Do Israel-US Air Drills Signal Attack On Iran?
Israel and the United States have conducted air exercises in southern Israel in what an observer said, “could be signal to Iran in the ongoing nuclear standoff.”
Israel and the United States have conducted air exercises in southern Israel in what an observer said, “could be signal to Iran in the ongoing nuclear standoff.”
Joint drills of Israeli F-35 jets and six US F-15 jets were based out of the Nevatim air base, where Israeli squadron commanders briefed Jerusalem Post military correspondent Jonah Jeremy Bob on training “for hitting targets in ‘deep’ enemy territory.” Bob wrote that the terminology was “often a euphemism for Iran and other countries who do not have immediate borders with Israel” and therefore should be seen a “signal to Iran.”
The return to power of Benjamin Netanyahu, heading a right-wing and pro-Jewish settler coalition, has fed speculation of an Israeli military attack on Iran. While outgoing prime minister Yair Lapid left office claiming Israel was better capable of striking Iran than ever, outgoing defense minister Benny Gantz told graduating air-force personnel late December they should be ready within “two to three years.”
Implying greater urgency, the Jerusalem Post’s report quoted a commander involved in Wednesday’s air drills that Israel’s three squadrons of US-supplied F-35s, even with some planes grounded for technical reasons, were “plenty, along with other Israeli fighter aircraft, to accomplish any mission that would need to be assigned.”
Netanyahu, whose warnings of an imminent Iranian nuclear bomb go back to the 1990s, is keen to stymie efforts by world powers to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). The Likud leader strongly backed President Donald Trump pulling the US from the JCPOA and imposing ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions impeding Iran’s access to international markets.
But Netanyahu and his ministers now stress their closeness to the administration of President Joe Biden, which took office pledged to restoring the JCPOA but has been unable to agree terms with Tehran. Netanyahu’s call this week to win ‘global opinion’ against Iran suggests he thinks he can shift Biden in the direction he wants.
According to Israel Hayom, the Israeli newspaper owned by the Adelson family, Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, told Eli Cohen, Israel’s foreign minister, by phone January 2 that the JCPOA was finished. But the State Department read-out of the call referred only generally to a “threat from Iran,” did not mention the JCPOA, and stated Blinken had “emphasized the continued US commitment to a two-state solution [for Israel-Palestine] and opposition to policies that endanger its viability.”
US concerns over the likelihood of the Netanyahu government speeding up Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank are not just that demographic changes under what rule human rights groups have called ‘apartheid,’ doom the ‘two-state solution’ that Washington still formally backs. The recent World Cup in Qatar highlighted popular Arab support for Palestinian rights.
Netanyahu has also said he wants to extend Israel’s Trump-brokered ‘normalization’ agreements with some Arab states, stressing an Iranian threat. But even the United Arab Emirates, which signed a ‘normalization’ agreement with Israel 2020 and has perhaps little to fear from public opinion, stressed at the time its support for a Palestinian state.
‘Keep your friends closer’
There is also nuance in the US-Israel military relationship. Washington’s 2021 shift of Israel from its European Command (EUCOM0) to CENTCOM, its Middle Eastern command, has been followed by talk from leading US officials of closer military cooperation.
But some analysts pointed out this works in two ways, and may help the US rein Israel in. Newsweek magazine in December quoted a senior US intelligence official that Israel “was coming out of the closet, allowed now to openly associate with the [US] military while at the same time being denied access to another closet.” One third of Hebrew linguists in the US government “work in intelligence collection and analysis specifically related to spying on Israel,” including its nuclear arsenal, Newsweek reported.
“The more that Israel is a credible military opponent of Iran, the very reason for this shake-up, the more that they are also suspect for the very capabilities that we are helping to create and improve,” the official told Newsweek. “This is a case of ‘Keep your enemies close and your friends closer.’”
In a tweet on Tuesday, the foreign ministry claimed Iran continues “to play a decisive role” in the region and the United States’ “footprint in West Asia continues to diminish”.
The tweet was published on the eve of the third anniversary of Soleimani’s killing by the United States.
On January 3, 2020, the US military, on the order of President Donald Trump, killed Soleimani in a drone strike near Baghdad International Airport, saying that he had been "actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region."
In a Monday statement, the Iranian regime also claimed that Washington conducted the killing of Soleimani with "false claims and pretexts, including under the guise of counter-terrorism" and in "naked violation of the tenets and principles of international law."
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on Sunday that nearly 60 US officials have been blacklisted by Tehran for their involvement in the assassination of Soleimani.
Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei have time and again vowed revenge for the killing of Soleimani.
Raisi in a speech on Tuesday addressed the US saying, “We have not forgotten martyr Soleimani’s blood and will never forget. They [Americans] should know that revenge for Soleimani is certain and his killers…will not have any peaceful sleep.”
At the same time, many Iranian regime opponents and activists on social media celebrated Soleimani’s killing anniversary, calling it a “Cutlet Day”, after a popular Iranian dish made of ground beef and potatoes. Soleimani’s body was so mutilated in the attack that his detractors came up with the comparison to the meat and potato patties.
Some activists said that if Soleimani was alive he would have ordered a more brutal response to the current protests and would have had no reservations about killing thousands of people. They accused him of playing such a role in past protests and engineering Iran’s bloody military intervention in Syria against anti-Assad rebels, when hundreds of thousands of people were killed, injured and left homeless.
Protesters in Iran burned many banners erected in Soleimani’s honor this week and set fire to several of his statues.
A member of Iranian Revolutionary Guard was charged in August with planning to assassinate John Bolton, the former United States National Security Advisor in what the US Justice Department called “retaliation for the death of Iran’s Islamic Qasem Soleimani”.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was also told by the Justice Department that he was a second target of the plot.
Soleimani, who was Iran’s top military and intelligence operator outside its borders, was in charge of supporting and organizing militant proxy forces, including the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite militia groups that have repeatedly attacked US forces.
Cohen said Monday that the “international community must stop burying its head in the sand when it comes to Iran,” and that Israel should “stop Iran from attaining nuclear capabilities in every way.”
Cohen said the new government led by Benjamin Netanyahu aimed to “deepen ties with European countries and to bolster them compared to past years.” He brushed off any human rights concerns in Europe, attacking Friday’s United Nations General Assembly resolution that sought an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN’s highest court, on Israeli occupation of Palestinian land. Cohen also dismissed the prospect of Israel facing war crimes suits at the International Criminal Court, which Israel and the US do not recognize. Washington voted against the resolution, which passed 87-26.
Some of the Israeli press has made much of the personal relationship between Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden. Last July, when Biden arrived for his trip to Israel, he told Netanyahu, then in opposition, “You know that I love you.”
While the latest Israeli military intelligence report favors efforts to reach an international agreement over Tehran’s nuclear program, Netanyahu has long rejected such a course, and strongly supported former US president Donald Trump withdrawing from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). While Biden came into office committed to restoring the JCPOA, any tensions over this with Netanyahu are likely to soften as Biden officials place no ‘focus’ on JCPOA talks and extend sanctions on Iran.
Netanyahu has also said he wants to extend Israel’s Trump-brokered ‘normalization’ agreements with some Arab states, stressing an Iranian threat. But he is unlikely to convince Saudi Arabia since his government now includes ultra-Zionists committed to speeding up Jewish settlement in occupied Palestinian territory. Riyadh voted Friday in favor of the UN resolution referring Israel to the ICJ.
‘Significant contribution to regional stability’
Cohen said Monday he would meet in March in Morocco with counterparts from the ‘normalized’ states – Morocco, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan. This would, he said, develop “a significant contribution to security (and) regional stability.” The Times of Israel reported Tuesday that Netanyahu planned to visit the UAE officially for the first time, possibly next week.
After European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell highlighted in December dim prospects for the JCPOA, Ali Bagheri Kani, a deputy Iranian foreign minister and Tehran’s lead nuclear negotiator, said Tuesday Tehran would “continue serious and effective cooperation” with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
One challenge in JCPOA talks has been Tehran’s demand that the IAEA close an enquiry into uranium traces found at ‘non-nuclear’ sites, an enquiry Iran says followed accusations made by Netanyahu in 2018 but which the agency says concern Tehran’s ‘safeguards’ obligations under Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
‘The ball in the Western court’
The US and western European states successfully moved resolutions in June and November at the IAEA governors’ board censuring Iran over its approach to the agency, but Russia and China argued this is counterproductive given the main responsibility for JCPOA restoration lies with the US as the party that abandoned it. Russia’s IAEA ambassador Mikhail Ulyanov tweeted Tuesday that “the ball” was in “the Western court.”
Bagheri Kani offered his views on the JCPOA at a ceremony marking the third death anniversary of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, killed in Baghdad along with nine others January 3, 2020, by a US drone strike. Bagheri Kani stressed Soleimani’s success in “building power by relaying on the capacities in the region” so making “terrorism fail” – referring to the commander’s role mobilizing Iraqi forces against the Islamic State group (Isis, or Daesh).
Bagheri Kani repeated Tehran’s previous threats that the foreign ministry and judiciary were continuing, along with Iraq, to follow routes under international law against “the agents of the assassination” of Soleimani, whose death the UN special rapporteur called ‘unlawful killing.’ The deputy foreign minister gave no details.