In the Israel-Iran war, everyone is buying time

English original of article published in Italian this morning by La Stampa

Buying time. This is what all the countries involved in the confrontation over Iran’s nuclear weapons programme are trying to do. In Israel’s case it is buying time by bombing. America is buying time by not bombing. Iran is trying to buy time by talking, albeit at first with Europeans rather than America. France, Britain and Germany are trying to buy time by being willing to talk to Iran, as well as buying themselves some sort of potential role in the resolution of this conflict.

The question for all is what the time brought will really bring. The harsh truth is that no one involved in this conflict has a clear objective, beyond the simplest one of survival. The reason is that no one can predict the consequences of this conflict, let alone control them, nor can they predict the future of Iran’s nuclear programme.

It is paradoxical, perhaps, to say that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has been buying time by taking military action. Admittedly that is not the only thing he has been doing. As with his war against Iran’s proxies in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen, his decision to start the war directly against Iran has also been designed to weaken Israel’s most dangerous opponents by degrading their military strength and by showing how powerful Israel’s military is by comparison.

However, even that mixture of deterrence through strength and degradation of military capabilities is, ultimately, designed to buy time. Netanyahu and all potential future Israeli leaders will know that new versions of Hamas in Gaza and Hizbullah in Lebanon will eventually emerge. The martyrs and grievances that have been created will guarantee that this will happen, in one form or another. The Houthis in Yemen are different, as Yemen is further away and less dangerous to Israel as a base for attack, which is why Netanyahu has given them less attention.

The harder questions concern the main financier, supplier and trainer of those militias, Iran. By degrading the militias so thoroughly, Israel may hope that it will have tipped the balance of thinking inside Iran about the value of financing and supporting such groups in the future. The direct war on Iran, launched on June 13th, may further be expected to act as a discouragement, although it is doubtful whether Netanyahu really believes that such discouragement will end the story.

Equally, however, Netanyahu cannot really believe that Israel’s bombings will bring a permanent end to Iran’s nuclear aspirations. He may be betting that by proving Iran’s weakness he may bring about the fall of the theocratic regime that has been in place since 1979. But he will not be foolish enough to think that whatever governing system might replace the Mullahs would be guaranteed to abandon the pursuit of nuclear weapons. His true bet, therefore, is that his bombings might have bought five, or likelier ten, years during which Israel need not fear a nuclear attack.

The two week deadline set by Trump for his decision on whether to join Israel’s war is a more obvious way to buy time. It gives the US military more time to bring an aircraft carrier and associated forces into the Middle East. More important than that, it increases the chance that Trump might be able to avoid joining the war directly, which most analysts assume would mean sending a massive, bunker-buster bomb to attempt to destroy the presumed underground location of Iran’s main nuclear facilities.

In his first term of office, Trump showed that he is willing to order military attacks, but also that he is quite risk-averse. If his latest time-buying effort succeeds, it will do so because the Iranian government somehow agrees to abandon its nuclear programme and to accept international verification of that process. This feels unlikely, as it would represent a huge humiliation for Iran and a huge loss of sovereignty, and would be perilously hard to trust or verify, but it is not impossible that an indication along these lines might emerge.

The fact that Trump has chosen to keep that option open indicates that his military advisers may have told him that a bunker-busting strike on the deeply hidden Fordow nuclear facilities would not in fact be enough to do the job of bringing Iran’s nuclear programme to a permanent end. More, perhaps a lot more, would be needed and even then it would not be guaranteed to succeed.

The idea of US military intervention in another Middle East war is also unpopular among many of Trump’s core supporters, even if support for Israel is popular with another group of his supporters. But the main reason to delay joining could also be that, quite sensibly, he and his advisers are not convinced that American attacks would do the job.

This may be an optimistic interpretation. However, such a judgement by Trump would also be a realistic one. This is also why the beleaguered Iranian regime is buying time by agreeing to resume diplomacy. It may well be calculating that Trump is persuadable to suspend bombing for longer than two weeks if a diplomatic solution looks possible. And it may be thinking that a suspension would make the survival of the regime and the individuals within it likelier.

The difficulty, which is surely shared by the Iranians themselves, is to imagine what kind of diplomatic offer that Iran can make in order to rebuild its credibility sufficiently. Ultimately, the judges of that credibility will be Israel and America, but France, Britain and Germany are trying to offer themselves as the preliminary judges, especially as they were the main negotiators of the 2015 nuclear deal which Trump withdrew from in 2018.

Any offer, or in diplomatic terms any path to such an offer, will have to look as if it stands to impose stronger controls and stronger verification procedures for nuclear facilities than the previous pact.

Ultimately, no deal can be fully credible. Everyone involved will expect that Iran will retain the desire to become a nuclear state, and that it will retain the knowledge of how to become one, for knowledge cannot be destroyed by bombs. It is theoretically possible that a more liberal, democratic regime might emerge in this nation of 90 million people, one that would not want the nuclear option. But let us be realistic: the idea of such a regime is a dream, perhaps a fantasy, but sadly not a likelihood. Worse outcomes from a regime collapse are more likely. Buying time makes sense.