Why Israel supports watered-down Iran nuclear sanctions

"Israel, even though it would not admit to it publicly, is warily watching what looks like the Obama administration's failings in the face of Iranian maneuvers,'' wrote columnists Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel in the liberal Haaretz newspaper. "The United States may still succeed in its attempts to impose international sanctions, but those sanctions seem unlikely to derail the mullahs from their efforts, with the probability of an American military strike seeming even slimmer.''

Even if Iran doesn't make use of a nuclear weapon, Israel is concerned that a nuclear Iran would destabilize the Middle East by spurring an arms race and by providing an "umbrella'' for non-state groups like Hezbollah and Hamas to launch missile attacks from Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. Israel, the thinking goes, would be more reluctant to retaliate against aggression from the two militant groups if it knew a nuclear Iran was backing them.

Herzliya group simulates Iran nuclear dynamic

At a simulation hosted this week at the Herzilya Interdisciplinary Center, participants reacted to the possibility that Iran would arm Hezbollah with components for a crude nuclear bomb (a scenario that Javedanfar, who played Iran in the simulation, criticized as unrealistic and "apocalyptic''). The simulation ended with the US seeking international military intervention in Lebanon while persuading Israel to hold its fire.

The simulation disproved the theory that a nuclear Iran would prompt a mutual deterrence with Israel in the Middle East similar to the US-Soviet standoff during the cold war, argues Gerald Steinberg, a political science professor at Bar Ilan University. "It shows how much more unstable and governable the Middle East would be.''

While he called the Brazil-Turkey-Iran agreement "political theater'' that will fail to gain traction, Mr. Steinberg expressed concern that, despite the sanctions, US deterrence will fail because it isn't effectively communicating to Iran the costs of becoming a nuclear power. That could increase concern in Israel that it must grapple with Iran on its own, he said.

"There's no favorable environment for Israel. The situation hasn't changed in four years,'' he said. "The Bush administration failed to take action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and the Obama administration hasn't made any progress.''

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