October 10, 2004

The New York Times

JERUSALEM ? One of the major winners of America's war on terrorism has been nuclear-bound, terrorism-supporting Iran, and it is giving the Israelis nightmares.

Israelis have been targets of terrorists since long before American cities were struck three years ago - a fact driven home last week by bombings that killed dozens of vacationing Israelis at three resorts in Egypt. But the nightmares about Iran are of another dimension.

Iran - large, ambitious and run by radical clerics committed to the destruction of the Jewish state - is seen by Israelis as the most obvious and urgent threat today to Israel's very existence.

The overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan eliminated one of Iran's main fundamentalist rivals to its east, while the overthrow of Saddam Hussein to its west eliminated Iran's main military rival in the Persian Gulf. Not only is Mr. Hussein gone, but much of Iraq is in disorder, presenting opportunities for Iran to meddle in Iraq's heavily Shiite south, even to create a kind of Iranistan there.

So the Israelis who plan for this country's security confront a paradox: While they are relieved that the American invasion of Iraq removed a sworn enemy, they are increasingly nervous about the opportunities that the same invasion has opened for another. And they see the Middle East moving from conventional military rivalries to far more dangerous nuclear rivalries.

That is why Israeli officials have been threatening for months to take "the necessary steps,'' as Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz puts it, to prevent Iran, his birthplace, from developing nuclear weapons.

Behind that threat is a hope that the rest of the world can persuade Iran, with threats and diplomacy, to drop the parts of its nuclear program that could be used for armaments. But Israeli officials say they have not had great success so far in encouraging a preoccupied Washington, a conflicted Russia and a divided Europe to do much about Iran except talk anxiously about it.

Iran's program - which its leaders maintain is for peaceful purposes - is far more sophisticated and widespread than the single Iraqi nuclear reactor Israel bombed in 1981, and Israeli officials make clear that they do not want to act alone against Iran.

Iran, however, has an increasing number of cards to play in the region. According to the Israeli military, it has strong influence over the radical Palestinian group Hamas and over the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, which has been financing and organizing most of the attacks against Israelis from the Palestinian West Bank. Iran is gaining influence with the Shia factions jockeying for power in southern Iraq. Officials in Washington have said Iran is helping to foment anti-American resistance there. Most important, perhaps, Iran has increasingly sophisticated Shahab missiles that could hit the outskirts of Tel Aviv.

Iran's leaders do not acknowledge ambitions for nuclear arms, but they are building reactors and there is logic for them wanting a bomb: their neighbors India and Pakistan have nuclear arms, Israel is presumed to have them, and American troops are on their borders.

Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Israeli Parliament's foreign and defense committee, argues that Iran is a clear danger for the entire West, since it is working on an intercontinental missile that could threaten Europe and NATO. "The Iran nuclear program is so ambitious that after producing a first bomb, they could produce 20 bombs a year," he said. "It's up to the Americans and Europeans to solve Iran," he added, "not little Israel."

Mr. Steinitz's concerns are expressed as well by senior Israeli political, military and intelligence officials who spoke on the condition that they not be quoted by name. Israel has been pushing Washington to deal with Iran's nuclear program since the mid-1990's.

"If Iran develops nuclear weapons, there will be a new Middle East,'' said Gerald M. Steinberg of Bar-Ilan University. "It would lead to a lot more brinkmanship and tension, with higher stakes for Israel's survival and pressure on other countries, like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria, to develop nuclear weapons of their own.''

Amatzia Baram, a scholar of Iraq, thinks Israel and the region are safer for now with Mr. Hussein gone. But the euphoria Israelis felt following his quick defeat has dissipated, Mr. Baram says, and has been replaced by anxiety over the possibility of American failure in Iraq.

"So far, with the American Army in Iraq, things are O.K., if not very stable, and in the best case, Iraq will settle down, a net gain for Israel,'' said Mr. Baram, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Haifa University. "But worst case, the Americans decide to go," he said, and that would mean: "There's no central control, growing anarchy, western Iraq becomes a no man's land, like a little Afghanistan. Iran will be a power broker in southern Iraq, and then Jordan is under threat and there's more terrorism in the world."

"The jury's still out" on what will happen, he said, "and the stakes are very high.''

Iran's nuclear ambitions began under Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi in the 1970's, a time when the United States, France and Germany competed to build reactors there and Iran and Israel were proto-allies against a hostile Arab world. But the shah's overthrow in an Islamic revolution in 1979 changed the Middle East.

Israel later watched with some relief as Mr. Hussein's Iraq fought a war with Iran at such a bloody cost that both countries were weakened for years. But both regimes survived, with their animosity intact.

In the short run, Israel has gained enormously from the ouster of Mr. Hussein, said Michael B. Oren, a historian and senior fellow at Jerusalem's Shalem Center.

Not only did Mr. Hussein sent $25,000 checks to the families of suicide bombers and promise to wipe Israel off the map, but his huge if indifferent army was the focus of the old Israeli specter of a massed invasion by Syrian, Jordanian and Iraqi armies moving together against Israel's narrow waist. "That was our nightmare, and it's over, buried,'' Mr. Oren said.

But in the long run, the situation in Iraq "is very uncertain, hazardous and possibly catastrophic,'' he said. Even an American success in democratizing Iraq "will almost definitely entail majority Shia rule, linked to a rapidly nuclearizing Iran, causing upheaval and increased expectations among Shias throughout the Gulf.'' He imagines a Shiite belt from the Persian Gulf through southern Lebanon, organized against America and Israel. "That's scary, because the raison d'être of the Iranian regime is to export holy war,'' he said. Also, Mr. Oren said, "there's a genuine fear here that if America withdraws precipitously from Iraq, the initial message, that the West will stand up to terror, is not only lost, but supplanted by: 'You shoot at Americans and Westerners long enough and they'll retreat, so don't stop shooting.' ''

For Dan Schueftan, a senior fellow at the National Security Studies Center at Haifa University and at the Shalem Center, the situation is deeply worrisome, but not yet a crisis. Mr. Hussein's fall, he said, has been a clear benefit to Israel, which would have had Iran as an enemy in any case. The improbability of a big land war means that Israel's army can start renovating itself in earnest - mothballing armor, cutting its size and acquiring high technology like precision weapons, drones and anti-missile defenses that will help deter Iran.

Iran presents a global problem "already recognized by the United States and Europe, which is within missile range,'' Mr. Schueftan said. "So we feel less lonely vis-à-vis Iran than we did with Iraq in the 80's.''

But, he said, he worries about what Iran could do with nuclear weapons, and their impact on the region.

A nuclear Iran would embolden Syria and Hezbollah to feel protected by an Iranian nuclear umbrella, he suggested. Egypt and other Arab countries would feel pressure to develop nuclear weapons, and other radical regimes could come into being. Egypt is under pressure from Islamic radicals. A change there, he said, "would change the region completely.''

Mr. Baram also makes the point that Iran's regime is less secure internally and more unpredictable than the Soviet regime that the United States faced in the cold war. "In Iran, I can imagine some commander, acting out of ideology, like some Dr. Strangelove, shooting off a nuclear bomb against Israel,'' he said.

There would be deterrence of a kind between Iran and Israel, he conceded, based on the old theory of mutually assured destruction, or MAD. "But then everything hangs on MAD, and MAD in an area that is mad enough is a big problem,'' he said. "And an existential one.''