For Israel it is high time for disciplined strategic thinking untainted by politics. The most important objective of pertinent Israeli calculations should be to confront Iran while that recalcitrant foe is still pre-nuclear. If Israel should delay and wait to face an operationally nuclear Iran, its rate of drone and ballistic missile interceptions could need to be 100%. Prima facie, any such defense objective would be impossible.
There will be a great deal to consider. Though Iran describes its wantonly murderous April attacks on Israeli civilians as “retaliation,” they were, under codified and customary international law, unpardonable acts of aggression. With these purposely indiscriminate acts, Iran acted with mens rea or “criminal intent.”
If Iran were an already-nuclear enemy state, Israel’s exemplary capacity for effective self-defense could become severely limited or nonexistent. But because Iran is still pre-nuclear, an impending Iranian aggression could prove to be net-gainful for Israel. Ironically, this next-foreseeable Iranian crime could offer Israel an eleventh hour opportunity to prevent enemy nuclearization and a mutually-annihilating war. In legal terms, this means a literally indispensable opportunity (and corollary obligation) for “anticipatory self-defense.”
“The safety of the people,” wrote Roman philosopher Cicero, “is always the highest law.” This ancient jurist’s plain dictum remains valid and timeless.
Using both logical and historical standards, the human and material costs to Israel of any protracted war could be very high. Nonetheless, fighting against a not-yet-nuclear enemy that repeatedly initiates aggression could represent Israel’s last best chance to avoid a nuclear war. Tehran’s earlier assurances that its April strike against Israel would be limited in order “to avoid escalations” was dishonest and disingenuous. After all, during any intra-crisis search for “escalation dominance” by an already-nuclear Israel and a not-yet-nuclear Iran, competitive risk-taking would favor the Jewish State
There is more. Under authoritative international law, defensive first strikes or acts of “preemption” could be judged permissible in existential-threat circumstances. But even if Israeli resorts to anticipatory self-defense would be lawful or law-enforcing, they could still prove unreasonably dangerous, strategically misconceived and/or tangibly ineffectual. Going forward, Israel will need to evaluate all anticipatory self-defense options along the two coinciding standards of law and strategy.
From the standpoint of international law, preemption could represent a fully permissible strategic option. And while a “bolt from the blue” Israeli preemption against Iran would involve multiple difficulties, such difficulties are unlikely to apply during an ongoing conventional war. In this connection, Iran repeatedly declares its intention to strike Israel as “punishment.” In law, this visceral and primal declaration is another open admission of “criminal intent.”
Even if Iran were not in a condition of self-declared belligerency with the Jewish state, an Israeli preemptive action could still be both lawful and law-enforcing. Israel, in the fashion of every state under world law, is entitled to existential self-defense. Today, in an age of uniquely destructive weaponry, international law does not require Israel or any other state to expose its citizens to plausible destruction. Where hostilities are already underway, Israel’s legal right to attack selected Iranian nuclear facilities would be unassailable. In this regard, such hostilities would include surrogate or proxy attacks on Israeli noncombatants by jihadist terror groups.
Under current conflict circumstances, an Israeli non-nuclear preemption could represent the best available way to reduce the risks of a nuclear war. If Israel waits until the next direct war with Iran, that dissembling foe could conceivably launch authentic nuclear attacks. Even if a then-nuclear Tehran would strike first with “only” conventional weapons, Israel might still have no meaningful choice but to undertake a calibrated nuclear retaliation.
These are all bewildering matters. What should Israeli planners conclude? The answer depends in part upon their view of Iran’s reciprocal judgments on Israel’s leaders. Do these judgments suggest a leadership in Jerusalem that believes in the potential net benefits of a measured nuclear counter-retaliation? Or do they suggest an Israeli leadership that believes such counter-retaliation would bring upon Israel variously intolerable levels of destruction?
In these matters, all relevant Israeli calculations would assume rationality. In the absence of calculations that meaningfully compare the costs and benefits of all strategic alternatives, what would take place between Israel and Iran would remain just a matter of open conjecture. Still, the prospect of non-rational judgments in this belligerent relationship is always possible, especially as the influence of Islamist/Jihadist ideology remains strongly determinative among Iranian and Hezbollah decision-making elites.
Iran’s daily threats of extermination warfare against Israel are barbarous on their face, but ones that also leave Jerusalem with an opportunity to preemptively destroy selected Iranian military targets. Ironically, this non-nuclear preemption opportunity could express the optimal way for Israel to prevent future nuclear aggressions by Iran. In jurisprudential terms, this also means an opportunity for Israel to support the overriding obligations of humanitarian international law. For those who might respond with wrongful charges that Israel is the true law-violator in Gaza, it is finally time to understand that Palestinian “perfidy” (human shields) is legally responsible for ongoing Palestinian suffering in Gaza.
While Hamas and Iranian leaders declare that the Palestinian dead have become shahids (“martyrs”), their political declarations of immortality are left unapplied to themselves or their families. For some reason, it seems, these manipulative leaders are not personally interested in acquiring the martyr’s power over death. Instead, they prefer the circumstances of five-star hotel suites in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.
While Israel’s active defenses have been remarkably successful against Iranian missile and drone attacks, active defenses against nuclear-armed missiles would have to meet much higher standards. In short, they would have to be “leak-proof.” Operationally, this could mean an interception rate of 100%. However counter-intuitive, impending Iranian attacks could offer Israel a life-saving opportunity to avoid later preemptions against an already-nuclear enemy.
Plausibly, for Israel, Cicero’s “safety of the People” could best be served by waging “just war” against a pre-nuclear Iran. Though such a permissible war would still create significant human and material costs, it would be substantially less catastrophic than war between two already-nuclear powers. This is the case, moreover, even if an Iran that had verifiably crossed the nuclear threshold was “less powerful” than a nuclear Israel. In any pertinent nuclear conflict scenario, even a tangibly “weaker” Iran could wreak intolerable harms on Israel.
All things considered, if ongoing or future war with Iran is inevitable, it would be much safer for Jerusalem to proceed as the sole nuclear combatant. Accordingly, this is not a moment for Israeli strategic thinking to become confused or shortsighted. Accepting variously political demands for war avoidance at all costs – even when entirely one-sided – could first appear sensible and law-enforcing. Upon closer examination, however, that forced acceptance would remove Israel’s remaining opportunities to combat jihadist terrorism and keep Iran non-nuclear.
No such removal could be consistent with Israel’s physical survival.
LOUIS RENÉ BERES was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971). Born in Zürich at the end of World War II, he is the author of many books, monographs, and articles dealing with Israeli nuclear strategy. Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue, he has lectured on this topic for over fifty years at leading universities and academic centers for strategic studies. Dr. Beres’ twelfth book, Israel’s Nuclear Strategy: Surviving amid Chaos, was published by Rowman and Littlefield, in 2016 (2nd ed., 2018). In December 2016, Professor Beres authored a monograph at Tel-Aviv University (with a special postscript by retired USA General Barry McCaffrey), Israel’s Nuclear Strategy and American National Security. In 2003-2004, he was Chair of Israel’s “Project Daniel” (Iranian nuclear weapons/PM Ariel Sharon).