Not just a gimmick: Netanyahu's drone stunt is a direct threat to Iran and Assad
Aside
from the contribution from the department of tactical props, Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the Munich Security Conference
also included two important statements. Netanyahu directly threatened Iran
if it continues in its aggression toward Israel. To this he added a
threat to the stability of Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria if he
continues to help Iran gain a foothold in his country. With all due
respect to the gimmick of showing conference participants part of the downed Iranian drone
and to his biting remarks directed at Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad
Javad Zarif, these two statements will certainly be noted and analyzed
in Tehran and Damascus.
More
than a year ago, just after U.S. President Donald Trump was elected,
Netanyahu began to slightly change his public tone toward Iran in a
series of speeches. Over the months that followed, he pledged that “those who threaten us with annihilation put themselves in peril”
and that Israel’s military might “must be able to threaten to destroy
those who threaten to destroy us.” When he met with Kazakhstan’s
President Nursultan Nazarbayev, he even asked him to convey a message to the Iranians:
“Israel isn't a rabbit, it's a tiger. ... The Iranians don't know who
they are dealing with, and Iran is putting itself in grave danger."
In
recent months, Netanyahu has changed the order of the threats that he
says come from Iran. He has not reduced his warnings against the Iranian
nuclear project and the disadvantages of the Vienna agreement (which he
also attacked in his Munich speech on Sunday), but he placed the danger
of Iranian involvement in Syria ahead of them. This new order appeared
for the first time in his “pickle” speech
at the opening of the Knesset winter session last October, and has
appeared in other speeches since then. Netanyahu has stressed the many
aspects of Iranian activity on Israel’s northern border: the impact on
the Assad regime, the deployment of Iranian militias and the aspiration
to build weapons factories, a naval port and an air base.
The
new element on Sunday is the threat to act directly against Iran: “We
will act if necessary not just against Iran's proxies but against Iran
itself,” said Netanyahu. Directly addressing Zarif, who was sitting in
the conference hall, he added: “Don’t test us.”
Not for the first time, Netanyahu sounded like he was corresponding with his partner-rivals in his coalition back home.
When
Education Minister Naftali Bennett spoke at the annual convention of
the Institute for National Security Studies in late January, he
presented what he called the “octopus head doctrine” and called on
Israel to specifically threaten Iran itself in response to the latter’s
actions in Syria and Lebanon. The remarks by Bennett and now by
Netanyahu cannot be dismissed as empty rhetoric. Major developments are
taking place on a number of fronts as they speak: the success of Assad’s camp,
supported by Iran and Russia, in the civil war in Syria; frequent
trading of threats by Riyadh and Tehran; the zigzagging of the Trump
administration, which in the meantime is not being translated into a
show of force on the ground vis-a-vis Iran or the Russians; the downing of an Iranian drone and an Israeli F-16 in a clash which saw the Israel Air Force attacking Iranian targets in Syria for the first time; and finally, tension on the border with the Gaza Strip on Saturday.
This
a sensitive period and through his statements, Netanyahu is ratcheting
up tensions with Syria. In another exceptional declaration in his Munich
speech, the prime minister said that Israel has not intervened in the
Syrian civil war so far “except for humanitarian assistance” (although
rebels have recently been quoted in the foreign press claiming they also
receive weapons and ammunition assistance). But according to Netanyahu,
if Assad is now inviting Iran into his country, he is changing the
Israeli position and “challenging his own position.”
Zarif, as expected, ridiculed Netanyahu’s speech
and even taunted him about the police investigation for alleged
bribery. But over time, the Iranians will also have to see whether
Netanyahu might be returning to a policy of walking a fine line
regarding Iran. Every summer between 2009 and 2012, Netanyahu
intentionally turned up the heat, intensively discussing the possibility
of an Israeli military attack on Iran’s nuclear sites. Those threats
were never carried out – and the Iranians probably didn’t really take
them seriously – but in so doing, Netanyahu launched a process that
subsequently imposed heavy international sanctions on Iran’s economy,
causing Tehran had to go back to the negotiating table and eventually
accept the Vienna agreement. This time, too, the question is not just
what people in Iran and Syrian will think about the threats, but how the
Israeli warnings will be seen in other countries involved in the
region.
On
the margins, one should ask whether the audience in Munich paid
attention to Netanyahu’s drone gimmick or whether it was intended for
sympathetic ears back home. The conference attendees are familiar enough
with the Middle East to know that not only is Israel considered a
leading world power in drone development and use, but that according to
foreign reports, Israeli drones have been flying in neighboring
countries for years. This policy is fully justified in light of the
security risks, but Netanyahu’s playing the victim with regard to the
Iranian drone seems exaggerated under the circumstances. Hasn’t Israel
done similar things in its neighbors’ skies? Hasn’t it been accused of
such things – even toward Iran – itself?
Nobody in the room bought Netanyahu playing the victim card | Analysis
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