As President Obama wrestles with how to respond to new assessments that Syria appears to have used chemical weapons, leaders in Israel say they will be watching for clues about how he might handle the Iranian nuclear issue in the future.
In Syria’s case, Mr. Obama has said that the use of chemical weapons would “change my calculus,” but he has not said how. Even while Israel appeared to be egging on Mr. Obama toward taking action, with officials here saying Tuesday that it appeared sarin gas had been used by the Syrian government, those officials also conceded that none of the military options were good.
“If you bomb the sites, you could cause exactly the catastrophe you are trying to prevent,” said an Israeli military officer who has spent considerable time studying the options. “If you just go in to secure the weapons, you can get stuck” in the middle of a civil war, he added, with American troops and their allies suddenly targets, and no easy way out.
But to the Israelis, how Mr. Obama navigates the next few weeks will be viewed as a gauge for what he might do later regarding the potentially bigger confrontation in the region.
“There is a question here: when a red line is set, can we stick by it?” Zeev Elkin, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, said Friday in a radio interview. “If the Iranians will see that the red lines laid by the international community are flexible, then will they continue to progress?”
Mr. Obama, during his visit to Israel and Jordan last month, repeated that Iran would not obtain a nuclear weapon on his watch. Yet judging when it would be too late to stop Iran is an even greater intelligence challenge than determining whether chemical weapons were used in Syria near Aleppo and Damascus.
“In the case of chemical weapons, you have forensic evidence,” one former aide to Mr. Obama noted recently. “Ground samples. Tissue samples. In the Iranian nuclear program, unless they conduct a test, you are never likely to have that kind of certainty. It’s more art than science.”
Mr. Obama’s polices in the Arab uprisings have been specific to each country, making it hard to draw lessons of how action in one would predict action in the next. He pressed former President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to step down, and led an international bombing campaign to stop Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s attacks on rebels in Libya. But he effectively supported the king of Bahrain through the uprising in that tiny nation, which is host to the largest American Navy base in the region.
White House officials clearly understand the stakes in Mr. Obama’s decision on Syria. On the one hand, they say, he is deeply mindful of the mistakes made exactly a decade ago in Iraq; for that reason, they say, he is insisting on what the White House called on Thursday “credible and corroborated facts.”
On the other hand, if the president waits for courtroom levels of proof, what has been a few dozen deaths from chemical weapons — in a war that has claimed more than 70,000 lives — could multiply. Israeli officials, in interviews, made clear that they see the limited use of sarin so far as a test by President Bashar al-Assad — and fear that a lack of international reaction would tempt him to deploy chemicals more broadly.
“If you ask me why they used it, I would say it was just to test the world,” an Israeli military official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of army rules. “If somebody would take any reaction, maybe it would deter them from using it again.”
Amos Harel, the defense correspondent for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, said in a column Friday that this week’s wrestling over chemical weapons might have been as much about Iran as it was Syria. He noted that a speech Tuesday by Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, Israel’s top military intelligence analyst, asserting that sarin had been used was followed by one in which Amos Yadlin, the former chief of military intelligence in Israel, declared that Iran was at or about to cross the red line set by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
“It’s possible that mention of chemical weapons was also intended as a wake-up call to the U.S.,” Mr. Harel wrote. “Israel may have expected that the Americans would stick to their guns in the Syrian case, as well, as a way of sending a regional signal that would also be understood in Tehran.”
Iran, too, may well be watching Mr. Obama’s decision-making on Syria closely. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has huge stakes in the survival of Mr. Assad, his only real ally in the region. And United States intelligence analysts believe that Iran’s leaders have interpreted two decades of American drift on the North — during which Mr. Obama’s three immediate predecessors all said they would never tolerate the country’s obtaining nuclear arms — as a sign that Washington will not wage war to stop even a rogue nation from obtaining nuclear arms, or the ability to build them.
If the United States intervened in Syria to secure its chemical stockpiles — perhaps organizing the Arab League, the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council or NATO to share the job — Israeli officials say it would be a signal that Mr. Obama would most likely back up his warnings to Iran the same way. But the prospect of such a move also worries many in Jerusalem: one senior official said he feared that an intervention in Syria could also obfuscate “the problem of greater concern” for Israel, stopping Iran’s nuclear program.
All this is a reminder that red lines are never quite as clear as they sound at first. But failing to set limits has its own risks, as one of Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party allies in Israel’s Parliament, Tzahi Hanegbi, said in an interview Friday with Israel Radio.
“There is also a problem in not setting red lines,” Mr. Hanegbi said. “Because then you admit from the outset that there is no line whose crossing is considered grounds for taking action.”
Still, Mr. Hanegbi said, Israel was not trying to force Mr. Obama’s hand. “I think that we have no interest in the world getting sucked into the fighting in Syria.”
In Syria’s case, Mr. Obama has said that the use of chemical weapons would “change my calculus,” but he has not said how. Even while Israel appeared to be egging on Mr. Obama toward taking action, with officials here saying Tuesday that it appeared sarin gas had been used by the Syrian government, those officials also conceded that none of the military options were good.
“If you bomb the sites, you could cause exactly the catastrophe you are trying to prevent,” said an Israeli military officer who has spent considerable time studying the options. “If you just go in to secure the weapons, you can get stuck” in the middle of a civil war, he added, with American troops and their allies suddenly targets, and no easy way out.
But to the Israelis, how Mr. Obama navigates the next few weeks will be viewed as a gauge for what he might do later regarding the potentially bigger confrontation in the region.
“There is a question here: when a red line is set, can we stick by it?” Zeev Elkin, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, said Friday in a radio interview. “If the Iranians will see that the red lines laid by the international community are flexible, then will they continue to progress?”
Mr. Obama, during his visit to Israel and Jordan last month, repeated that Iran would not obtain a nuclear weapon on his watch. Yet judging when it would be too late to stop Iran is an even greater intelligence challenge than determining whether chemical weapons were used in Syria near Aleppo and Damascus.
“In the case of chemical weapons, you have forensic evidence,” one former aide to Mr. Obama noted recently. “Ground samples. Tissue samples. In the Iranian nuclear program, unless they conduct a test, you are never likely to have that kind of certainty. It’s more art than science.”
Mr. Obama’s polices in the Arab uprisings have been specific to each country, making it hard to draw lessons of how action in one would predict action in the next. He pressed former President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to step down, and led an international bombing campaign to stop Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s attacks on rebels in Libya. But he effectively supported the king of Bahrain through the uprising in that tiny nation, which is host to the largest American Navy base in the region.
White House officials clearly understand the stakes in Mr. Obama’s decision on Syria. On the one hand, they say, he is deeply mindful of the mistakes made exactly a decade ago in Iraq; for that reason, they say, he is insisting on what the White House called on Thursday “credible and corroborated facts.”
On the other hand, if the president waits for courtroom levels of proof, what has been a few dozen deaths from chemical weapons — in a war that has claimed more than 70,000 lives — could multiply. Israeli officials, in interviews, made clear that they see the limited use of sarin so far as a test by President Bashar al-Assad — and fear that a lack of international reaction would tempt him to deploy chemicals more broadly.
“If you ask me why they used it, I would say it was just to test the world,” an Israeli military official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of army rules. “If somebody would take any reaction, maybe it would deter them from using it again.”
Amos Harel, the defense correspondent for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, said in a column Friday that this week’s wrestling over chemical weapons might have been as much about Iran as it was Syria. He noted that a speech Tuesday by Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, Israel’s top military intelligence analyst, asserting that sarin had been used was followed by one in which Amos Yadlin, the former chief of military intelligence in Israel, declared that Iran was at or about to cross the red line set by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
“It’s possible that mention of chemical weapons was also intended as a wake-up call to the U.S.,” Mr. Harel wrote. “Israel may have expected that the Americans would stick to their guns in the Syrian case, as well, as a way of sending a regional signal that would also be understood in Tehran.”
Iran, too, may well be watching Mr. Obama’s decision-making on Syria closely. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has huge stakes in the survival of Mr. Assad, his only real ally in the region. And United States intelligence analysts believe that Iran’s leaders have interpreted two decades of American drift on the North — during which Mr. Obama’s three immediate predecessors all said they would never tolerate the country’s obtaining nuclear arms — as a sign that Washington will not wage war to stop even a rogue nation from obtaining nuclear arms, or the ability to build them.
If the United States intervened in Syria to secure its chemical stockpiles — perhaps organizing the Arab League, the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council or NATO to share the job — Israeli officials say it would be a signal that Mr. Obama would most likely back up his warnings to Iran the same way. But the prospect of such a move also worries many in Jerusalem: one senior official said he feared that an intervention in Syria could also obfuscate “the problem of greater concern” for Israel, stopping Iran’s nuclear program.
All this is a reminder that red lines are never quite as clear as they sound at first. But failing to set limits has its own risks, as one of Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party allies in Israel’s Parliament, Tzahi Hanegbi, said in an interview Friday with Israel Radio.
“There is also a problem in not setting red lines,” Mr. Hanegbi said. “Because then you admit from the outset that there is no line whose crossing is considered grounds for taking action.”
Still, Mr. Hanegbi said, Israel was not trying to force Mr. Obama’s hand. “I think that we have no interest in the world getting sucked into the fighting in Syria.”
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