US, Iran, Israel nuke standoff, everyone blinks – now what? – analysis

SEPTEMBER 17, 2021 08:09

In the ongoing nuclear standoff involving the US and Iran – with Israel and the moderate Sunni Arab states the most actively interested parties commenting from the sidelines – everyone has now blinked to some extent.

Where that means the nuclear standoff will go next is less certain.

The US blinked first.

Israeli intelligence sources indicated to The Jerusalem Post in the past that when Washington saw that Ebrahim Raisi would be elected president, it softened some of its redlines, hoping to wrap up a deal before he came on.

These softened positions included being willing to let the Islamic Republic put its advanced centrifuges which could allow it to produce a nuclear bomb at a faster rate in storage as opposed to the original demand that they be nearly all destroyed.

Incidentally, under the 2015 JCPOA Iran nuclear deal, Tehran was permitted a very limited number of these advanced centrifuges in the dozens, compared to the now hundreds it has operating.

Further, the Biden administration reportedly showed some additional flexibility on which sanctions it would remove as part of a return to the JCPOA.

These pre-Raisi elections concessions are part of what may have encouraged the new Iranian president to seek more concessions by stalling the negotiations now for three to four months and barrelling forward with 60% uranium enrichment – a high level of enrichment only one step down from the 90% weaponization level.

Iran blinked next.

Last week, the Islamic Republic agreed to renew talks with the IAEA about nuclear inspections and allowed the agency initial access to some of its nuclear program observation equipment after months of being in the dark.

Notably, some of the equipment was reported as damaged and the IAEA gave its first details about the damage.

The IAEA did not clarify whether its conclusions that the damage to its cameras was caused by a June attack on Iran’s Karaj nuclear facility’s centrifuge equipment (attributed by Iran and sources validated by the Post to Israel) were based solely on Iranian reports or whether it had independently confirmed the cause of the damage.

This is an important open question as to whether the ayatollahs tampered with IAEA equipment over the last few months to hide certain activities – though it is noteworthy that no Israeli officials approached by the Post denied the Karaj facility attack allegation or pointed the finger at Iran on that issue.

One could argue that Iran did not blink so much as it finally started to cash in on the US’ new more conciliatory approach.

But blinking is still blinking and the Islamic Republic has not gotten the major concession it wanted of having the US return to the nuclear deal first, by lifting sanctions first.

As things stand, it would still need to give up all of its 60% and 20% enriched uranium and most of its 5% enriched uranium to get sanctions lifted.

Israel also seemed to blink over the Yom Kippur holiday interviews.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz became the first major governing Israeli official since before the JCPOA to publicly reduce opposition to the deal.

Until now current Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Gantz and all other Israeli officials publicly opposed a return to the deal.

If there was a difference between the Netanyahu and Bennett approaches, it was in style: Netanyahu wanted to make the fight over Iran with the US a constant and loud source of friction to win certain points with portions of the American and Israeli electorate and possibly to intimidate Iran.

Bennett wanted to try to win back the Democratic party’s support for Israel which has reached historically low levels during the years of the Netanyahu close workings with the Trump administration and after Netanyahu undermined the Obama administration with a speech before the US Congress in 2015.

Gantz’s statement crossed a new line.

It came only a day after Foreign Minister Yair Lapid played down Iran’s achievement of getting to a point of being only one month from sufficient uranium for a nuclear weapon.

Lapid said out loud what only Israeli critics, nuclear scientists and sometimes IDF officials were saying in recent years when Israeli political leaders from the current and prior governments rattled their sabers about how close Iran was to a nuclear weapon.

He explained that even if the Islamic Republic gets to the point where it has enough uranium, it would still be more than a few months away from being able to deliver a nuclear weapon.

In fact, even hawkish nuclear experts and (non-political) Israeli intelligence officials have said for some time that the fastest Iran could develop a nuclear weapon after it had sufficient weaponized uranium would be six months.

IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi and multiple IDF intelligence officials have put the number at closer to two years.

The disparity primarily derives from how much Iran has accomplished clandestinely in the areas of detonation and ballistic missile development since the 2003 era (an era which Israel knows a lot about after the Mossad seized Iran’s nuclear archives) and what activities Tehran might or might not be physically and financially capable of undertaking in parallel.

But saying this out loud, Lapid reduced the urgency that Israel has placed on Iran’s pressing forward to a nuclear bomb.

Lapid could be playing three-dimensional chess and his purpose could be to lessen pressure on the US to rush to a deal – if Iran is not that close to delivering a bomb then the US can wait patiently for a “better” deal with Iran.

But taken along with Gantz’s statement, it seems that at least some mix of the current Israeli government are ready to swallow a US return to the JCPOA provided they get guarantees about economic sanctions snapbacks and at least private reduced resistance to Israeli backup plans to strike the Iranian nuclear program in the future if deemed necessary.

Will all of this lead to an Iranian and American return to the JCPOA?

What will the new JCPOA look like and will the Biden administration stay true to its commitment to enforce an add-on to the JCPOA to fix the deal’s holes?

How will Israel act if Washington and the West simply wilt under Iranian pressure and suffice with a slightly weaker JCPOA in which Iran permanently gets to keep its hundreds of advanced centrifuges – even if they are temporarily closeted?

These are all open questions.

But the blinking from all sides over the last few weeks and even days has started to reshape the geopolitics surrounding the issue, and it seems some more changes and surprises may not be far off.