Sep 9, 2014

Lately, no one in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv has any clue about what to do about regional and global developments. Are they good? Are they bad? Are they both good and bad? A case in point was when Hamas and Fatah suddenly agreed to reconcile and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas established a unity government, which faced harsh criticism from the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. With the encouragement of Netanyahu himself and his Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, the unity government became Israel’s “Great Satan.” Then the Operation Protective Edge war erupted in Gaza. When it ended, everyone begged Abbas and his government of technocrats to come and save the day, deploy at the Rafah crossing and give everyone a ladder to get off their high horse.

There are many other such examples, one of which (as reported here previously) is how the insurgents were taking over the Golan Heights. Israel has yet to decide what’s better: Having the Golan Heights under the control of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or see his grip waning in favor of sub-state chaos governed by ephemeral insurgent organizations. While we are still weighing this, reports started appearing about Iranian cooperation with the United States in the war against the Islamic State (IS). It began with accounts noting that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a special fatwa, rendering legitimate the assistance to the United States in its war on the insane Sunni “infidels” from IS. Reports then followed that both countries, which are pitted against each other in a forceful struggle relating to Iran’s nuclear program, were indeed coordinating their positions and collaborating to stop IS. Although these reports were denied, Jerusalem did not completely take those denials at face value. The distrust of Washington runs so deep that no one among Netanyahu’s associates takes the White House or State Department’s official versions seriously. Until not long ago, an Israeli prime minister was able to hold intimate talks with the American president, asking the toughest questions and getting straight answers. No more. The line of communication between Jerusalem and Washington has gone cold and intimacy has gone into the deep freeze.

“The only two countries in the world that divide the globe into [regional] commands are the United States and Iran,” a high-ranking Israeli military official told me last week. “Iran sees itself as a power and, like the United States, it divides the world into commands. Each such command is overseen by a different body in the Revolutionary Guard. This is how the Iranians perceive themselves. Their conduct, geopolitical constructs and even their nuclear race all stem from this outlook.” The senior military official referred to the rise of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to power as a “strategic event,” thus using the exact turn of phrase that I heard from another military official, a very senior one, a few months ago. This complements a very clear picture: The majority of top Israeli defense establishment officials believe that a big strategic watershed, which has yet to take final form, is unfolding in Iran. Where this event will take Iran and what its final results will herald remain to be seen. According to the opinion of many of the people holding the most sensitive positions in the Israeli military and intelligence community, what is clear, however, is that something is going on.

It is against this background that the cooperation between Iran and the United States — even if the reports are grossly premature — could prove to also be a positive development and not necessarily just a negative one. On ordinary days, news about any kind of rapprochement between Washington and Tehran would have sparked a big wildfire and panic in Jerusalem, which would have raised a hue and cry. This week it was conducive mainly to embarrassment and the usual whining by Netanyahu’s associates about US President Barack Obama’s policy. But in the backrooms, defense officials analyze the situation somewhat differently.

For sure, they are concerned lest this cooperation lead to a rapprochement that is too close for comfort, possibly causing the Americans to be far too lenient in the nuclear negotiations, which Jerusalem considers to be fateful for Israel’s future and national security. On the other hand, Israeli defense officials acknowledge that so far the world powers, led by the United States, have been conducting themselves “surprisingly well” in terms of the nuclear negotiations. “They stand their ground and will not be pushed around,” officials from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the intelligence community are saying. So why would they chicken out now?