The Gaza War: the Netanyahu Biden Nuclear Duet
The seventh of October 2023 will forever be remembered in Israel as a day of national catastrophe. 1,400 civilians and soldiers were killed and murdered in one day in a barbaric surprise attack by the Hamas terror organization in the massacre which they carried out in kibbutzim, villages, towns and military bases in the area bordering the Gaza strip. Hundreds were wounded and over 200 kidnapped to Gaza, including children and elderly citizens.
What happened on October 7 was not a natural disaster. It was a colossal and incredible human failure. The result of a combination of intelligence blindness, the Hamas strategic deception plan which enabled the surprise, and the IDF high command’s conceptual unpreparedness for a scenario that included a surprise attack and conquest by Hamas of territories within Israel for an entire day.
At this stage, beyond the partial information revealed in public sources, we do not have details regarding the intelligence and military failures that led to the catastrophe. They will certainly be investigated by the military and defense bodies after the Gaza war. But we can already point to a number of parameters on the higher strategic level. We can examine, among other things, whether it will be necessary to make changes and revisions to Israel’s national security doctrine.
Security Doctrine
Deterrence and early warning are two central concepts in Israel’s national security doctrine. The element that collapsed on the October 7 was in the field of intelligence early warning. Although enormous sums had been invested in advanced technologies intended to provide the military command with ample time to prepare for and repulse an enemy attack, at the critical moment they failed. In the field of deterrence, Israel failed in a well-known area in which other armies have failed (the US in the Vietnam War, the French in the Algerian War). Deterrence is a concept that relates to confrontations between states and conventional armies (although even in this case, it also is elusive) and primarily between nuclear powers. Deterrence does not work against a non state guerrilla organization. As I see it, Israeli deterrence against Iran and the Arab countries in the region continues to exist as it did before the Hamas attack. If we look at the month following the commencement of the war, it does not seem that the Iranians are eager for a military engagement with Israel.
A formal defense treaty with the US
Immediately after the October 7 attack, Israeli deterrence received its most significant boost ever. In order to deter Iran from expanding the war, President Biden gave a clear message that at the edge of Israeli deterrence stands US military power. The US sent two task forces on aircraft carriers with tens of fighter plans to the Mediterranean Basin. President Biden further emphasized his message of deterrence through his visit to Israel in the midst of the war. Secretary of State Blinken participated in war cabinet discussions at the military high command headquarters, and senior US military officers were placed in IDF operation rooms.
In one go, the Israel-US “special relations” and strategic cooperation that had existed for many years were upgraded almost to the level of a defense treaty. Within a few days, in a time of war and crisis, Israel was given an American defense umbrella of the highest order. In the months that preceded the war, Netanyahu had tried (via his special envoy Ron Dermer while bypassing standard decision making procedures) to exploit discussions between Saudi Arabia and the US on a formal defense treaty in order to promote in parallel a formal defense treaty between Israel and the US based on the South Korean model. Not all the details about Netanyahu’s independent move for a defense treaty are known. But from past experience, we know that the IDF and Israeli strategic planning bodies do not view such an idea favorably. For years, they have viewed a defense treaty skeptically. They see a formal defense treaty as incompatible with the principle of freedom of action which is a fundamental component of Israel’s national security doctrine.
At the same time, the new strategic advance in Israel-US strategic relations to almost the level of a defense treaty has highlighted two weak spots that would make it difficult for Israel to sign a full defense treaty. A defense treaty is intended to protect a territory from a massive military attack. How can you implement a defense treaty with a state that does not have defined territorial borders? The US would find it difficult to sign a defense treaty with Israel before it has signed a peace agreement which would define its borders and sovereign area.
The second weak spot. The US is ready to sign a mutual defense treaty only with states who are parties to the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) and which fall under the Treaty’s definition of non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS). Israel is one of only four states in the world which have not signed the NPT. This brings us to the nuclear issue: a formal defense treaty with the US would almost certainly require a dramatic conceptual change in Israel’s traditional doctrine of nuclear ambiguity.
The nuclear issue
The total shock of the Hamas attack and the high number of victims in a single day were also reflected in extremist statements that crept into the public discourse. Television panelists hinted at the need to “ activate the Hiroshima doctrine”. In an article in Ha’aretz (29 October 2023) the well known Israeli historian Benny Morris called for using the opportunity to start a preventive war to destroy Iran’s nuclear sites. Between the lines, the possibility was raised of a nuclear attack. The former Netanyahu national security advisor, Yaakov Nagel, hinted (Ma’ariv 27 October 2023) at the possibility of using the “doomsday weapon” (presumably against Iran) after the Hamas surprise attack in order to “change the rules of the game from their foundation”. On a radio broadcast, a minister in Netanyahu’s government from an extreme right party, Elihu Amihai, called to examine the possibility of dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza.
On a superficial level, these declarations could be taken as an indication of the shallowness of nuclear weapons discourse in Israel. But at the same time, they should be a cause for concern for the US administration as they are liable to constitute a danger to global world order. The placement of the full weight of US deterrence from the first day of the war was intended to send a deterrence message to Iran and to provide the ultimate guarantee for the security of the State of Israel. But there were latent functions for Netanyahu in the immediate US move and its deep strategic involvement in the planning of Israel’s war: to ensure that Netanyahu was not planning to exploit the escalation of the war to drag the US into attacking Iran’s nuclear sites. This is an old dream of Netanyahu’s which the US has long feared.
In US eyes, the multiplicity of nuclear declarations in the Israeli public discourse and the dangers of an escalation of the war are liable to connect to another aspect on the latent level. President Biden worries that Netanyahu intends to exploit the war to change Israel’s traditional nuclear ambiguity policy. This would not necessarily be at the level of Moshe Dayan’s extreme scenario on the second day of the Yom Kippur war – to assemble a nuclear weapon for “demonstration” purposes – as is described by two leading scholars Uri Bar Yosef and Avner Cohen in their Hebrew article on the Gaza war “The Nuclear Shadow Once Again Hovers over Israel”. But it is a strategic worry about crossing a lower but no less dangerous nuclear threshold: a declarative change in the nuclear ambiguity doctrine (“we will not be the first”) with the declaration of a move towards open nuclear deterrence. This would at once lead to the disintegration of US policy on the nuclear issue – “the Nixon-Golda Meir Understandings” of 1969 to maintain nuclear ambiguity. These understandings formed the basis of US support of Israel’s unique strategic status. Such a change could bring about an acceleration of Iran’s nuclear program in the direction of military development and to an outbreak of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. We can assume that US intelligence researchers presented President Biden with indications showing the dangerous change that Netanyahu’s views have undergone over the past years regarding Israel’s declared nuclear policy. An example can be found in a highly irregular comment that Netanyahu made at a speech during the August 2018 public ceremony renaming Dimona nuclear research facility in the name of Shimon Peres. In his speech, Netanyahu emphasized Shimon Peres’ legacy which “ensured our deterrent power and defense ability before existential threats”. At the entrance to the Dimona nuclear facility, Netanyahu added his own comment “our enemies know very well what Israel is capable of doing. They are familiar with our policy…whoever threatens us with annihilation puts himself in a similar danger”. And in order to be absolutely clear, he added “I am describing a persistent, clear and determined policy…backed by appropriate deployment, equipment, preparedness and – in hour of need – appropriate orders”.
The national trauma and Netanyahu’s personal trauma following the Hamas October 7 attack, the pressures on Netanyahu, the public comparison that he makes between the holocaust of Europe’s Jews and today, and the aggressive nuclear discourse among not a few Israeli groups, all create an extremely dangerous strategic environment. It is incumbent on decision makers to deliberate in a rational manner for the good of Israel’s national security and to prevent a slide into the dangers of miscalculation.
Shemuel Meir is an independent Israeli strategic analyst