Israel is preparing a full court press to discuss Iran’s threats with the new US administration, according to various media reports. National Security Advisor Meir Ben-Shabbat spoke on Saturday with Jake Sullivan, his counterpart in the Biden administration, and Mossad head Yossi Cohen is expected to travel soon to Washington to present concerns to his counterparts in the intelligence community.
The discussions are expected to be wide ranging. They will likely include, according to the report, Iran stopping uranium enrichment, ending production of advanced centrifuges, and stopping support for various terrorist proxies and militias. Such proxies include Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, as well as Iran’s threatening posture in Syria and Iraq. There are other concerns as well.
Sometimes in negotiations, one side outlines its ideal demands at the outset to get only some of them fulfilled at the end. This laundry list looks like that. Throw enough problems at the wall, and surely the US and Israel can work some of them out.
On the other hand, what Israel is sketching out also looks a lot more like an Iranian elephant in the room, than just a nuclear problem. Iran has often used the nuclear program to distract from its real desire: to achieve regional hegemony.
The nuclear program is just one part of a vast military industrial complex in Iran that involves advanced precision ballistic missiles, sophisticated drones, new naval assets and a coterie of militias across the region.
Iran funds and arms Hezbollah, including secret production facilities for weapons. Iran has placed drones, and even tried to put its Khordad air defense system in Syria. It has moved weapons to T4 and Imam Ali bases and other centers in Syria. It is trying to move precision-guided munition production to Lebanon or Syria, has moved drone and missile technology to the Houthis in Yemen; and in 2018, it moved ballistic missiles to western Iraq. READ MORE
