In March of this year, the outgoing Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, held a strategic discussion on the Iranian issue.
On the topic: the possibility that the US and Iran will return to the nuclear agreement, and the question of whether Israel should support it or oppose it.
Two conflicting positions were presented at the hearing.
One, of the IDF Intelligence Division, in which the head of the Armed Forces, Major General Aharon Haliva, and the head of the research division, Brigadier General Amit Saar, sided. His head, Dedi Barnea, argued that Israel should in no way be a partner, even passively, in the renewed agreement.
A source familiar with the details of the hearing said this week that both sides "gave a show. The policy will not change: Israel will continue to strongly oppose a return to the agreement.
The one who was less unequivocal was the then Foreign Minister and the current Prime Minister, Yair Lapid.
Lapid entered the hearing when he was at the Mossad position, and when he left, he spoke differently, the source said.
But things seen from the Foreign Minister's office look different from the Prime Minister's Office: now the responsibility for formulating Israeli policy rests with Lapid, and this is also the reason why disagreements in the defense establishment watched this week - to try and influence him to change or leave the existing policy. The professional.
Middle Eastern Poker
The main reason for the IMF (and also for the Iranian wing) to support a return to the agreement concerns enriched uranium. In the years since the US withdrew from the agreement, in May 2018, Iran has accumulated a significant amount of enriched uranium, which is enough to bomb up to two.
Under the agreement, the Iranians were banned from enriching uranium to a level above 3.67 percent.
As long as the agreement was in force they kept it devoutly, but from the moment the Americans withdrew from it - they gradually raised the level of enrichment.
First to 20 percent, and now to 60 percent, from which the distance to a 90 percent military level enrichment required for a nuclear warhead is very short.
Quite a few experts believe that Iran is already a nuclear threshold for everything.
Officially, this is not yet the case, and the American claim - supported by the Armed Forces - is that the removal of uranium accumulated from Iran will significantly distance it from the bombing. Israel will also be able to leverage its support for the agreement, demanding from the United States a substantial security compensation package, which will include components - including additional aircraft and advanced armaments - that will allow it to act if it is required to stop Iran just before the bombing.
The counter-position, led by the institution, is that enriched uranium is only one component of the problem.
Under the agreement, Iran will receive billions of dollars frozen under the sanctions, and will use them to strengthen its economy and export the Shiite revolution and terrorist attacks across the region and the world.
It will also be able to increase its oil production 5-4 times, and at current prices it will accumulate a lot of capital, which will further increase its power and its bad influence.
The Mossad believes that Iran has accumulated enough knowledge, resources and capacity to re-accumulate in a short time the uranium it will deliver under the agreement.
Since the agreement does not oblige it to stop the research and development of new centrifuges, it will reach an even stronger, more sophisticated and dangerous expiration date.
Worse, they argue, if Israel supports the agreement, it will bind itself to it, and will not be able to operate freely in Iran in case this is required.
This is indeed a classic argument in which both sides have weighty arguments, and unfortunately are not so relevant.
With all due respect to the internal Israeli preoccupation with the issue, which is important in itself, the decisions will not be made here - but in Washington.
And the Americans have already made it clear that they want an agreement, and will probably do quite a bit to reach it.
The Iranians, who seemingly have their hands on the bottom, understand this well, and play to the end the bad hand they got in this Middle Eastern poker.
This is amazing and very worrying.
The US could (and should have) pushed Iran into a corner. Iran's economy is collapsing, inflation and unemployment are soaring, every day another sector is on strike (this week it was the teachers) and the regime in Tehran has no answers. Eliminate Israelis in Istanbul, which was thwarted by the joint activities of the Mossad and its Turkish counterpart.
But Washington wants to put this matter behind it.
This passive policy worries not only Israel, but also its partners in the region, led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Biden is likely to hear things very clearly on his upcoming visit, but it is doubtful he will be affected;
Israel is convinced that sooner or later, the agreement will be re-signed.
Once that happens, the Americans will not deal with Iran anymore, and neither will the Europeans, Russians and Chinese.
The intensification, terrorism and nuclear fears will remain the exclusive domain of Israel and the countries of the region.
All of these will intensify of course as the expiration date of the agreement approaches (partially at the end of 2025, and fully at the end of the decade), with Iran claiming that it has fulfilled its part in full and demanding that the world allow it to continue on its path, without restrictions.
Two years from the destination
Iran is not yet close to a bomb.
In one part of the process - uranium enrichment - it did most of the work, but in the other part - of the weapons group - it is about two years away from the target.
This gives Israel time to prepare, but the dimension of time and the degree of pressure vary according to the agreement.
With an agreement, Israel has seven and a half years to prepare for the day after, and without it it may be required to act in a much shorter time if Iran decides to break the tools.
The IDF is now in a marathon of preparations for an attack. It is required to do magic, and complete within months what was supposed to take years. This is possible in terms of operational planning and training, it is a little less possible when it comes to equipping technology and weapons.
Israel had a good plan for an attack on Iran, which was refined and practiced to a minimum in the years leading up to the agreement.
When it was signed, it was set aside, and the IDF invested billions in other matters. But from the moment the United States withdrew from the agreement, then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had to order the IDF to abandon everything and prepare again for an attack.
Netanyahu apparently believed that Iran would collapse, or give in and agree to an improved agreement, or that the Americans would attack the nuclear facilities.
All this did not happen, and Israel was left with a dangerous gap in the attack.
The actions attributed to it in recent weeks - from assassinations to cyber attacks - have tactical weight, but the strategic leg is still lacking in sufficient strength.
The multiplicity of election campaigns in recent years has stuck the budget, and implicitly critical processes in the defense system.
In the past year, things have accelerated, and it is to be hoped that the current political chaos will be short: Tehran will not wait for decisions in Jerusalem.
Were we wrong?
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