Shahin Berenji
Days after approving strikes against Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor on June 7, 1981, Israel’s then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin publicly defended his decision amid much international criticism, including from US President Ronald Reagan. “Another Holocaust would have happened … we shall defend our people with all the means at our disposal. We shall not allow any enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction [to be] turned against us,” Begin said. This decision inaugurated what has come to be known as the “Begin doctrine”—a security doctrine that lays out how Israel will not permit states that seek its elimination to develop weapons of mass destruction.
After Israel launched air strikes against Iran in June, many drew parallels between Begin and Israel’s present and longest-serving Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. But was the recent operation against Iran as strategically successful as the one against Iraq? Netanyahu’s decision to launch an extensive aerial campaign passes, some argue, “the Begin test with distinction.” This conclusion, however, is premature. Netanyahu may have applied the Begin doctrine, but it does not mean he has achieved the doctrine’s primary objective, here meant to be the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program. Though a very difficult and high bar to achieve, Netanyahu argued Israel satisfied its war aims and declared the military operation a “historic victory.” His triumphant narrative, however, ignores the extent to which Israel failed to achieve its strategic aims because Iran can still reorganize and revive its nuclear program—and may now have a greater willingness and desire to do so.
The uncertainty lingering over the effects of Israeli—and even US—airstrikes makes it clear that a political rather than a military solution is needed to remove, or at least mitigate, the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program. Unless there is a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear question, the region and the international community ought to expect future Israeli preventive strikes and a renewed outbreak of war, perhaps even longer and more intense than what has been referred to as the 12-day war.
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