Military action against Iran would backfire on Israel, report warns

By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor
Published: 12 March 2007

Military action against Iran would backfire against Israel, which in turn would face "dire and far-reaching" consequences, a leading British foreign policy think-tank believes.

Chatham House says in a report that it is "widely assumed" that preparations are "well under way" in both America and Israel for military action against targets related to Iran's nuclear programme. The report by Yossi Mekelberg examines the possible responses by Iran, which may retaliate with massive ballistic missile attacks on Israeli cities such as Tel Aviv or Haifa, resulting in "substantial loss of life".

Israel's relations with moderate Arab states would also be harmed, as any military attack would be seen as an offensive against the Muslim world and would fuel Islamic extremism.

"An Israeli military operation against Iran would hurt Israel's long-term interests. It would be detrimental to Israel's overall security and the political and economic consequences would be dire and far-reaching," the report warns.

Israel says the issue of curbing Iran's suspected nuclear weapons programme is a problem for the international community. But it has been made clear by the Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, that if the international community failed to prevent Iran from obtaining a weapon, Israel would take the steps to do so.

While the report describes such a possibility as remote, it says that if diplomatic efforts fail, "the US and Israel would feel that force is justified and might act militarily either together or separately, regardless of international consent. This could have disastrous consequences."

Mr Mekelberg concurs with other analysts who have warned that military action against Iran could provoke fallout against US forces in Iraq. And like previous studies, the report points out that any attack would be unlikely to halt Iran's nuclear programme, and would only delay it "for a while."

The report concludes that international efforts should continue to focus on diplomatic and economic sanctions that could persuade the Iranian authorities to comply with UN demands. The report argues that Israel could consider open deterrence by coming clean on its nuclear arsenal as an alternative to military action, an option the Israelis are unlikely to contemplate.

The UN Security Council is calling on Iran to halt uranium enrichment - which can produce fuel for a nuclear weapon - in return for negotiations. But Iran, which says its intentions are peaceful, defied a deadline which passed last month, exposing Tehran to expanded sanctions.

Iranian state-run television said that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wanted to brief the UN Security Council about his country's nuclear plans, but did not give further details.

Some optimism on Afghanistan, none on Iraq

A Nato spokesman at a London thinktank talked up the Afghan campaign, but none of the sober suited specialists had hope for Iraq

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When is a war a winnable one? That, it seems, can depend on your perception.

Nato, apparently, remains confident that the Western intervention in Afghanistan, short on international attention and resources since the focus turned to Iraq in 2003, can still reach a positive conclusion.

Addressing a seminar today at the Chatham House think tank in London, Jamie Shea, director of policy planning in office of Nato secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, insisted progress was being made.

"Above all, we have recognised that this is a mission that is eminently do-able," said the now white-haired Englishmen, best known for his role as chief press officer and public face of Nato during various the Balkan crises.

Success would depend on improved cooperation between nations and other organisations, and could take as long as a decade, he warned, noting: "The business of state-building is a work in progress."

His cautiously optimistic view of a sustained, global effort to stablise the Afghan state, crack down on the drugs trade and gradually train a new force of domestic police officers was far too rosy for some of the academics, policy experts and journalists listening.

One BBC reporter with experience of present day Afghanistan called Mr Shea's version "absolutely extraordinary", saying: "I couldn't recognise the country from how you described it."

But while there was someone willing to talk up the Afghan campaign, the view on Iraq, the other main subject of the morning's talk, could be summed up as such: we're all doomed.

And this, it should be remembered, was no student debate but a room full of several hundred sober-suited, overwhelmingly middle aged specialists.

While Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain's ambassador in Washington when the troops first went into Iraq, could describe Afghanistan as "winnable", he made no similar predictions for the other war.

Those who could speak more bluntly did so, with some vehemence.

Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at London University's Queen Mary College and author of several books on the modern Iraqi state spoke of a political vacuum now filled by militia groups.

"The thing to keep in mind is that the Iraqi state does not exist in a meaningful fashion," he said, warning that a rapid US troop withdrawal would make matters even worse.

It would be "morally repugnant to leave 26 million people to descend into hell - a hell that we have created," he said.

When the foreign troops eventually leave, they will leave "a collapsed state with a civil war, in one of the most important geo-political regions in the world".

By Peter Walker / World news 02:47pm