(March 30, 2021 / JNS) While Israel was busy with the domestic political imbroglio surrounding last week’s Knesset elections, a strategic threat that could threaten the country’s very existence was developing. If the Iranian-Chinese alliance reaches its full potential, the Middle East could once again be dragged into a new cold war between superpowers.

Soviet support for the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s radical policies ensured him regional hegemony that threatened Israel for more than a decade. The American attempt to placate the Egyptian leader only made things worse.

Now, massive Chinese assistance to the radical regime in Tehran could provide Iran support in its attempts to impose its hegemony on the region within the framework of another kind of cold war now developing between Washington and Beijing. Such Chinese support, along with U.S. President Joe Biden’s conciliatory tone, could pose the kind of strategic threat Israel has not seen since the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

In recent years, Israel has faced an escalating war with Iran in an attempt to prevent it from attaining the kind of power that would allow it to construct massive military infrastructure around its borders. Iran understands that only Israel can thwart its aspirations for hegemony. It has tried to deter Israel by threatening its population centers.

Most Arab regimes have also come to understand that only Israel is strong and determined enough to stop the ayatollahs. While the United States is more important, it is less reliable and determined. These Arab states were appalled by former U.S. President Barack Obama’s approach but temporarily encouraged by that of his successor, Donald Trump.

Under Biden, they have begun to worry once again. That is the meaning of the Abraham Accords. In many ways, the old, familiar Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been replaced by an Arab-Israeli coalition that opposes Iran and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and is suspicious of the new U.S. administration.

Trump’s determined stance offered a comprehensive response to the Iranian challenge. It did not relate merely to the nuclear threat.

A focused response in the form of the 2015 nuclear deal, which effectively bolstered Tehran’s position, does not effectively meet the challenge. What is required is a zero-sum game that seeks to harm Iran, mainly in the economic arena, and deters it from conflict by ensuring U.S. support for Israel’s military actions it.

When Iran engaged in numerous provocations against Saudi Arabia’s oil industry, Trump responded by assassinating Qassem Soleimani, head of the elite Quds Force. Tehran didn’t dare offer a suitable response to the painful and humiliating blow it was dealt. But the main tool was sanctions that hit Iran’s economy to such an extent that, had they been in place for another four years, the ayatollah regime would have been unlikely to survive.

We are now witnessing something reminiscent of what we saw under the late U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower: deep economic and military involvement by a superpower competing with the U.S. and a conciliatory response from Washington.

China’s foreign minister signed a 25-year strategic deal, first drawn up during Chinese President Xi Ji Ping’s 2016 visit to Iran, aimed at increasing bilateral trade tenfold, to $600 billion in 10 years. The deal will provide China with priority access to huge investments in Iranian infrastructure, banking, and communications.

The agreement also allows for joint military exercises and military cooperation in the future. In return, China is set to provide Iran with vast amounts of oil and gas in the long-term at relatively low rates.

This kind of agreement serves to effectively neutralize U.S. economic pressure, seriously bolsters Iran’s bargaining position, and could herald a renewed Iranian effort toward regional hegemony. The rate of its realization and its characteristics depend crucially on U.S.-China ties. This is a very important Chinese bargaining chip in the international area—one that was suspended under Trump and pulled out once again under Biden, with significant repercussions for Israel.

This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.

Source: https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-iran-china-deal-is-cause-for-israeli-concern/

The post The Iran-China deal is cause for Israeli concern first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is right: Iran is the greatest threat to Israel. Today this threat seems distant, but it would only take a few errant Israeli bombs hitting an Iranian target in Syria, or a massive terror attack by Hezbollah, to undermine the calm and create a dynamic that could lead to war. And that war, with the main task reserved for Hezbollah’s missile arsenal, would differ from all past wars. Less than two years ago, Military Intelligence chief Herzl Halevi warned in an interview of “hundreds of tons of explosives reaching the center of the country.”

Try to imagine central Tel Aviv, for example the Yoo Towers, hit by dozens of tons of explosives. Or several dozen precise missiles carrying half-ton warheads hitting the Hadera power station, putting it out of commission and denying Israel a significant percentage of its electricity production.

And these are only a few examples. Even if the military landed a harsh blow on Hezbollah in a spectacular ground maneuver, the home front, which the military is supposed to protect, would pay a high price. Israel would be very different after such a war.

And the fact that the prime minister correctly diagnoses the threat doesn’t necessarily mean he’s addressing it optimally. At this point, he and the defense establishment deserve credit for the cautious effort that has been made to reduce the Hezbollah threat without breaking all the rules of the game. The investment in missile defense systems will prove itself if a war breaks out.

But the MI chief is well aware of all these things, and still he speaks of hundreds of tons of explosives that would hit the home front, so we have to ask whether we should also be investing more in reducing the chances of war. In other words, is it possible to talk to Iran, and on what basis?

On the face of it, the answer is no. For almost 40 years, Iran has been our greatest enemy, one that considers Israel the Little Satan (the Great Satan is the United States). We’re used to threats of extermination by Iran’s leaders, just as until 1967 we were used to threats by Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser to destroy Israel. The arming and training of Hezbollah, terror attacks against Israeli targets abroad, Iran’s belligerent policy and its nuclear potential are different expressions of the fact that these aren’t empty threats. And still, Iranian hostility toward Israel isn’t absolute, and here may lie the key to change and hope.

Since the Arab Peace Initiative (which began as the Saudi Peace Initiative) was proposed in 2002, Iran hasn’t expressed opposition to it. Moreover, the initiative was adopted by the foreign ministers at a summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in 2003, in Tehran of all places.

At the heart of the initiative, we should recall, is recognition of Israel by all the Arab and Muslim countries, a normalization of relations in exchange for establishing a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, and an agreed-on solution (including by Israel) of the refugee problem. In 2008, the Iranian approach was confirmed by then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said he would honor whatever was acceptable to the Palestinian people.

To this day, the Arab Peace Initiative hasn’t received the public discussion it deserves. This is the most important development in the conflict since the Six-Day War, which gave Israel the territories whose return today would enable an end to the conflict. Most of Israel’s former defense chiefs, who are members of Commanders for Israel’s Security and the Council for Peace and Security, consider it a suitable basis for starting negotiations, and many politicians, including former right-wingers, believe we should respond to the proposal.

Thus far the emphasis has been that responding to the initiative would move Israel’s relations with the Sunni countries in a positive direction and reduce the chances of a new conflict with the Palestinians. But just when Iran’s power is rising, we should also consider a response to the initiative an effective way to deal with the threat from Iran and its creation, Hezbollah.

That doesn’t mean doing so would make the regime in Tehran pro-Zionist, but it would to a great extent take the wind out of Iran’s ideological sails regarding its all-out war against Israel. It would lower the hostility between the two countries and reduce the chances of war, with all its risks. Such a response could also create a basis for talks between the two countries, first in secret channels and then perhaps overtly. And if Iran opposed the peace initiative, its isolation in the Arab and Muslim world would grow.

If Netanyahu wants to be remembered as Mr. Security, he should also invest in reducing the chances of war, not just lowering the price. Otherwise he might be remembered in an entirely different way.

Uri Bar-Joseph is a professor at the School of Political Science at the University of Haifa’s Division of International Relations.

Source: https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.816411

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