A thump interrupted the prime minister’s words. Zvi Avner sat two seats to his left. The 56-year-old Israeli defense minister had pounded his fist on the table, a reaction which surprised no one. “We should have gone while Bush was president,” he said. “We had the chance in December. I told everybody this. We knew this!”
“Please calm down Zvi,” the prime minister responded. “We all know that we had a friend, but we know equally well that he had not yet been convinced that a strike was necessary. And let’s face the facts here — we have been floating along and relying upon the U.S. Air Force as our strike force. We do not even have a plan yet. At least not one that, in my opinion, offers the right odds of success without relying upon the Americans. We have to change our thinking and develop a plan that assumes we are acting alone.” He paused for a second before adding, “And that works!”
Heads nodded around the room, signifying unanimous consent on Cohen’s last point. The prime minister understood that his point was uncontroversial. But he also realized that reaching a plan the extended Israeli Cabinet would support and that didn’t include the armed forces of the greatest military power on earth would be a great challenge. He was not at all sure he would achieve this goal.
Benjamin Raibani shifted in his chair as he always did when preparing to speak. He sat between Cohen and Avner, a symbolic position for the minister who had no real portfolio to worry about. As the oldest man in the room, Raibani was responsible for imparting wisdom and caution into the discussions and thinking of the Israeli Cabinet, especially when it came to Iran. Without any practical duties, the 71-year-old minister of strategic affairs was free to apply his considerable brain power to any situation without the constraints that come from daily obligations. He had been a friend and confidant of Eli Cohen for more than four decades and there was no secret left unknown between the two men. “Please, Eli, can you summarize where we stand with the Americans and especially the president?”
On a lighter day Cohen would joke about his nickname for Raibani, the “Metronome” — the man who always returned the group to topics at hand and maintained the proper pace. But right now, Cohen welcomed this quality in Raibani. “Yes, you’re right. Let me hit the… well I would say highlights, but in this case the right word is lowlights. First, we have all read the Mossad file on the president. I have to give kudos to the Mossad analyst or analysts who wrote the summary. Now that I have met the man one-on-one, I realize that they were spot on. I made a couple of pages of notes on the flight home that I gave to Ami. I am sure these will help update the profile.” Amichai “Ami” Levy was the director of Mossad and, in the mind of Eli Cohen, the most important man in Israel not present in this room at this moment.
The prime minister continued. “I am going to be charitable and refrain from calling the man an anti-Semite, but there is no doubt that he is a product of the decades long tilt toward the Palestinian cause among the academic left in America. I went to Washington hopeful that the weight of the office would overcome his background. I left disappointed. We had the predictable dialogue on the Palestinians.” Cohen paused, his eyes staring at nothing, his lip quivered slightly. “No. It was no dialogue. I received a fifteen minute lecture on the importance of a Palestinian state and the… um… I am trying to recall the word. Ah, yes, the ‘intransigence’ of Israel in general and me in particular.” Cohen drank more water. “This discussion is not important. After the lecture I defended myself, of course, but then I asked him specifically about Iran. He referred to his CIA reports and told me that Iran was at least three to four years away from a bomb. He stated flatly that he believes that under his administration the U.S. and Iran will be able to negotiate honestly and fairly — these were his words — ‘honestly and fairly’. The man is incredibly naïve.” Cohen stabbed his finger into the air as he spoke to emphasize his point.
“I tried to nail him down so that I could judge where we stand now. So I asked him a hypothetical. I said ‘Mister President, assume the CIA walks into your office tomorrow and tells you that they have absolute proof that the Iranians will have a working bomb in six months. Will you then join us in using military force to remove this program?’” The prime minister took the time to look each man in the room briefly in the eye. He leaned forward in his chair, his right elbow on the table in front of him supporting his weight. His index finger pointed outward to the opposite wall as if facing the President of the United States. “Do you know what that man said to me?” he asked rhetorically. “He said ‘you are asking me a hypothetical question. All I can tell you is that it is the policy of the United States to insist that all signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty abide by their obligations.’” Eli Cohen was now reliving the moment when he came to the conclusion that Israel stood alone in the world. His face was reddening and everyone in the room could see it. ‘“If Iran fails in its obligations, then the United States will work with you and all other nations to contain any threat.’”
Cohen leaned further forward, assuming the posture he wished he could have assumed three days earlier with the president. “I replied, ‘Mister President, with all due respect, we are not in a theoretical debate at Harvard. We are discussing life and death for eight million Israeli citizens. We are discussing in real terms whether or not the world will stand by as it did in the Thirties while darkness overwhelms the Jewish people. We are discussing the next Holocaust.’” Cohen relaxed slightly, his right arm returning to a rested position on the table. His eyes shifted downward. “Well that man was clearly angered at my tone. And I freely admit that perhaps I was somewhat condescending to the most powerful man on the planet.” Cohen offered the hint of a smile, breaking the tension of the moment. The other men in the room all knew Eli Cohen intimately, including his strengths and weaknesses. Some of them even smiled. “All he would say to me in response was something like ‘I will continue to review this situation in a rational and restrained manner.’ Without saying it directly, the message was clear. This man will not join us in a military strike. We are on our own.”
“To hell with him,” blurted out Zvi Avner. “What about our friends?”
“To hell with him?” admonished Cohen. “He is the goddamn president. There will be no U.S. military action without his orders.
“And most of our ‘friends’ worked to get him elected!” the prime minister continued. “Here, I will tell you a story. I had dinner Monday night with Senator Schein of New York. I relayed to him just what I have told you. Maybe I was even more blunt in my view of the motives of this president. He then spent five minutes reassuring me that the president will be a friend of Israel in the long-run and chalked our discussion up to his political inexperience. I don’t know, gentlemen. But I think our friends in America are in denial over this guy. I wonder if we have lost American Jews.”
The prime minister then spent another ten minutes highlighting his meetings with senior American leaders, both Jew and Gentile. He summed up the situation. “We maintain deep support in the U.S. military and intelligence community. But we have lost the president. And that loss means we are alone in our struggle with Iran, at least when it comes to overt military support. I tell each of you here and now, we will develop a working plan over the next few months that assumes we are alone and addresses every contingency. If the day comes when we must strike Iran, we will have a plan that will succeed. This process starts right now. Zvi, please review the military issues as you see them.”