Hamas’ Gaza strongman Yahya Sinwar at a Gaza rally, May 24, 2021. (AP/John Minchillo)
Sinwar is stuck within Gaza’s tunnel system and is running low on ammunition and supplies.
By Vered Weiss, World Israel News
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar may want to agree to a ceasefire and hostage release deal, according to a Washington Post opinion piece. Still, he is likely waiting out the clock and is hoping Iran attacks Israel.
David Ignatius wrote that Israeli and US sources say that Sinwar is intentionally stalling over commenting on the so-called “bridging proposal” put forward by the US that would call for the release of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in the first phase.
Ignatius writes that Sinwar is stuck within Gaza’s tunnel system and is running low on ammunition and supplies.
However, he is holding off on agreeing to a ceasefire deal because he hopes that Iran or Hezbollah will attack Israel first and will plunge Israel into a war on multiple fronts.
However, Ignatius added, “Iran seems likely to disappoint Hamas” since US officials believe that Iran has decided to delay its revenge strike against Israel for the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
Thanks to a “massive American show of force,” Iran has been deterred from attacking Israel. However, it may encourage Hezbollah to do so.
There have been back-and-forth strikes on Lebanon’s border with Israel since October 8th. Still, to avenge the death of senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr, it is thought Hezbollah was planning massive bombings of Tel Aviv, which would likely lead to a full-scale war on Israel’s northern front.
Ignatius says US officials are describing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “slow-walking” negotiations, insisting on having Israel remain in the Philadelphi corridor on the Gaza/Egyptian border.
However, according to US officials, any criticism of Netanyahu seems to pale in comparison to the intransigence of Hamas, and Ignatius reports that the hostage negotiations on Thursday are designed to put pressure on the terror group to secure a hostage deal.
Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani plans to travel to Iran to speak to the new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, about de-escalating tensions in the Middle East, particularly regarding Israel.
Military personnel stand guard at a nuclear facility in the Zardanjan area of Isfahan, Iran, April 19, 2024. Photo: West Asia News Agency via REUTERS
The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), will soon issue new reporting on Iran’s nuclear program from a summer of inspections at Tehran’s nuclear sites.
The new data — and their implications — may cause a shock.
In June, Tehran installed numerous new uranium-enrichment centrifuges at its Natanz enrichment plant and its underground Fordow site, more than tripling the latter’s capacity to produce uranium enriched to 60 percent purity.
Amassing 60 percent enriched material puts Iran days from enriching that uranium to 90 percent, the level needed for atomic weapons. As a result, the Islamic Republic’s so-called “breakout time” — specifically, the amount of time the regime needs to produce weapons-grade uranium for multiple nuclear devices — may have dropped significantly.
The IAEA’s 35-member Board of Governors will meet next during the week of September 9 in Vienna, where Washington and its European allies will consider Tehran’s nuclear advances, and assess Iran’s non-compliance with previous Board demands that the regime cooperate on a multi-year IAEA investigation into Tehran’s nuclear weapons-work.
To deter and penalize further Iranian advances, the West should pass an IAEA censure resolution against Tehran, and trigger the snapback of UN sanctions on the regime.
Iran’s breakout time began dropping precipitously after the election of US President Joe Biden in 2020, as Tehran exploited his desire to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and remove sanctions. Notably, this expansion came after Iran’s relative restraint when President Donald Trump exited the nuclear accord in 2018 and implemented massive US sanctions that severely crippled the Iranian economy.
As of November 2020, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Science and International Security, Iran needed 3.5 months to make weapons-grade uranium for one nuclear device, and around 5.5 months to produce enough material for two.
Biden later said he wouldn’t try to revive the joint nuclear deal, but stood by as Iranian breakout time dropped to terrifying levels.
IAEA data for May 2024 indicated the Islamic Republic could make enough fuel for one nuclear weapon in under 7 days, and enough for 13 weapons in four months. The regime would require an unknown number of additional months to build atomic devices and integrate the weapons-grade fuel, and the United States and Israel have reportedly observed Iranian scientists working on such efforts.
At Fordow last June, Iran installed advanced-generation machines known as the IR-6, which churn out uranium at a fast clip. There, Iran was already enriching uranium to 60 percent purity in two clusters of centrifuges — known as cascades — each containing 174 IR-6 machines, and informed the IAEA it was adding eight more cascades.
Institute for Science and International Security President David Albright crunched the numbers at Fordow, and found — using that facility alone — that Tehran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium for nine nuclear weapons in two months, adding to Iran’s overall breakout capability and rendering the plant an agile pathway for the Islamic Republic to quickly produce fuel for nuclear weapons.
Unless Iran has slowed centrifuge installation, Tehran could have nearly 1,400 IR-6 machines spinning at the highly fortified Fordow site, along with hundreds more new advanced machines at Natanz. A caveat: The United States may have offered the regime informal but lucrative sanctions relief to slow but not stop installation, meaning Iran could ramp back up any time.
These developments pair poorly with new US and Israeli intelligence that Iranian scientists at civilian research institutes were recently studying computer modeling and metallurgy related to nuclear weapons. As a result, the US intelligence community was unable to assert in a recent report to Congress that Iran is not working on nuclear weapons activities, prompting alarm from members of Congress who have seen the report’s classified version and received briefings.
Moreover, it is unclear whether the US and Israeli intelligence communities have adequate insight into Iran’s more covert nuclear weapons-work at military sites.
With the disarray of US election season and multiple world crises, Tehran’s temptation to sprint to nuclear weapons will only grow. Washington and its European allies must immediately counter and deter further Iranian advances.
As a follow-on to the IAEA board’s Iran censure last June — and in light of Tehran’s failure to comply with the board’s demands — the West must vote for a new censure at the IAEA’s upcoming meeting. Yet since Iran used the June board resolution as a pretext to expand its uranium-enrichment capacity immediately after, the West must do better at deterring further advances.
In the new IAEA resolution, Washington and its allies must refer Tehran’s proliferation case to the UN Security Council, where the United States, the United Kingdom, or France may — without Russia and China’s veto — reimpose within 30 days all Iranian sanctions that currently remain lifted by the defunct nuclear accord. Importantly, those sanctions prohibit Tehran’s uranium-enrichment activity and international (read: Russian and Chinese) missile and military trade with the regime. The West must also signal more sanctions pain is to come for additional Iranian advances.
Iran is rapidly approaching the capability to produce a medium-sized nuclear arsenal, and no nation but Israel is acting to stop it. Unless the Western powers plan to counter an expansionist, messianic Islamic Republic with nuclear weapons — one that is already acting on plans to destroy Israel by 2040 — they would do well to halt the regime’s advances while there is still time.
Andrea Stricker is deputy director of the Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program and a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Follow her on Twitter @StrickerNonpro. FDD is a nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.
Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations on Wednesday promised that the Islamic Republic’s response to the Israeli assassination of Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran would come “at a time and in a manner that the Zionists don’t expect,” Mehr News reported. “Maybe when their eyes are on the sky and the radar screen, they are surprised from the ground, and maybe a combination of the two.”
According to the Iranian mission, the response must punish Israel for its violation of Iran’s national sovereignty, and strengthen Iran’s deterrence power. It should “bring the [Israel] deep remorse to prevent any future aggression.”
“Also, Iran’s response should avoid a possible negative impact on a possible Gaza ceasefire,” Iran’s mission to the UN added.
Former IRGC chief Mohsen Rezaei told CNN this week that “There has to be a ceasefire in Gaza soon,” and so, “the Iranian actions will be very calculated.”
Rezaei said, “We have investigated the possible repercussions. And we will not let Netanyahu, who is sinking in a swamp, save himself.”
Mehr’s reports these days betray a sense of both impatience and anxiety, as three weeks after the July 31 assassination, “nobody yet knows when and how Iran will be responding to Israel. Some are wondering whether Iran will be responding at all.”
In that regard, Mehr stated Wednesday in an unattributed article headlined, “Iran’s retaliation against Israel a matter of when, not if,” that “If we take a look at what Iranians have been saying to the media or their counterparts, the answer is yes. Multiple high-ranking Iranian officials have repeated the Leader of the Islamic Revolution’s vow to avenge Haniyeh’s blood.”
Iranian Mehdi Bakhtiari told Mehr on Tuesday: “I don’t think 20 days is enough to say Iran has abandoned retaliation. I believe there is no doubt that the response will be carried out. What we don’t know yet is how and when it will come.”
Bakhtiari explained that “there are numerous international, political, and military issues Iranians must ponder before punishing Israel. In our current situation, the most important one is perhaps the Arba’in pilgrimage.”
THE ARBA’IN PILGRIMAGE
Every year, on the twentieth of Safar, a.k.a. Arba’in (today is the seventeenth), millions of Shiite pilgrims flock to Karbala, Iraq, often arriving there on foot from the nearby city of Najaf. Arba’in marks forty days after the tenth of Muharram, known as Ashura. On this day in 61 AH (680 CE), Husayn was killed, alongside most of his relatives and his small entourage, in the Battle of Karbala against the army of the Umayyad Caliph Yazid ibn Mu’awiya. The battle followed Husayn’s refusal to pledge his allegiance to Yazid, who is often portrayed by Shiite historians as irreverent and immoral. In Shia Islam, Karbala symbolizes the eternal struggle between good and evil, the pinnacle of self-sacrifice, and the ultimate sabotage of Muhammad’s prophetic mission.
Starting a major war with Israel on Arbai’n 20 would be like attacking Israel on, say, Simchat Torah. How can anyone even consider it?
Moreover, Bakhtiari argued that “when it comes to Israel in 2024, the longer Iran takes, the more it can harvest favorable outcomes,” pointing out that “Israel is already in a dire economic situation after 10 months of fruitless war in Gaza. Having to stay on high alert out of fear for Iran’s response significantly exacerbates those economic woes.”
LIBERMAN IS FURIOUS
Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman at a press conference about the state budget, August 30, 2021. / Yonatan Sindel / Flash 90
Curiously, Bakhtiari’s view of realities in Israel was embraced Wednesday morning by the man who many years ago promised to eliminate Haniyeh in 48 hours, Israel Beitenu Chairman Avigdor Liberman. Speaking on 103FM, Liberman announced:
“The Iranians succeeded in uniting all the war theaters. We must adopt a comprehensive plan here, and we must treat all the sectors together. The basis is Iran. We were dragged into the war of attrition, we played on the Iranians’ court, and they are exhausting us in the secondary arenas of Lebanon and Gaza.
“Without defeating Iran, there is no chance of winning – neither against Lebanon nor against Hamas, because they immediately recover. We have now seen that Hezbollah controls Lebanon, and the attacks are daily. Dozens of soldiers and civilians have been killed in the north, and hundreds have been injured. In my view, you must start from the head of the snake, the root, and the base of the axis of evil, Iran.
“How long can we continue the war of attrition? I know one thing: without overwhelming Iran and eliminating their nuclear program, the stranglehold they created will continue, and we will see the ring tighten.”
IT’S ABOUT PRESERVATION, STUPID
Danny Citrinowicz, a Research Fellow in the Iran Program at the Institute for National Security Studies, told Ynet on Tuesday that “the supreme goal of the Iranian regime is to preserve the regime.” Therefore, the activity of Iran’s proxies all over the region, Tehran’s diplomatic campaigns, and even its nuclear program are all meant to serve this goal.
Citrinowicz believes that “the more Israel deals with the Palestinians, Hamas, and even Hezbollah, the less it will deal with Iran in their view and this serves their purpose.”
