/
countyreportyegyptII.
pdf, p. 21.
Palestine 5 4
Jordan Economy 1 46 http://www.
arabbarometer.org/
countyreportjordan2_0.
pdf, p. 40.
Palestine 2 21
Saudi Economy 1 49 http://www.
Arabia arabbarometer.org/
countyreportysaudi2.
pdf, p. 16.
Palestine 3 12
47 See the same opinion as expressed by Nizar Abdel-Kader, “Putting

Opponents of the API on the Defensive,” in Bitterlemons Guide, p. 33.
48 Julian E. Barnes and Adam Entous, “Panetta: Iranian Threat Spreads,” Wall
Street Journal, February 1, 2013, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127
887323926104578278231369164640.html.
49 For example, “Jerusalem Day,” which was established to mark the demand
for the rights of the Islamic nation in Palestine.
50 Avi Issacharoff, “Restarting Direct Negotiations: With Amr Moussa
Optimistic, the Right Begins to Worry,” Haaretz, September 5, 2010, http://
www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/1.1219953.
51 Abdul Rahman Shaheen, “Turkey Sees Arab Peace Plan Key to Solving
Woes,” Gulfnews.com, February 4, 2009, http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/
uae/general/turkey-sees-arab-peace-plan-key-to-solving-woes-1.50093.
Following the visit by the Turkish president Saudi Arabia in February 2009,
pundits assessed: “Turkey sees the Arab peace initiative, mooted by King
Abdullah and endorsed by the Arab world, as a means of extricating the
Middle East region from its predicament, as well as a panacea for the woes of
the region in order to restore its stability and consolidating the pillars of just
peace enabling peaceful coexistence of all people in the region.” Erdogan
even attended a meeting of the monitoring committee of the Arab foreign
ministers on the subject of the initiative, al-Quds, September 13, 2011.
The Emergence of the Sunni Axis in
the Middle East
Yoel Guzansky and Gallia Lindenstrauss
Much focus in the Middle East in recent years has centered on the growing
influence of Iran and the creation of a sphere of influence under its
leadership stretching from Iran to Iraq, Syria, and Hizbollah in Lebanon.
Terms such as “radical axis,” “Shiite Crescent,” and “resistance camp,”
which were designed to reflect this alliance, whether by emphasizing
the political-strategic element or the ideological-sectarian element, have
become part of the general lexicon. The upheavals that have gripped the
Arab world since late 2010, however, have led to the formation of a new
geopolitical landscape, with changes in the composition and cohesion of
the radical axis. They have also sparked the formation of an Arab-Turkish/
monarchial-republican Sunni axis, which constitutes a counterweight to
Iran, and is challenging the power and influence of Iran and its proxies in
the region. This increased Sunni activism began even before the so-called
Arab Spring, which aggravated the sectarian tension between Sunnis and
Shiites and between the Arabs and Iran, but peaked in the wake of the
events. Classic balance of power considerations and inter-ethnic rivalries
are intertwined in this activism, particularly on the part of the Arab Gulf
states, whose goal is to form a Sunni front and obstruct Iran.
The Sunni perception of the Iranian threat stems from sectarian
enmity and anxiety about Iran’s rising influence in the region – a concern
that grew with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime and the
assumption of a leading role by the Shiite majority in Iraq.1 Iran also tried
to take credit for key developments such as the Israeli withdrawal from
the security zone in Lebanon in 2000 and the withdrawal from the Gaza
Strip in 2005.2 In addition, there is the fear that future Iranian nuclear
Yoel Guzansky and Dr. Gallia Lindenstrauss are research fellows at INSS.

Yoel Guzansky and Gallia Lindenstrauss | The Emergence of the Sunni Axis
38
weapons capability will result in a profound geostrategic change in the
Middle East, followed by the strengthening of the Iranian-led axis and

the increasing sense of empowerment among its members. The radical
axis plays a key role in Iran’s security perception, and Iran serves as
material and ideological strategic depth for its fellow axis members.
Iran has an interest in portraying itself as a leader of the radical forces in
order to enhance the sense of its power, and it regards the other members
of the axis as a means of promoting its regional ambitions. However,
the weakening of the Assad regime, the distancing of Hamas from the
radical axis following the outbreak of civil war in Syria, and internal
Lebanese restrictions on Hizbollah have made this axis less attractive
and significantly weakened it. Its cohesion naturally also depends on the
behavior of external actors that are able to affect the priorities of the axis
members.
Against the background of an apparent weakening of the Iran-led axis,
this article examines what presents as the emerging Sunni camp, focusing
on the strengths and weaknesses of this axis. Indeed, the weakness of
the Arab regimes, particularly Egypt, the historical distrust between
Turkey and the Arab countries, and the disunity and lack of a clear and
unified strategy among the members of this axis impact negatively on the
potential new power equations created by the Arab Spring. Beyond these
issues, the question of what interests are common to the members of the
Sunni axis and the US and Israel will also be considered: ostensibly, the
axis and Israel and the West share some interests, at least in the short
term. Yet while these regimes are considered pro-Western and more
moderate toward Israel than Iran, they still largely represent and support
an Islamic ideology, which in its extreme version vigorously opposes
Israel. Finally, many believe that the strengthening of the Sunni axis is
primarily due to the weakening of the Shiite axis, reflecting a zero-sum
game. From this perspective, if it becomes clear that the weakening of
the Shiite axis is temporary or partial, this will affect the strength of the
opposing axis.
Is There a Sunni Alliance?

Iran’s advancements in the nuclear sphere and the regional instability
have caused significant movement among the Sunni countries and
strengthened the realization that a more active policy is needed. Greater
political and security cooperation between Turkey, Egypt, and the
39
Arab Gulf states, headed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, is perceived as

increasingly urgent, especially given the Iranian threat and the Syrian
civil war. More coordination on the strategy toward Iran on the part
of some of these states and a more publicly assertive stance is already
evident, and this positioning has invigorated the Sunni axis.
While the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)
supported the no-fly zone over Libya, thereby paving the way to a Security
Council resolution on the issue and the overthrow of the Qaddafi regime,
Saudi Arabia regarded Mubarak’s overthrow as a painful loss and an
American betrayal of a loyal partner.3 Following the fall of the Mubarak
regime, Saudi Arabia responded firmly to the uprising in Bahrain, and in
March 2011 sent forces (under the GCC flag) to put down the riots. The
purpose was to deliver a message that Saudi Arabia would be willing to
employ all available means – from diplomacy and economics to military
measures – in its efforts to act as a counterweight against Iran (and
would stand by what it regarded as its interests, even in opposition to the
position of the US). Concern also existed about possible similar uprisings
by the Shiite minority within Saudi Arabia, which over the previous two
years had begun to foment potential unrest. Still another motive was
preventing Iran from increasing its influence in Bahrain.4
To a large extent, the Syrian civil war was a watershed in all matters
pertaining to the balance of power between the two axes. Before the
conflict began in Syria (where events have since made it a theater
of regional conflict), it appeared that the overthrow of the pseudo-
republican regimes in North Africa was to the benefit of the Iranian-led
radical camp, which would be able to exploit the chaos to heighten its
influence in various arenas. The spread of protest to Syria, however, gave
the Sunni countries a golden opportunity. They have turned their back
on Assad and now await his downfall, if only because Iran would thereby
lose a key ally. From their perspective, Assad’s fall would restore Iran to
its “natural size.”
Hamas, which in the wake of the Syrian civil war distanced itself from
its traditional benefactors of Iran and Syria and even publicly condemned
the Assad regime, has begun to take shelter under the diplomatic and
economic umbrella of the Sunni axis. Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense
in the Gaza Strip in 2012 boosted the Sunni axis, because Sunni states
helped bring about the ceasefire agreement. Iran was disturbed by the
way that Egypt and its allies (Qatar and Turkey) led the mediation for a
40
ceasefire, with Cairo becoming the primary contact during the fighting.
According to Iran, these states earning are becoming patrons of the

Palestinian cause, and are earning political and public relations points
while shunting Iran to the sidelines. They are depriving Iran of credit for
the military aid it gave Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which enabled the latter
to fight against Israel. When Iran’s substantial diplomatic and economic
isolation are added to the picture, it appears that momentum is on the side
of the Sunni bloc states. The possibility that Assad’s regime will give way
to a regime controlled by the Sunni majority in Syria would constitute
decisive confirmation of the revival of the Sunni axis, after a decade in
which it was at a disadvantage, following the “loss” of Iraq to Iran.
The ongoing plunge in Iran’s popularity in public opinion, as reflected
in surveys conducted in Arab and Muslim countries in recent years, has
likewise contributed to a rise in the popularity of the Sunni camp. In all
the countries surveyed other than Lebanon and Iraq, Iran’s role in Bahrain
and Syria was perceived as more negative than positive. In addition,
except for Lebanon and Libya, the number of respondents who thought
that Iran was developing nuclear weapons was greater than the number
who thought that Iran was pursuing peaceful nuclear development.5 In
contrast, despite some erosion in Turkey’s popularity in the Middle East
and North Africa, it remains the country in the region most positively
perceived.6
The Key Members of the Emerging Axis

Saudi Arabia’s effort to unite the monarchies out of concern about popular
unrest against them, and to form a monarchial bloc as a counterweight
against Iran, has thus far been unsuccessful. In December 2011, Saudi
King Abdullah called on the six Arab Gulf states “to go beyond the stage
of cooperation to the stage of union in one entity.” However, despite
expectations that a union – even if only partial – would be announced,
the idea was suspended, ostensibly in order to give the members more
time to assess the proposed framework and settle their disputes. At the
same time, the regional unrest has to date not caused the downfall of
any of the monarchies in the region. Moreover, even though significant
disputes complicate relations among them, the Gulf states constitute the
most unified and effective bloc in the Arab world.
In addition to its natural inclination to remain behind the scenes and
focus on diplomatic mediation, Saudi Arabia faces significant challenges
41
at home, including a potential succession crisis, internal and external

calls for political reform, and simmering unrest among the Shiites in
the eastern district, problems that make it difficult for Saudi Arabia to
assume a leading role. Yet Saudi Arabia, despite important structural
weaknesses, is still determined to promote a new regional order. The
kingdom, which supplies economic aid and advanced weaponry to the
opposition in Syria,7 wants to see Assad’s regime fall, if only because Iran
would thereby lose a key ally, the radical axis would be undermined, and
Saudi Arabia would have the opportunity of joining the leadership of a
larger and more unified Sunni camp. As long as it succeeds in managing
the conflict through its “clients,” the kingdom believes that with each
passing day, even if it is not nearing victory, it benefits from the situation,
because its enemies – Iran, the Assad regime, and Hizbollah – are
suffering casualties and growing weaker.
Qatar’s enormous economic power and readiness to use it for political
purposes, combined with the weakness of several traditional power
centers stemming from the upheaval in the Arab world, have highlighted
the emirate’s growing power and its particular brand of foreign policy.
Qatar has been actively involved in most of the upheavals in the region,
from Libya to Syria, where the emirate is so far the leading contributor to
the rebels, with an estimate of $3 billion since the outbreak of the civil war.8
The October 2012 visit to the Gaza Strip by the Emir of Qatar was the first
visit there by a head of state since the Hamas takeover. Qatar’s activity in
the internal struggle between Fatah and Hamas in the Palestinian arena
is not new, but it underscores the drive to fill the vacuum left by Egyptian
weakness. The emirate’s goal is to assume a place of honor alongside
Egypt, which is preoccupied with internal problems, as a key sponsor
in the efforts to mediate between the two Palestinian movements. In
addition, the $8 billion in aid to Egypt by Qatar and its promise of future
investment in the Egyptian economy,9 even if it apparently comes without
any official strings, will give it more influence over Egypt’s policy than it
enjoyed under the Mubarak regime, when relations between Cairo and
Doha were strained.
What motivates the involvement of this gas-rich emirate in the
regional revolutions? Probably it seeks to establish its leading role in the
Middle East and perhaps also to avoid any uprising in its own territory.
But Qatar’s power is not unlimited; its activism, particularly its support
for Islamic forces and Islamists in the region, is arousing opposition
42
among the other monarchies, which fear the strengthening of elements
linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.

As a result of the Syrian crisis, Hamas has distanced itself from Iran
and Syria – providers of economic assistance and advanced weaponry
– while becoming closer to Egypt and Qatar, where several of its senior
officials reside. Qatar’s relations with Hamas in part led Israel in March
2011 to sever relations with Qatar and close its diplomatic delegation in
Doha, ban holders of Qatari passports from visiting the West Bank, and
halt cooperation between Qatar and Israel’s defense industries. Israel
was presumably not pleased by the Emir’s visit to the Gaza Strip and the
resulting gain for Hamas: even if the organization’s dissociation from the
radical axis is in itself positive, the new closeness had a negative impact
on relations between Israel and Qatar.
Turkey, which is trying to balance its rediscovery of the Middle East in
recent years with maintaining close relations with the West, constitutes
an important link in the emerging Sunni axis. While some Arab countries
remain ambivalent about Turkey’s efforts to return to a position of
leadership in the Middle East, its opposition to Israel and the option
of alternative Sunni leadership to Iran are perceived positively in Arab
capitals. On the other hand, Turkey’s “return” to the Middle East is likely
to be at the expense of some Arab countries’ standing in the leadership of
the Islamic world, and also in the Arab world. Negative memories of the
Ottoman Empire are still fresh in some capitals, and the Turkish model
threatens the conservative character of the Sunni monarchies.
The warm reception accorded Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan on his September 2011 visit to Egypt10 was accompanied by
criticism from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Before his arrival in
Egypt, he stated, “A secular country respects all religions. Don’t be wary
of secularism. I hope there will be a secular state in Egypt.”11 He stressed
that people should have the right to choose whether or not to be religious,
and cited himself as an example of a Muslim prime minister heading a
secular country. In response, a Muslim Brotherhood spokesman said
that Erdogan’s remarks were interference in Egypt’s internal affairs.12
Since then, the Turkish leadership has shown more caution, and has
emphasized that it does not intend to export the Turkish model, but only
wishes to assist those who have asked for its help.13
Operation Pillar of Defense exposed the problems in Turkish policy
toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Following the deterioration in
43
relations between Israel and Turkey and Turkey’s unequivocal support

for Hamas, Turkey was left with no actual ability to mediate and exert
influence, beyond its statements condemning Israeli policy.14 The
campaign once again demonstrated the fact that Turkey had lost its status
as the leading mediator in the region – a status it enjoyed before the Arab
uprising as a result of the weakness of the Arab countries, particularly
Egypt. At the same time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s
apology to Erdogan in March 2013, and the prospect of some thawing
in Israeli-Turkish relations, could help bolster Turkish influence over
developments between Israel and the Palestinians.
Egypt profited both regionally and internationally from its success as
a mediator in Operation Pillar of Defense. The new Egyptian regime’s
ability to bring about a lull was a considerable achievement. Morsi did
not want prolonged escalation because he feared that it would increase
public criticism in general, especially from the Muslim Brotherhood, and
fuel demands for extreme measures such as revoking the Egyptian-Israeli
peace treaty, a move that could exact a heavy economic and political price
from Egypt in the international arena. Egypt will likely play a key role in
the future in moderating the conflict between Israel and Hamas, because
Egypt remains an acceptable mediator to both parties. On the other
hand, it is questionable whether Egypt can play a significant role in the
regional arena at a time when it must cope with dramatic internal events.
For example, Egyptian Minister of Defense General Abed al-Fatah al-
Sisi warned in January 201315 that Egypt was in danger of disintegrating.
Its shaky economic situation, reflected in its almost total lack of foreign
currency reserves, a large budget deficit, and unemployment of nearly
25 percent among young people (while 60 percent of Egypt’s population
is below the age of 30),16 forces Egypt to turn to new channels in a search
for resources. In March 2013, in order to encourage the Egyptian tourism
industry – and less likely as an overture to the regime in Tehran – Egypt
even renewed its direct flights to and from Iran, after a 34-year break.17
Cohesion of the Sunni Axis

Notwithstanding what appears to be a strengthening of the Sunni camp,
there is also a split within it. While Turkey, Qatar, and even Egypt under
Muslim Brotherhood leadership are inclined to support organizations
like Hamas and a considerable degree of change in the status quo, other
Gulf states as well as Jordan are concerned about the rise in power of
44
political Islam and are trying to do their best to defend the status quo.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II even warned in this context that a new radical
axis, the “Muslim Brotherhood Crescent” centered in Egypt and Turkey,
was forming and threatening to change the character of the region.18
Furthermore, Erdogan’s aggressive line toward Israel in recent years is
not shared by Saudi Arabia and several other Gulf states, which prefer
quiet cooperation with Israel.19
Even with respect to the Syrian issue, where a greater convergence
of interests among the Sunni axis members would be expected, disputes
exist. The Saudis and the Qataris support different, at times competing,
factions within the rebels groups; Qatar, for example, backs the more
radical groups and works with the Muslim Brotherhood, which is
anathema to Riyadh. Also, there is a fundamental difference between
Turkey and Jordan on the one hand and Saudi Arabia on the other. As
countries bordering Syria, Turkey and Jordan must deal with influences
infiltrating from the Syrian civil war (refugees, a higher probability of
terrorism), and this constitutes a key factor underlying their policies.
Saudi Arabia is disappointed that Turkey’s harsh rhetoric toward
the Assad regime is not accompanied by physical measures.20 The
prolonged stalemate in Syria is largely to Saudi Arabia’s benefit, because
it weakens its enemies and requires relatively little investment on its
part. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia fears that if and when Assad falls,
the power of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria will grow substantially,
which in turn might affect the stability of certain Gulf states. Egypt and
Qatar, however, the other leading partners in the axis, see matters quite
differently. Moreover, in the absence of a clear decision in Syria, the split
between the Sunni factions fighting in Syria and their respective backers
is liable to widen.21
There are even visible gaps in perception between the Sunni axis
members on the fundamental question that would presumably unite
them – Iran. Together with Egypt, which is bolstering its economic and
diplomatic ties with Iran, Turkey does not regard the threat from Iran in
the same way as do some of the Gulf states. For example, while Turkey is
proud of its mediation attempt in March 2010 with Brazil regarding the
Iranian nuclear program, some of the Gulf states were less approving.22
Furthermore, while these states agree that a Middle East free of
nuclear weapons is a desirable goal, the fact that it will probably prove
unachievable makes the discussion of other strategies urgent. Turkey
45
holds that the Gulf states are exaggerating the threat of Iranian nuclear

capability, and claims that this question can only be solved through
negotiations. In addition, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu
argued that the P5+1, which is negotiating with Iran, should include
Turkey and Saudi Arabia and become the P5+3.23
The internal weakness already existing in some Middle East and
North African countries, and expectations that this trend will continue
and gather momentum, may pose a significant challenge to the emerging
Sunni axis, which will find it difficult to formulate a clear message of
unity (on both the intra-Sunni and Sunni-Shiite fronts) that can convince
the masses. The weakness of these regimes is hazardous for the Sunni
axis for two main reasons. The first is that it can create additional hot
spots of Shiite-Sunni conflict, thereby dragging the Sunni axis states
into various levels of intervention in many places, including some near
their borders, which could sap their strength. (Yemen is an example of a
weak state in which Iran is stepping up its negative involvement, which
is liable to push Saudi Arabia again into military intervention. The same
can happen in Syria, which is in danger of splitting into cantons.) The
second is that this weakness at the national level also affects Egypt, one
of the main players in the Sunni axis’s current lineup. Building an axis on
such a shaky foundation guarantees trouble, and it is already apparent
that Iran is looking for ways to improve its relations with Egypt given the
latter’s weakness, despite Saudi Arabia’s efforts to block developments
of this kind.
Conclusion
The advantage of a multi-polar system lies in its flexibility.24 The question
arises whether in the Middle East multi-polar flexibility is giving way to
the creation of a more rigid bi-polar system. Such a development could
restrain Iran on the one hand, but also escalate local conflicts and spark a
general regional conflagration. The Sunni countries appear more willing
than ever to harness their diplomatic, economic, and even military assets
to the effort to obstruct Iran and its proxies. At the same time, they do
not regard the Iranian threat with an identical degree of alarm, and this
is therefore also a source of tension between these countries, joining
their differing views of the role of political Islam, with an emphasis on
the Muslim Brotherhood. The latter bone of contention between them
detracts from the axis’s ability to take joint action. Similarly, the outbreak
46
of the Syrian civil war brought together different elements that want to
see Assad weakened, but no matter how this effort plays out, it will most
probably intensify existing rifts.
Thus if the rise of the Sunni axis persists, there will likely be a
paradigm shift in the Middle East dominated more by sectarian and
ideological colors. Iran’s power and influence may fade, but political
Islam will become stronger in the Middle East, which is liable to make
the region less tolerant toward Israel and the West. The Sunni Islamic
movements are already experiencing a golden age, and play a major role
in government in many of the states that have undergone a revolution.
For the Americans, the rise of the Sunni axis can potentially be a
positive development, as a source of regional legitimacy in the struggle
against the Iranian nuclear program. The three leading states in the
Sunni axis – Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt – are states where the US
has invested heavily in maintaining their Western orientation. Still,
there are difficult tensions in the relations between each of these three
states and the US. In particular, it appears that the challenges facing the
US in preserving its relations with Egypt under the Morsi regime will be
complex. Each of these three countries, however, has a strong incentive
to maintain its relations with the US at their current level. On the other
hand, where Syria is concerned, the active role of the Gulf states in
financing and arming the rebels, and the fact that jihadist factions are
exerting a growing influence on events in parts of that country, are likely
to constitute a threat to the US and Israel.25
From Israel’s perspective, greater regional firmness toward Iran is
a positive development. Indeed, what Israel and the Sunni axis have
shared in recent years was concern about Iran. This common interest
has reportedly also led to cooperation in intelligence and coordination
of positions with regard to Iran, at least between Israel and several of the
Arab Gulf states. Israel and several of the monarchies also share another
interest. To date, Israel and most of the monarchies have demonstrated
their preference for preserving the status quo and halting the rise of
political Islam, out of concern about the results of the upheaval in the
region – another reason for deepening the tacit alliance between them.
The geopolitical change portrayed here offers an opportunity to
further isolate Iran, limit its penetration of the Arab world, and complicate
its efforts to support its proxies on Israel’s borders.26 Furthermore, as
terrorist organizations like Hamas become closer to the Sunni axis, their
47
operations against Israel are likely to be considerably more restrained,

even if Hamas wishes to continue receiving military support from Iran.
On the other hand, this trend could hamper Israel’s freedom of diplomatic
and military action. If and when Israel and Hamas square off militarily
again, Hamas will receive more diplomatic and economic support from
the Sunni axis countries than in the past. Furthermore, although the
Sunni countries are considered pro-Western with a more moderate
policy toward Israel than Iran, they still largely support Islamic ideology,
sometimes in an extreme version that vehemently opposes Israel.
Notes
1 Yoel Guzansky, “Iraq and the Arabs Following American Withdrawal,”
Strategic Assessment 15, no. 3 (2012): 42.
2 Ofra Bengio and Meir Litvak also add the Second Lebanese War (2006) to
this list of “achievements.” See Ofra Bengio and Meir Litvak, “Introduction,”
in The Sunna and Shi’a in History: Division and Ecumenism in the Muslim Middle
East, eds. Ofra Bengio and Meir Litvak (New York: Palgrave, 2011), p. 9.
3 F. Stephen Larrabee, “Turkey and the Gulf Cooperation Council,” Turkish
Studies 12, no. 4 (2011): 695.
4 John R. Bradley, After the Arab Spring: How the Islamists Hijacked the Middle
East Revolts (New York: Palgrave, 2012), p. 84.
5 Zogby Research Services, “Looking at Iran: How 20 Arab & Muslim Nations
View Iran & Its Policies,” March 5, 2013, http://www.aaiusa.org/page/-/
Images/Polls/LookingAtIranPoll3_5_13.pdf.
6 In an August 2012 survey by TESEV, a Turkish research institute, 69 percent
of those surveyed expressed positive views of Turkey, compared with 78
percent in 2011. Sixty-five percent of those surveyed in 2012 held positive
views of Egypt, 62 percent approved of the United Arab Emirates, and 60
percent approved of Saudi Arabia, compared with 37 percent who expressed
positive views of Iran. See also: Mensur Akgun and Sabiha Senyucel
Gundogar, The Perception of Turkey in the Middle East 2012 (Istanbul: TESEV,
December 2012), p. 9.
7 C. J. Chivers and Eric Schmitt, “Saudis Step up Help for Rebels in Syria with
Croatian Arms,” New York Times, February 25, 2013.
8 “Qatar and Syria: Emirate has Boosted Rebellion but Created Confusion,
Too,” Financial Times, May 19, 2013.
9 Zvi Barel, “The Egyptian Heart in Qatar’s Pocket,” The Marker, April 18, 2013.
10 Aviel Magnezi, “Erdogan: Israel Jeopardizing its Future,” Ynet News,
September 13, 2011, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4121766,00.
html.
48
11 “Egypt’s Islamists criticize Erdogan over Calls for Secular State,” Ynet News,
September 14, 2011, http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4122413,00.

html.
12 Ibid.
13 Gallia Lindenstrauss, “Turkey and the Arab Spring: Embracing People’s
Power,” EuroMeSCo Papers No. 14, March 2012, p. 13.
14 Uzi Rabi, “‘Operation Pillar of Defense’: A Window into the ‘New’ Middle
East,” Tel Aviv Notes, November 20, 2012.
15 “Egypt Army Chief warns of ‘State Collapse,” al-Jazeera, January 29, 2013,
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/01/20131299362752333.
html.
16 “Egypt’s Economic Crisis,” New York Times, January 20, 2012; “Egypt’s
Economic Struggle,” New York Times, September 4, 2012; Ben W. Heineman,
Jr. “Egypt’s Economic Winter,” The Atlantic, December 18, 2012.
17 “First Iranian Tourists Arrive in Egypt Amid Tight Security,” al-Ahram, April
1, 2013.
18 Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Modern King in the Arab Spring,” The Atlantic, March
18, 2013.
19 Saban Kardas, “Turkey and the Gulf Dialogue in the Middle East,” TESEV
Foreign Policy Programme, November 2012, p. 5, http://www.tesev.org.tr/
Upload/Publication/efe57ebc-ca34-4e94-a7e0-04b6b721e3bb/Turkey%20
and%20Gulf%20Dialogue_Saban%20Kardas.pdf; see also Yoel Guzansky,
“Israel’s Relations with the Arab Gulf States: Between Iran and the Arab
Spring,” Politique Etrangere (winter 2012-2013), http://politique-etrangere.
com/2013/03/11/israel-and-the-gulf-states-between-iran-and-the-arab-
spring.
20 Kardas, “Turkey and the Gulf Dialogue in the Middle East,” p. 5.
21 Katrina Dalacoura, “The Arab Uprisings Two Years On: Ideology,
Sectarianism and the Changing Balance of Power,” Insight Turkey 15, no. 1
(2013): 86.
22 Yoel Guzansky and Gallia Lindenstrauss, “Toward a Nuclear Middle East?”
in Strategic Survey for Israel 2012-2013, eds. Anat Kurz and Shlomo Brom (Tel
Aviv: Institute for National Security Studies, 2013), p. 61; Kardas, “Turkey
and the Gulf Dialogue in the Middle East,” pp. 5-6.
23 “Turkey’s Ties with Qatar, Saudi Arabia Unlikely to be Limited to Syrian
crisis,” Today’s Zaman, February 10, 2013.
24 Karl W. Deutsch and J. David Singer, “Multipolar Power Systems and
International Stability,” World Politics 16, no. 3 (1964): 394.
25 Joshua Jacobs, “The Danger that Saudi Arabia will Turn Syria into an
Islamist Hotbed,” Christian Science Monitor, April 12, 2012; Halil M. Karaveli,
“Turkey, the Unhelpful Ally,” New York Times, February 27, 2013.
26 Neil Macfarquhar, “Sunni Leaders Gaining Clout in Mideast,” New York
Times, November 27, 2012.
Islam and Democracy:
Can the Two Walk Together?
Yoav Rosenberg
An analysis of the events in the Middle East over the past two years
requires a close examination of the foundations of political philosophy,
using basic concepts in philosophy connected to enlightenment,
freedom, and the sovereignty of man and God. In many ways, the
events now taking place in the Middle East are somewhat reminiscent
of what happened in Europe some two hundred years ago with the rise
of the ideas of enlightenment and nationalism. To be sure, the events in
the Middle East of the twenty-first century are unique to this time and
place, and cannot even be imagined as eighteenth or nineteenth century
events. Much has been written, for example, about the contemporary
use of the internet and social networking sites to circumvent and make
a mockery of the apparatuses used by the authoritarian regimes against
would-be protesters. Neither these technologies nor other mass media
that document events in real time were available two hundred years ago.
However, a thorough understanding of the idea of the Enlightenment and
of the political systems it spawned makes it possible to better examine
the significance of the rise to power of the Islamic parties in many Arab
countries and to better define the chances that democratic governments
will arise in those countries.
The primary claim of this article is that it is not yet possible to decide
whether democratic governments will spring up in Arab countries. An
attempt to assess the likelihood of these developments is no simpler than
was an attempt to predict the stability of the regimes of Mubarak, Assad,
Qaddafi, and others. What is clear, however, is that the fundamental
Yoav Rosenberg is a doctoral student in the Department of History and

Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University, England.

Yoav Rosenberg | Islam and Democracy
50
philosophical terms that underlie intelligence and cultural assessments,
and as such, predictions as to how the events in the Arab world will play
out, are grounded directly or indirectly in basic ideological and cultural
assumptions.
Many of the analyses published thus far, especially in Israel, have
been written by Middle East experts. For years, the academic discipline
of Middle East studies has assumed that the societies and countries in
the geographic region called the Middle East are distinct from other
global geopolitical phenomena. It is clear that scholars of the Middle East
are not ignoring global phenomena (such as the internet and economic
globalization), but they maintain that discussion of movements and
societies in the Middle East requires singular expertise. They depict a
sort of unique quality of people in the region and political forms common
in the Middle East. In fact, however, an understanding of the processes
currently underway in the Middle East requires
that these processes be fundamentally linked to
The very fact that a
phenomena that have taken place over the past few
particular government hundred years in Europe and the United States.
imposes restrictions on its The depiction of the Islamic current of thought that
citizens, whether they are has recently scored several impressive victories in
restrictions in religious free elections in the region as rejecting “Western
values” is flawed and does not provide a good
law or others, does not
description of the “West” and its “values.”
in and of itself preclude The article below first briefly surveys
the establishment of the Enlightenment movement, whose most
democracy in the basic prominent figure was eighteenth-century German
sense of regular elections philosopher Immanuel Kant, and then reviews the
currents of thought that subsequently opposed the
and basic rights and
Enlightenment from that time till today. Careful
equality.
study reveals that a considerable number of the
Islamic movements in the region draw ideologically
from the Western anti-Enlightenment movement,
even if their basis is Islamic religious faith. Therefore, a solid analysis
of the chances that an Islamic democracy will develop is impossible
without a thorough understanding of the concept of democracy, both
in its Western meaning and in the new meanings it might assume in the
current Middle East context. The decision whether to recognize particular
characteristics as unique to the Middle East or identify them as global
51
characteristics of humanity is mainly an ideological decision and cannot

be justified by historical or cultural research. This article prefers to look
at current events in the Middle East through a Western and global prism
that touches on the question of human sovereignty and freedom. While
the ideas on these issues were developed in what is called the “West,”
as philosophical ideas, they are relevant throughout the globe – even if
some people think otherwise.
What is Enlightenment?
In his 1784 essay “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?”
Kant in effect determined how enlightenment would be discussed
for generations to come. Kant writes that regarding an individual,
“enlightenment is mankind’s exit from its self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity
is the inability to make use of one’s own understanding without the
guidance of another . . . Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own
understanding! is thus the motto of enlightenment.”1 In the social
context, he states, “that a public [publikum] should enlighten itself is more
likely; indeed, it is nearly inevitable, if only it is granted freedom . . . the
public use of reason must at all times be free, and it alone can bring about
enlightenment among men.”2 Kant is very clear in his approach to the
Church and the clergy’s ability to enforce timeless conventions that are
not based on human reason: “But it is absolutely forbidden to unite, even
for the lifetime of a single man, in a permanent religious constitution that
no one may publicly doubt, and thereby to negate a period of progress
of mankind toward improvement and thus make it fruitless and even
detrimental for posterity.”3 Kant thereby challenges the clergy, and later
in the essay political rulers as well, whom he would restrict in their
power to harm the freedom of thought and freedom of expression of their
citizens and subjects. Enlightenment is thus inextricably linked with
political liberalism in the sense of giving basic rights to citizens, and in
particular, public freedom of expression. However, Kant does not call for
political anarchism, in which every person can decide by the strength
of his intellect whether he wishes to pay taxes, be drafted into the army,
or obey the country’s laws. Rather, Kant allows for full civil obedience,
based on the rational freedom of every citizen. The public space is the
place where reason dominates, while in the space where a citizen plays
a particular private role (e.g., soldier, government official, or worker), he
52
must obey in order to preserve civil order. This is also closely connected
to Kant’s moral concept, but that is beyond the scope of this article.
The Enlightenment, therefore, was initially a revolutionary movement
that callled for human beings to rely on their intellect in exploring
natural reality as well as human moral values. The Enlightenment is also
a natural successor to the Reformation of the sixteenth century, which
called upon Christians to understand their holy books by themselves
and to dissociate themselves from the authority of the Church and
the monopoly on interpretation of holy writ that Catholic priests had
assumed. Another influence is that of the scientific revolution, which
led to impressive achievements in the power of the human intellect and
its objective observation of nature. Essentially, enlightenment does not
recognize religious, divine, ecclesiastical, or political authority, and it
places man’s freedom and his sovereignty over his body and his mind
at the center of its political thought. To many people in Israel today, this
sentence sounds almost trivial. However, we do not need to go back
many years in order to be reminded that for most of human history,
human beings were not sovereign entities, and they did not have freedom
and basic rights. Human beings were subject to patriarchal authority, to
feudalism, to the Church, and to many other systems that determined
what they would think, how they would dress, what work they would do,
whom they would marry, and numerous other practices that today are
anchored in basic laws that grant human beings the right to decide these
issues by themselves.
The idea of enlightment was revived under the Republican
administration of George W. Bush. An example of the arguments made
against the idea of enlightenment that was promoted by Bush early in
the first decade of the twenty-first century in his war against Saddam
Hussein can be found in “American Optimism and Middle Eastern
Pessimism,” an article published in 2004 in the IDF journal Maarachot.
The article is litle more than a challenge to the Bush administration
policy of exporting democracy. Thus, refuting statements by the Bush
administration, the authors argue that “presenting precedents from a
different political, social, and cultural world from that of the Middle East
is largely misleading”4 (referring to the administration spokespersons
who based themselves on the political changes that had taken place in
Eastern Europe and South America to support the idea that a similar
political change could be made in the Middle East as well). The authors
53
justify the distinct approach to the Middle East populace on the basis of

a culture that ostensibly separates them qualitatively from other citizens
of the world.
The authors, Middle East experts, characterize Middle East society as
having a “deeply entrenched belief in the dominant role of fate, which is
dictated in advance in the life of the individual and the collective, and for
this reason, it also adheres to the assumption that there is a deterministic
historical need (which often leads to a tendency to passivity and to
rejecting pursuit of change in a situation by depending on sabr, the well-
known Middle Eastern patience). Moreover, societies in the Islamic world
attribute clear importance to a preference for the collective over the idea
of individualism common in the West.”5 Two claims are made here. One
is about the ostensible passivity of the Arab public, which does not take
action against corrupt regimes because of some faith in “the dominant role
of fate.” The second claim, which has no necessary or causal connection
to the first, maintains that Middle East societies prefer the collective to
the individual. Yet even if the collective is preferred to the individual, it
is of course still possible to actively protest against a corrupt dictatorial
regime, as in fact happened recently in a number of Arab states. The two
claims made by the authors are not necessarily connected.
In their conclusion, the authors argue:
There is increasing recognition that the United States and
the entire West are worried about the problems in the Mid-
dle East and are prepared to deal with them more vigorously
than those who live in the region itself. The lack of democ-
racy, the extremism and terror, the weakness of civil soci-
ety, the weak connection to the nation-state, poverty and
ignorance, the inferior status of women – all these emerge
as problems that are much more troubling to the West (and
in fact, threaten its tranquility) than to most people in the
Middle East. Not only do most people in the Middle East not
view these problems with the same degree of seriousness as
the West, but it would appear that sometimes, they do not
even perceive them as problems.6
However, reading these lines in 2013 leaves no room for doubt: Middle
East society has had its say. Most of the publics in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria,
and other countries see the problems of poverty, corruption, the status
of women, and others as fundamental problems for which they took to
the streets and risked their lives. It may be that they prefer the collective
54
to the individual, but there is no connection whatsoever between this
preference and accepting fate.
Anti-Enlightenment: A Movement as Old as the Enlightenment

To people who grow up in secular, liberal democratic countries like
Israel, the description of the Enlightenment above is clear, if not obvious.
Individual rights, freedom of expression, liberalism, and democracy are
givens. In Hebrew, the concept of enlightenment has a fully positive
connotation, and there are very few people who would proudly describe
themselves as unenlightened. However, the Enlightenment movement
has had many opponents over the years, from its beginning to this day.
Most of its opponents were part of Western culture and developed in
Western countries. One key cultural movement that reacted against
the enlightenment was Romanticism, with its emphasis on subjective
human perception and emotion superseding a comprehensive belief in
human reason as a means to reveal the secrets of nature and arrive at
universal moral norms. Many religious movements also opposed the idea
of enlightenment on the basis of divine sovereignty in the world and the
claim that human beings, subject to the divine, are themselves limited.
An important current of thought that opposed enlightenment and
liberalism and continues to have an impact on political thought in
Europe and the United States today is known as the Frankfurt School.
Its proponents were a group of neo-Marxist thinkers who began their
activity before the Second World War in Frankfurt; most of its members
left Germany during the war, immigrating mainly to the United States.
The pessimism characteristic of their approach stems from its Marxist
origins and thereafter from the historical experience of the Holocaust, the
industrial killing of the Jews, and the use of atomic weapons against the
civilian population in Japan. The leaders of the group, which engaged in
a deep social analysis of the problems of contemporary Western society,
were Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno.
Horkheimer begins his essay “The Concept of Enlightenment” thus:
“In the most general sense of progressive thought, the Enlightenment
has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their
sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant.”7
Horkheimer thus points to the main problem faced by members of the
Frankfurt School: the Enlightenment that conquered the Western world
and which, according to Kant, was supposed to lead it to a more just place,
55
led to dictatorial regimes and world wars that ended with a Holocaust

in which technology, achieved by the power of the human mind, was
used to kill millions of innocent civilians as part of the worst murder
in human history. Enlightenment, according to Horkheimer, turned
technology into a tool man uses to take over the world, and the Industrial
Revolution turned science into a functional tool only that is divorced
from its original aspiration to investigate the truth. The instrumentality
of science and technology made it possible to alienate them from the
world of morals and thereby allowed them to be exploited for purposes of
mass killing. Control over nature also immediately brings with it man’s
alienation from reality, a basic concept in Marxist and Freudian thinking.
Alienation prevents man from being happy, in contrast to the Kantian
vision. Horkheimer concludes his article by stating, “But in the face of
such a possibility, and in the service of the present age, enlightenment
becomes wholesale deception of the masses.”8
The Arab Spring: Is There Still Room for Optimism?

Undoubtedly the Muslim Brotherhood, like other religious movements
(Christian, Jewish, and Muslim) believes that man is not lord of himself
and that divine authority and sacred writings are binding on man and
impose limits on his way of life. Theology, in its interpretation of sacred
writings, reveals hidden layers of reality, which human intelligence,
science, and technology will never manage to reveal, in contrast to the
Kantian ideas on the possibility of conquering happiness on the basis
of human reason alone. According to the Muslim Brotherhood, the
moral world and the desire to establish justice on earth require reliance
on religious law and sacred writings, and they are to be preferred over
human laws. In these senses, the Muslim Brotherhood is close to the
Western anti-liberal movements, and the profound influence of such
Western thinkers is recognizable on the Muslim Brotherhood, as well
as on Shiite thought in the Islamic Revolution in Iran. (Some of the
leading Shiite religious seminaries in Iran teach the writings of German
philosopher Martin Heidigger, the most prominent philosopher of the
critics of enlightenment in the twentieth century, and Iranian President
Ahmadinejad reportedly met his ideological mentor Ayatollah Mesbah-
Yazdi in a course he gave on Heidigger in one of the religious seminaries
in Qom.9)
56
That being the case, it is important to understand what we can
expect of the Islamic movement and what we cannot. The Western

concept of liberalism and enlightenment, to the extent that it highlights
man’s sovereignty and freedom, must be rejected by a movement that
advocates the values of Islam and sharia. To be sure, founders of the
Muslim Brotherhood drew much support from the rise of the fascist
movement in the early twentieth century. However, over the years the
movement has evolved, and contemporary leaders are grappling with
different challenges. For example, the concept of democracy, in the
sense of accepting the people’s decision, or in the simple test of holding
elections every few years, does not necessarily contradict the values of
religion embraced by some Muslim Brotherhood leaders, among them
Egyptian President Morsi. In this sense, and against the backdrop of
the ways in which the Arab public has expressed its positions in the
town square over the past two years, we can discern in the Muslim
Brotherhood a profound engagement with how it will be possible to
adopt democratic concepts under the basic assumptions of a religious
movement. It is certainly appropriate to establish social justice according
to the movement. Even before the movement came to power, this goal
guided its members in their varied dawa activity. This is also what brought
them public sympathy, particularly given the failures of the previous
authoritarian governments and their profound corruption. The very fact
that a particular government imposes restrictions on its citizens, whether
they are restrictions in religious law or others, does not in and of itself
preclude the establishment of democracy in the basic sense of regular
elections and basic rights and equality. Even Kant applies restrictions on
the liberty of the German citizen and requires him to obey the country’s
laws (though in the late eighteenth century, parliamentary democracy
had not yet been established in any country in the world).
After Islamic parties came to power in some Arab countries, most
Israeli commentators hastened to eulogize the potential of the Arab
spring. These commentators tend to deny the chances of realizing a
democratic society and government in Arab states after (and in some of
the countries, before) the governmental revolutions that removed the
authoritarian and dictatorial regimes. Thus, a 2012 Maarachot article by
“Michael,” author of the 2004 article cited above, repeats the basic claim
that Middle East society is different from other societies in the world.
Once again, the author attacks the optimists who describe the “new”
57
Middle East as a “region that is being led and shaped by modern young

people who yearn for Western culture, are driven by the force of liberal,
democratic ideas, and who operate through social networking sites.”10
The author here identifies yearning for Western culture in its liberal
sense with a positive vision of the Middle East. In any case, Islamic forces
that do not yearn for Western culture cannot lead to democratic ideas.
However, the author gives a good description of the dilemmas the Islamic
movements face in shaping a new political order and in confronting
the demands of the “street” for basic rights and freedom. He correctly
describes the possibility of creating “a democratic, but not liberal order”11
in the sense that the authority of a decision by the people will be accepted,
but individual freedoms that contradict Islamic law will not necessarily
be allowed.
However, it is not possible to claim categorically that the Muslim
Brotherhood cannot serve in the government and at the same time adopt
democratic methods, and in particular, allow free elections that could
also lead to its losing the elections and handing the reins of power to
other political movements (for example, secular liberal ones). We cannot
expect the Muslim Brotherhood to adopt a secular, liberal policy in the
profound sense of the Enlightenment as described above. The Islamic
movement does not believe in the sovereignty of man and in achieving
justice and progress in the Kantian fashion, which encourages activity
by man through the power of his intellect only. “The deep revulsion with
the West,” which “Michael” in his conclusion ascribes to the Islamic
movements, is revulsion with the enlightened, secular liberal West.
However, for hundreds of years, there have been
many and varied movements in the West itself that The Islam of the Muslim
are disgusted by the concept of enlightenment in Brotherhood is contrary
its simple, Kantian sense. Some have become to the concept of
dictatorial movements that were repulsed by the
enlightenment, but not
ideas of Western democracy (such as the fascist
necessarily democracy.
movements of the early twentieth century), but
over the years some have put the democratic idea
into action (thus, for example, most social-democratic movements prefer
the values of collective mutual responsibility to the values of undisputed
individual freedom given to every citizen according to the liberal and
capitalist systems).
58
While the Iranian attempt to realize a democratic Islam appears
dismal (although here too there is an ongoing debate about the connection
between democracy and Islamic law), elsewhere there are also better
attempts in terms of government conduct (such as Turkey). The rise of
a middle class and the ability of public expression that has appeared in
the public squares of Arab states over the past two years is also likely to
force the Islamic movements to adopt democratic behavior in the context
of domestic policy, even if this behavior is not “enlightened” and liberal
in the senses defined in this article. The fall of the regime in Tunisia
following the murder of the opposition leader is one example, and
Morsi’s retreat from attempts to advance certain reforms due to public
and judicial pressure is a second example.
A similar opinion to the 2012 article by “Michael” appears in an article
by Professor Asher Susser, who also points to the fact that “Middle East
societies are for the most part not secular. These are societies in which
the public ascribes great importance to belief, religious ritual, and
religion.”12 He rejects an effort to extrapolate from the attempt at a Spring
of Nations in nineteenth century Europe to the contemporary Arab
Spring, and he is careful to maintain the cultural distinction between
West and East. Susser points to an ostensible gap “between outsiders’
expectations… establishment of liberal/secular governments on the ruins
of the old regimes – and the Islamist reality that ultimately emerged.”13
Susser laments post-modernist currents in the West, which have sought
to challenge “the underpinnings of rational thought of the modern
enlightenment.”14 Thus, already from the outset of his article Susser
by choice becomes a representative of the enlightened position, which
favors the rule of human intellect over any other source of knowledge
(divine or collective, for example).
Susser confuses the question of democracy in Arab countries with
whether the new regimes are liberal and enlightened. He makes an
implicit assumption, identical to that of “Michael,” that once the Islamic
movements do not accept the “burden” of liberal enlightenment, they
cannot support the establishment of democracies on the ruins of the
authoritarian regimes. He describes a debate that developed on the Arab
Spring between those “who maintained that the Middle East was on the
verge of an Islamic tidal wave” and those who “argued that a new Middle
Eastern democracy was taking shape here and now.”15 Thus, Susser
assumes, though without defending this assumption, that the Islamic
59
tidal wave is fundamentally opposed to democracy. This is in contrast to

the correct distinction, which is that the Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood
is contrary to the concept of enlightenment, but not necessarily
democracy. Susser laments the death of the process of secularization in
the Middle East, without which, he assumes, Middle Eastern democracy
will be impossible, though again, he does not prove it. For Susser too, the
“West” is only the liberal, secular West, and he does not consider all the
movements that opposed Kantian enlightenment for profound reasons
to be “Western.”
Although Susser mentions the currents of thought that oppose
enlightenment in the West, he seems unable to break free of an
identification of democracy with an enlightened, secular government on
the model of the French Revolution. Susser, who is careful to emphasize
the uniqueness of the Middle East, does not succeed in seriously
considering the possibility of democratic development that is based
on religious principles and that does not advocate the sovereignty of
the individual. How would such a democracy look? One possibility is
an Islamic democracy that draws from sharia and restricts some of the
individual rights accepted in liberal democracies (e.g., on matters of
modesty or separation of the sexes), but still allows free elections and
maintains the separation of powers, freedom of expression, and minority
rights. It is precisely such a connection between the desire of the masses
for freedom and democracy and traditional societies based on the
foundations of Islam that is likely to bear fruit, both in a slow reform of
Islam (not toward secularism, but toward greater tolerance for minorities
and freedom of expression, for example), and in creating a democracy
that is more suited to people and cultures in the Middle East.
It appears that a correct look at the roots of democracy and the
Enlightenment and a close examination of the various kinds of
Western political philosophy would allow commentators to raise richer
possibilities about possible future developments in a Middle East that
is taking shape. More than ever, the current period requires that we
exercise caution in assessing the fate of the historic revolutions shaking
up the Middle East. Political Islam does not necessarily mean the loss of
a chance for democracies in the region. Thus the point of this article was
not to determine how the future of the Middle East will look, rather to
caution commentators against judging too quickly and sealing the fate
60
of the region without examining new possibilities such as the creation of
Islamic democracies in a range of colors.
Notes
1 All quotations of Kant are from “An Answer to the Question: What Is
Enlightenment?” in What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and
Twentieth-Century Questions, ed. James Schmidt (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1996), p. 58.
2 Ibid., p. 59.
3 Ibid., p. 61.
4 Major Michael and Major Alon, “American Optimism and Middle Eastern
Pessimism,” Maarachot 393 (2004): 3-11; quoted sentence is from page 5.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid, p. 11.
7 All quotations of Horkheimer are from “The Concept of Enlightenment” in
Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, The Dialectic of Enlightenment,
trans. John Cumming (London and New York: Verso, 1997); quoted sentence
is from p. 3.
8 Ibid., p. 42.
9 Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott Clark,. “War Games,” The Gaurdian,
December 8, 2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/dec/08/iran.
cathyscottclark.
10 Colonel Michael, “The Rise of the ‘Green Wave’: The Strengthening of the
Islamic Current in the Shadow of the Regional Upheavals, and Implications
for Israel,” Maarachot (2012): 12-17; quoted sentence is from p. 13.
11 Ibid., p. 15.
12 Asher Susser, “Tradition and Modernity in the ‘Arab Spring,’” Strategic
Assessment 15, no. 1 (2012): 29-41; quoted sentence is from p. 30.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid., p. 31.
15 Ibid., p. 34.
The US and Israel on Iran:
Whither the (Dis)Agreement?
Ephraim Kam
The Iranian nuclear program has been a principal issue in discussions

between the American and Israeli governments in recent years. The
intensive contacts and American statements indicate that there are
differences of approach between the two sides. This article examines
where the two governments agree and where they diverge in how they
define objectives concerning Iran, and how they would design an answer
to the threat.
While the American and Israeli governments are quite close in their
perceptions of the Iranian nuclear threat and have shared objectives in
this regard, a concrete dispute between them has developed as to how
to meet the threat, particularly concerning a military operation in Iran.
The US is considering the military option, but unlike Israel, opposes it
in the current circumstances, owing to a different understanding of its
ramifications. Assuming that Israel does not change its position that
military action against Iran is necessary in the not too distant future if it
becomes apparent that the diplomatic process has reached a dead end,
the dispute will be decided primarily by Iran’s behavior and the attitude
of the US administration. If the administration agrees to a deal with Iran
with loopholes that Israel finds difficult to accept, or if it decides to switch
from a strategy of denying Iran nuclear weapons to one of containment,
the gap between Israel and the US will widen. If the administration
concludes that an attack in Iran is unavoidable, the gap will narrow.
Dr. Ephraim Kam is a senior research fellow at INSS.

Ephraim Kam | The US and Israel on Iran
62
Perception of the Iranian Threat
Perception of a threat from Iran began to emerge in the US and Israel

following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when both countries saw that the
change of regime in Tehran turned a former ally into a rival and enemy.
The Iranian threat became especially significant to both countries in the
early 1990s when Iran, no longer occupied by the war with Iraq, began a
military buildup and accelerated its nuclear and missile programs.
Perceptions of the Iranian nuclear threat by the US and Israel have
converged over the years. Since 1993, every Israeli prime minister has
cited Iran as the gravest strategic threat to Israel and to Middle East
stability. The understanding was that the Iranian threat stemmed
from the combination of a fundamentalist Islamic regime dedicated
to destroying Israel and to attaining a capability to deal Israel a severe
blow. The US has demonstrated understanding of Israel’s perception
of the Iranian threat, agreeing that Iran potentially poses an existential
threat to Israel.1 This understanding constitutes a key consideration in
the American administration’s decision to prevent Iran from obtaining
nuclear weapons. Furthermore, the US regards a nuclear Iran as a threat
to its most important interests in the Middle East, namely, the security of
its allies in the region, US influence in the region, the supply of energy,
and the Arab-Israeli peace process.
The American and Israeli perceptions of the regional consequences
of a nuclear Iran are close, although it is clear that the US has broader
considerations on the matter. Both countries believe that a nuclear Iran
will increase instability in the Middle East, deal a critical blow to the arms
control regime, and spark a nuclear arms race in the region. Both believe
that possession of nuclear weapons by Iran will make it more aggressive
vis-à-vis its neighbors, the American presence in the region, and Israel;
reinforce its status as the cornerstone of the radical camp; increase the
pressure on the moderate countries in the area to fall in line with Iranian
policy; and motivate its allies to exhibit a more brazen stance against
Israel.
While the US and Israel share similar perceptions of the Iranian
nuclear threat, there are differences between their intelligence
assessments concerning the development of the nuclear program. There
is a broad consensus in both Israel and the US – although this consensus
is not undisputed in the US – that years ago Iran made a strategic decision
to obtain nuclear weapons. The intelligence assessments on the timetable
63
for Iran to become technically capable of attaining nuclear capability

are not substantially different: in the early 1990s, the intelligence
communities in both countries estimated that Iran would be able to reach
nuclear capability within 5-8 years. This estimate proved questionable,
because it is now clear that Iran was unable to produce fissile material in
the 1990s. Furthermore, this estimate was based on a worst case scenario,
predicated on a misunderstanding of Iran’s cautious strategy. Ultimately
it became clear that Iran prefers development of a range of advanced
nuclear capabilities, and is in no hurry to break out to nuclear weapons.
Its reasons are twofold: Iran wishes to wait and find the optimal timing for
a breakout in order to limit the price it will have to pay the international
arena, and it is important for Iran to develop capabilities that will enable
it to build a nuclear weapons arsenal, not merely a single bomb.
According to the 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iran
evinced the technical capability that would allow it to produce nuclear
weapons in 2010-2015. While Israeli intelligence estimated that Iran
was capable of producing nuclear weapons on much shorter notice,
the difference between the estimates was not significant. The dispute
between the US and Israel intelligence communities centered on a
different element of the American assessment: that Iran had a weapons
program until 2003 that was discontinued, and there was no factual
basis for concluding that it had been renewed. Israel, on the other hand,
held that Iran’s nuclear weapons program was indeed discontinued
in 2003, but was later renewed. The 2007 American assessment was
also criticized for not sufficiently recognizing the significance of Iran’s
acceleration of its uranium enrichment program, which could indicate
not only its improved ability to attain nuclear weapons capability, but
also its intention of doing so.2
The US intelligence assessment in 2012 went a step beyond the
2007 assessment. This assessment was not made public, but its main
points were leaked to the media, and a summary appeared in a report
by the US Director of National Intelligence published in March 2013.
This assessment indicates that the US and Israel both agree that Iran
is building a nuclear infrastructure and enriching uranium in order to
reserve the option of obtaining nuclear weapons, that Iran is conducting
basic research related to its nuclear weapons program, and that it has
the scientific, technical, and industrial capability to produce nuclear
weapons, subject to a political decision. The US agrees that Iran advanced
64
in 2012 to a situation enabling it to enrich uranium to a military level,
should it decide to do so. The US and Israel also agree that thus far there
is no solid evidence that Iran has already decided on a breakout to nuclear
weapons, but is liable to do so in the future. Nevertheless, press reports
say that the American intelligence community believes that Iran has not
yet decided to go ahead with a nuclear weapons program like the one that
was discontinued in 2003. Israel disagrees with this assessment, asserting
that Iran has already made great progress in uranium enrichment, the
most difficult step on the way to nuclear weapons, such that the path to
building a nuclear weapon itself is relatively short.3
It therefore appears that the points of agreement between the US and
Israeli intelligence assessments are greater than the differences between
them. This was the sense of the remarks of former Defense Minister Ehud
Barak, who said that the US President had received new information that
Iran had made significant and surprising progress in its nuclear program
that was bringing it close to achieving nuclear weapons capability. He
added that this information was changing previous US intelligence
assessments, which were now very close to those of Israeli intelligence.4
Objectives Concerning Iran

United States objectives vis-à-vis Iran are more extensive than Israel’s,
because as a superpower the circle of US interests is wider and its ability
to achieve those objectives is superior. The administration wishes to rein
in Iran’s ability to achieve regional hegemony, halt its military buildup
and involvement in terrorism, strengthen the confidence of American
allies threatened by Iran, and promote human rights in Iran. Iran believes
that though Washington does not admit it, the US aspires above all to
overthrow the Islamic regime. Achievement of these American objectives
is also important for Israel, whose ability to help realize them is limited.
The most important objective for both Israel and the US is preventing
Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. President Obama made this
objective a US commitment in March 2012, when he said that his policy
was not to contain but to deny Iran a nuclear weapons capability,
because a nuclear Iran could not be contained. In other words, the US
administration is unwilling to accept the scenario of a nuclear Iran and
then have to use all means to deter it from using these weapons to promote
Iranian interests. Nonetheless, an important question is whether the US
administration will change its position by switching from a policy of
65
prevention to one of containment if it reaches the conclusion that only an

attack will stop Iran on its road to nuclear weapons, and it is unwilling to
risk such an attack.
Responding to the Iranian Nuclear Threat

While the US and Israeli governments share similar perceptions of the
Iranian threat, they disagree on the response. Both countries agree that
in principle, the best way to deal with the Iranian nuclear program is
through diplomacy, whereby if Iran is persuaded through negotiations
to halt its nuclear program, the serious risks incurred by a military strike
will be avoided. After a decade of fruitless negotiations, however, the
chances of persuading Iran to forego its ambition to obtain a nuclear
military capability are slim. Israel in particular is pessimistic about the
chances of stopping Iran’s nuclear program through diplomacy and
points to two inherent risks. The first is that the Iranians will continue
their efforts to gain time through negotiations in order to make progress
in their nuclear activity until it is too late to stop them through a military
strike. The second is that the six governments negotiating with Iran
will reach a settlement that does not eliminate the possibility of Iran
producing nuclear weapons. For these reasons, Israel expects the
American administration to set a timetable that will prevent Iran from
prolonging negotiations indefinitely, and demonstrate that military
action is a viable option.
The military option is the focus of the controversy between the US
and Israel. In principle, their positions are similar: they are the only two
governments that have stated publicly that all options, including the
military option, are on the table. In practice, however, their positions
diverge: while Israel wants to give the military option credibility,
it contends that the US is undermining this option’s credibility
by emphasizing repeatedly that conditions are still not ripe for a
military strike, that Israel’s capabilities are inadequate for an effective
independent military strike, and that it demands that Israel not surprise
the US with independent military action. Israel fears, probably rightly,
that this attitude eases the pressure on Iran, and is liable to convince it
that the United States does not actually intend to attack.
Why does the US object to military action under current conditions?
Senior administration officials give two main reasons. The first is their
assessment that a military strike will only delay the Iranian nuclear
66
program for a limited period, not stop it, and that Israel’s ability to damage
the Iranian nuclear sites is limited. Former US Secretary of Defense Leon

Panetta said that an attack would delay the Iranian nuclear program
for only one year or two.5 The second reason is that Iran’s response to a
military attack could drag the Middle East into a broad military conflict
and lead to chaos. Panetta alleged that such an attack could potentially
cause severe security and economic damage in the Middle East and
throughout the world. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Admiral Michael Mullen also believes that an Israeli attack would lead
to escalation, upset stability in the Middle East, and endanger the lives
of American soldiers in the Persian Gulf. General Martin Dempsey, who
succeeded Mullen as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, held that an
attack on Iran would harm regional stability “to an unbelievable degree”
and would constitute a very big problem, and added that if Israel attacks,
he would not want to be a part of it.6 Other sources in the US argue that
an attack is liable to prompt Iran to accelerate its nuclear program and
actually break out to nuclear weapons while taking advantage of an
attack to force the lifting of the sanctions, and that an attack is liable to
strengthen Iranian popular support for the regime.
The administration has not clarified its predictions of escalation
following an attack on Iran. It probably fears, however, that the Iranian
response to an attack will not be confined to missile and rocket attacks at
Israel, but will lead to an attack against American targets in the Persian
Gulf and Afghanistan and against US allies in the Persian Gulf. Such
a measure would force the US to respond to Iran, and would be liable
to ignite an oil crisis and anti-American unrest in the Arab and Muslim
worlds.
Israel’s view is different. Israel’s assessment is that a successful attack
against Iran will cause a longer delay in the Iranian nuclear program than
the US believes – possibly three to five years.7 Furthermore, according to
Israel’s assessment the US possesses superior capabilities for a military
operation, particularly in a series of attacks against the Iranian nuclear
sites that could halt Iran’s nuclear program for a long period and even
result in its cancellation, if Iran realizes that the US is determined to
continue attacking until the program is completely stopped. Under
this scenario, the US could decide to extend its attacks to other targets
beyond the nuclear sites, and possibly attempt to paralyze the entire
Iranian response system in advance. A scenario of general escalation in
67
the Middle East is also unlikely according to these assessments, because

it ignores constraining factors: Iran’s response capability is limited,
and it is likely to shrink from an all-out confrontation with the US. Iran
may therefore confine itself to a symbolic response, and the conflict will
eventually be limited to a small number of players. In addition, proper
use of a successful attack would prevent the Iranians from renewing their
nuclear program and breaking out to nuclear weapons. Israel believes
that in all, a military attack will have negative consequences but will not
cause a dramatic change in the Middle East, and the consequences can
be dealt with.
The attitudes of the Israeli and US governments to a military attack
on Iran are also influenced by their differing assessments of the deadline
for carrying it out. From an operational standpoint, the US has a longer
timetable than Israel because its military capabilities enable it to
attack at a later date, even at a stage when Israel would have difficulty
attacking. Furthermore, the two countries define the red line, beyond
which a military option will be considered, in different ways. The US
has not actually defined a clear red line for military action, but various
statements suggest that its red line will be crossed when there are signs
of an Iranian breakout to nuclear weapons – for example, if Iran starts
enriching uranium at a military level, expels the International Atomic
Energy Agency inspectors, and/or revokes its signature on the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty. For the US, therefore, Iran has not yet neared
the “zone of immunity.” For Israel, the red line will be crossed when Iran
enters the zone of immunity. It will then lose its ability to conduct an
independent nuclear strike, and will be dependent on the willingness of
the US to take such a measure. Where Israel is concerned, Iran’s entry
into the zone of immunity will occur when the defense of its nuclear sites,
especially in Fordow, reaches a stage so that it would be difficult to ensure
the success of an attack. An entry into the zone of immunity can also
occur when Iran is so close to producing fissile material that the process
can no longer be stopped. In other words, the US will consider an attack
to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons when Iran breaks out to
nuclear weapons, while Israel believes that it will have to attack earlier to
render Iran unable to break out. In August 2012, then-Minister of Defense
Ehud Barak said that Iran was liable to enter the zone of immunity very
soon, i.e., it had not yet done so. Some in Israel, however, believe that
68
Iran entered the zone of immunity already in the fall of 2012, and that this
concept therefore no longer has any meaning.8
Questions for the Future: Agreement and Discord

Can the United States and Israel reach an understanding in the future
about the diplomatic and/or military solution to the Iranian threat? This
question is especially important because the three main actors are likely
to reach a fateful crossroads in a year or two. Iran will have to decide
whether to make real concessions that will enable it to conclude a deal
limiting its nuclear program for the sake of easing the stringent sanctions
against it. The American administration will have to decide whether to
agree to real concessions in negotiations with Iran in order to conclude
a deal, initiate military action – American or Israeli – against the nuclear
sites in Iran, or switch from a policy of preventing Iran from acquiring
nuclear weapons to a strategy of containing Iran, which means accepting
its possession of nuclear weapons. Israel will have to decide whether to
embark on military action, if no other way is found to stop Iran.
Can the US and Israel reach an understanding on a deal with Iran
that will include significant restrictions on its nuclear program, and
delay that plan’s completion for a significant period of time? Presumably
the administration is also aware that Iran will not voluntarily forego its
ambition to produce nuclear weapons, or at least build a capability of
producing such weapons on short notice, and that Iran is likely to persist
in the policy of deception and concealment that it has pursued in the
nuclear realm. This assumption can be used as a basis for a rudimentary
understanding between the US and Israeli governments on how to handle
the Iranian nuclear program diplomatically. From Israel’s standpoint,
such an understanding can include various elements, such as:
a. Continued American commitment to prevent Iran from obtaining
nuclear weapons, and no switch to a containment policy.
b. A common definition of red lines concerning progress in the Iranian
nuclear program, and an understanding that the US will consider
military action if diplomacy fails. This definition must also clarify
what will be considered failure in the negotiations with Iran.
c. Basic terms for an agreement with Iran, such as removing all uranium
at an enrichment level of 20 percent or higher from Iran, and removing
most of the uranium that has been enriched to a lower level, in order
to prevent an Iranian breakout to a bomb and its development within
69
a short span of time, and closing the enrichment facility at Fordow, or

at least suspending its activity. These terms mean stopping the ticking
Iranian clock and winding it back by several years at least.
d. Stepped up supervision of the nuclear sites in Iran in accordance with
the Additional Protocol.
e. Retention of most of the painful sanctions until a satisfactory
agreement with Iran is achieved.
f. Coordination mechanisms between the US and Israel for formulation
of a joint strategy on the Iranian nuclear question.
In practice, an understanding of this type between the US and Israel
is possible, because at least some of these terms are acceptable to the
American administration. However, the two countries have diverging
attitudes regarding the diplomatic option. Israel believes that there is
only a slight chance for the negotiations to succeed, while the US believes
that there is enough time to test whether the painful sanctions in force
against Iran will prove effective. The administration wants to pursue
every possibility for the diplomatic option, even if the prospects appear
poor. This will postpone military action as long as possible, and may
somehow achieve results; and if the administration decides to attack
Iran, important legitimacy for an attack will be achieved by waiting until
all diplomatic possibilities have been exhausted.
The administration’s fear of a military strike against Iran suggests
that it may ultimately relax its stance towards Iran. The US may even be
willing, despite Israel’s objections, to conclude an agreement that will
leave loopholes enabling Iran to achieve nuclear weapons capability. The
fact that the administration has softened its position in talks with Iran
suggests as much. The US no longer demands the suspension of Iran’s
uranium enrichment program; it expressed willingness in principle
to recognize Iran’s right to enrich uranium under certain conditions.
In 2012, the US administration demanded that Iran shut down the
Fordow site. Today, reports say that it is willing to accept a suspension
of enrichment in this facility under restrictions that will make it difficult
to resume enrichment quickly. According to these reports, the American
administration is also willing to allow Iran to continue producing and
maintaining a small store of uranium at a 20 percent enrichment level,
and it is not clear whether it will demand that Iran give up most of the
uranium that has been enriched to a level below 20 percent.9 These
concessions imply that the administration is liable to accept a deal even if
70
it has loopholes, and even if it is unacceptable to Israel – if it believes that
the prospective deal will prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
The administration’s consent to such a deal is also likely due to its
assessment that if Iran possibly tries to take advantage of the loopholes
in the agreement to move towards nuclear weapons capability, the option
of a military strike will remain open.
Will the US administration be willing to attack Iran, or alternatively,
give Israel a green light to carry out such an attack? The administration
has stated unequivocally that it will prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear
weapons, and that all the options to this end are open. President Obama
and other administration senior officials – the Vice President and the
new Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State – affirmed this position
in early 2013.10
Given the administration’s commitment to a strategy of preventing
Iranian nuclear weapons capability, the US will find it difficult to
abandon this position without severe damage to its credibility, not only
as perceived by Israel, but in the eyes of its other allies and the eyes of Iran
as well. Therefore, it will presumably adhere to its prevention strategy,
unless exceptional circumstances justify otherwise. A commitment
to prevention, however, does not necessarily mean commitment to a
military strike, however, and it is obvious that the US currently prefers
diplomacy. In these circumstances, Israel will be forced to weigh whether
it judges the administration willing, now or in the future, to commit itself
to attacking Iran if diplomacy reaches a dead end. Will Israel be able to
rely on the US to attack Iran, if it waits until its own attack capability is
lost?
Several considerations are likely to influence the American
administration’s decision on whether to attack Iran. The administration
states that current conditions are not yet ripe for an attack on Iran, but
it does not say what constitutes ripe conditions. At the same time, its
reasons for objecting to military action are not likely to change in the near
future. For this reason, it appears that the administration will be in no
hurry to attack Iran, unless it is convinced that the consequences of an
attack will be less severe than it currently believes.
As long as the administration believes that there is chance of a
reasonable arrangement with Iran, it will refrain from military action.
This assumption poses a twofold problem: first, it is difficult to say when
the diplomatic possibilities have been exhausted and there is no chance
71
of an agreement, because it can always be claimed that sanctions require

more time to take effect, or that additional sanctions should be imposed,
and that the diplomatic alternative has therefore not been exhausted.
Second, the administration is liable to continue softening its position on
Iran in order to achieve an agreement with it, under the assumption that
it will also be able to manage a poorer agreement.
There is currently no international support for an attack on Iran, and
the degree of internal support in the US for such a measure is unclear.
In order to embark on an attack, the administration will need to prepare
the groundwork on two fronts and gain a minimum level of support.
The administration will want to obtain legitimacy for an attack from the
UN Security Council. Since it will be difficult to obtain this legitimacy,
however, it may forego such support in advance if and when it decides
to attack.
The bottom line is therefore that the administration is likely to
consider military action in Iran if it reaches the conclusion that Iran is
breaking out to nuclear weapons. The likelihood of American military
action could grow in two situations: if Iran takes an obvious step, such as
a nuclear test à la North Korea, or if an agreement is reached with Iran,
which then proceeds to violate significant parts of it.
If the American administration concludes that military action is
unavoidable, it will likely prefer an American attack to an Israeli one.
An Israeli attack will enable the administration to claim that it is not a
partner in it, thereby avoiding both internal and international criticism,
and perhaps cause Iran to limit its response against the US and its allies.
The US believes, however, that an Israeli attack also has disadvantages:
as Panetta said, Israel’s military capabilities are inferior to those of the
US, and the chances that an Israeli military strike will be successful
are therefore poorer.11 American deterrence against Iran is stronger
than Israeli deterrence, and the US administration will wish to control
developments as much as possible, without depending on Israel’s
behavior. Furthermore, Iran will likely regard the US as a partner in any
Israeli strike. It is therefore also likely that if the administration decides
to attack Iran, it will prefer not to include Israel in the action, aside from
intelligence cooperation, which is secret by nature. Israel’s participation
will not contribute much from an operational standpoint, and is liable to
aggravate criticism of the US, especially in the Muslim world, where an
American-Israeli conspiracy will be alleged.
72
Will the American administration give Israel a green light for an
independent military strike against Iran? The answer at this stage is

negative, first and foremost because the administration still objects
to the idea of military action. Its position on a green light will probably
not change as long as it objects to the idea of an attack. If and when the
American position changes and it concludes that an attack is essential,
it will likely notify Israel that it is assuming responsibility for dealing
militarily with Iran.12 Alternatively, if Israel makes it clear to the US
administration that it intends to attack Iran, a more likely scenario – as
indicated by its public stance – is that the US will tell Israel to act as it sees
fit, and that the decision about its security is in its own hands, but this
does not mean that the US is giving Israel a green light to act.
Finally, can Israel attack Iran without a green light, or at least a yellow
light, from the US? In other words, in a matter so critical for Israel, should
the decision be in its hands, even if negative consequences ensue for its
relations with its main ally? Or can Israel not afford to act contrary to
the American administration’s position in a matter so important to its
interests? A scenario in which an Israeli attack without a green light is
likely to be accepted by the US could occur if Iran commits an obvious
act that shows its intention to achieve a nuclear breakout, without this
measure leading to an American attack. In any other situation, Israel
will need a green light. The reason is not only that an attack without
an advance understanding from the American administration will
do serious harm to its relations with Israel; a no less important reason
concerns follow-up actions on the Iranian nuclear question after the
attack. A military attack on Iran cannot be the end of a process; it is the
beginning. Israel will need substantial American aid to cope with the
results of the action: preventing Iran from rebuilding the sites that have
been hit, preventing it from taking advantage of an attack to achieve a
nuclear weapons breakout when it is ready, defeating an Iranian effort to
have the sanctions against it removed, trying to deter Iran from a broad
response against Israel and other targets in the region, helping Israel deal
with international criticism following an attack and perhaps efforts to
impose sanctions against it, preventing a negative response in the Arab
world against Israel, especially if Arab countries threaten to disrupt
peaceful relations with it, and finally, helping Israel cope with the failure
of an attack, if such failure occurs.
73
Notes

My thanks to the INSS Director Amos Yadlin for his comments on an earlier
draft of this article.
1 See President Obama’s speech in Jerusalem on March 20, 2013, White
House, Office of the Press Secretary.
2 David Albright and Paul Brennan, “The New National Intelligence
Estimate on Iran: A Step in the Right Direction,” Institute for Science and
International Security, March 2, 2012.
3 David Albright and Paul Brennan, “US Intelligence Estimates and the
Iranian Nuclear Program,” Institute for Science and International Security,
April 9, 2012; James Risen and Mark Mazzetti, “U.S. Agencies See No Move
by Iran to Build a Bomb,” New York Times, February 24, 2012; James Clapper,
“Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community,” Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence, March 12, 2013.
4 “Barak: Intelligence Report Submitted to Obama Makes the Iranian
Question More Urgent,” Haaretz, August 9, 2012; CBS News, London, August
9, 2012.
5 “Panetta: Military Strike Would Delay Iranian Nuclear Project By No More
Than Two Years,” Haaretz.com/print edition/news, December 4, 2011.
6 “Panetta Warns Israel on Iran Strike,” Wall Street Journal, November 17,
2011”; Obama To Israel: No US War On Iran,” consortiumnews.com, February
2, 2012; “Pentagon Chief: Israeli Attack Would Endanger Mideast,” Haaretz,
March 16, 2009.
7 Ronen Bergman, “Will Israel Attack Iran?” New York Times magazine,
January 25, 2012.
8 Ari Shavit, “The Decision Maker Warns: You Can’t Rely on the US to Attack
Iran,” Haaretz, August 10, 2012; see remarks by General (ret.) Amos Yadlin,
“Amos Yadlin: ’Iran Has Crossed Already the Red Line,’” Maariv, April 25,
2013.
9 “Another Try at Nuclear Talks,” New York Times, March 1, 2013.
10 Devin Dwyer, “Obama: Iran a Year Away from Nuclear Weapons,” ABC
News, March 15, 2013, http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/03/
obama-iran-a-year-away-from-nuclear-weapon; “Kerry: ‘Do What We Must’
To Stop Iran,” Yahoo News, January 24, 2013; “Chuck Hagel on Iran at Senate
Hearing,” The Iran Primer, US Institute of Peace, February 4, 2013.
11 Interview with Secretary Panetta, National Journal, March 8, 2012.
12 For more discussion of the question of a green light and American
considerations, see Ephraim Kam, “A Green Light on Iran?” Strategic
Assessment 14, no. 4 (2011): 39-50.
Walking a Fine Line:
Israel, India, and Iran
Yiftah S. Shapir
Introduction
Since Israel and India established formal diplomatic relations in 1992,
bilateral economic ties and security relations have grown stronger. India
is the Israeli defense industry’s largest customer, and Israel is India’s
second most important supplier of weapon systems. However, Israel has
not succeeded in reaching the degree of closeness that perhaps might
have been expected with as important a partner as India.
India also maintains close ties with Iran. Although the relationship
has undergone upheaval and change over the years, vacillating between
close and distant, it is built on a solid foundation comprising many
elements, including historical, cultural, economic, and even security
aspects. As such, Israel and India do not see eye to eye on the issue of
Iranian nuclearization, and Iran’s relations with India are one of the
prominent obstacles to enhanced relations between Israel and India.
This article will analyze the relationship between India and Iran and
will attempt to examine its ramifications for India’s future ties with Israel.
Historic Ties between India and Iran

India and Iran have a tradition of ties dating back thousands of years.1
As early as the sixth century BCE, Darius I conquered the Indus Valley.
After the Islamic conquests, Islamic religion and culture became a new
connecting link.
During the Cold War, relations between the two countries were
distant at best. Iran enjoyed warm relations with the United States,
while India adopted a non-aligned policy that included a socialist world
Yiftah S. Shapir is a senior research fellow at INSS.

Yiftah S. Shapir | Walking a Fine Line: Israel, India, and Iran
76
view that brought it closer to the Soviet Union. Iran supported Pakistan,
manifested in political and material aid during the violent outbreaks

between India and Pakistan and in adoption of a firm stand against India
on the issue of Kashmir. At the same time, relations between Iran and
India were not characterized by fierce hostility. Over the years, there were
reciprocal visits by senior officials, and Iran even gave India its political
support during India’s war with China in 1962.
The Islamic Revolution in Iran changed the relationship entirely,
although in the first decade of the Islamic Republic, relations between
the two countries were still cold. While Iran abandoned its pro-American
orientation and became a member of the Non-Aligned Movement, India
was suspicious of Iran’s efforts to export the revolution throughout the
Muslim world. Iran also continued covert cooperation with Pakistan in
aiding the mujahidin in Afghanistan.
The turning point in relations between the two countries occurred
shortly after the end of the Cold War. The most notable change was
the September 1993 visit to Tehran by India’s then-prime minister,
P. V. Narasimha Rao, which was followed by other high level visits.
Since then, relations have fluctuated between warm and chilly,
mutual condemnations, and the freezing of various ventures. Thus,
the relationship between India and Iran went from high points, with
cooperation documents (the Tehran Declaration
India is under heavy of April 2001 and the Delhi Declaration of January
political pressure to stop 2003), to low points after India grew closer to the
oil imports from Iran United States and voted against Iran regarding its
entirely, but it would nuclear program at the Board of Governors of the
International Atomic Energy Agency in 2005 and
be hard pressed to
2006. Relations improved in 2007 and 2008, but
find alternative sources
today, especially because of the sanctions regime
of crude oil, in terms tightening around Iran, relations are again distant.
of both quality and The underlying reason for the fluctuation is that
shipping costs. the relationship is multifaceted. A large number
of subjects lie at the core of the relationship, and
interests alternately clash and converge. The relationship also depends on
a large number of actors that have complex relations with the two parties,
and developments in one relationship affect the other relationships as
well.
77
Iran’s Strategic Importance for India

Iran’s main importance is its hydrocarbon resources, as it holds some 10
percent of the world’s proven crude oil reserves2 and some 15 percent
of the world’s proven natural gas reserves. Its location on the Persian
Gulf coast allows it to control the Strait of Hormuz and to threaten to
block maritime traffic in the strait. Iran also has one of the largest armed
forces in the region, with significant maritime capabilities and ballistic
missile capabilities unique in the region. Another factor that greatly
affects bilateral relations is Iran’s importance for India as a Muslim state,
as India has a population of some 160 million Muslims.3 Indeed, India is
apparently the country with the second largest Shiite population in the
world.4
Energy
Imports of oil from Iran are often cited as the most important factor behind
India’s need for good relations with the Islamic Republic. India has been
undergoing rapid growth for two decades and is thirsty for energy.5 Some
600 million Indians lack access to electricity. Indian officials believe that
in order for their country to gain what they see as its rightful place in the
global economy, it will have to triple or quadruple its supply of energy
and will need a six-fold increase in its supply of electricity.
India is also under international pressure to reduce its greenhouse
gas emissions, and therefore it seeks sources of cleaner energy such as
gas. This was the reason for initiation of the IPI oil pipeline project, which
was designed to bring gas from the South Pars gas field in the Gulf to
India, through Pakistan. Today, the project is frozen (in recent months
an agreement was signed between Iran and Pakistan to build the Iranian-
Pakistani part of the pipeline). In the meantime, India has begun to
express interest in alternative proposals.
In recent years, India has imported from Iran some 12 percent of
its crude oil consumption. For its part, Iran has very few remaining oil
customers (mainly China, South Korea, India, and Japan). Moreover, the
sanctions imposed on Iran have led to a gradual decline in its production
capacity, and there is a serious lack of refining capacity. Thus while India
has imported crude oil from Iran, it has exported refined oil products
to Iran and in particular, benzene for vehicles. Iran has almost none of
the technology for exploiting natural gas, nor the facilities necessary to
produce liquefied natural gas.
78
In the past two years, it has become harder for India to import oil from
Iran. In December 2010, India acceded to requests from the United States,
and the Reserve Bank of India (RBC) banned Indian companies from
paying for the purchase of crude oil through the Asian Clearing Union
(ACU),6 which blocked the main route for payments for imports of crude
oil from Iran.7 The sanctions have forced Indian importers to seek other
routes for payment. Today, the Iranians receive some of their payments
in rupees, which is not an international currency. In addition, the trade
relationship between India and Iran is far from balanced: while annual
Indian imports from Iran total about $11 billion, Indian exports to Iran
are only about $1 billion.
Today’s energy ties between India and Iran are on the brink of a crisis.
While India is under heavy political pressure to stop the imports entirely,
it would be hard pressed to find alternative sources of crude oil, in terms
of both quality and shipping costs.
Geostrategy
For India, Iran serves as a land bridge both to countries in the Caucasus
and to the nations of Central Asia, and through them, to North and
Central Africa.8 Since the subcontinent was divided between India and
Pakistan, India has been blocked from direct access not only to Central
Asia, but also to Afghanistan. Iran is the only bridge that allows India
access to Afghanistan, whether for economic or security purposes.
Several large projects have been designed that were intended to
respond to this Indian need. The most important of them are the Chabahar
port and the North-South corridor. The Chabahar port is in southwest
Iran, along the Indian Ocean coast, some seventy kilometers from the
Iran-Pakistan border. It is intended for use as a port of transit for goods
destined for Afghanistan, and through it, the countries of Central Asia.
From India’s point of view, it has tremendous importance, and together
with Iran, India has initiated a number of joint projects concerning
development of the port and ground transport routes to it.
The International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC) is based
on a multilateral agreement for developing traffic in a land corridor
that runs the length of Iran and continues into Russia, both through the
Caspian Sea on a maritime route, and along the coast of the Caspian
Sea on a land route, and there is another route in the direction of the
Caucasus. Today, there are eleven signatories to the agreement.
79
Nonetheless, the full potential of the two programs is far from realized,

both for security reasons and because of Tehran’s fears concerning
India’s true position toward Iran.
India-Iran: Issues in Bilateral Relations

Pakistan
Since Pakistan received its independence in 1947 and the Indian
subcontinent was divided, India’s foreign relations have been dictated
by its relationship with Pakistan. The hostility between the two countries
has led to three rounds of armed conflict, countless incidents and terrorist
attacks attributed to Pakistan, and an ongoing serious territorial dispute
over Kashmir.
During the Cold War, Iran clearly sided with Pakistan: both are
Muslim countries and both were allies of the United States. Therefore,
Iran provided Pakistan with political and material support during its
armed conflicts with India, and it consistently supported the Pakistani
position on the issue of Kashmir.
The Islamic Revolution in Iran exposed clear differences between
Iran and Pakistan, which continued its relationship with the United
States and maintained cooperation and a close relationship with Saudi
Arabia. Here for the first time the fault lines between Shiite Iran and
Sunni Pakistan (and Saudi Arabia) began to appear. At the same time,
as an Islamic republic, Iran continued to support Pakistan’s positions on
Kashmir, and even supported Hizbllah in Kashmir (not to be confused
with the Lebanese organization of the same name).
When relations between Iran and India improved after 1993, Iran
attempted to walk a fine line of maintaining its interests with respect to
India while continuing its opposition in principle to India’s positions on
Kashmir.
Afghanistan
Iran has found itself in intense competition with Pakistan over spheres of
influence in Afghanistan. This multi-ethnic country has Persian-speaking
regions and a not-insignificant Shiite population. In the beginning,
Iran attempted to cooperate with Pakistan, but Iran and India soon
found themselves cooperating in aiding the alliance of organizations in
northern Afghanistan (Tajik and Persian speakers) against the Pashtun
Taliban, supported by Pakistan. When the Taliban government grew
80
stronger, this created a background for closer relations between Iran
and India. These ties grew even warmer, including in the area of security
assistance, after US forces entered Afghanistan in 2001 and toppled the
Taliban government.
Today Iranian and Indian interests are again converging with
the preparations for the withdrawal of US and NATO forces from
Afghanistan in 2014. India has significant interests in Afghanistan and
is investing hundreds of millions of dollars in economic projects there.
Similarly, Iran too fears that the Taliban’s power will increase after the
United States leaves.
United States
India’s cold relations with the United States thawed in the early 1990s, at
a time that its relations with Israel and Iran also changed.
India and the United States are in agreement on many issues, and there
are shared interests on numerous issues. Like the United States, India
is a democracy, with a strong interest in maintaining a world with open
borders for goods and people. The two countries have a similar interest in
preserving the security of shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean and access
to the Persian Gulf, as well as in fighting international terrorism. Both
countries are also concerned about China’s growing power. Both are
eager to maintain a stable relationship with China
India has attempted and are careful not to anger China, but they have
adopted a policy of hedging toward it.
to isolate relationships
Therefore, it was to be expected that the two
from one another and countries would develop close strategic ties. And
maintain a relationship in fact, since the end of the Cold War, they have
with Iran as if it had no grown closer, trade has grown by hundreds of
ties with the United percent, and there is an effort to cooperate in
military matters – particularly naval – as well.
States, and a relationship
The most prominent step taken by the United
with the United States
States toward India was the agreement on
as if its ties with Iran did cooperation in the field of nuclear energy, which
not exist. was signed in August 2008. This agreement is an
exception; it sharply contradicts US policy, because
since 1998 India is a declared nuclear state and is not a signatory to the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). As part of the agreement, India
hoped to purchase from the United States a nuclear power production
81
capacity up to 25,000 megawatts by 2020. However, nearly five years

after the agreement was signed, specific contracts to build nuclear power
plants have not yet been concluded, and some in the United States
doubt the benefit of the nuclear agreement. In the field of security too,
cooperation has not progressed as the United States had hoped. While
India has acquired US military equipment, large scale weapons deals
that American companies had hoped to achieve have not taken place.
The issue of Iran is one of the painful subjects in relations between
India and the United States, which expected India to be fully aligned with
US policy in its attempt to isolate Iran as much as possible. The United
States has not hesitated to use fairly explicit threats.9
For its part, India has attempted to isolate the two relationships from
one another and maintain a relationship with Iran as if it had no ties
with the United States, and a relationship with the United States as if its
ties with Iran did not exist. This policy was not particularly successful
and pressures from the United States have had much impact on India’s
relations with Iran, but they have continued to zigzag. On the one hand,
India voted against Iran in the IAEA Board of Governors in September
2005 and again in February 2006, which caused its relations with Iran to
deteriorate. On the other hand, India has not hesitated to signal to the
United States that it intends to conduct an independent policy vis-à-vis
Iran. A notable instance was the visit of two Iranian navy ships to an
Indian port during the visit by US President George W. Bush in March
2006, which was seen as a slap in the face to the United States.
India has embraced the sanctions imposed by the UN Security
Council. While in principle it opposed the unilateral sanctions imposed
on Iran by the United States and the European Union, India ultimately
acceded to requests from the United States and also imposed its own
unilateral sanctions, including those that hurt Indian companies (for
example, the RBI ban on transferring payments through the ACU).
Iran’s Nuclear Program

The rise of the Iranian nuclear program on the international agenda
in 2003 created a difficult problem for India. India is not interested in
another nuclear neighbor. However, as a country that is itself nuclear,
India has a hard time preaching to a state that aspires to nuclear status.
From a political point of view, India also has no interest in clashing with
Iran on the nuclear issue.
82
On the declarative level, India emphasized its support for all Iranian
nuclear development activity, along with a demand that Iran honor its
treaty commitments to the international community (i.e., a demand
to honor its commitments to the NPT and open all its facilities to
inspection). And while the Indian government aspired to isolate its
bilateral relationships, as if Indian-Iranian relations had no connection
to India’s ties to the United States or to Israel, reality dictated otherwise.
The worse the international crisis over Iran’s nuclear program became,
the greater were the pressures from the United States. Ultimately, India
changed its policy, and was forced to vote for the IAEA resolution against
Iran.
India-Israel Relations
Like India’s relations with Iran and with the United States, ties with Israel
also began to develop only after 1992, and since then, they have grown
stronger in many economic areas. In 2012, the volume of bilateral trade
between Israel and India (not including diamonds) totaled some $2.15
billion (since 2010, trade has decreased because of the global economic
crisis).10
Security cooperation, which includes purchases of advanced weapon
systems, transfer of military technology, and joint development of
weapon systems, is especially noteworthy. Today, Israel and India are
discussing a deal for the purchase of additional early warning aircraft
and joint development of various ground-to-air missile systems. Israel
has become the second most important weapons supplier of the Indian
army, while India has become the largest customer of the Israeli defense
industry. However, to this day the ties between Israel and India have not
developed into strategic cooperation. In fact, from the point of view of
international politics as well, it is difficult to speak about cooperation.
The subject of Iran has been on the Israel-India bilateral agenda from
the beginning. Israel has repeatedly expressed its dissatisfaction with
India’s bilateral relations with Iran, and in particular, security relations
(including joint naval maneuvers). It has also expressed to India its fears
that Israeli technology may fall into Iranian hands. In contrast, Iran
has generally not expressed reservations about India’s ties with Israel,
preferring to ignore the subject. A noteworthy exception was in January
2008, when India launched the Israeli TecSAR satellite. While India
presented the launch deal as a commercial transaction and preferred
83
to play down the event, Israeli publications emphasized that it was a

“spy” satellite intended to monitor Iran. In this case, Iran responded by
expressing its concern to the Indian government without mentioning
Israel specifically.
Conclusion
The end of the Cold War was a turning point in India’s relations with
the world. It was not by accident that during those years, India changed
direction in its approach to the United States, Iran, and Israel. Since
then, India has been conducting foreign policy relationships that involve
walking a fine line. India’s attempt throughout those years to isolate
its bilateral relationships one from the other was not successful, but it
appears that it has still not abandoned this effort.
Its relationship with Iran, on the other hand, has undergone upheavals,
including periods of closer and more distant ties. This has generally been
because of pressures on the bilateral relationship from outside parties,
and in particular, pressures stemming from its relationship with the
United States and pressures resulting from the international system in
general, such as Security Council resolutions. Today, India’s relations
with Iran are at a new low. Oil imports are being reduced because of the
sanctions, and India is falling into line with the international community
on isolating Iran on the nuclear issue.
However, the deep geopolitical and geostrategic issues, which are
the basis of India’s relations with Iran, still remain. While Iran today has
difficulty producing oil and gas and output is shrinking, its large reserves
will remain for a long time to come. India, on the
other hand, is energy thirsty, and the demand will Israel-India cooperation
only grow. Therefore, ultimately Iran and India has remained in the
will likely restore their energy ties. realm of economics.
Similarly, the geostrategic considerations will India’s interest in regard
remain. India has interests in Afghanistan, and
to Israel is technological,
as long as a hostile Pakistan separates India from
and not strategic
Afghanistan, Iran will remain the only route. Iran
will also continue to control the Strait of Hormuz, or political.
and thus freedom of shipping in the strait will
remain in Iranian hands. For India, Iran will continue to offer access to
the countries of Central Asia, both markets for Indian products and an
additional source of energy. It may also offer a possible overland route to
84
North Africa. Today, travel on this route is difficult and not always safe,
but it will continue to be the only route available.

In its relations with Israel, India has actually succeeded in drawing the
line between relationships. In spite of its ties with Iran, its relations with
Israel have been stable in the past decade. Arms deals have expanded
and grown in scope and extent of technological cooperation. However,
cooperation has remained in the realm of economics. India’s interest in
regard to Israel is technological, and not strategic or political.
A look at the relationship between India and Iran, and in particular,
its history, culture, energy, and geography, underscores that India’s
relations with Iran were, and will continue to be, more important to it
than its relations with Israel. The fact that relations with Iran are today at
a low point is a temporary situation, and Israel must understand that. For
their part, Israel-India relations will continue to be dependent on India’s
ability to walk a fine line among its different relationships. If Israel
wishes to maintain good relations with India, it must also be careful to
walk a fine line: to continue to strengthen relations with India and emerge
unscathed from this relationship, and at the same time, not to damage it
by pressuring India on painful issues.
Notes
1 Mushtaq Hussain, “Indo-Iranian Relations during the Cold War,” Strategic
Analysis 36, no. 6 (2012): 859-70; Gulshan Dietl, “India’s Iran Policy in the
Post-Cold War Period,” Strategic Analysis 36, no. 6 (2012): 871-81.
2 According to the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook, Iran’s crude
oil reserves are estimated, as of January 2013, at 151.2 billion BBL, out of an
estimated world reserve of 1.532 trillion BBL. Iran is fourth in the world, after
Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Canada. As of January 2012, Iran’s proven
natural gas reserves are estimated at 33.07 trillion cubic meters, with proven
world reserves estimated at 208.4 trillion cubic meters as of January 2011.
Iran is second in the world, after Russia, in proven natural gas reserves. For
the sake of comparison, in January 2012 Israel’s proven natural gas reserves
were estimated at 207.7 billion cubic meters, some 1 percent of world
reserves. See http://1.usa.gov/5gIm, accessed April 21, 2013.
3 Central Intelligence Agency, World Factbook, http://1.usa.gov/9doDpD.
4 The number of Shiites in India is not known, since no census has been
conducted on this issue. The various estimates of the percentage of Shiites
among India’s Muslims range from 10 to 30 percent, which means between
16 million and 48 million Shiite Muslims.
5 India today produces 880 billion kilowatt hours a year (733 per capita per
annum, as compared to some 13,000 kilowatt hours per capita in the United
85
States). See Shebonti Ray Dadwal, “India–Iran Energy Ties: A Balancing

Act,” Strategic Analysis 36, no. 6 (2012): 930-40.
6 The ACU is a clearing house for the central banks of nine South Asian
nations, and is used for conducting financial transactions and clearing
payments. It is located in Tehran, and its members are Iran, Bhutan,
Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and the Maldive
Islands. The acronym ACU is also used for the unit of calculation in the
Asian Clearing Union, the Asian Currency Unit.
7 Shebonti Ray Dadwal, “India Struggling to Cope with Sanctions on Iran,”
IDSA, Issue Brief, June 26, 2012, http://bit.ly/MpcEUq.
8 Meena Singh Roy, “Iran: India’s Gateway to Central Asia,” Strategic Analysis
36, no. 6 (2012): 957-75.
9 The Henry J. Hyde United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation
Act of 2006, which is an amendment to the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and
which made possible the nuclear agreement, states that US policy is, among
other things, to “secure India’s full and active participation in United States
efforts to dissuade, isolate, and, if necessary, sanction and contain Iran
for its efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear
weapons capability and the capability to enrich uranium or reprocess
nuclear fuel, and the means to deliver weapons of mass destruction.” See the
full text of the law at http://bit.ly/11yQFN9.
10 According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, the bilateral trade
figures were as follows: In 2012, the volume of bilateral trade, not including
diamonds, was some $2.15 billion, about 7 percent less than the previous
year (adjusting for the diamond trade, trade totaled $4.4 billion, vs. $5.1
billion in 2011). Israeli exports to India in that year, excluding diamonds,
totaled $1.33 billion, vs. $1.48 billion in 2011, a decline of 11 percent. The
main products exported were chemicals and electrical equipment. Imports
in that year, excluding diamonds, totaled $821 million, as opposed to $798
million in 2011, an increase of about 3 percent. The main products imported
were chemicals and plastic products. See Central Bureau of Statistics press
release, “India Interested in Israeli Water Technologies,” March 10, 2013,
http://bit.ly/Za9d5N.
Response Essay
Civilian Casualties of a Military

Strike in Iran
Ephraim Asculai
Introduction
The Iranian nuclear issue, including how the acquisition of nuclear
weapons by Iran would affect the region and the world, and how this
challenge might best be confronted, has been widely discussed and
debated. Three main possibilities for resolving this issue, with numerous
potential variations, have been identified: the diplomatic solution (i.e.,
engagement), including sanctions; a regime change in Iran; and the
military option, i.e., destruction of or severe damage to Iran’s nuclear
weapons development capabilities. The diplomatic solution has been
and still is the focus of major international efforts, though as yet is
unsuccessful.1 The “biting” sanctions have hurt Iran, but have yet to
become a game changer. Covert operations, hostile measures short of an
outright military strike, have been effective in slowing down the Iranian
program, but not in bringing it to a halt. The timing of a regime change in
Iran is difficult to predict, and there is no assurance that the new regime
will adopt an anti-nuclear weapons policy. The last resort, which is the
military option, is fraught with dangers. The pros and cons of a military
attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and its local, regional, and global effects
are the subject of heated discussions.
While estimating political effects of a military strike is much a matter
for analytical speculation, the direct physical effects of a military attack,
including the assessment of the number of civilian casualties resulting
from this action, are somewhat easier to estimate, depending mainly
Dr. Ephraim Asculai is a senior research fellow at INSS.

Ephraim Asculai | Civilian Casualties of a Military Strike in Iran
88
on technical models and data. This is the main topic of the following
essay, which seeks to address a lengthy and detailed report by Khosrow

B. Semnani, The Ayatollah’s Nuclear Gamble: The Human Cost of Military
Strikes against Iran’s Nuclear Facilities (hereafter “the report”).2
The purpose of the report is announced in the opening paragraph of
the introduction:
The goal of this study is to protect the Iranian people and
to educate policymakers by providing an objective basis for
evaluating the impact of military strikes on Iranian civilians
and soldiers. Nevertheless, we do not defend a policy of
engagement premised on building confidence in the peace-
ful intentions of a theocracy whose Supreme Leader is re-
sponsible for the death of thousands of Iranians and whose
president dismisses the people as “dust and dirt.”
Late in the report the author concludes that the preferred, and probably
the only feasible, solution is to wait for a regime change in Iran. This
option will be discussed below, but suffice it here to say that this could
be a very long wait, without the certainty of resolving the nuclear issue.
The report received widespread attention, and its conclusions were
widely quoted and taken as basic truisms.3 The problem is that similar to
other scientific related issues, conclusions that are erroneous or based on
incorrect or partial information could be very misleading, and serve as
the basis for misplaced decisions.
Environmental Effects of an Attack on Nuclear Installations

Estimating the environmental impact of civilian industry on the civilian
population has long been an exercise in which industries tend to
minimize the possible effects of both regular operations and accidents on
their workers in particular and the greater population in general. On the
other hand, environmentalists and many neighboring populations tend
to present doomsday scenarios that maximize the environmental effects
of both routine operations and emergency situations over which they
have no control. There is no standard resolution of this conflict, and the
middle of the road does not always offer a reasonable outlet for solving
the problems. Therefore, each problem must be resolved on its own, by
agreeing on the methodology to be used in an assessment, taking the best
scientific data available, and arriving at an agreed solution.
89
This becomes very difficult when considering the specific issue of

a possible attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Many factors come into
play here, some technical, some humanitarian, some economical, some
political. Some are not quantifiable, and as such cannot serve as a basis
for comparisons and evaluations. However, the technical issues, as they
are quantifiable, are the first that should be considered, and when not
manipulated can be used to evaluate the effects of a military attack on
Iran’s nuclear installations.
In general, industrial accidents, i.e., accidents that involve industrial
facilities, can have serious environmental consequences if they involve the
release of toxic materials into the atmosphere or the aquatic environment,
or materials that could render the environment inaccessible for future
development and thus cause serious economic consequences, even if
they are not that harmful in their immediate effects. Nuclear industry
accidents could also involve the release of radioactive materials that are
by themselves harmful – radiotoxic materials – though not all radioactive
materials are harmful. Radioactivity is omnipresent in the environment,
albeit in rather low concentrations in most places. The main radiotoxic
materials in Iranian nuclear industrial complexes would be present in
operational nuclear reactors and their byproducts in high and potentially
lethal concentrations.4 Although the uranium industry involves the use
of highly toxic materials, the uranium contents alone are of rather low
toxicity (on the same level as lead, for example). The main toxicity of
the uranium industry in Iran would come from the fluorine contents of
the uranium compounds, because of their extreme corrosive properties.
Releases of considerable quantities of these to the atmosphere could
cause grave health problems if inhaled or if they come into contact with
the human skin. The economic consequences would be overshadowed
by the human consequences.
It is because of the fear of the consequences of accidents in the nuclear
industries that many protective actions are taken. The imposition of
exclusion zones around nuclear complexes, built-in protective measures,
and extensive emergency planning and preparedness programs are all
intended to reduce the environmental consequences of nuclear accidents
caused by any source, including military aggression.
90
Bushehr is not a Target
Returning to the report’s introduction, some of its statements lead one to

question whether this will in fact be the “objective basis” on which to base
future policy decisions: “In terms of power and precision, military strikes
against nuclear plants could result in damage similar, if not worse than,
the damage caused by nuclear accidents, whether the result of human
error, design flaws, or natural disasters.” And:
“No matter what safety and defensive measures are in
place, there would be no time for intervention or evacua-
tion: no way to shut down the plants, cool down the reac-
tors in Bushehr, reinforce containment structures, save
plant personnel, evacuate local residents, or bring in rescue
workers. The subsequent contamination of air, water, and
soil from the chemical and thermal impact of strikes on
nuclear plants would be immediate, vast and, for the most
part, irreversible.”
However, labeling the Bushehr reactor as a main target for a strike is
pure demagoguery, as no one in his right mind would consider striking an
operating nuclear power reactor. First, the environmental consequences
could be horrendous. Second, the utilization of this reactor for military
purposes is not straightforward, while the subsequent stages for fissile
materials production are also vulnerable and carry less potential for
environmental consequences. Third, Iran is contractually obligated to
return the irradiated fuel to Russia, so why attack this installation?
The author goes one step further, and in the discussion of the
consequences of an attack on Bushehr uses the Chernobyl accident as an
historical model for the situation that could arise in Bushehr. In addition,
the Fukushima accident strengthens his stance that these consequences
are unacceptable for Iran. Yet while for the reasons stated above this
model cannot and should not be used here, the seed is sown, and the
populist comparisons are inevitable.
Targeting the Uranium Compounds Inventories

Leaving aside the non-issue of attacking operating nuclear reactors, we
arrive at the more important possible targets of a military attack: the
uranium enrichment facilities. The first link in this chain is the Uranium
Conversion Facility (UCF) where the uranium ore is converted into
uranium hexafluoride (UF6), which is the feed material for the uranium
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enrichment facilities, located both at Natanz and at Fordow, near the

city of Qom. At normal room temperature and pressure, UF6 is a solid.
At around 56oC it vaporizes, turning into a (highly toxic) gas.5 It is stored
in containers that are usually filled, under some pressure, with liquid
UF6, which later, after a period of cooling, solidifies, leaving a small
quantity of the gas at the top of the container. Under normal conditions,
if the container is ruptured, very small quantities of gas will escape to
the environment and can cause injuries or even death to the workers at
hand, but not to anyone beyond an immediate, circumscribed distance
from the source.
There can be little doubt that the UF6 produced at the UCF, near
Isfahan, is stored underground. In May 2010, the IAEA reported that Iran
declared that it was installing an underground analytical laboratory at the
site “to meet security measures.”6 This laboratory, Iran indicated, “would
be installed in an underground location in one of the UCF storage areas.”
Therefore, even if there is a direct hit on a container, it is doubtful that
a significant part of its inventory would leak to the outside atmosphere,
because of the heat that has to be supplied to the container in order to
vaporize its contents, and because of the tortuous path the vapor would
have to take, interacting with the contained environment and turning
again into a non-gaseous compound before escaping, in very small
quantities, if any, into the free atmosphere. As mentioned, after a period
of cooling, the contents of the containers solidify. Since the vast majority
of the UF6 inventory is already years old, and with the exception of very
small quantities in gaseous form is in the solid state, the possibility of
release is reduced, even if container integrity is compromised.
Although it is not possible to foresee the consequences of direct hits
on Iranian underground facilities, it is reasonable to assess that either the
underground facilities will be penetrated and exploded from within, or hit
and collapse into the inner cavities and turn into piles of rubble, or with
their innards at least gravely harmed. These piles of rubble would act as
filters, with their greater surface areas holding on to or reacting with the
materials released within, and thus preventing the major contents from
escaping to the atmosphere and causing grave environmental harm.
The report unrealistically assumes a release rate of up to 50 percent of
the inventory, a figure that is patently absurd.7 With the assumed source-
term (the characteristics of the release) for the calculations being in the
range of hundreds of tons UF6 released into the atmosphere, the ensuing
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result of 70,000 casualties is of course achievable. What the report fails
to state explicitly is that the source-term for its calculations assumes a

ground level, unprotected source, with the entire inventory in the liquid
state. This certainly is beyond a worst case scenario.
The case for the UF6 inventories at both the next links in the uranium
enrichment chain, Natanz and Fordow, is not different from that
of Isfahan. Both are underground installations and as such are well
protected, and perhaps while not all that immune to military damage,
would still be rather immune to significant atmospheric releases.8 There
would of course be some inventories of UF6 in several above ground
areas, and these could be sources of releases. The vulnerable inventories
are all controlled by the local operators, and it is in their power and
their duty to minimize these. It is not only a matter of preparing for a
military strike. It is part of nuclear good practices, essential for all nuclear
operations. The same argument should be made for the case of industrial
toxic gases, which should be normally protected against accidents whose
occurrence could cause damage and casualties to the workers and to the
environment.
The question then arises as to whether the Iranians apply good safety
practices in their industrial activities. Although there is much evidence
that they pay serious attention to the issue of industrial safety, there
is no way to judge the efficacy of the safety measures that are applied
in the industrial sector. Presumably the Iranians would not embrace
atypical standards in this field, but would apply a reasonable standard
of operational safety. Without this their activities would have been in a
much worse shape than they are in today.
Is Regime Change the Solution?

What then is to be done? The report states clearly that rather than
carrying out a military attack that can be devastating for Iran, “it is time
to recognize that the Iranian people pose a far greater threat to the Islamic
Republic than the U.S. or Israeli military power.” In other words, the
best solution for the Iranian nuclear issue is an Iranian regime change.
There are two major problems with this solution. First, the policy of
the new regime is uncertain and could possibly opt to retain its nuclear
capabilities. Only a comprehensive regime change, which would install
in Iran a democratic secular government that would have a deep respect
for human rights, for the international community, and for international
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treaty obligations could inspire hope that Iran genuinely seeks to be

an equal member of the region and not a hegemonic one. Such a state
would be relied on to make decisions that would benefit its people, and
not lead them into a disastrous situation from which it would be difficult
to recover. Only such a regime would stand a chance of convincing the
IAEA, the Security Council, and the world at large of the “exclusively
peaceful purpose” of its nuclear program.
However, the acquisition of a military nuclear capability will
probably prolong the life of the present regime in Iran, with all the added
regional stability and proliferation issues. Hence the second problem in
considering the regime change solution is the timetable for such a change.
Not only could there be no guarantee of this change, but it could also be
so delayed that it would give the present Iranian regime time to produce
nuclear weapons that would be a game changer for all concerned. It is
also not inconceivable that the present Iranian regime would resort to the
actual use of nuclear weapons, should it consider it beneficial to do so.
Notes
1 As expected, the April 2013 Almaty talks between the P5+1 and Iran ended in
failure, giving Iran more time to develop its nuclear weapons project.
2 Published by the Hinckley Institute of Politics at the University of Utah,
September 2012. See http://nucleargamble.org/wordpress/wp-content/
uploads/2012/09/Ayatollahs-Nuclear-Gamble-Full.pdf.
3 See, e.g., David Isenberg, “The Myth of ‘Surgical Strikes’ on Iran,” Time,
October 18, 2012, http://nation.time.com/2012/10/18/the-myth-of-surgical-
strikes-on-iran/; and “Situation Report: What 371 Metric Tons of Uranium
Hexaflouride Could mean to Iranians,” Foreign Policy, September 27, 2012,
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/27/what_371_metric_tons_
of_uranium_hexafluoride_could_mean_to_iranians.
4 At present, there are three nuclear reactors in Iran: the operational power
reactor in Bushehr, the relatively small research reactor in Tehran, and the
heavy water reactor at Arak, which is still under construction.
5 “Interim Guidance on the Safe Transport of Uranium Hexafluoride,
Appendix II: Properties of UF6 and Its Reaction Products,” Vienna: IAEA,
1991, IAEA-TECDOC-608, http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/
PDF/te_608_prn.pdf.
6 Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and relevant provisions
of Security Council resolutions 1737 (2006), 1747 (2007), 1803 (2008), and
1835 (2008) in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Report by the [IAEA] Director
General, GOV/2010/28, May 31, 2010, http://www.iaea.org/Publications/
Documents/Board/2010/gov2010-28.pdf.
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7 See chapter II in the report: “Methodology and Assumptions - A. Inventories,
Storage and Location, and B. Release.”

8 In order to render these enrichment facilities damaged beyond repair, one
does not have to blow them out. Destruction can be contained within, when
the enrichment machines and pipings are damaged beyond repair, but the
damage would be mainly contained inside the facilities.
Response Essay
If it Comes to Force:
A Credible Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Military
Option against Iran
Amos Yadlin, Emily B. Landau, and Avner Golov
Introduction
A study published in 2012 by the Iran Project1 seeks to create the basis for
an informed discussion regarding the option of a military strike against
Iran. In the prefatory remarks and the introduction to the study, the
authors emphasize that they intend to provide figures and assessments
as a basis for their balanced cost-benefit evaluation of a US military
attack, but will refrain from presenting their own positions on the issue.
The document is signed by some thirty former US government officials,
Democrats and Republicans alike, including the current US Secretary of
Defense, former senator Chuck Hagel.
The authors of the report assume that the United States will succeed in
identifying an Iranian decision to cross the nuclear threshold and break
out to nuclear weapons, and that the administration will have a month
to respond before Iran is in possession of at least one nuclear weapon.
Although it is problematic and highly risky to rely on such assumptions –
something the writers themselves caution against2 – the report proposes
three main models for the implementation of a military option in Iran:
an attack that is relatively limited in scope, intended to delay the Iranian
military nuclear program for up to four years; a medium scale attack,
Major General (ret.) Amos Yadlin is the Director of INSS. Dr. Emily B. Landau is a
senior research fellow at INSS. Avner Golov is a research assistant to the Director
of INSS.

Amos Yadlin, Emily B. Landau, and Avner Golov | If it Comes to Force
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intended to completely deny the possibility that Iran will develop nuclear
weapons; and a broader scale attack in order to promote more ambitious

goals, such as toppling the Iranian regime, causing serious damage to
Iran’s military and economy, and/or forcibly promoting US interests in
the region.3 The authors then skim over the benefits of the limited scale
military option very briefly, while presenting at length both the direct and
indirect costs of this option. The two other models are not dealt with.
References to the report in the global media following its publication
tended to focus on two ominous messages: one, an American attack on
Iran could lead to an all-out war in the Middle East, and two, the military
option for Iran would cost more than the combined cost of ten years of
American fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.4 True, these are not the main
conclusions of the report, and in any case the authors purport to enhance
“dispassionate policymaking,” while avoiding “an advocacy document.”5
However, the tenor of the report, its structure, and its analytical lapses
do stress in the main the risks of the military option and present it as
damaging to American interests, and as such it is not surprising that
these are the messages that were picked up by the media. Significantly,
the Iran Project has recently issued another report where they clearly and
directly object to the threat of military force in the context of pressure on
Iran.6
We agree with the report that a military attack on Iran must be the
last option in an attempt to prevent Iran from going nuclear. A resolution
through negotiations is the preferred solution.
Nevertheless, there are several major flaws in the
A credible threat to
report – both in how the subject is presented and in
employ military force and the analysis – that undermine the authors’ stated
diplomatic efforts do not goal: namely, to present the basis for an informed
contradict each other; discussion of the issue.
rather, they complement The first flaw is that the authors ignore the
fact that a credible military threat is of decisive
and reinforce
importance, first and foremost in the context
one another.
of negotiations. A credible threat of military
consequences (if Iran does not cooperate) plays an
important deterrent role that is intended to help convince Iran to come to
the negotiating table for the purpose of actually negotiating a deal.
A second flaw is that the analysis is biased in its description of the
costs of an attack on Iran. This bias is due to the choice of incorrect
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military models for stopping Iran from acquiring a military nuclear

capability, rather than what would be a correct focus on a pinpoint,
surgical strike if the diplomatic options do not succeed. In addition, the
analysis exaggerates the negative consequences of an attack on Iran and
includes grave statements regarding some ramifications of a limited
strike that lack sufficient foundation.
The third flaw is that the authors miss the essential comparison that
needs to be drawn when assessing the costs of a military strike, after non-
violent options have failed. The correct comparison is not between the
cost and benefit of an attack in the context of current international efforts
to stop Iran, rather, between the cost of a military option and the cost of
Iran’s acquisition of a military nuclear capability, and the threat that it
would then pose to the Middle East and world order.
These flaws undermine the value and validity of the report. Had the
authors considered these issues, their analysis might well have pointed
to the option of a surgical strike as preferable to an Iran in possession of
a nuclear bomb. This in turn would have changed the tone of the report,
which presents a strike as having a predominantly negative impact.
In choosing among the available options for stopping Iran from
acquiring a military nuclear capability, the United States is acting, as
President Obama has made clear, first and foremost out of concern for its
own interests – and not in order to help Israel or other allies in the region.
As such, our analysis – which fleshes out each of the three flaws we have
identified in the Iran Project report – also focuses on the US angle and
American interests.
A Credible Military Threat in the Context of Negotiations

Strategy
In its discussion of the military option, the report, curiously enough,
ignores the need to distinguish between a credible threat to use military
power and an actual attack. Indeed, both the threat and the attack itself
focus on the question of the use of military force, but they play totally
different roles in the framework of the overall dynamic of confronting
Iran on the nuclear issue. A credible threat is essential as a means of
exerting pressure during negotiations, while an actual attack would enter
the picture only when the (current) negotiations are deemed to have
failed.
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As such, a credible threat to employ military force and diplomatic
efforts do not contradict each other; rather, they complement and

reinforce one another. A credible military threat is a necessary means of
exerting pressure on Iran precisely in the context of a strategy that seeks
to resolve the crisis through negotiations. Iran has not yet shown any
willingness to compromise on the nuclear issue, despite international
sanctions that are causing significant damage to its economy and its
international stature. In this situation, a credible threat to use the military
option, beyond tightening the sanctions, is a necessary additional lever
for pressure in order to change the cost-benefit calculations of the
regime in Tehran and persuade it to become a more serious partner
for negotiations on its military nuclear program, especially after Iran
has invested considerable national resources in developing its nuclear
program, and successful negotiations would ultimately require it to give
up its military nuclear aspirations. But when the heavy costs involved in
the military option are emphasized in the public debate, this serves to
weaken the effectiveness of the threat and this potential lever of pressure
on Iran, and inadvertently even strengthens Iran’s deterrence. As such,
the authors, by underscoring severe dangers of an attack, even if this
was not their intention, actually undermine the chances of success in the
negotiations.
It has already been proven in connection with the sanctions on Iran
that levers of pressure can be used without generating a rise in the price
of oil and harming the economies of states participating in sanctions. The
effects of the “biting” sanctions imposed during 2012 on the oil industry
and the financial system in Iran have proven that the threats and the fears
before they took effect – about a rise in the price of oil and the possibility
of escalation in the conflict between Iran and the West, even up to a
military confrontation – were unfounded.7 Rather, the Iranian leadership
responded cautiously, and actually sought to avoid escalation in relations
with the West in general, and with the United States in particular.
Moreover, Iran moderated its position, albeit insufficiently, in the talks
with the P5+1, and there were also moderates in Tehran who sought to
be more flexible and, in contrast with the blanket opposition of the past,
hold direct talks with the United States. The Obama administration
prepared the sanctions effort well, and in coordination with the Saudi
regime, provided a response to the global demand for oil that resulted
from the reduction in output of Iranian oil. Clearly, correct planning can
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significantly reduce the cost of escalation in the diplomatic campaign

against Iran.
This observation indicates that American coordination with allies
who share both its concern about the Iranian nuclear program and the
aspiration to resolve the issue by diplomatic means is a central part of the
solution to the concerns in the report about the threat of a military strike.
As part of this careful planning, the question of which military threat
strengthens the diplomatic efforts and deals with these concerns in the
most effective manner should be examined.
Exaggerated Costs of the Military Option

The report presents a biased analysis of the costs of attacking Iran –
the result of a mistaken choice of model for an attack on Iran’s military
nuclear facilities and an overestimate of the cost to the United States. The
methodological flaw underlying the bias is the authors’ assumption that
the United States must choose among three options: first, a military option
of limited scope that would delay the program by two to four years. This
would include deployment of air power, unmanned aerial vehicles, and
sea-launched missiles, and the possible use of special forces and cyber
attacks over several weeks in order to damage “hundreds of targets.”8
The second is a medium scale option, designed to ensure that Iran will
not have nuclear weapons. It would require a wider deployment of US
air and naval power over years. The third is a large scale military option
(the Iraqi model), which would involve a ground
invasion of Iran, occupation of the country, and a A balanced analysis of
change in government. the consequences of a
We agree with the report that the model of the
surgical strike, which is
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, whose purpose
was regime change, is not the correct model for focused on achieving
handling the Iranian nuclear issue. However, American goals and
this incorrect model must not dictate dogmatic which limits the cost of
thinking about the other options for Iran. What an attack, indicates that
is required is military thinking that examines
the price of this option is
effective alternatives for achieving the limited
not high.
goal of causing serious harm to Iran’s ability to
produce a nuclear weapon. Therefore, even the limited model suggested
by the report is too broad, and consequently, misguided and too costly.
The US air force has sufficient capabilities to carry out a surgical strike,
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over several days, on Iranian nuclear facilities and sites that support this
industry. This limited strike could set back the Iranian nuclear program by
several years, depending on how successful it is.9 The option of a surgical
aerial strike makes it possible to carry out an additional attack several
years later if Iran seeks to rehabilitate its military nuclear capabilities.
Consequently, this model preempts the authors’ claim that it will be
necessary to station additional air and naval forces for a prolonged period
in order to ensure that the achievements of an attack are maintained. It
also renders irrelevant the high cost of the options proposed.
A surgical strike by the United States would demonstrate the
seriousness of its intention to stop Iran’s military nuclear program if Iran
fails to adopt a serious approach to the diplomatic track. Interestingly,
a surgical strike that does not harm widespread Iranian military
and economic assets could encourage a positive Iranian response to
negotiations, and the fact that many assets remain in Iran’s possession
that stand to be harmed in the event of escalation could moderate Iran’s
response and keep it measured and limited.10 A surgical strike on Iranian
nuclear facilities could thus reduce the risks of becoming engulfed in
a regional war, and ultimately even enable a return to the negotiations
table.
Since the authors indicate their concern about the consequences of a
regional war, it is not clear why they even consider scenarios of a broad
attack that increase the risks that this threat will be realized, compared to
the limited scenario of a surgical strike.
The authors of the report describe in cursory fashion the direct, short
term benefit of a limited American attack but detail at length the medium
term and long term costs. Thus the cost-benefit analysis is in itself
imbalanced, even as the authors warn that it is difficult to assess these
said costs and that the costs they are suggesting are actually based on
“speculation.”11 They skew the assessment with speculation that exceeds
the direct cost of the limited model and is more relevant to an expansion
of the crisis, and as a consequence, an expanded US response, without
making this clear. Accordingly, they fail to remain faithful to the outline
of an attack that they themselves have chosen and instead present the
costs of more extensive fighting, including an escalated crisis to the point
where Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz and the region is mired in an all-
out war.
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Yet even if the gravest assessments are realized, namely, that

the Iranian response will be powerful and will require an American
response, the aerial model of Kosovo in 1999 and Libya in 2011 offers a
more effective option than a large scale ground attack that includes an
invasion and occupation of Iranian territory. Indeed, we agree that the
model of a ground invasion is neither appropriate nor correct as a solution
to the Iranian nuclear issue. Nevertheless, an air strike by NATO forces
in Serbia led to the Serbian army withdrawing from Kosovo, an end to
the bloodshed, and a change in government one year later. NATO’s air
strikes in Libya aided the rebel forces and led to the fall of the Qaddafi
regime within seven months. The cost of these two operations was
limited, both from a monetary point of view and from the perspective of
harm to NATO forces.12
Therefore, even if the United States were forced to increase the
intensity of its operations in Iran, it would not have to choose the model
of a broad attack proposed by the report, and it would not necessarily be
forced to pay an economic price that is higher than the price of the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, as warned.13 In other words, a change
in the model of attack could significantly reduce the cost of an attack on
Iran without impeding the ability of the United States to damage Iran’s
military nuclear program or provide a response to dramatic escalation –
even if according to the authors the probability of this scenario is slim.
In addition to flaws connected to the choice of attack model, the
authors also overestimate the costs of an attack on Iran. This distortion is
expressed on five principal levels:
a. The economic cost: The report warns that an attack on Iran is liable
to lead to an increase in global oil prices and to a price spike in the
event of escalation into regional war.14 But the United States could
moderate the rise in oil prices with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve,
which could supply American oil demand for more than a month and
maintain the stability of world oil prices for a short period of time.15
Even analyses that anticipate an increase do not necessarily expect a
dramatic rise such as that suggested in the report, and certainly not as
a result of a surgical strike on Iran.16 Furthermore, the surgical strike
model reduces the risk of deterioration into regional conflict and an
increase in oil prices over time as a result of a decision by Iran to exert
pressure on its adversaries.
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b. The political cost. The authors claim that an American attack on Iran
would strengthen the perception that the United States tends to

solve its problems through the use of force, thus enabling terrorist
organizations and radicals in Muslim countries who oppose the United
States to grow stronger at the expense of the forces of moderation.17
However, an attack on Iran would not necessarily weaken US allies
in the region and would perhaps even strengthen them. Indeed, Iran
is not very popular in the Arab world in general, and in the Sunni
Muslim world in particular.18 Certainly those who oppose the United
States will make themselves heard after the attack, but why would
they be able to convert moderates who do not support Iran’s radical
ideology and provocative policy, precisely when Iran has suffered a
severe blow?
An American attack on Iran would not necessarily cause serious
harm to the position of the United States in the Arab world and/or
weaken the moderate elements. Perhaps it would have the opposite
effect: the Sunnis who fear Iran would see that the United States acts
decisively in the face of the threat of the “Shiite bomb,” and would feel
that they have an opportunity to promote their interests in the region
at the expense of Iranian hegemony. Such a response could reduce
Iranian influence in the region. Iran is the main supporter of the
Assad regime, which is slaughtering its own people; of Shiite groups
that are working against the regimes in Saudi Arabia and in Bahrain;
of terrorist organizations in Iraq working against US forces and
continuing to do so following the US withdrawal; and of Palestinian
terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip that oppose Israel. The
weakening of Tehran’s allies would serve American interests and
increase stability in the region, and thus the argument that an attack
on Iran would necessarily harm US interests in the region is without
foundation. In fact, an attack would be more likely to serve American
interests.
c. The regional cost. The report warns that a regional war resulting from
an American attack19 could elicit an Iranian response against US bases
in the region and strategic targets in the Gulf, along with pressure by
Iran on its regional allies to attack US allies and make them pay for
the attack. Such a response could lead to escalation and to regional
war between Iran and its adversaries in the region, and in particular,
Israel.
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Yet given this scenario of all-out war, it is not at all clear that the

Iranian regime would wish for regional escalation against the United
States, or even against Israel. With Iran’s standing and economy
already hurt, it would certainly not seek to respond in a manner that
requires the US military to act forcefully against Iranian strategic
assets. Iran’s fear of increased tensions with the Sunni Gulf states,
particularly Saudi Arabia, and with Turkey, which seek to limit Iranian
influence in the region, is likewise a factor. Indeed, the Iranian regime
would probably be prepared to pay a certain price by responding in
order to save face, as long as it estimated that the cost of its response
would be tolerable and not too high. But when considering a third
step in the crisis (after it was attacked and it responded), it would
most likely have little motivation to risk escalation and further harm
to Iranian interests; its motivation would remain low as long as the
regime itself was not threatened. Therefore, it can be expected that
the Iranian response will be measured and cautious, rather than
comprehensive.
The regime’s limited motivation to act against Israel is matched
by its limited capabilities.20 Iran has very limited weapon systems,
especially surface-to-surface missiles that can hit targets in Israel.
Iranian missiles would have to contend with Israeli anti-missile
defense systems: the Arrow, the Patriot, and in the future, other
systems as well. Therefore, Iran would likely turn to its proxies in the
region and have them act on its behalf. However, the Iranian regime’s
allies in the region are in a sensitive position. The Assad regime,
which is fighting for its survival and allocating all its resources to
the domestic arena, lacks genuine motivation and ability to act
against Israel today. The rifts in Syria increase the sectarian tension
in Lebanon and threaten Hizbollah’s goal to become a Lebanese
organization that enjoys broad support from the local populace.
Hizbollah is contending with increasing criticism from Sunnis and
Christians, who accuse it of promoting Shiite and Iranian objectives at
the expense of Lebanon’s national interests. Opening a front against
Israel in order to preserve the alliance with its Iranian patron could
aggravate the organization’s already shaky domestic standing in
Lebanon. The Palestinian organizations in the Hamas-governed Gaza
Strip will also face a far from simple dilemma after suffering heavy
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casualties in the last round of fighting and in light of their change in
orientation from Iran and Syria to Egypt and Qatar.

Iran’s sense of honor will probably not allow the regime to refrain
entirely from responding, but it is not at all clear that Iran would
prefer a broad response and the risk that the entire region “go up in
flames” with its interests jeopardized, as suggested by the report. In
our assessment, there would be an Iranian response, but it would be
moderate, measured, and calculated.
d. The nuclear cost. The report warns that an attack on the nuclear facilities
would increase motivation to produce a nuclear bomb, and therefore
would miss its target.21 However, the regime in Tehran has already
made a strategic decision to achieve military nuclear capabilities. A
tactical decision to break out will be made at the time that is most
appropriate and prudent from the regime’s point of view – and when
the chances of stopping it are slim. Indeed, already today Iran has
evinced much determination to develop nuclear weapons. The Iranian
regime, which during 2012 confronted “biting” sanctions for the first
time, has not ceased its progress toward a military nuclear capability.
Its adherence to the goal, particularly in the face of unprecedented
international sanctions and regional and international isolation,
indicates that Iran’s motivation to produce a bomb is already very
strong, and therefore it will not significantly increase as a result of an
American attack.
Furthermore, motivation is not a sufficient condition for developing
nuclear weapons; it is also necessary to have actual implementation
capability. It appears that for Iran, the capability component is the
most vulnerable to an attack at this time, which explains why the
argument about increased Iranian motivation is problematic and why
instead there is a need for an international campaign to prevent Iran
from developing the ability to break out to a bomb. The Iraqi test case,
which started in 1981 with a pinpoint Israeli strike and continued with
a system of international sanctions and a US attack on Iraqi nuclear
facilities in 1991, is an excellent model for stopping the Iranian military
nuclear program.22
e. The internal Iranian cost. The report’s assertion that the Iranian
populace will unite around the regime in the event of an attack23 is far
from self-evident and lacks empirical proof. Eli Jacobs of the Center for
Strategic and International Studies, for example, argues that the “rally
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round the flag effect” was not proven to result in “across-the-board

support” in Iraq in 1991 and in Libya in 2012.24 According to Jacobs,
the theory is not suited to the dynamic that exists within Iran and to
the relationship between the people and their government. Former
State Department official Aaron David Miller even claims that a
successful American attack could challenge the stability of the regime
because pragmatic elements in the regime and secular elements in
Iranian society aspire to bring about a change in government in Iran.25
The claim that the people will fall into line behind the government
was also made before economic sanctions were imposed on Iran,
and this prediction was not borne out. The serious damage to the
Iranian economy has actually increased the pressure on the regime,
which fears anti-government protests, and has increased the tension
between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his supporters and
followers of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. A limited,
surgical strike further reduces the chances that the authors’ prediction
– that an attack would necessarily lead to broad public support for the
regime – would be proven correct.
The report’s flawed estimate of the cost of an attack on Iran, along with
a flawed choice of a desirable model for an attack, generates a skewed
analysis that exaggerates the cost of the military option. The choice of the
surgical strike model, which is focused on achieving American goals and
which limits the cost of an attack, along with a balanced analysis of the
consequences of an attack, indicates that the price of this option is not
high. This is particularly the case when considering that even this cost
should not be examined on its own, but should be compared with the
relevant alternatives, as will be explained below.
The Correct Price Comparison: Military Force vs. Nuclear Iran

The authors of the report argue that they have chosen to focus on the costs
and benefits of the military option and have intentionally refrained from
addressing the possibility that Iran will reach military nuclear capability.26
They have thus consciously decided to address only the cost of a military
strike and to avoid the necessary analysis, namely, a comparison of this
cost with the cost of accepting a nuclear Iran if all other options fail. In
our opinion, this choice is misguided and unacceptable. If the diplomatic
option fails, the United States president will need to choose between
106
two difficult, risk-filled options – and therefore, the cost of each option
should be studied against the price that the United States will be required
to pay for the other option, and not against the situation today, when
Iran does not yet have a military nuclear capability. The situation today
is temporary and far less complicated than the two options that will be
relevant in the future.
This narrow analysis in the Iran Project’s report ignores three points
that are critical to American interests. The first is that a nuclear Iran will
undermine the nuclear nonproliferation regime and encourage a regional
arms race. As part of a concise presentation of the benefits of the military
option, the report acknowledges in cursory fashion that an attack on Iran
would help maintain the nuclear nonproliferation regime.27 However, the
threat of an arms race in the Middle East is tangible and dangerous, and
therefore should be part of a comparison of the option of a strike against
the option of containment (accepting the inevitability of a nuclear Iran).
In recent years, the Saudi regime has warned the US administration
in closed talks that if Shiite Iran, the largest adversary of Sunni Saudi
Arabia, attains nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia will need to acquire
similar capability. The Turks and the Egyptians have also expressed
opposition to the Iranian military nuclear plan, and their rivalry with
Tehran could pose a difficult dilemma for them: should they respond
by entering the nuclear arms race if Iran obtains nuclear weapons? The
Obama administration, which seeks to reduce its involvement in the
Middle East and hopes to focus more on Asia,
If the diplomatic option would increase the pressure on these Sunni states
to find a solution in which they are not dependent
fails, the United States
on US policy. Thus countries in the region that feel
will need to choose threatened by the regime in Tehran, such as the
between two difficult, Gulf states, Turkey, Egypt, and even Iraq, could
risk-filled options: the decide to enter a regional arms race if Iran passes
cost of a military strike vs. the military nuclear threshold. Therefore, it is clear
the cost of accepting a that acceptance of a nuclear Iran would constitute
a difficult challenge to the nuclear nonproliferation
nuclear Iran.
regime.
An attack on Iran could prevent this scenario,
and further strengthen the nonproliferation regime by demonstrating
American willingness to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons to
other states in the region. Since the nonproliferation regime helps ease
107
the charged atmosphere in this tense region and avert catastrophic

escalation in the event of conflict between states in possession of weapons
of mass destruction, nonproliferation is defined as a vital US interest.
In light of President Obama’s vision of a global effort to reduce nuclear
stockpiles, this interest has become even more crucial for the current US
administration. In order to understand the price that the United States
would have to pay if it accepted an Iranian nuclear bomb, the authors
should have compared the price of the containment option to the benefit
of the option of a strike against Iran. Such an analysis clearly reveals that
the military option serves American interests, while the containment
option significantly harms them.
The second point absent from the report is that Iranian hegemony
and the power of the radicals in the region will increase if Iran goes
nuclear. The report warns that American military intervention in Iran
would strengthen the forces that oppose the United States and American
intervention in the region and would empower the radicals, particularly
Iran, at the expense of the moderates that are US allies.28 This argument
ignores the fact that those same moderates would be even more
threatened by a boost to Iranian hegemony. For this reason, the Saudi
regime is working to stop the Iranian nuclear program, and in the past
year, it has increased its output of oil in order to allow harsh sanctions
to be imposed on the Iranian oil industry.29 The Sunni regimes in Egypt,
Bahrain, Qatar, and Turkey also fear the expansion of Iranian influence in
the region, which threatens their interests, and especially the possibility
that Iran will acquire a military nuclear capability. This capability would
turn Iran into a regional power, bolstering its ability to undermine the
stability of the Sunni regimes in the Gulf and enabling it to expand its
Shiite revolutionary ideological influence in the region as well as its
support for terrorist activity against US targets. In other words, if Iran
possessed a nuclear weapon, it would have much greater power against
its regional rivals, which are allies of the United States, than if the United
States bombed Iran.
Relations between the United States and its regional allies are based
on US willingness and ability to help promote the interests of the Arab
regimes. With the Iranian threat, it is America’s deterrent capability and
credibility in the eyes of the moderate regimes that will determine its
ability to prevent a regional war and ensure that the power of moderate
forces in the region is maintained. The credibility of the United States
108
as an ally has been damaged in the past two years because of both the
Obama administration’s abandonment of Egyptian president Husni

Mubarak and Iran’s ability to progress toward nuclear weapons despite
the international campaign against it. Acceptance of a nuclear Iran
could result in the collapse of American deterrence in the region and an
almost total reduction in the ability of the United States to maintain the
strength of the moderates against the Iranian superpower and prevent
deterioration into regional war. We agree with the report that these two
consequences would be devastating for US policy in the region, but we
differ in contending that these risks would be more tangible if the Iranian
regime were in possession of a bomb than if the United States attacked
Iran.
Accepting a nuclear Iran after President Obama has stated that he
would prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons30 would damage
the credibility of American deterrence. This damage could spill over
beyond the boundaries of the Middle East and also harm American
deterrence in Asia and other regions. A credible threat of a strike against
Iran and its execution when all other options have been exhausted could
be an opportunity to strengthen the position of the United States as a
superpower and increase the credibility of American deterrence in the
region and support for US allies, including Israel and the Gulf states.
The third point is the faulty assessment that global oil prices will
increase further if Iran goes nuclear. The report warns that a strike against
Iran is liable to lead to an increase in oil prices if Iran attempts to interfere
with the supply of oil or harm oil facilities in the Gulf in order to hurt
its rivals.31 Although this is an extreme and unlikely scenario, the logic
behind it illustrates that the cost of an Iran with a nuclear bomb would
actually be higher than the cost of striking Iran. An Iranian bomb would
curtail the ability of the West to prevent Iran from raising the price of oil
and would allow the regime in Tehran to increase prices permanently.
The Bipartisan Policy Center estimates that a nuclear Iran would lead
to an increase of 10 to 20 percent in the price of oil in the first year (an
additional $11-27 per barrel), and between 30 and 50 percent by the third
year ($30-55 per barrel).32 Other analyses of the economic consequences
expected to undermine stability in the Middle East as a result of Iran’s
acquisition of a nuclear bomb present even higher figures, depending on
the scope of the conflict.33 These studies indicate unequivocally that an
Iran with a nuclear bomb will hurt American interests over time much
109
more than a temporary price increase suggested in the report. Therefore,

even the most extreme scenario could be preferable in the long term to
Iran’s possessing a nuclear bomb.
These three points illustrate how critical it is to draw the comparison
between the anticipated results of a strike against Iran and the expected
consequences of Iran going nuclear and a policy of containment. Since
both are bad options, we do not recommend an attack at this point.
However, if negotiations fail, no agreement is reached, the covert
campaign does not achieve its goal, and a time of decision is reached,
analysis indicates that the option of bombing Iran as a last resort is
preferable to the option of living with an Iranian bomb.
Conclusion
The Iranian Project report on the costs and benefits of the military option
on the Iranian issue claims to focus on facts and shun specific policy
recommendations. However, the spirit of the report, its structure, and
its methodological lapses highlight the negative consequences of the
military option for American interests. This was the sentiment reflected
in the discussion of the report in the global media. It appears that in the
guise of an objective report that “draws no final conclusions and offers
no recommendations,”34 the authors have in fact produced a subjective
report with clear recommendations, even if they are not written as such.
The current article has aimed to balance the picture.
We agree with the report that escalation in the conflict with Iran, a rise
in the price of oil, and the weakening of pragmatic elements in the Middle
East harm American interests. We also agree that if the negotiations
between Iran and the West fail, the United States will need to choose
between a policy that makes its peace with a nuclear bomb and a strike
against Iran, and that only in this situation should the use of military force
be considered. Nonetheless, methodologically the report is flawed. The
threat of military force and the diplomatic campaign complement rather
than contradict one another, and when it comes to an effort to persuade
a regime to give up its nuclear ambitions after it has invested enormous
resources in its military nuclear program, the importance of the military
threat grows stronger. Ironically, damaging the credibility of the military
option could lead to its being the only option to prevent the regime of the
ayatollahs in Tehran from possessing a nuclear bomb.
110
The report also errs in its mistaken choice of a model for a military
option, and hence its overestimation of the ensuing military costs, and
its failure to consider the cost of failed negotiations and a policy of
containment that reconciles itself to a nuclear Iran. We contend that the
option of bombing Iran to prevent its military nuclearization is preferable
to the option of an Iranian nuclear bomb, and the surgical strike model
is preferable to the three models presented in the report. In our opinion,
these insights balance – if not offset – the risks presented by the report.
Our analysis seeks to broaden the perspective to an examination of the
best option for American interests. It stresses that even if it is desirable to
conduct a discussion on this subject, the credibility of the military threat
must be maintained in order for this discussion to remain relevant.
Notes
1 The Iran Project, Weighing Benefits and Costs of Military Action against Iran,
2012 (hereafter Iran Project report), http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/
default/files/IranReport_091112_FINAL.pdf. The purpose of the Iran
Project is made clear on the project’s official website, which states that it
is “dedicated to improving the relationship between the U.S. and Iranian
governments.” In other words, the goal of the project is not to stop Iran from
military nuclearization. The goal of the Project, which underlies the report, is
not mentioned in the report itself.
2 Ibid., pp. 21-22. In spite of their assessment, the report warns that “no
monitoring and detection system is failure-proof.” It fails to take into
account the use of modern centrifuges that could allow Iran in the future to
produce a bomb in less than a month after a decision is made by the regime.
3 Ibid., p. 24.
4 For example, see the AP report published in the United States, Britain, and
Israel, which also stresses the cost of the broad attack model without noting
that there are intermediate models: Associated Press, “U.S. Strikes on Iran
Would Risk All-Out Middle East War: Experts,” CBS News, September
13, 2012; Associated Press, “U.S. Strikes on Iran Would Risk Major War:
Report,” The Daily Star, September 13, 2012; Associated Press, “U.S.
Strikes on Iran Could Lead to All-Out Mideast War, Experts Say,” Haaretz,
September 13, 2012. This is in the spirit of comments by Thomas Pickering,
one of the authors of the report, at a panel discussion at the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy on February 12, 2013. See James F. Jeffrey
and Thomas Pickering, “Year of Decision: U.S. Policy toward Iran in 2013,”
PolicyWatch 2036, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, http://www.
washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/year-of-decision-u.s.-policy-
toward-iran-in-2013.
5 See the Introduction to the report.
111
6 The Iran Project, Strategic Options for Iran: Balancing Pressure with Diplomacy,

2013, http://www.cfr.org/iran/iran-project-strategic-options-iran-balancing-
pressure-diplomacy/p30487.
7 See, for example, John R. Bolton, “Don’t Let Iran Benefit from EU Financial
Crisis,” Bloomberg, January 26, 2012; Fareed Zakaria, “To Deal with Iran’s
Nuclear Future, Go Back to 2008,” Washington Post, January 26, 2012.
8 Iran Project report, p. 10. The report is not consistent in addressing the
limited scenario. For example, on p. 23, a broader attack is described that is
intended to achieve the same goal, delaying Iran’s military nuclear plan by
up to four years: “We believe that extended military strikes by the U.S. alone
or in concert with Israel could delay Iran’s ability to build a bomb by up to
four years—if the military operation is carried out to near perfection, with
all aircraft, missiles, and bombs working to maximum effect.” On p. 24, the
authors describe the attack again in a different manner: “We are assuming
that the U.S. would deploy a full array of aircraft and conventional weapons
against Iran, in standoff strikes that could last for several days or weeks, or
longer.”
9 In our assessment, in a successful operation the United States could set the
Iranian military nuclear program back by up to four years, as the writers of
the report suggest. Ibid., p. 12.
10 In the assessment of the authors themselves, the Iranian response would be
cautious and would seek to avoid an all-out conflict with the United States.
Ibid., pp. 34-35.
11 Ibid., p. 33.
12 In Kosovo, two NATO soldiers were killed as the result of the crash of an
American Apache helicopter during training carried out in Albania, and
during fighting by NATO in Libya, one British soldier was killed as a result
of an accident connected to a logistical operation. BBC, “Two Die in Apache
Crash,” May 5, 1999; “UK Airman Dies in Italy Road Accident,” Time,
Associated Press, July 21, 2011.
13 Iran Project report, p. 24.
14 Ibid., p. 35. This analysis, like similar analyses that reach the same
conclusion, is based on the model of a broad and prolonged attack, such
as the 1991 Gulf War. The relevance of these broad and prolonged crises is
limited in a discussion of the surgical strike model and an operation lasting
several days. See Bob McNally, “Unconventional Gas/LNP,” Presentation of
the Rapidan Group, March 2012.
15 Greg E. Sharenow, “Playing ‘What If?’ with Oil Prices and a Potential Strike
on Iranian Nuclear Facilities,” PIMCO, November 2011, http://www.pimco.
com/EN/Insights/Pages/Playing-What-If-with-Oil-Prices-and-a-Potential-
Strike-on-Iranian-Nuclear-Facilities-.aspx; Jay Maroo, “The Uncertain Impact
of an SPR Release,” Energy Risk, November 13, 2012, http://www.risk.
net/energy-risk/feature/2221778/the-uncertain-impact-of-an-spr-release;
Securing America’s Future Energy, “Decision Point: A Well-Supplied Global
112
Oil Market Will Make 2013 the Year to Deal with Iran,” Issue Brief, March 13,
2013, http://secureenergy.org/sites/default/files/SAFE_Decision_Point_
Iran_Issue_Brief_March_2013.pdf.
16 Matthew Kroenig and Robert McNally, “Iranian Nukes and Global Oil,”
American Interest 8, no. 4 (March/April 2013), http://www.the-american-
interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1386.
17 Iran Project report, pp. 40-41.
18 James Zogby, “Looking at Iran: How 20 Arab & Muslim Nations View Iran &
Its Policies,” March 2013, http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/
iranpollfindingspresenation.pdf.
20 For more information on Iran’s missile capabilities, see Michael Elleman,
“Everything You Wanted to Know About Iran’s Air Force,” RCP, March 12,
2013.
22 This example should not be understood as a recommendation for an initial
Israeli attack, rather as an illustration of the utility of the surgical strike
option, backed by international sanctions, as a means of delaying a military
nuclear option over time.
24 Eli Jacobs, “Considering the ‘Rally Round the Flag Effect’ in Iran,” CSIS,
January 20, 2012, http://csis.org/blog/considering-rally-round-flag-effect-
iran.
25 Aaron David Miller, “Everyone Calm Down: Israel is Not Going to Bomb
Iran. Well, At Least Not in 2012,” Foreign Policy, August 20, 2012.
26 The report’s authors claim that they will publish a paper on the subject in
the future, without noting which options they are referring to. Iran Project
report, Weighing Benefits and Costs of Military Action Against Iran, p. 16. Up to
the time of writing, the Iran Project had not published a paper examining the
cost of the option of containment and accepting a nuclear Iran.
27 Ibid., p. 30.
28 Ibid., pp. 39-40.
29 Ran Dagony, “Saudi Arabia vs. Iran: We’ll Use the Oil Weapon because of
the Nuclear Program,” Globes, June 22, 2012.
30 Since the speech by President Obama at the AIPAC conference in March
2012, he has stated on a number of occasions that his policy toward Iran is
prevention, not containment of a nuclear Iran.
32 Charles S. Robb and Charles Wald, “The Price of Inaction: Analysis of
Energy and Economic Effects of a Nuclear Iran,” National Security Program,
Bipartisan Policy Center, October 2012.
33 Kroenig and McNally, “Iranian Nukes and Global Oil.”
34 See the report’s prefatory remarks.
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Volume 16 | No.

Leading from Behind:

‫המכון למחקרי ביטחון לאומי‬

Leading from Behind: The “Obama Doctrine” and

Editorial Advisory Board

Graphic Design: Michal Semo-Kovetz, Yael Bieber

The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS)

Strategic Assessment is published in English and Hebrew.

© All rights reserved. ISSN 0793-8942

Eleven Years to the Arab Peace Initiative: Time for an Israeli

The Emergence of the Sunni Axis in the Middle East

Strategic Assessment | Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013 3

in part by historical tension and divergent perspectives on the emerging

Islam and Democracy: Can the Two Walk Together?

The US and Israel on Iran: Whither the (Dis)Agreement?

Walking a Fine Line: Israel, India, and Iran / Yiftah S. Shapir

Strategic Assessment | Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013

Civilian Casualties of a Military Strike in Iran / Ephraim Asculai

If it Comes to Force: A Credible Cost-Benefit Analysis of the

Under the United States constitution, Congress is empowered to make

Professor Sanford Lakoff is the Dickson Professor Emeritus of Political Science at

Strategic Assessment | Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013 7

Strategic Assessment | Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013

From the First Term to the Second

Strategic Assessment | Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013

southern border to illegal immigration. He pursued efforts against the

Strategic Assessment | Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013

change and “nation-building” under occupation.

The Syrian Conundrum

Strategic Assessment | Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013

next decade than it estimates.12

Strategic Assessment | Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013

Strategic Assessment | Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013

Ilai Alon and Gilead Sher

Professor Ilai Alon is a member of the Philosophy Department at Tel Aviv

Strategic Assessment | Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013 21

A Brief Historical Overview

Strategic Assessment | Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013

The “Against” in Israel

Strategic Assessment | Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013

The Arab Peace Initiative is an Arab interest, and therefore it can be

The Demand to Withdraw or Reconsider the Initiative

Strategic Assessment | Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013

2006, Mashal and Mahmoud al-Zahar expressed lukewarm support

The International Community

Strategic Assessment | Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013

The Arab World

of states in the Arab League to prepare an official statement on Israeli

Strategic Assessment | Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013

Strategic Assessment | Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013

Strategic Assessment | Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013

47 See the same opinion as expressed by Nizar Abdel-Kader, “Putting

Yoel Guzansky and Gallia Lindenstrauss

Strategic Assessment | Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013 37

Middle East, followed by the strengthening of the Iranian-led axis and

Is There a Sunni Alliance?

Strategic Assessment | Volume 16 | No. 1 | April 2013

According to Iran, these states earning are becoming patrons of the

The Key Members of the Emerging Axis