The speech of Lt. Gen. Aviv Kohavi, the chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, in which he harshly criticized the Biden Administration’s assertions that it is considering bringing the U.S. back into the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and announced that he had ordered the development of new war plans for striking Iran’s nuclear program, has caused an uproar in Israel. While there are variations among the critiques, there seems to be a consensus that what it shows, is that there’s no daylight between Kohavi and Netanyahu on Iran, including, if deemed necessary, on the matter of taking military action against Iran’s nuclear program. This is reported, in several locations, to be a contrast to earlier periods, including that of 2015, when the JCPOA was completed. IDF assessments at the time were that the JCPOA was better than no agreement at all.
Not everybody in Israel thinks that Kohavi should have gone public with such criticism of the US and with the IDF’s own intentions, though. “A nuclear Iran is a danger to the world, to the region and is a challenge to the security of Israel. Of course Israel must be prepared to defend itself in any way, but red lines are drawn in closed rooms,” Defense Minister Benny Gantz said yesterday, reports the Times of Israel. ToI notes that it’s unlikely that Kohavi would make such remarks without receiving approval from the Prime Minister’s Office, implying a further widening of the divide on Iran policy-making between Gantz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But other criticism of the speech targets Kohavi, not Netanyahu. Amos Gilad, a former head of Military Intelligence and former top Defense Ministry official, who criticized the Iran nuclear deal as “terrible,” said that Israel should nevertheless refrain from publicly criticizing the Biden administration, in order to ensure that it can make the deal as good as possible and get commitments from the US to offset the potential damage to Israel’s national security. “If you want to have a negotiation, with all due respect, the prime minister can have a quiet negotiation with the president of the United States. Why insult and excoriate? That’s not how you lead policy,” he said.
