Secretary of State Antony Blinken is spending part of this week in the Middle East, where he’s scheduled to meet with Israeli, Palestinian and Egyptian officials to reduce the roiling violence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. But you can bet that Blinken will also take this opportunity to refocus attention on another issue that is simmering to a near boiling point: Iran and its ongoing nuclear program.
By its own actions, Israel has forced the subject on the agenda. Last weekend, three drones struck an Iranian Ministry of Defense facility in the city of Isfahan that was reportedly connected to Tehran’s missile program. While nobody claimed credit for the strike, a U.S. official stated that Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency was likely responsible. While Israeli officials are notoriously tight-lipped for operational security reasons, it certainly wouldn’t be surprising if the Israelis planned and executed the attack. Israel, after all, has the motive and operational acumen to conduct an operation like this, given its heightened concern over Tehran’s weapons programs.
Israel also has a successful history of sabotaging Iranian military programs. The Israeli government has been especially forceful over the last several years, often using its impressive network of operatives and agents to blow up facilities crucial to Iran’s military and take out individuals crucial to staffing it.
In November 2020, a top Iranian nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was ambushed on a desert road and killed. (The operation was purportedly conducted in part by Iranian nationals recruited by Mossad.) Five months later, Iran’s main uranium enrichment facility in Natanz suffered a major blackout, causing its centrifuges to stop spinning.
In June 2021, a small drone targeted one of Tehran’s centrifuge assembly plants in Karaj. And in February 2022, a swarm of Israeli drones, purportedly launched from northern Iraq, hit an Iranian drone factory in Kermanshah; sources at the time said that dozens of Iranian drones were destroyed in the attack.
The Iranian security services, which pride themselves on snuffing out traitors and protecting the regime’s most valuable strategic assets, have been unable to stop these operations. The fact that the Mossad has successfully targeted individuals and facilities of such importance to the Iranian government not only demonstrates the impressive capabilities of the Israeli intelligence community — it also embarrasses Iran at home and abroad, making it look like a clueless, fourth-rate power unable to protect its own.
Tactically, these operations have delayed Tehran’s military programs to some extent. Yet delaying isn’t the same thing as ending. In that respect, the sabotage has likely had the counterproductive effect of further motivating the Iranian government to press on. The Iranians have rebuilt and hardened their facilities. This is particularly the case with Iran’s nuclear program, which is churning out more uranium today than it ever has. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran is now in possession of enough fissile material that, if further enriched, could produce “several nuclear weapons.”
Israel and Iran are therefore in the middle of an escalatory cycle that isn’t expected to end anytime soon. Israel, worried about Iranian weaponization, tries to undermine as much of Tehran’s program as it can. Iran, in turn, responds by reinvesting and recommitting to that very same program, which in turn convinces Israel to organize and execute even more daring operations on Iranian territory. It doesn’t take a foreign policy genius to speculate where this cycle may be heading.
For the United States, the Israel-Iran dynamic makes an already complex situation even more so. The Biden administration’s Iran policy resembles a trapeze artist walking the thinnest of wires. On the one hand, it wants to curtail Iran’s nuclear program and, if possible, eliminate it altogether. But on the other, it wants to avoid plunging tens of thousands of U.S. troops into what would be America’s fourth war in the Middle East in 20 years.
Up until September, the White House was trying to accomplish both objectives through negotiations with Tehran. The aim: bring the Iranians back into compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal the Trump administration callously withdrew from.
But those negotiations have seen no movement whatsoever. Robert Malley, President Joe Biden’s lead negotiator, has all but declared the negotiating process dead for the time being. Biden himself actually used the word “dead” in November. The U.S. and Iran are refusing to mollify the other, with both believing they have already demonstrated the necessary compromise and flexibility.
The Iranians continue to pressure Washington and its European allies to compel the IAEA to dismiss its investigation into past nuclear activities as a condition for putting its supreme leader’s signature on the dotted line. Washington and the Europeans, however, are strongly opposed to short-circuiting an entirely legitimate inquiry and are in turn pressuring the Iranians to answer the agency’s questions fully and honestly.
On Iran, the U.S. has four options: military action, covert operations, sanctions and continued diplomacy. The first would destroy much of the program but lead to a whole host of tragic consequences in the region, including Iranian military retaliation and the prospect of war. The second is akin to “mowing the grass” every few months. The third, sanctions, can constrict the Iranian economy but is highly unlikely to convince the clerics to quit their nuclear enterprise.
Diplomacy is by far the best option on the table, yet diplomacy works only if one or both sides are willing to sacrifice maximalism for the sake of “good enough.”
Rarely are easy solutions available in the world of international statecraft. The decadeslong drama over Iran’s nuclear work is no exception to the rule.
Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
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