Gen. (ret.) Amos Yadlin : Show Us That You’ll Really Stop Iran, Or We May Have To.

Gen. (ret.) Amos Yadlin : Show Us That You’ll Really Stop Iran, Or We May Have To.(TI).Gen. (ret.) Amos Yadlin served for more than 40 years in the Israel Defense Forces. As a fighter pilot, he was active in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and he was one of the eight pilots who bombed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981. Later serving as deputy commander of the air force and Israel’s military attaché in the US, he was appointed head of Military Intelligence in 2006, a post he held until his retirement at the end of 2010. Today he is the executive director of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, where this interview took place on Wednesday. Yadlin is a careful but candid interviewee, taking time to choose the formulations he wants but not retreating into polite diplomatese. In this conversation, for instance, he takes issue with US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta for undermining the US military option, makes plain his conviction that Israel’s military option does not expire in the fall, urges Israel to find a formula for apologizing to Turkey over the deaths on the Mavi Marmara, and manages not to sound alarmist while raising the possibility of Egypt canceling its peace treaty with Israel.
How do you see the Iranian threat developing? 
That depends on three people - two in Israel and one in the United States. If we take at face value what the prime minister and the defense minister say publicly, we are reaching a very critical period. What they say, more or less, is that all the strategies being employed against Iran have either failed or are not working. The diplomatic negotiations that took place in Istanbul, Baghdad and Moscow produced nothing. The sanctions may be painful for the Iranians, but not to the extent that they change their minds. The secretive operations for which no one takes responsibility have not stopped the Iranian nuclear program. The regime is relatively stable.
And therefore if you’re not prepared to live with an Iran with a nuclear bomb, you are left with only one option and that’s the option of military intervention. Add to that the concept that the defense minister has coined, “the zone of immunity.” He said we were entering [this zone] three months ago, and at that time he could still hope that the negotiations would succeed or that the sanctions would work. Today, he sees that’s not the case. So, we’re in a very critical area. 
According to the zone of immunity argument, next year, more or less, Israel already won’t be able to [set back the Iranian program through military intervention].There is a certain feeling in Israel that perhaps the president’s declaration at AIPAC is not sufficient, and that maybe much more binding and stronger steps need to be taken. Actual steps, not just statements? Even statements, such as a declaration - not to AIPAC, a declaration to the Congress - that if the steps the administration is relying upon today, like negotiations and sanctions, do not achieve success by the summer of 2013, then the Americans will deal with the problem via military intervention.
You’re saying that if the president made such a declaration publicly, this would assuage Israel’s concerns? I think it could. Now, in addition to declarations, actions should be taken to show that you’re serious. More intensive missile defense in the Middle East, exercises with your allies in the Middle East - in order to demonstrate to the world more clearly that you’re really training for this and preparing for this. 
And this we don’t see? 
We see less of this. We see less of this than we could see for it to enter the Iranian calculus as something they need to be afraid of. The Iranians have just said that they’re not afraid of the Israelis. They didn’t say they’re not afraid of the Americans. But you can see from their behavior that they’re not afraid. Therefore the American threat has to be a great deal more credible. It cannot be that the secretary of defense will stand up publicly and say that an attack on Iran will plunge the world into World War III or the Middle East will go up in flames. [Yadlin may have been referring to comments made by Panetta, including in an address at the Brookings Institution in December, where he said that a military attack would trigger "an escalation that would... not only involve many lives, but I think could consume the Middle East in a confrontation and a conflict that we would regret."] That shows that you don’t really mean to do it. America is the world’s biggest military power, the strongest in the world. And a country like Iran can be taken care of by the United States.Read the full story here.