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re Iran and the United States headed for war?

There are conflicting signals. President Trump earlier this week said that he wants to avoid war with Iran, but if a war comes, it will mean Iran’s “end.” The Iranians too have declared that they don’t want a military conflict, but have reportedly told proxy forces to ready themselves for a protracted battle with the American enemy.

An American aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, earlier this week entered the Arabian Sea, where it is engaged in military exercises. Its arrival has already prompted Iran to remove some of the missiles it had been shuttling around in boats in the Persian Gulf.

All this military activity comes as the United States has ratcheted up sanctions on Iran’s oil and metal industries, closing off lucrative outlets for Iran’s economy. In response, Iran has threatened to quit the nuclear deal if conditions don’t improve. Israel is watching the developments closely. If shots are fired, it seems almost certain that Iran would try to entangle Israel in the conflict.

Israeli intelligence sources tell Mishpacha that Iran’s aggressive behavior is a direct result of a profound shift in its strategy. Until recently, the regime believed it could withstand American pressure and wait out President Trump until 2020, when a more amenable president would sit in the Oval Office. In that way, Iran could avoid a military conflict and preserve the nuclear deal, which it clearly sees as a benefit. However, in recent weeks, the regime has changed course as the Iranian economy tanks and the chance increases that Trump will win an additional four years.

The Iranians originally hoped to use their close ties with Europe to outflank Trump — on the economic front by weakening the effect of the sanctions, and on the diplomatic front by strengthening the nuclear deal, which the United States abandoned a year ago. In fact, a decisive majority of large European companies are now unwilling to engage in business with Iran. As a result, the damage to the Iranian economy is only expected to worsen, due both to America’s cancelation of the exemptions to countries that continued to do business with Iran, and to a new wave of sanctions on Iran’s steel industry.

The Iranian dilemma is understood in Israel as hesitation between clinging to the nuclear deal, despite American pressure, with a real possibility that the economy could collapse, or escalating the conflict with the US and the Gulf Arab states while terminating the deal. In discussions over the last few weeks, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, head of the National Security Council Meir Ben-Shabbat, IDF Chief of General Staff Aviv Kochavi, and head of the Military Intelligence Directorate Tamir Haiman, have played out at least four different scenarios for an Iranian attack on Israel.

The first and most probable scenario is a missile fired on Israel from Iraqi territory. The second involves rocket fire and the activation of combat drones from Syria, accompanied by terrorist activity along the northern border. The third scenario is a Hezbollah military operation. At present that seems less likely, since Nasrallah’s finances are at a nadir, and he is not likely to give Israel an excuse to strike him. The fourth scenario, the one that least concerns Israel, is terrorist activity by Islamic Jihad from the Gaza Strip, funded and directed by Tehran. At Israel’s request, Egypt has told the Hamas government in Gaza to control the situation in their territory and prevent violent incidents that could spiral out of control.

A year and a half ago, Israel had warned Iran through Russia and the United States that it would not tolerate surface-to-surface missile batteries Iran had established in western Iraq. Israel intelligence speculated that Iran had set up the batteries to deter Israel from attacks on Iranian targets in Syria. The warning went over as expected, and the Iranians lowered their profile in western Iraq. But the surface-to-surface missiles remained in the hands of pro-Iranian Iraqi militia groups.

The Iranian militias in Iraq possess rockets with a range of 700 to 1,000 kilometers. When these missiles are deployed in western Iraq, their range covers all of Israel, and, in contrast to the rockets fired by Saddam Hussein on Israel from western Iraq in 1991, these missiles are accurate and take comparatively little time to launch.

Israel has not yet made visible preparations for this potential threat, though intelligence is on guard for the eventuality. Israeli capacities for intelligence-gathering in western Iraq are incomparably higher than in 1991, when Israel was forced to grope in the dark looking for Hussein’s portable missile batteries. Israel’s capacities for military strikes — both airborne and on land — against Middle Eastern countries that don’t border Israel, like Iraq, are also much higher than in 1991. And above all, Israel now has, more than at any time in the past, international consensus to act in western Iraq if need be.

This is probably why every present conversation with a senior figure in the defense establishment begins these days with the situation at the Gaza Strip but quickly shifts to developments in the Persian Gulf. The Iranians are on the march.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 761)