The Israeli nuclear facility in the
Negev Desert outside Dimona. (Jim Hollander / Courtesy Reuters)
The debate over Iran’s nuclear
program has made clear that when it comes to nuclear deterrence, Israeli
strategic thinking is flawed. In the 1960s, Israel developed a nuclear
capability as the ultimate security guarantee, a last resort to be used if the
country’s very existence was threatened. This capability became popularly known
as the “Samson Option,” after the Jewish biblical hero who, rather than face
death alone, brought down the roof of a Philistine temple, killing both himself
and his enemies. At the same time, Israeli strategy has been guided by a belief
that any adversary developing weapons of mass destruction is an existential
threat that must be stopped. This belief came to be known as the Begin Doctrine,
after Prime Minister Menachem Begin used force to stop the Iraqi nuclear program
in 1981.
This leads to a paradox: the basic
potential advantage of the “Samson Option” is that it could deter a
nuclear-armed foe. But the Begin Doctrine prevents Israel from benefiting from
the “Samson Option,” as it seeks to ensure that the situation in which a nuclear
capability would be most useful will never come to pass.
It seems that
Israel derives no concrete benefits from its nuclear capability.
Today, the majority of Israel’s
strategists promote some kind of a preventive attack on Iran, as they do not
believe a nuclear-armed Iran could be deterred and reject the notion of
stability based on mutual assured destruction (MAD). Some suggest that Iranian
leaders, driven by messianic religious ideology, would use their weapons to
destroy Israel, regardless of the costs. Others argue that even if Iranian
decision-makers were rational, Iran’s conspiratorial worldview and lack of
direct communications with Jerusalem could lead Tehran to misread Israeli
signals and to miscalculate, triggering unintended nuclear escalation. Another
common argument against MAD is that Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon would
result in a dangerous proliferation cascade across the Middle East.
But these attitudes obscure the
real reason that Israel refuses to live with an Iranian bomb. Israel’s
intolerance of MAD is not limited to any particular adversary or set of
circumstances, but, rather, derives from its paradoxical nuclear strategy. The
“Samson Option” is by nature an asymmetrical deterrence model: Israel seeks to
deter without being deterred.
Maintaining asymmetrical deterrence
would be impossible if Iran did ultimately develop a nuclear weapon. But Israel
need not see that outcome as the end of the world. If anything, deterring a
nuclear-armed adversary is exactly what Israel’s nuclear capability is good for.
But in order to make the best use of its “Samson Option,” Israel needs to start
thinking about and publicly debating how it would position itself against a
nuclear-armed Iran. In short, Israel needs a new nuclear strategy.
WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?
For most countries, the primary
goal of nuclear weapons is to deter their use by others. But Israel’s “Samson
Option” has nothing to do with the nuclear balance of terror. The balance of
terror, known to most strategists as an unavoidable evil of the atomic age, is
seen in Israel not as a strategic challenge but as a materialized, existential,
and unacceptable threat. Although the “Samson Option” hypothetically enables
MAD, Israeli leaders will have nothing of it. The development of nuclear
capabilities by an adversary is a casus belli and demands immediate diplomatic,
clandestine, or military preemption. This explains why Israel launched
airstrikes on Iraq in 1981 and, reportedly, on Syria in 2007 in order to secure
its nuclear monopoly.
Instead, Israel’s nuclear program
was allegedly devised to serve as an ultimate guarantor against a doomsday
scenario in which an all-out conventional attack by a coalition of enemies
threatened the total annihilation of the state. But it is not clear that
Israel’s nuclear deterrent has had any bearing on the strategic calculus of its
foes during past wars. It did not deter the Egyptians and Syrians from invading
Israel in 1973, Iraq from launching missiles on Israel in 1991, the Palestinians
from turning to violence during two intifadas, or Hezbollah and Hamas from
raining rockets on Israel during the last decade. None of these attacks were
kept at bay by a balance of military force that overwhelmingly favored
Israel.
To be sure, a nuclear capability
would be hypothetically useful if Israel’s conventional qualitative military
edge were completely eroded, leaving only a nuclear last resort. But such a
scenario is unlikely; the raison d’être of Israel’s national security policy is
to retain conventional superiority, and the country is constantly building up
its forces toward this goal. Furthermore, at least for the foreseeable future,
the United States will continue to guarantee Israel’s military edge.
So if MAD is not an option, and
Israel can deter conventional threats with conventional forces, then what is the
“Samson Option” good for? It seems that Israel derives no concrete benefits from
its nuclear capability. To understand, then, why Israel produced a nuclear
capability and crafted a deterrence strategy for a scenario that it cannot
tolerate, one has to look at Israel’s unique strategic culture.
Unlike other countries, Israel did
not undertake its nuclear project because of geostrategic aspirations, a desire
for prestige, or to defend against nuclear adversaries. Even in the late 1950s,
when the project was conceived as a so-called great equalizer against larger
Arab militaries, Israel’s conventional might was already seen as the main
countermeasure against its neighbors. When Israel reportedly crossed the nuclear
threshold in 1967, the conventional power of the Israeli army was at its peak,
leaving no doubt to Israelis that it could effectively deter its opponents in
the future.
For Israelis, security practices
and military innovations are usually not driven by strategic theory but by
ad-hoc solutions to burning problems and by creative improvisations. As the
historian Avner Cohen showed in The Worst-Kept Secret, Israel’s nuclear
project was initiated without a careful analysis of the long-term strategic
objectives, applications, and implications of this new capability. With little
political guidance, the Israelis at first focused only on building
infrastructure and capabilities, and avoided articulating complex issues of
nuclear doctrine.
If Iran gets the
bomb, Israel would need to accept the irony of its security stemming from the
constant threat of annihilation.
More than for any perceived
security benefits, Israel’s nuclear project was conceived for psychological
comfort in face of the unthinkable quintessence of all Jewish and Israeli fears:
a second Holocaust. For millennia, life in the diaspora was an uninterrupted
struggle for survival. Enslavement, persecution, and systematic annihilation
have had a profound impact on the Israeli approach to national security. This
fundamental sense of insecurity, a siege mentality that results in the
assumption that the country is under a constant existential threat, predisposes
Jerusalem to seek absolute security. At the core of Israeli strategy rests the
notion that the country can survive and politically engage its neighbors only
from a position of military superiority; symmetry in conventional and nuclear
affairs is unthinkable.
GETTING MAD
A number of thinkers, including
former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, argue that because
the “Samson Option” offers it few tangible benefits, Israel should give up its
nuclear project in exchange for Iran doing the same. But this argument overlooks
Israel’s strategic mentality. Without understanding Israeli strategic culture,
foreign observers cannot fully grasp just how profound the psychological
barriers are that Israel must surmount in order to think systematically about
how to live with and deter a nuclear-armed Iran.
Given that Israel’s nuclear
capability exists to calm the dread of perceived existential threats, Jerusalem
would accept nuclear disarmament only as a consequence of a regional peace
agreement and normalization, not as a prelude to them. Any other solution would
be seen as premature and counterproductive. This approach to disarmament,
coupled with an aversion to consider MAD, has put Israel in a strategic bind
with regard to Iran.
Whether Israel can stop Iran from
getting the bomb is the question of the day. But if, for whatever reason, the
Begin Doctrine fails, the far more important question looming on the horizon is
how to live with a nuclear Iran. Israel’s security elite is inclined to believe
that the end of the country’s regional nuclear monopoly -- brought on by an
Iranian nuclear weapon -- would leave it defenseless and vulnerable to total
annihilation. But Iran’s developing a nuclear bomb would discredit only the
Begin Doctrine, not the “Samson Option.” And in that case, Israel would need to
embrace its “Samson Option” and adjust its strategy to derive the most tangible
benefits from it.
To begin with, Israel should
consider outlining its
nuclear posture to
enhance strategic stability and assure Israelis that their government could
successfully deter a nuclear Iran. This would entail communicating its redlines
and how it would respond if Iran crossed them. Israel may be uninterested in
full disclosure so as to avoid international pressure to disarm. But Jerusalem
can find a way to outline a general doctrine without revealing specific
capabilities. An ambiguous posture alone might not be enough to ensure stable
deterrence, but a full disclosure could be provocative.
Israeli strategists would also have
to explore the relationship between conventional and nuclear deterrence and
examine whether the Israel Defense Forces could deter a nuclear-armed Iran more
credibly with its conventional might. The optimal balance between deterrence by
denial (using defensive measures to limit the effectiveness of an enemy strike)
and deterrence by punishment (threatening a heavy offensive retaliation to any
attack) should be found and communicated to Iran. Both Israel and Iran would
need to introduce a vocabulary of MAD so that each side understood the rules of
the game. And to avoid any nuclear miscalculation, each side would need to
carefully study the other’s strategic culture.
Today, Israel’s deterrence
strategy, like its other strategies, is not a written doctrine but a vague,
tacit concept. Any causality between Israel’s actions and its adversaries’
behavior is more assumed than proven. Israel lacks an institution charged with
verifying the effectiveness of its deterrence. Jerusalem cannot afford this in
the nuclear age -- significant intellectual and organizational energy should be
invested in formulating, managing, and evaluating deterrence policy on the
national level.
Finally, if Iran gets the bomb,
Israel will have to overcome several deeply ingrained beliefs before it can make
the necessary adjustments to its deterrence strategy. Israel would need to
accept the irony of its security stemming from the constant threat of
annihilation. This would entail a fundamental departure from Israel’s habit of
seeing absolute military superiority as the key to its stability. Israel’s
government would also have to learn to see Iran in a different light. Viewing
Iran as a reasonable, if radical, actor would be a jarring departure from
earlier beliefs, but it would be a necessary precondition to any kind of
interaction between the two countries. Seeing Iran’s leaders as religiously
motivated fanatics could lead to a nuclear war.
Israel has sworn to prevent Iran
from becoming a nuclear-armed state, but has not prepared for what happens if it
does. So far, Israel’s policymakers have avoided publicly exploring strategies
for coping with a nuclear-armed Iran out of fear that talking about the issue
would compromise Israel’s nuclear opacity and communicate Israel’s acceptance of
an Iranian nuclear weapon. But public debate could generate insights on how to
establish stable deterrence and avoid dangerous escalation. It could help Israel
overcome the cognitive dissonances of its nuclear strategy, and, in making
Tehran familiar with the Israeli mind-set, minimize the chances of
miscalculation. This debate should start now, because the cost of waiting until
the morning after Iran has a nuclear weapon, if it does in fact acquire one, is
too great.
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