Former Israeli military intelligence chief and retired Major General Amos Yadlin
The relaunch of the Iran nuclear deal is underway, and although Israel is not a party to the talks, it is closely following their progress. Amos Yadlin, a retired major general and former head of Israeli military intelligence who helped successfully destroy nuclear power plants in Iraq and Syria, said it is now more difficult to stop Iran’s nuclear program.
In a recent interview with the Consumer News and Business Channel (CNBC), Yadlin said Iran’s nuclear program is “more robust and decentralized,” while Iraq’s and Syria’s are concentrated in one place. Iran’s nuclear program has dozens of sites, many of which are buried deep under mountains. In addition, it is not clear that intelligence agencies know all the details of the locations of Iran’s nuclear program.
“Iran has learned from what we’ve done, but we’ve also learned from it and now we have more capabilities.” Yadlin said.
Israel’s military planners say they have five strategies to stop Iran, regardless of the outcome of the Vienna talks.
Option 1: Push for a stronger deal between Iran, the United States, Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain.
Option 2: Show Iran that it is too costly to continue on the current path in terms of sanctions and diplomacy.
Option 3: What Israel calls the “C-strategy,” which uses covert attacks, covert operations and cyberattacks. In essence, it is to try everything but war.
Option 4: Bomb Iran’s nuclear program.
Option 5: Promote regime change in Iran.
According to Ali Nader, an Iran expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a U.S. think tank, Iran’s current regime is increasingly unpopular at home and has been hit hard by U.S. sanctions over the past few years. The economy has faltered and several protests have erupted over the past few years as a result of U.S. sanctions. He sees sanctions as the main leverage the U.S. has over Iran in the Vienna nuclear talks.
Henry Rome, a researcher at the Eurasia Group, the world’s largest political risk consultancy based in New York, is closely monitoring the negotiations and does not expect them to break down or have a breakthrough as each side tries to get the other to make concessions first.
With Iran set to elect a new president in two months, Rome said Iran does not want to be seen as desperate, and the Supreme Leader would prefer to wait until after the June 18 election before making any concessions.
Yadlin, for his part, expressed concern that if the United States is too eager to reach a deal and gives up too much, it will repeat the mistakes of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Yadlin noted that Iran’s uranium enrichment achievement has now reached the symbolic 60 percent mark.
“The first deal proved problematic, and look how fast they’re moving.” “They have enough enriched uranium to get two to three bombs quickly,” Yadlin said.
While there may be some work to be done on delivery methods and weaponization, Yadlin has no doubt that Iran has the knowledge to build a nuclear bomb.
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Jerusalem, “My principle as prime minister of Israel is clear: I will never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear capability to achieve its genocidal goal of annihilating Israel. ”
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