Just everyone is concerned with Iran’s rising influence in the Middle East. Israel, the United States, Egypt, and Russia protest what they see as Iranian incursion on their turf. Russia and America are in the double binge: Iran acts both in the Middle East and in their backyards, Central Asia and Venezuela, respectively. For Egypt, rising Iran creates a major domestic threat: dormant Shiite communities in Egypt and Shiite proselytes sponsored by Iran are inherently disloyal to Egypt’s secular Sunni regime. Russia sees Iran as wooing away its traditional clients: Syrians and Palestinians. France protests Iran taking Lebanon and Syria out of the French sphere of influence. And Israel rightly feels threatened by Iranian nuclear weapons which Iran needs only for boosting its regional stance rather than actual attack.
It hardly pays to run against the wave of history. Iran is returning to its historically high position. The country which destroyed ours in the sixth century BCE and helped us to establish a short-lived Jewish state a thousand years later; the country powerful when Egypt was a non-power; the populous, civilized, educated, and rich country, Iran will unavoidably rebound.
Israel had helped Iran with its nuclear program. That happened under the Shah, even though a failure of monarchy was only a matter of time; monarchy is not viable in the modern world. So the real problem is not the Iranian nukes, but Iranian friendliness. Love is impossible for now, but cooperation can be there. Israel has no other option: Iran can actually move its low-end but massive army against Israel through friendly Kurdistan, Jordan and Syria. Unlike Israel’s traditional enemies Egypt and Syria, Iran is extremely tolerant to strikes at its civilian centers, as shown in the Iran-Iraq war. There is really nothing short of a multiple nuclear strikes that Israel can do to stop the Iranian military advance. So Iran has to be accommodated.
Israel shares a political common ground with Iran: both need to do away with Egypt and Saudi Arabia. As far as Israel is concerned, the US military aid allowed Egypt to develop a relatively agile modern army, and Saudi Arabia has both a huge conventional arsenal (which it can loan to Egypt) and nuclear weapons (developed by Pakistan with Saudi money). For Iran, Egypt is a major contender for regional influence, and Saudi Arabia is the oppressor of Shia population conveniently settled in Saudi oilfields region.
Israel should prefer Iranian Shiite dominance in the region to Egypt’s Sunni one. Egypt will soon become even more radicalized than Iran, when Muslim Brotherhood takes the power. Iranians are disenchanted with mullahs but Egyptians are all for Muslim Brotherhood. So it’s not a choice between a secular peaceful Egypt and the Ahmadinejad state, but between the two heavily armed Islamic fundamentalist states. In such an outlook, Iran is preferable as it did not start wars in its recent history – unlike Egypt which attacked Israel continuously, and continues to do so through the Hamas-Muslim Brotherhood proxy.
Whatever we do will threaten us. If Israel attacks Iran’s nuclear facilities and suffers massive retaliation, it would only clear the way to Egyptian dominance. Egypt will continue building a conventional army, to be inherited by the politically victorious Muslim Brotherhood, and would likely develop nuclear weapons, feeling that the US Camp David guarantees protect it from Israeli reprisal.
Without the Sinai and the West Bank, Israel is a beach approximately 60 miles long by 14 miles wide. The Negev is uninhabitable, and the Galilee is densely settled by the hostile Israeli Arabs. A country 60 by 14 miles cannot survive. We can effectively increase its size by attacking preemptively far outside of our borders. Short of that, Israel needs strategic cooperation with Iran.
