Introductory Note: This op-ed, published today in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, was written by Israel’s former Prime Minister and Minister of Defense and once the most decorated soldier in Israel’s history. It is both a pragmatic and visionary response to the extremist, self-destructive and dangerous rhetoric of right-wing messianic members in the current Israeli government. I urge you to read his analysis carefully. Haaretz is a subscription newspaper. I have urged my readers to subscribe for years as it is among the most important publications produced for thinking people in Israel itself and in the English speaking world.

Op-ed – Ehud Barak – Former Israeli Prime Minister – July 14, 2024 – Haaretz

“We have reached nine months of war. Despite the sacrifice and courage our soldiers and commanders display every day, and despite the harsh blows felt by Hamas and Hezbollah, still none of the war’s goals have been met. What’s more, the strategic paralysis exhibited by Israel’s leadership risks a comprehensive and prolonged regional conflict, while the deepening rift with the United States expands, and the country is being plunged into international isolation. This must not be allowed to happen.

This complex situation has generated a growing discourse in recent weeks, including in this newspaper and on television channels, centering on expectations or demands that Israel threaten to use its alleged nuclear capabilities as a means of emerging victorious from this crisis. There are those who even propose to consider actually making use of this ability.

This discourse, to the best of my understanding, is unnecessary, unhelpful and may even be harmful. It reflects feelings of frustration and helplessness, which are not desirable counsels to strategy and statesmanship. What is required here is common sense, not fantasies.

The failure to achieve the war’s goals does not stem from Israel’s use of conventional weapons alone, rather, it was the reluctance to determine on October 8 what we want the “day after” the war to look like. This reluctance derives from the prime minister’s considerations regarding his political survival and the extortion by extremists in his coalition against him. It has led to treading water and wasting military achievements that were reached at the cost of blood.

The solution to the impasse is to first remove the obstruction that caused it, that is, to replace the head and remove reckless figures from the government – and by not resorting to measures that many of those promoting them don’t even understand their implications.

Second, say “yes, but!” to the U.S. initiative to create an “axis of moderation” under its leadership, centering around Israel, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and perhaps Saudi Arabia as well, that will ready itself against the “axis of resistance”: Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and others, led by Russia. We saw the axis of moderation’s potential on the “night of the missiles” launched from Iran in April. That’s the appropriate strategic horizon for Israel.

In the words of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel is simultaneously an all-powerful nation saving the world from a new Islamo-Nazi threat, and a whining victim abandoned to its fate of being threatened with annihilation by “Amalekites” from without and “traitors” from within. This bipolar perspective is disrupting his judgment of reality and dragging many confused Israelis into it.

Readers of newspapers in Israel can get the impression that, on the one hand, we can destroy and annihilate all our enemies one after the other at the slightest provocation, swiftly and at a tolerable price. On the other hand, the whole world is against us, and we can only rely on the Almighty and on Dimona, the site of an Israeli nuclear reactor.

That is not the case. Even today, in July 2024, Israel is the strongest state – militarily and strategically – in the region. The “axis of moderation” the United States is proposing is the most effective deterrent against an overall regional war at any foreseeable future. This axis is also the correct framework to ensure victory, if such war were to break out.

The threat of the “Dimona option” and the discourse around it doesn’t convey determination or power. They radiate insecurity, weakness and confusion, imbalance and a pinch of panic. The reason is that Iran knows our strategic capabilities far better than the Israeli public. The ayatollahs in Tehran are extreme fanatics, but they are also calculated chess players and certainly not stupid.

Similar to North Korea’s leadership – who has no intention of dropping a bomb on South Korea or Japan, understanding such actions would lead North Korea back to the Stone Age – Iran’s nuclear program has two goals. The first and foremost one is to ensure the regime’s survival. The second is to build – under the umbrella of the “strategic balance” that would be created by a military nuclear capability – a reliable conventional threat. The late and cursed Qassem Soleimani, called it a “ring of fire” which would exhaust Israel in a prolonged war of attrition until it weakens and collapses.

This “ring of fire” is based on proxies like Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and others. They are equipped with drones, rockets and missiles, some of them highly accurate, and have terror units trained with precise weapons, like the Kornet anti-tank missile, operating within the population and prepared to conduct years of guerrilla warfare, even under occupation.

The U.S.-led “axis of moderation” is the right answer to the current situation, where, despite the rapid progress, Iran is still hesitating to develop military nuclear capabilities. If it decides to do so, it will still take it another year or so to get to a crude nuclear weapon and a decade to build an initial arsenal. But Iran is already a nuclear threshold state, meaning Israel and the United States have no surgical way to stop it from obtaining nuclear weapons.

This requires an alignment between Israel, the U.S. and regional allies. Ali Khamenei and the ayatollahs know that Israel hasn’t hesitated to attack states in the region to thwart their production of nuclear weapons. But they also know that for the past 50 years, Israel has been making efforts and huge investments to ensure an adequate response to a situation in which a state in the region obtains nuclear weapons. Despite the attempts to stop it, Israel is not without means.

Strategic capabilities are at their best when they remain a threat. During the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, this approach even kept at bay wide conventional confrontations. For reasons familiar to anyone who dealt with the matter, such abilities are not suitable means for preventive attacks. There’s no logic in considering them in a situation that is not a real, immediate, irrevocable existential threat, which cannot be thwarted in any other way.

This is definitely not our situation. Certainly not in view of the existing alternatives – joining the “axis of moderation” and replacing the failed Israeli leadership. These two steps will provide a quick, simple and much cheaper solution than resorting to the “Dimona option.”

The primary global danger posed by Iran’s nuclearization is that it will set off a chain reaction of nuclearization in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey, thereby bringing down the entire regime of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT. By its very creation, the U.S.-led axis can answer this challenge as well, in that it provides a “nuclear umbrella” to Saudi Arabia and Egypt. (Turkey already has such an umbrella through its membership in NATO.)

It is no coincidence that nuclear weapons have not been used in 80 years. Israel’s famous declaration that it will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the region remains the correct policy.

There is also no reason to remove Israel’s nuclear ambiguity since, as noted, there is nothing the Iranians do not know. Lifting the ambiguity would only be seen as a gimmick meant to assuage the general despondency in Israel. Such a move, and also insinuations a la “Remember Dimona,” are liable to give Iran the incentive and the legitimacy to accelerate the race toward nuclear weapons, on the grounds that it is threatened by Israel’s “nuclear capability,” which, unlike Iran, has not even signed the NPT.

Israel is indeed in a complex situation requiring courage, discipline, sober, reality-based strategic thinking, making difficult decisions and determination in carrying them out. The current leadership is equipped with almost none of these. Alien considerations are leading it – and us with it – toward the abyss.

“Dimona talk” in the current context is unnecessary and harmful, and only distracts us from what is truly needed: to immediately replace the sinkers of the Titanic and join the axis of moderation with the United States. Such talk contributes no understanding, common sense or a relevant course of action for the challenge we face. We must end it immediately.”