These are uncertain times in Israel, as Israelis – and Iranians – wait to see whether President Donald Trump follows through on preparations to attack Iran. The pace of events makes it difficult to predict even what might happen overnight, which was summed up well in a recent edition of Yedioth Aharonoth, Israel’s largest paid circulation daily newspaper. Rather than just reporting the news, on the cover of its news analysis section, the newspaper asked the following of its readers:
“How did you sleep last night? Will he (Trump) bomb? Did he bomb? Will we exercise restraint? Did we respond? Will we be running to the bomb shelter? Did we receive an all-clear? With Trump on the ground, an entire country, actually the whole world, is stressed.”
Trump seems to have deferred immediate plans for an attack on Iran, and I haven’t had to go to the bomb shelter in the basement of our apartment building in suburban Tel Aviv. But we haven’t received an all clear either.
The Iranian regime is in big trouble and they recently cracked down on dissent in the most brutal manner. Time will tell whether additional military action by the United States – with or without Israel – is in the cards, and whether the Islamic Republic seeks to negotiate its way out of its current confrontation with the United States.
It was just last June that, with the help of the United States, Israel conducted a massive bombing campaign over Iran. It was prompted by concern that Tehran was on the brink of becoming a nuclear power – and that it was amassing huge numbers of ballistic missiles that could be used against Israel. Less than six months later, Trump has again been talking about Iranian efforts to restore its nuclear program, and Netanyahu has again expressed concern that the Iranians have been restoring their ballistic missile arsenal.
Israel has what must be the world’s most sophisticated anti-missile defense system, and Israel is a resilient country – because its people are resilient. That was on impressive display last June when my days and nights were interrupted by air-raid alerts that required me and my neighbors to wait out Iranian missile barrages in our basement shelter.
The mood in the shelter was one of defiance and acceptance of the situation, and in typically Israeli fashion, some of my neighbors with more technical knowledge than I have, rigged up a Wi-Fi router there, giving us internet access. They also set up a television so that the younger kids in the building could watch videos in the middle of the night.
But if there’s another round of fighting with Iran, the guy in our building who set up the Wi-Fi won’t be in the shelter. He worked in Israel for a multinational high-tech firm and last summer took a job with the firm at its Silicon Valley headquarters in California. Was it because of the war? I don’t think so, at least I don’t think that was the primary reason. Will he and his family be coming back to Israel? I certainly hope so, and he and his wife haven’t sold their apartment in the building – which is an indication that they believe Israel will remain a good place in which to invest.
The Iranian threat needs to be defused through military action or diplomacy, because no country, not even Israel, can confidently face the future with brief bursts of war with Iran every six months. If the country is to continue to retain its best and brightest – and attract large numbers of Jewish immigrants from the Diaspora – it needs to find a way to deal with Iran.
Cliff Savren is a former Clevelander who covers the Middle East from Ra’anana, Israel. He is an editor at the English edition of Haaretz.