Journalist Noam Sheizaf, writing on +972, asks, “Would the incoming Israeli Chief of Staff favor an attack on Iran?”

He writes:

Last spring, Gantz said that “there is no question regarding our moral right to act [againt Iran]“ [Heb]. Yet according to Ynet’s defense analyst Ron Ben-Yishay, much like the departing Gabi Ashkenazi, Gantz belongs to the “skeptics” camp, and would like to avoid IDF military action against the Iranian nuclear facilities. Unlike Ashkenazi, Gantz is not expected to oppose such an action if the political leadership decides to carry it out.

Sheizaf adds an update:

UPDATE: Haaretz’s Amir Oren also estimate that Benni Gantz opposes a military strike on Iran. “Gantz is part of the level-headed camp, led by Gabi Ashkenazi,” writes Oren . Oren names other senior IDF generals that hold the same views, and concludes that the “pro-active” line on Iran, led by Netanyahu and Barack, is “disintegrating.”

While Netanyahu and Barack have attempted to portray the military and political leadership as sharing a deep fear of the Iranian nuclear program and a willingness to act militarily against Iranian nuclear facilities, cracks are  appearing in that supposedly united front. Information such as that passed along by Noam Sheizaf is useful in understanding what the “true” Israeli position is on Iran’s nuclear program. It also should call into question Jeffrey Goldberg’s reporting from last fall, which portrayed Israeli political and military leadership as willing to “go it alone” in a unilateral attack against Iran. Who exactly were Goldberg’s anonymous sources and how were they selected?

Goldberg wrote back in September:

I have asked a simple question: what is the percentage chance that Israel will attack the Iranian nuclear program in the near future? Not everyone would answer this question, but a consensus emerged that there is a better than 50 percent chance that Israel will launch a strike by next July. (Of course, it is in the Israeli interest to let it be known that the country is considering military action, if for no other reason than to concentrate the attention of the Obama administration. But I tested the consensus by speaking to multiple sources both in and out of government, and of different political parties. Citing the extraordinary sensitivity of the subject, most spoke only reluctantly, and on condition of anonymity. They were not part of some public-relations campaign.)

Thanks to recent reporting, we now have reason to question whether IDF and Mossad leadership (see former Mossad chief Meir Dagan’s comments on the Iranian nuclear program) have been convinced that an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities is a feasible mission or a strategic calculation with a positive cost-benefit outcome.

• The Atlantic: Jeffrey Goldberg lists his observations on the ongoing events in Egypt and mentions that friends of his, like FDD fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht, advocate that democratically elected Islamist governments might be part of a “long-term process of gradual modernization.” But Goldberg is “not so sure” and suggests that not all democratically elected governments are worth ending “fifty years of peace” which have “meant propping up dictators for fifty years.” “I support democratization, but the democratization we saw in Gaza (courtesy of, among others, Condi Rice) doesn’t seem particularly worth it,” he writes.” Goldberg then tries to deny the importance of “linkage”—despite its embrace by the military establishment and the Obama administration—and concludes, “these uprisings are offering proof that Israel isn’t the central Arab preoccupation. Wikileaks showed us that Iran is the obsession of Arab leaders, and these mass demonstrations are showing us that the faults of Arab leaders are the actual obsession of Arab people.” (Jim Lobe and I took a closer look at those cables and found a very different message.)

• The National Interest: Ben-Gurion University professor Benny Morris writes, “The regimes that have crumbled or appear to be on the verge of crumbling, are those linked to the West, and they are regimes characterized by a relatively soft authoritarianism, and are commonly perceived as weak, if not downright flabby, well past their prime.” He contrasts the end of Ben Ali’s rule and the escalating situation in Egypt with the suppression of protests by the Iranian government in 2009. “All of this stands in stark contrast to the Iranian regime’s successful suppression of last year’s street rebellion, triggered by the fraudulent elections that left President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad in power,” he writes. Morris concludes, “What is clear is that the West, as usual, is faring poorly among the Muslims of the Middle East, where real savagery—sadly—wins respect, and irresolution, a kick in the pants.”

In Haaretz,  Ari Shavit, a member of the paper’s editorial board, lashes out at the former spy chief for undermining the possibility of “the military option” against Iran.

Shavit writes:

The prime minister responded with rage to the former Mossad chief’s statements. Benjamin Netanyahu thinks Dagan has sabotaged the diplomatic effort to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. But Netanyahu isn’t alone. Senior officials in the United States, Britain and France this week castigated Dagan for his utterances. The White House and Capitol Hill expressed shock and anger. Major allies of Israel saw the former Mossad chief’s briefing as incomprehensible and irresponsible.

I’m not sure who exactly in the White House “expressed shock and anger”—Dennis Ross?  It would be helpful if Shavit could point to which “senior officials” in the U.K. and France “castigated” Dagan — though I suppose I could guess which members of Congress might be disappointed by Dagan’s blast of honesty.

Shavit claims that Dagan’s “utterances” may have undermined the glue that holds together the Western powers’ ability to “adopt a firm approach to Iran.”

The success [of this strategy] stemmed in part from the feeling of urgency Israel instilled in the powers. Now comes the former Israeli Mossad chief and blurs the sense of urgency. The Russians, Chinese, Germans and Italians cannot be expected to be more Catholic than the pope. Dagan hurt Israel’s allies and played into the hands of officials abroad who dismiss the Iranian danger and seek an excuse not to address it.

Is Shavit arguing that Dagan’s comments, which weren’t widely challenged on factual grounds, undermined the “sense of urgency” that Israel had instilled in the West?  It sounds like Shavit is acknowledging that some factual exaggeration may have occurred when Israel made the case that Iran’s nuclear program presented an imminent existential threat. His bizarre argument seems to be that if Israeli officials fail to tow the line and exaggerate the Iranian threat, Western powers might not feel as inclined to take such a hard-line—and potentially self-destructive –approach to pressuring Tehran.

Shavit drives this point home:

[Dagan’s] statements about the grave consequences of an attack on Iran are balanced and correct. But one of the main tools to put pressure on Iran was the implied threat of an Israeli military attack. The international community has also begun to pressure Iran seriously for fear of a sudden strike by the Israel Air Force. Now Dagan has weakened the leverage. He made the Israeli threat seem unreliable and not serious. The man who was in charge of thwarting the Iranian nuclearization made the Iranians think they can continue galloping to the bomb because they are not in any real danger.

Shavit is essentially admitting that Israeli leadership might not have been as serious about a military strike as it were suggested to be by the likes of Jeffrey Goldberg.  Instead, it appears to have been blackmailing the U.S. and other allies into conforming to a hard-line strategy with the threat that Israel might launch a disastrous unilateral strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.  For Shavit, and perhaps Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, it’s not just the fact that Iran might call the bluff in Israel’s threats.  Israel risks losing the support of its western allies when Dagan let the truth slip out about Iran’s nuclear program.

Israeli hawks have little to fall back on after Dagan’s remarks, so Shavit concludes his column by suggesting that the spy chief’s statements might make an Israeli military strike more likely because allies may lose their will to “impose a diplomatic-economic siege on Iran.”

It will be interesting to see how the voices in the U.S. who have echoed and magnified hysteria about the “existential threat” from Iran respond to increasing uncertainty about the actual danger posed to Israel and the West.

Of course, those who have placed their professional reputations on the line by repeating Israeli talking points about the likelihood of an Israeli military strike will be more likely to repeat Shavit’s argument.

Jeffrey Goldberg, whose Atlantic cover story last September kicked off widespread speculation about the possibility a unilateral military strike by Israel, was already repeating Shavit’s argument on his blog this morning.

Goldberg, in a post titled “Has the Ex-Mossad Chief Made an Iran Attack More Likely?,” wrote:

Ari Shavit excoriates Meir Dagan, the recently-retired Mossad chief, for subverting the international coalition aligned against Iran by speaking so loudly against a military option.

He then block-quoted two paragraphs of Shavit’s column.

For those who have helped maintain the illusion of urgency and imminent danger posed by Iran’s nuclear program, Dagan’s comments must pose a serious threat.

• National Review Online: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Benjamin Weinthal blogs on the collapse of Lebanon’s government on Wednesday, warning that “the Iranian proxy Hezbollah” has shown “that the political Islamists rule the roost in Lebanese society.” Weinthal writes, “The Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah’s chief sponsor, has been forced to reduce its supply of military and financial aid to the Islamic fanatics by 40 percent. Over the years, the Iranian regime has pumped roughly $1 billion in military aid into Hezbollah’s arsenal.” Weinthal concludes that the approval of $100 million in military aid for Lebanon could have been a mistake if Hezbollah somehow becomes the beneficiary of the military goods: “Plainly said, it is time that the U.S. discontinues military funds for Lebanon and redirect monies to pro–Lebanese democracy organizations.”

• The Atlantic: Jeffrey Goldberg responds to a post by Reza Aslan in which Aslan suggests that Ahmadinejad’s comments that Israel should be “wiped from the map” has been mistranslated and does not imply that Israel, and its people, should be physically destroyed but that “existing political borders should be wiped from a literal map.” Goldberg responds, “Hmmm. So Israel should be replaced by Palestine, which is different than removing Israel from the map. Got it. What Ahmadinejad has been trying to say all along, then, is  ‘Shabbat Shalom, Jews!.’” He then sarcastically offers to “clarify the record of the Holocaust-denying, eliminationist anti-Semitic Iranian president” before reprinting a list of Ahmadinejad’s comments about Israel and Jews.

• Commentary: Evelyn Gordon, writing on Commentary’s Contentions blog, pushes back against the claim by outgoing Mossad chief Meir Dagan that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon before 2015. Gordon writes, “Precisely because Dagan is known to have vehemently opposed military action against Iran, his confident assertion that Iran won’t have the bomb before 2015 should be taken with a large grain of salt.” She concludes, “Dagan is both a dedicated patriot and a consummate professional, but even patriotic professionals are still human. And it is only human nature to read the tea leaves in a way that supports what you would most like to believe.”

• The Atlantic: Jeffrey Goldberg takes a more positive approach to Dagan’s announcement: “[I]t is fair to say that the combination of sanctions and subterfuge has definitively set back Iran’s nuclear program by at least one and perhaps as many as four years.” Goldberg hails “the unknown inventor of Stuxnet, the miracle computer virus, which has bollixed-up Iran’s centrifuges” and the Obama administration’s efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. He concludes with a warning, writing, “It is important to remember that Iranian intentions are unchanged, until proven otherwise, and it is also important to remember that technical difficulties are surmountable, but it is definitely fair to say that the zero hour is not yet here.”

• National Review Online: Michael Mukasey, Tom Ridge, Rudolph Giuliani, and Frances Townsend defend their participation in a Mujahadin e Khalq (MEK) event in Paris. The MEK is a foreign terrorist organization, according to the State Department; speaking at a MEK event could be seen as providing support for a terrorist organization.  But Mukasey, Ridge, Giuliani, and Townsend write, in response to a challenge by Professor David Cole, that the Material Support statute does not need revision, but “[w]hat it does need — and does not often enough get for fear of offending some Muslim organizations — is rigorous enforcement against accurately designated organizations, of which MEK is not one.”

• The Wall Street Journal: In his weekly column, Bret Stephens asks “Are Israeli Likudniks and their neocon friends (present company included) the dark matter pushing the U.S. toward war with Iran?” After analyzing the WikiLeaks documents, he concludes that, “Arab Likudniks turn out to be even more vocal on that score.” Stephens goes on to argue that the need for missile defense has not been overblown because, “we learned that North Korea had shipped missiles to Tehran that can carry nuclear warheads as far as Western Europe and Moscow.”

• The Atlantic: Former New York Times investigative reporter Raymond Bonner blogs that the WikiLeaks documents have shown “…that Israel is, as Jeffrey Goldberg notes, [is] not alone in wanting decisive action to stop Iran’s nuclear program.” Bonner repeats the alleged comments from King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and King Hamid of Bahrain, both of whom reportedly urged a U.S. military strike on Iran’s nuclear program, and observes that “this the same chilling language, which the American public is accustomed to hearing from hardline Israeli officials.” He finishes his post by speculating that the death of an Iranian nuclear scientist on Monday might be the work of Saudi Arabia, UAE or Kuwait because it is “easier for one of those countries to have infiltrated, or recruited, and less likely to be caught, because they could be confident Iran would blame Israel or the United States.”

• FrumForum: Executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), Noah Pollak, writes that this WikiLeaks release is “obliterating the Gulf-side Middle East” worldview of leftists and realists that had promoted negotiations with Iran and Syria, a withdrawal from Iraq and a policy of pressuring Israel to stop settlement construction. Pollak, attacking the “linkage” argument, blogs that Washington’s Arab allies are not alienated by the close U.S.-Israel relationship. Instead, “we now know that what’s really alienating the Arabs is America’s reluctance to use its power to confront Iran and enforce a security architecture in which Israel is America’s most capable client.”

• National Review Online: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies‘ Benjamin Weinthal observes that WikiLeaks has  “forced [Arab world leaders] to come out of the diplomatic closet and declare Iran’s regime the number one enemy in the Middle East.” Now that the Arab world’s opposition to Iran’s nuclear program is known, says Weinthal, it’s time to ratchet up sanctions against the Islamic Republic’s energy and financial sectors. Weinthal stops short of calling for military action again Iran but concludes that the WikiLeaks information “vindicate[s] Israel’s longstanding position on the need for swift and powerful action against Iran’s out-of-control regime.”

• The Hill: Rebecca Heinrichs, an adjunct fellow at the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), blogs that the $60 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia should not be allowed to “sail through without serious oversight from Congress.” Heinrichs argues that although arming Saudi Arabia is widely seen as part of a containment and deterrence strategy against Iran, “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is governed by a monarchy in accordance with Sharia Law…” and “…like the majority of Muslim countries, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia does not recognize the statehood of Israel.” She admits the United States does enjoy access to Saudi oil exports and that the country’s leaders oppose Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program but, “…but if a country’s mores are more like those of our enemies than our allies, we should be careful how we reciprocate those benefits.”

• The Atlantic: Jonathan Schanzer, vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), blogs that Egypt, through Misr Iran Development Bank (MIDB), an Egyptian-Iranian financial institution, has become a vehicle for Iran to circumvent international sanctions. “It is a testament to how difficult it can be for the U.S. to enforce international sanctions, even among countries that appear to be natural allies in the effort to deter Iran,” writes Schanzer. He allows that, “Egypt, one of America’s closest allies in the Middle East and the recipient of more U.S. foreign aid than any country in the world save Israel, is certainly not planning on becoming a rogue state allied with Iran,” but “…Egypt is clearly hedging between Iran and the U.S.”

• Der Tagespiegel: The American Jewish Committee’s David Harris has an op-ed in the German daily (translated on AJC’s website) on the possibly forthcoming talks between the West and Iran. Harris cites experts who think Iran can be contained, then demurs: “[Iran] is driven by a theology which believes in hastening the coming of the so-called Hidden Imam. If unleashing war would help, it cannot be ruled out.” Even an Iran that doesn’t use weapons could make the world “a more dangerous place” by sparking an arms race that could lead to proliferation all the way in Greece. Harris then addresses potential dangers to Israel because of Iranian threats and client groups on Israel’s borders. Harris concludes by calling for explicit military threats against Iran: “The best way to avoid [the military option] is by making clear that it is on the table in all dealings with Iran. Only if Iran’s leaders grasp that the world is truly serious about preventing it from acquiring nuclear weapons can we hope for a diplomatic solution.”