Israel’s Gantz Due To Meet Blinken, Austin Amid Covert War Against Iran

Israel’s defense minister, Benny Gantz, will meet Thursday with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Blinken. Today, Israel’s Mossad chief, David Barnea, met with his CIA counterpart, William Burns. Can they synchronize American and Israeli policies on Iran even while disagreements intensify?“You don’t ask a man what he did at night,” Israel’s deputy defense minister, Alon Schuster, said Sunday when asked if Israel had anything to do with a mysterious explosion near Iran’s nuclear facility at Natanz.The Natanz incident occurred a day after the collapse of President Biden’s diplomatic overtures to Tehran in Vienna. If Israel was indeed responsible for sabotaging Natanz, as is widely speculated in the region, it might have timed its attack to remind failed diplomats that there are different, more successful methods of slowing down Iran’s race to a bomb.After toying with American and European diplomats for months, envoys of Tehran’s new government arrived at Vienna for talks to renew the 2015 nuclear deal. Their attitude was unserious, Washington officials are saying.“We can’t accept a situation in which Iran accelerates its nuclear program and slow-walks its nuclear diplomacy,” a senior official told reporters. Yet, after the official acknowledged that the Iranians have reneged on all agreements reached in the previous six rounds of Vienna talks, he nevertheless indicated talks will resume this week.More talks? Jerusalem had enough. “We have used force against our enemies in the past and we are convinced that in extreme situations, there is a need to act using military means,” Mr. Schuster said, adding his voice to numerous statements by Israeli officials.Marking a Hanukkah candle lighting, Mr. Barnea last week vowed that “Iran will not have nuclear weapons — not in the coming years, not ever.” This, he said, “is my personal commitment, this is the Mossad’s commitment.” Earlier, Mr. Bennett called on Americans intent on Vienna diplomacy to “use a different toolkit” against Iran’s race toward enriching uranium.Such comments stand in sharp contrast to Mr. Bennett’s election campaign promises to avoid airing publicly sharp differences between Israel and the Biden administration. Unlike the GOP-friendly Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Bennett’s government would keep such differences, if any, under wraps.The Mossad’s Mr. Barnea was also supposed to differ from his predecessor, Yossi Cohen, who was often accused of bragging publicly about clandestine attacks in Iran. Mr. Barnea was hailed as someone who’d do the job quietly without the kind of public bravado that so irks Washington’s Democrats.Israel’s left now blames Mr. Bennett and his Mossad chief for seeking unnecessary confrontation with Washington. Just as Iran is about to blow the diplomatic track, they say, Jerusalem turns hostile against Mr. Biden.Perhaps so. Yet, as in Netanyahu’s days as premier, Israelis in power increasingly recognize a sharp difference between Washington’s Mideast goals and their own.For Washington, Iran represents only one part of a global puzzle. America struggles to break away from the region and shift its attention to Communist China’s aggression in the Pacific, Russia’s Putin, climate change, and other global worries.For Israel, a nuclear — or even a near-nuclear — Iran is an existential threat. As Brigadier-General Abolfazl Shekarchi, a spokesman for Iran’s armed forces, said last week, “We will not back off from the annihilation of Israel even one millimeter. We want to destroy Zionism in the world.”True, Iranian officials also seek “death to America,” but the threat to Israel is much more acute.Messrs. Barnea and Gantz will try this week to put some flesh on Washington’s claims, in the aftermath of the Vienna disaster, to prepare for new Iran measures in case diplomacy collapses. They’ll try to convince American counterparts to amp up sanctions and furnish Israel with armaments that can destroy Iran’s dug-up nuclear facilities.They’ll make clear Israel is unbound by Vienna-style agreements. Israel may not tell what it did at night but, perhaps to Mr. Biden’s chagrin, it will likely renew sabotage operations while planning for more muscular military operations. It reportedly allotted $1.5 billion for potential attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities.Some in Israel and America hoped that, unlike its predecessor, the current Jerusalem government would acquiesce to Washington’s Iran policies. Instead they got the same old Bennetanyahu attitude.__________Twitter @bennyavni

Israel’s Gantz Due To Meet Blinken, Austin Amid Covert War Against Iran

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