Early this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a mock wartime meeting of his security cabinet in a bunker.
Communities in northern Israel are preparing shelters for a long-term conflict. And the military is working overtime on a new laser system to intercept rockets.For years, Israel has considered a nuclear-armed Iran to be an existential threat, and directed its energies to confronting it and its regional proxies in Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinian areas.
Israeli officials cite the topic wherever they go. Nir Barkat, Israel’s economy minister, told Bloomberg TV in New York recently, “Iran threatens the world. They want to create a bomb in order to use it. We’re maybe first in line, but we’re not the only one.” But even opponents of Netanyahu say that, on Iran, they back him. “On this, there is no coalition or opposition in Israel,” said Yair Lapid, opposition leader, when he was in New York recently. “Everybody’s on the same note.”
The intense preparation, then and now, serves as a messaging tool, to persuade the US and Iran that Israel means business and to slow or stop Iranian uranium enrichment and missile production.A strike on Iran could roil oil markets and turn into a regional conflagration, affecting states such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as well as shipping routes through the Gulf.
The growing potential for an Israeli strike has unsettled others in the region. Until last year, Saudi Arabia suffered a series of drone and missile attacks on oil and other facilities that were claimed by Iranian-backed Houthi militias in Yemen.The Saudis saw a China-mediated deal with Iran as a way to “reduce tensions with their neighbors and focus on development,” said Riad Kahwagi founder of INEGMA, a Dubai-based security research group.
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