Major General Isaac Ben Israel played a key role in Israel’s attack on Iraq’s nuclear reactor back in the 1980s and later served as Israel’s chief of air force intelligence and is now chairman of Israel’s space agency. This week he joined a growing chorus emerging from the Israeli security establishment that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s obsessive opposition to the Iran nuclear deal has worsened Israel’s security.
“Netanyahu’s efforts to persuade the Trump administration to quit the nuclear agreement have turned out to be the worst strategic mistake in Israel’s history,” Ben Israel told journalist Zev Chafets in an interview published at Bloomberg. “We need to end the negativity and encourage the U.S. to conclude a deal that focuses on the main thing.”
Ben Israel dispelled the notion that a military strike would end Iran’s nuclear program and dissuade its leaders from building a nuclear weapon.
“[A]ll the technology needed to produce a bomb is already in Iranian hands,” he said. “The fact is, Israel can no longer destroy the Iranian nuclear project.” Ben Israel added that if Israel destroyed Iranian nuclear facilities, they would be able to rebuild them “within a year or two.”
The former Israeli general also criticized the idea, put forth by many JCPOA opponents, that talks with Iran should include a whole host of issues outside the nuclear file, like Tehran’s support for terrorism and missile development.
“It is [a] mistake to complicate things. We can deal with terrorism on our own,” he said.
Ben Israel said he has personally advised current Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett “to end Israel’s opposition to the American return to the JCPOA.”
Calls from the Israeli security establishment for the restoration of the Iran nuclear deal have ramped up in recent weeks as talks in Vienna have resumed and many experts are pessimistic about whether the United States with its international partners can reach an agreement with the Iranians.
Danny Cintrinowicz, who led the Iran branch of the Israeli Military Intelligence’s Research and Analysis Division from 2013 to 2016, recently called Netanyahu’s anti-Iran deal posture a “failure.” Former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon agrees with Ben Israel in that it was a “mistake” to withdraw from the JCPOA and and former Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot said the U.S.-Iran deal exit was “a net negative for Israel.”
Ben Armbruster is the Managing Editor of Responsible Statecraft. He has more than a decade of experience working at the intersection of politics, foreign policy, and media. Ben previously held senior editorial and management positions at Media Matters, ThinkProgress, ReThink Media, and Win Without War.
FILE PHOTO: Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu points to a red line he drew on the graphic of a bomb used to represent Iran's nuclear program as he addresses the 67th United Nations General Assembly at the U.N. Headquarters in New York, September 27, 2012. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/File Photo
Earlier today the Jewish Insider magazine ran a story saying that the White House tapped retired Lt. Col. Danny Davis for Deputy Director of National Intelligence, working under the newly confirmed DNI Tulsi Gabbard. It was a hit piece by a pro-Israel platform that primarily focused on Davis's critical views — published only in articles and on his popular podcast — on Gaza and Iran.
Within hours, he was informed there would be no job, Responsible Statecraft has confirmed. "Investigative journalist" Laura Loomer celebrated. We are sure neoconservative radio jock Mark Levin, who helped spread the Insider story to his 4.9 million followers on Wednesday, celebrated. We should not. President Trump should not.
Danny is a friend whose astute, informed military analysis has graced these pages over the last four years. I've had the pleasure of interviewing him countless times since 2009 when on active duty he sent a report to Congress and published an article excoriating the Afghanistan War generals— including the much vaunted Stanley McChrystal — for essentially lying to the American people.
In 2009 he had just returned from an inspection tour of the country and was pretty much shocked when what he saw there didn't line up with what the military was telling Congress and the mediahere. "I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but sustainable progress."
"Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level."
From his explosive Armed Forces Journal article, which is well worth reading today:
When it comes to deciding what matters are worth plunging our nation into war and which are not, our senior leaders owe it to the nation and to the uniformed members to be candid — graphically, if necessary — in telling them what’s at stake and how expensive potential success is likely to be. U.S. citizens and their elected representatives can decide if the risk to blood and treasure is worth it.
That is the very essence of civilian control of the military. The American people deserve better than what they’ve gotten from their senior uniformed leaders over the last number of years. Simply telling the truth would be a good start.
Today, more than 20 years later, everything he said about the war has been born out. The truth was out there and our military and civilian leadership tried to keep it from us — until they couldn't.
It may be obvious but that is exactly what Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and DNI Gabbard said they wanted to bring to the table — a refreshing, dramatic shift from the status quo, which had become sclerotic, secretive, and punishing of dissent. Gabbard herself is an Iraq War-era veteran who risked her career to tell uncomfortable truths about American foreign policy and war. Her very public statements about bad Washington policies and the special interests leading us unto unnecessary wars aligned well with Danny's important work over the last several years.
So it is not surprising that the most strident voices in the War Party, particularly pro-Israel hawks trying desperately to manage the remembered history of the 9/11 wars, had it in for him. He is an anathema to everything they have stood for over the last two decades: he is against the U.S. trying to impose its interests and values on the world via foreign regime change, he believes the military is overextended and needlessly placed in harm's way overseas, and he has criticized the military industrial complex for risking troop readiness and basic conventional warfighting capabilities by deferring to the war profiteers in the industry. He has also echoed George Washington's warning about entangling alliances in his own warnings about unconditional aid to Israel and Ukraine.
Just recently he told me that the entire current generation of generals and admirals need to be replaced so that the military can reform itself, which begins with promoting officers based on merit, not politics and risk aversion.
To me this is the kind of America First guy that the administration needed. He is a Christian conservative with a stern moral compass and had been hopeful for the new administration and its early foreign policy moves. He risked his reputation in 2009, losing out on a typical post-military career in some cushy sinecure mucking it up with other establishmentarians planning the next war, or worse, a board seat at Lockheed or Northrop Grumman. Instead, he has been toiling away at the truth. And this is how the system rewards him. Shame.
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Top image credit: https://www.youtube.com/@QuincyInst
A senior Democratic lawmaker on Wednesday said it was ‘a problem’ that many in his party have been trying to out-hawk Republicans on foreign policy and that Democrats need to be more aggressive in advocating for diplomacy approaches abroad, particularly with respect to China.
During a discussion hosted by the Quincy Institute — RS’s publisher — with House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash), QI executive vice president Trita Parsi wondered why — pointing to Vice President Kamala Harris campaigning for president with Liz Cheney and Sen. Elissa Slotkin’s (D-Mich.) recent embrace of Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy — the Democratic Party has shifted away from promoting diplomacy, opposing “stupid wars,” and celebrating multilateralism.
“There is no question that that is a problem,” Smith said, adding that he thinks Democrats often fear being criticized for promoting talking with adversaries as being weak and then feel they don’t get enough support from the left. “One of the beefs I have with the left side of the spectrum is they’re always banging on us for not doing one thing or another. … We do four things and it’s the fifth thing we didn’t do.”
Smith said that Democrats need to “much more aggressively embrace diplomacy” and that part of that should be a refocus on how the United States deals with China.
“Everyone wants to talk about what their plan is to beat China. Anytime anyone says that, you got to ask the question, ‘what is your plan to peacefully co-exist with China?’” he said. “We are completely ignoring even trying to figure out how to make that work and constantly focused on how to beat them.”
Smith acknowledged that China “does have expansionist ambitions” and that the U.S. has “to be able to have an adequate deterrence” to push back and that “we need to be able to compete economically.” But, he said, the U.S. needs to work with China on a whole host of shared interests, like global warming, health issues and energy needs.
“What’s your plan to get along with China?” he asked.
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Top photo credit: Volodymyr Zelensky (Shutterstock/Pararazza) and Vladimir Putin (Shutterstock/miss.cabul)
The Trump administration has so far played its cards in the Ukraine peace process with great skill. Pressure on Kyiv has led the Ukrainian government to abandon its impossible demands and join the U.S. in calling for an unconditional temporary ceasefire.
This call, together with the resumption of U.S. military and intelligence aid to Ukraine, is now putting great pressure on the Russian government to abandon its own impossible demands and seek a genuine and early compromise. A sign of the intensity of this pressure is the anguish it is causing to Russian hardliners, who are demanding that Putin firmly reject the proposal. We must hope that he will not listen to them.
That does not mean that Moscow either will or should simply agree at once to a ceasefire. It will not, because the Russian government has always insisted that certain things have to be firmly nailed down in advance. It should not, because unless key things are agreed and/or excluded, there will be a grave risk that the ceasefire will collapse and the war will resume. These issues will now be discussed in the next round of U.S.-Russia talks, and we must hope that they can be agreed upon with reasonable speed.
Among the things that Russia will have to abandon is Putin’s previous demand that in return for a ceasefire Ukraine withdraw from those parts of the four provinces that Russia claims to have annexed but Ukraine still holds. That is not going to happen, any more than Russia will withdraw from the territory it now holds. The ceasefire line will run where the battle line stops. However, it seems probable that before agreeing to a ceasefire Russia will do its utmost to drive the Ukrainian army from the sliver of Russian territory it holds in Kursk, and it may well achieve this in the coming days.
Something that should be agreed — at least in principle —- before a temporary ceasefire is the framework of a long term ceasefire. It is not clear from the latest U.S.-Ukraine talks if Kyiv has definitely given up its hope of a European peacekeeping force. It must do so; for the Russians regard this as NATO membership by another name, and if the Ukrainians and Europeans try to re-introduce this later, Russia will resume the war.
Any peacekeeping force must come from genuinely neutral countries under the authority of the United Nations; and this in turn could form the starting point for a new consultative mechanism on European security —- something that Russia has been seeking for the past 15 years at least.
Western suggestions for this have been pointless and unacceptable to Moscow, because they have involved four Western nations plus NATO and the EU “consulting” with Russia. For Moscow, this would be simply a new version of the failed NATO-Russia Council, in which Western countries line up to present Russia with previously agreed diktats.
A UN peacekeeping force for Ukraine by contrast could be under the aegis of a committee of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany and whichever leading member of the “Global South” (for example, India and/or Brazil) provides significant numbers of peacekeepers. Such a group would also put content in (so far empty) Western acceptance of the “multipolar world,” and Western recognition that other countries have legitimate interests in European stability, insofar as war in Europe can have severe effects on their own food and energy security.
Such a UN mechanism could in turn help initiate talks on mutual arms limitations. Russia will obviously have to give up its previous demand that Ukraine reduce its armed forces to levels where they could not defend Ukraine, but it can be expected to press hard for limits on certain categories of weapons, like long-range missiles. This will be far easier for Ukraine, the U.S., and EU to accept if it forms part of a wider process of arms limitation negotiations.
One promising element could be a return to the mutual abolition of intermediate missiles in Europe.
Obviously such a complicated issue cannot be negotiated before a ceasefire, but an announcement of the beginning of a new arms control process should be possible.
Then there is the issue of the approximately $300 billion in frozen Russian assets, mostly held by Europe. Moscow will certainly demand a guarantee that they be unfrozen. The EU for its part is under pressure to seize the assets and use them to fund Ukraine —something that would be both illegal and a serious obstacle to peace. Ideally, however, together with EU aid they could form part of a Ukraine reconstruction fund under the UN, with a significant proportion of the Russian money going to reconstruct the Russian-held areas of Ukraine. Russian officials have suggested that this solution could be agreed.
These are all highly complex issues. Nonetheless, given intelligence and goodwill on both sides, it should be possible to make real progress in the next round of talks, and open the way to a ceasefire in the reasonably near future. Russia has good reason to seek an agreement, because otherwise the future offers only on the one hand a grinding war of attrition for uncertain gains, and on the other, the collapse of a highly promising new relationship with Washington.
Ukraine too will have to compromise, and here, professed friends of Ukraine in the West also have a responsibility, which so far all too many have completely failed to meet. The Trump administration’s initiation of the Ukraine peace process has been met in much of the U.S. and Europe not with sensible analysis and advice but hysterical and hate-filled condemnation, including disgraceful accusations of “treason”, of “betraying Ukraine”, and of a “New Yalta Agreement.”
As the latest news clearly demonstrates, none of this is true. And if as Marco Rubio has said, the ball is now firmly in Russia’s court when it comes to peace proposals and a ceasefire, it is also true that Ukraine also still has the capacity to wreck peace talks by introducing or reintroducing conditions that Russia will automatically reject. Their “friends” should not encourage them to do so.
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