Even as Russia, Iran and the Europeans–even if with caveats–are trying to find a way to preserve the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Israel is preparing for war. Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) made this clear during a speech at the annual conference of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), yesterday. “Iran can decide that it wants to advance to a bomb, either covertly or in a provocative way. In light of this basic analysis, I have ordered the IDF to prepare a number of operational plans, in addition to the existing ones. We are studying these plans and we will develop them over the next year,” Kohavi said, reported the Times of Israel. He went on: “The government will of course be the one to decide if they should be used. But these plans must be on the table, in existence and trained for.” According to Kohavi, due to its improved centrifuges and growing stockpile of enriched uranium, Iran, were it to now “rush ahead,” could be “months, maybe even weeks” from a bomb.
Kohavi also conveyed to the Biden Administration, in no uncertain terms, the Israeli view that a U.S. return to the JCPOA would be a bad idea. “With the changing of the administration in the United States, the Iranians have said they want to return to the previous agreement. I want to state my position, the position that I give to all my colleagues when I meet them around the world: Returning to the 2015 nuclear agreement or even to an agreement that is similar but with a few improvements is a bad thing and it is not the right thing to do,” Kohavi said (if Iran is closer to a bomb now than it was before the U.S. left the agreement, how could returning to the agreement be worse than the situation that exists now? -ed.).
The Times of Israel reports that the consensus view among Israeli defense officials oppose a return to the exact terms of the 2015 nuclear agreement, under the belief that the leverage from recent sanctions would allow for a stronger deal to be negotiated (why do they think that the sanctions would provide “leverage” on Iran when Tehran has resisted them until now and increased its production of enriched uranium? -ed.). But Kohavi’s speech, the daily reported, marked the first time an improved version of the deal has also been described as wholly unacceptable from an Israeli security standpoint.
