With the Vienna talks on Iran’s nuclear program now underway but headed towards an uncertain outcome, veteran Israeli strategic affairs writer Yossi Melman argues in a lengthy analysis in Ha’aretz that Israel really has no options respecting Iran except for one: It must seek an agreement with Washington to extend the U.S. nuclear umbrella to Israel. This may seem nonsensical, given that Israel has its own nuclear arsenal—though it has never confirmed having it. “The deployment of a nuclear umbrella is the ultimate guarantee of deterrence in the face of Iran’s nuclear program and, if Tehran succeeds in assembling a nuclear weapon, the possibility that Iran will threaten Israel in order to extract concessions from it,” Melman argues.
Israeli declarations to attack Iran’s nuclear program are empty threats, he says, because Israel doesn’t have the military capacity—even with the F-35 and the advanced air-to-surface missiles it can carry—to wage the kind of long-term campaign that would be required to assure [sic] the final destruction of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Furthermore, an unprovoked attack would make Israel an international pariah by providing Iran with internationally justifiable responses, including deciding that, for its own self defense, it must rapidly build a nuclear arsenal “which it has refrained from doing so far.”
