Mick Hartley

After Iran's rocket attack on Israel a couple of weeks back, a “lethal, precise, and surprising” response was promised by Israel's defence minister. But so far…nothing. The general assumption is that this is due to US concerns – in particular, warnings that Iran's nuclear installations or oil production facilities must on no account be targeted. Still, America has sent over batteries of its THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) interceptors, with US crews, as a (welcome) gesture of support. So – what's going on?

Historian Benny Morris, writing in Quillette, suggests that this is all part of a political dance between Biden and Netanyahu while the US president has his eyes very much on the upcoming election. If Israel launches a serious attack on Iran before the election, senior Democrats worry that this will harm their election chances, drawing the US into a war they don't want. After the election though, it may be a different story….

Hence, if Israel launches its retaliatory operation against Iran before the US elections, Israel must take American sensibilities into account. Israel may adopt a two-step strategy: hit some non-oil and non-nuclear Iranian sites in the coming days and, after Iran retaliates as it has promised it would, hit the oil and nuclear sites after 5 November. After that date, the US will have a new president-elect, and the fear that Israel’s actions could hurt Kamala Harris’s chances of being elected will no longer pertain. Indeed, both Israel and Biden might view the two and a half months after 5 November [before the inauguration of the new president] as a golden window of opportunity in which to destroy the Iranian nuclear project at last—something that Israel appears to believe it is incapable of doing without major American assistance.

In other words, it is possible that while Israel has been putting up a show of delaying the retaliation against Iran for immediate, pragmatic reasons, in fact it is simply waiting until after 5 November, at which point it can go after whichever targets it believes are crucial to victory and to saving the country from eventual nuclear destruction by Iran, without fear of arousing Biden’s anger. Iran is said to be only a year or two away from producing nuclear bombs and has already accumulated large amounts of enriched uranium needed for nuclear weaponry. The thinking among some Israelis is that following 5 November, Biden  may be more amenable to joining in an Israeli assault on Iran’s critical facilities and nuclear installations or at least might condone such an attack.

An optimistic view, perhaps? We'll see.