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A Surprise out of Zion? Case Studies in Israel's Decisions on Whether To C O R P O R A T I O N A Surprise Out of Zion? Case Studies in Israel’s Decisions on Whether to Alert the United States to Preemptive and Preventive Strikes, from Suez to the Syrian Nuclear Reactor Warren Bass For more information on this publication, visit www.rand.org/t/RR498 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this publication. ISBN: 978-0-8330-8416-3 Published by the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif. © Copyright 2015 RAND Corporation R® is a registered trademark. Limited Print and Electronic Distribution Rights This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.html. The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. Support RAND Make a tax-deductible charitable contribution at www.rand.org/giving/contribute www.rand.org Preface and Summary Might senior U.S. policymakers be surprised by an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities? This study considers four key historical prece- dents to shed some light on today’s decisionmaking in both the United States and Israel. In 1956, the Eisenhower administration was livid over being surprised by Israel’s intervention in Egypt; in 1967, Israel repeatedly urged the Johnson administration to approve its use of force during the crisis that led to the Six-Day War; in 1981, the Reagan administration was startled by Israel’s strike on Iraq’s nuclear reactor; and in 2007, the George W. Bush administration ultimately rejected Israel’s high-level requests for a U.S. bombing campaign against a Syrian nuclear facility. This study seeks to use historical narrative to inform the reader’s understanding of choices both past and present, over several decades in which the U.S.-Israel relationship has grown far closer and deeper. For these purposes, we may think of Israeli leaders as falling into two categories: confronters and consulters. Israeli Prime Ministers David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin presented the United States with faits accomplis in 1956 and 1981, running serious risks in the bilateral relationship; by contrast, Levi Eshkol and Ehud Olmert took pains to try to see if Washington would resolve Israel’s security dilemmas in 1967 and 2007. In neither instance did consultation result in a U.S. use of force on Israel’s behalf, but in both cases, it did yield considerable dividends of U.S. understanding when Israel ultimately took matters into its own hands. From Suez on, one thing has not changed: Super- powers do not like being surprised. iii iv A Surprise Out of Zion? This research was conducted within the International Security and Defense Policy Center of the RAND National Defense Research Institute, a federally funded research and development center spon- sored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the -Uni fied Combatant Commands, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the defense Intelligence Community. For more information on the International Security and Defense Policy Center, see http://www.rand.org/nsrd/ndri/centers/isdp.html or contact the director (contact information is provided on the web page). Contents Preface and Summary ........................................................... iii Acknowledgments ...............................................................vii Abbreviations ..................................................................... ix Introduction ....................................................................... 1 Case I: The Suez War, 1956 ..................................................... 5 Case II: The Six-Day War, 1967 ...............................................15 Case III: The Raid on Osiraq, 1981 ......................................... 27 Case IV: The Raid on al-Kibar, 2007.........................................45 Conclusion ........................................................................61 References ........................................................................75 v Acknowledgments Many thanks to Olya Oliker for her help and support in launching this project. Jim Dobbins, Seth Jones, Eric Peltz, Robin Meili, Ali Nader, Andrew Weiss, and many other RAND colleagues offered valuable input and insight along the way. Ambassador Sam Lewis generously sat for a candid and fascinat- ing interview about Osiraq. Rami Shtivi of the Menachem Begin Heri- tage Center in Jerusalem kindly walked me through some of its archi- val holdings. David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Dalia Dassa Kaye of RAND both read the paper carefully and offered typically thoughtful and helpful comments. I’m also particularly grateful to Joan Chanman-Forbes for her help with funding and to Maggie Snyder for stalwart assistance throughout. vii Abbreviations AWACS Airborne Warning and Control System CIA Central Intelligence Agency DNI Director of National Intelligence DOD Department of Defense IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency IDF Israel Defense Forces NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NGA National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency NSC National Security Council UN United Nations UNEF United Nations Emergency Force WMD weapons of mass destruction ix Introduction For years now, the United States and Israel have held close consulta- tions about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Much ink has already been spilled about whether Israel will ultimately choose to attack Iran. But far less attention has been paid to the question of whether U.S. officials are likely to be surprised by any Israeli strike. This study seeks to offer some perspective on that question by considering four key cases in which Israeli prime ministers were faced with thorny questions of whether to notify or consult with the United States over looming preemptive or preventive military strikes.1 1 When it comes to the anticipatory use of military force, the terms “preemptive” and “pre- ventive” are often used interchangeably. They should not be. As Michael Walzer has put it, preventive war “responds to a distant danger, a matter of foresight and free choice,” usually to shore up a regional balance of power or avert a growing threat. In describing preemptive force, on the other hand, Walzer cites Secretary of State Daniel Webster from 1842, who argued that preemptive force could only be justified by the urgent and immediate need to defend oneself from a blow about to be struck, from an attack that can be seen coming but has yet to land—“instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” Walzer himself draws a somewhat different definition of a legitimate act of preemption in which a state faces “a manifest intent to injure, a degree of active prepara- tion that makes that intent a positive danger, and a general situation in which waiting, or doing anything other than fighting, greatly magnifies the risk.” To focus on the key ques- tion at hand, this study has limited its scope to cases in which Israel did strike preventively or preemptively—not such fascinating but different cases as the Yom Kippur War of 1973, in which Israel chose with a heavy heart to absorb the first blow. See Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations, New York: Basic, 2006, pp. 74–75, 80–81. See also Karl Mueller et al., Striking First: Preemptive and Preventive Attack in U.S. National Security Policy, Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND Corporation, MG-403-AF, 2006. 1 2 A Surprise Out of Zion? This paper seeks to offer a different angle on current decisionmak- ing—in both Washington and Jerusalem—by considering the history that undergirds today’s conundrums, offers some echoes, and makes up at least some of the intellectual infrastructure that may inform deci- sions in both governments. This study focuses on four key cases in which Israel, after complicated decisionmaking processes, ultimately chose to strike first: the Suez War of 1956, in which the Eisenhower administration was shocked and enraged by Israel’s secret collusion with Britain and France to try to topple Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser; the Six-Day War of 1967, in which the Johnson admin- istration contended with repeated Israeli entreaties for a green light to use force after Nasser took a series of increasingly aggressive steps; the 1981 Israeli strike on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s Osiraq nuclear reactor, in which the Reagan administration was surprised by an Israeli strike; and the 2007 Israeli bombing of a mysterious Syrian nuclear facility known as al-Kibar, in which the George W. Bush administra- tion found itself split over Israel’s top-level requests that the United States bomb the Syrian reactor. These cases also track the widening and deepening special relationship between the planet’s greatest super- power and an embattled democracy in a volatile and hostile
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