Amid the Gaza Uproar, Trump Shot Down Netanyahu on Iran - Israel News - Haaretz.com
Amid the week's uproar over U.S. President Donald Trump's proposal to transfer Gaza's residents to other countries – which was endorsed by Benjamin Netanyahu and met with euphoria by Israel's far right – one crucial fact has been lost.
The Israeli prime minister suffered a severe blow from the administration in another arena: Iran.
Trump and his aides made it clear to Netanyahu during their meetings in Washington that the Americans do not intend, at least for now, to launch a military attack on Iran. Instead, the president issued an executive order imposing harsh sanctions on Iran. These were aimed particularly at crippling Tehran's oil exports, which serve as its primary source of revenue.
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In recent years, Iran's Revolutionary Guards has managed, without too much effort, to continue exporting oil – especially to China – despite the sanctions that were also in place during the previous administration of U.S. President Joe Biden. Some of the revenues from these exports was used to fund Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran's other proxies, including the Houthis in Yemen, Shi'ite militias in Iraq and its ally Eritrea, which sits on the Red Sea coast.
Iran managed to circumvent the sanctions regime by establishing a "shadow fleet" of hundreds of tankers that sail under foreign flags. These are known in the trade as "flags of convenience." The ships also quickly change their names and deceive insurance companies covering the ships, crews and cargo.
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gesturing as he speaks to members of Iran's air force in Tehran last week.Credit: AFP
The Biden administration did little to track these tankers, expose them or pressure the countries involved, either directly or indirectly. Instead, a U.S. nongovernmental organization, United Against Nuclear Iran – led by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the brother of former President George W. Bush – took on this mission. The group's members, including former U.S. intelligence and State Department officials, as well as ex-Mossad figures like Tamir Pardo and Zohar Palti, monitor the tankers and report their findings to the U.S. administration and the public.
One of the organization's key efforts was pressuring the Panamanian government to stop allowing Iranian straw companies to register there and use Panamanian flags, which is a common tactic used to bypass oil sanctions. Given the Trump administration's tougher stance on Iran, it is likely that curbing Iran's oil exports will now become a higher priority. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a former senator from Florida, recently visited Panama – not only to discuss Trump's demand for control over the canal, but also to raise concerns about Iran's flag-based sanctions evasion.
Readying the system
For over three decades, Israel's security establishment and successive governments have considered Iran to be the country's most dangerous enemy. Since the 1979 Iranian Revolution led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who became the Islamic Republic's first supreme leader, Iranian leaders have referred to Israel as the "Little Satan" alongside the U.S.' "Great Satan."
For at least two decades, Israel has waged a covert campaign against Iran's nuclear and missile programs through its intelligence agencies (the Mossad, Military Intelligence and also the air force). According to various foreign reports, this campaign has included strikes on nuclear sites, assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, sabotaging nuclear and missile facilities and shipments of equipment, and cyberwarfare targeting Iranian computer systems.
A cleric walking in front of a shopping center in northern Tehran last month.Credit: Vahid Salemi/AP
According to reports, Israel has also taken action against Revolutionary Guards commanders who orchestrated terror operations targeting Israeli and Jewish interests worldwide.
For its part, Iran has periodically responded with attempted attacks on Israeli diplomats, embassies and Jewish targets abroad, reflecting the ongoing shadow war between the two nations.
The fight against Iran on all fronts, including its nuclear program, funding of terrorism and terrorist activities, became the cornerstone of Netanyahu's worldview, his central strategic focus and, in many ways, his personal obsession.
Since his first return to power in 2009, he has crystallized his rhetoric, policies and directives around confronting Iran. One of his earliest moves in his second term was instructing his then-defense minister, Ehud Barak, to prepare the air force and intelligence agencies for a potential strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. To that end, in early 2010 Netanyahu and Barak summoned Mossad's then-chief Meir Dagan, then-IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi and then-Shin Bet security service Director Yuval Diskin to a dramatic meeting at Mossad headquarters in north Tel Aviv.
Netanyahu and Barak ordered them to "ready the system" – a term interpreted as meaning to prepare for imminent operational actions leading up to a strike. However, Dagan, Ashkenazi and Diskin responded that they would only comply if the directive was legal, which required approval from the government or at least the security cabinet. Realizing they lacked majority support, Netanyahu and Barak did not push the plan forward.
Copies of Iranian daily newspapers in Tehran following U.S. President Donald Trump's inauguration last month.Credit: Atta Kenare/AFP
Dagan in particular believed that a military strike should be a last resort, arguing that Israel should focus on diplomatic pressure, tightening economic sanctions and covert sabotage operations. Much of this intensified under his leadership and continued under his successor, Pardo.
Years later, former CIA and National Security Agency Director Gen. Michael Hayden estimated that Netanyahu and Barak's true goal was not for Israel to attack Iran, but rather to provoke actions that would force the United States to do so.
This strategy was one of the reasons then-President Barack Obama pursued secret negotiations with Iran, which led to the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.
At one point, Netanyahu ordered Israeli security officials to stop cooperating with the Americans on the nuclear negotiations – a move that frustrated Israeli defense leaders. According to Pardo and then-IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, if Israel had participated in shaping the deal, it could have influenced and improved it. Instead, Netanyahu actively fought against the agreement. He even delivered a controversial speech to the U.S. Congress behind Obama's back in 2015, attempting, unsuccessfully, to block its progress.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressing a joint session of the U.S. Congress in Washington a decade ago.Credit: Nicholas Kamm/AFP
When Trump was first elected in 2016, Netanyahu and then-Mossad chief Yossi Cohen worked to convince him to withdraw from the agreement. Their efforts succeeded, and in May 2018 Trump pulled the Americans out of the deal – even though all the other signatories remained committed to it and officially the deal remains in effect until this July.
Now that Trump is back in office, Netanyahu is hoping the Americans will launch a direct military strike on Iran – or at the very least, provide Israel with full operational support, including intelligence, early-warning stations and aerial coordination for an Israeli attack.
Netanyahu is particularly emboldened by Israel's airstrike on Iran last October, which reportedly destroyed most of Iran's air defense systems and hit a secret facility at the Parchin military base used for explosions testing (to simulate the "chain reaction" crucial for the assembly of a nuclear bomb).
Despite Iran's exposed nuclear facilities, Trump is not rushing to approve a military strike. Instead, he prefers the strategy of "maximum pressure" through economic sanctions, hoping these will force Iran's leaders to return to negotiations and force them to accept a tightened nuclear agreement.
Trump's key demands are that Iran must halt uranium enrichment on its soil and cease all secret weapons-related activities in its laboratories.
While Netanyahu continues to push for military action, Trump appears committed – at least for now – to pressuring Iran through economic and diplomatic means rather than war.