Eyeing Israeli Intervention

On the open sea, a helicopter approaches a cargo ship of Eastern European origin. Quietly, the chopper disgorges a team of elite commandos, arguably the best in the world, who quickly subdue the crew and remove weapons unlisted on the ship’s manifest. This may be familiar as the opening mission of a widely popular modern combat video game, featuring Britain’s elite Special Air Service. Yet this scene may have actually happened recently —with Israeli troops.

Accounts differ on what really happened to “The Arctic Sea,” a ship with an Estonian, Latvian, and Russian crew that was nominally bound from Finland to Algeria with a cargo of harmless timber. Initial reports claimed masked men speaking accented English subdued, but did not harm, the crew; then the ship simply vanished. Russia has claimed, once the ship was found off West Africa, that there was no suspicious cargo on board besides the intended logs. Yet experts believe there was more to the ship’s hijacking than pirates seeking ransom.

More and more it seems likely that the ship was illicitly carrying powerful Russian anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. Russia has denied this assertion, but its position seems fishy. Whether Russia was coerced into taking back the missiles and covering the situation up or the missiles were forcibly removed, they would not be reported in the inventory following the ship’s recovery. Furthermore, the first whistleblower on the ship’s secret cargo, Mikhail Voitenko, a maritime expert and editor of the Russian maritime journal “Sovfracht,” has been fired and induced to flee to Istanbul after various threats. Voitenko’s forced exile only adds weight to his claim.

Having taken direct action, Israel apparently used diplomacy more to handle fallout from its actions. Though the Israeli government announced and then maintained in the face of doubting by its press that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had spent a full day incommunicado last week because he was visiting a secret Israeli base, it has since admitted Netanyahu leased a private jet from an Israeli citizen and flew to Russia for the day, where he spoke in secret.

With the Russian government itself commenting only vaguely about whether Netanyahu met with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, it does not take Jason Bourne to unravel a common thread: Whether through its commandos or through strong-arm diplomacy, Israel appears to have stopped a shipment of missiles from reaching Iran. As the two countries work more closely together, it appears Israel avoided any post-op crisis and successfully negotiated with its much larger counterpart on the issue. Around the time the ship was discovered off the west coast of Africa, Israeli President Shimon Peres even declared victory of a kind, announcing that Russia would reconsider selling a variety of missiles types to Iran; in what seems Russia’s preferred form of disclosure, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s office neither confirmed nor denied the claim that Medvedev has promised to work with the Israelis on the issue.

This major development in international relations involving both Iran and Russia has thus far been completely devoid of American influence. Israel, not the United States, is aggressively pursuing results on Iran, even standing up to Russia. Considering the United States’s difficulties with similar issues, such as the planned anti-missile bases in Central Europe, Israel’s accomplishments are impressive.

Israel’s success, however, does not come without a new and growing risk: preemptive action on a much larger scale. Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor of Israel has claimed “the clock is ticking” on negotiating with Iran about its nuclear program. According to Meridor, the United States and its Western allies have the chance to position Iran to stop its atomic projects, provided they apply the proper political and economic influence.

What will happen if the traditional Western powers do not halt Iran’s progress in nuclear capability? The answer may lie in the bizarre story of “The Arctic Sea” and an unannounced, clandestine trip by an Israeli head of state to Moscow. Simply put, Israel has proven itself unafraid to take direct, dramatic action to keep Iran in check. If Israel will not hesitate in playing tough with a country as powerful and potentially belligerent as Russia, the West cannot assume it will hesitate to use a similar “shoot first, ask questions later” policy in the future.

The possibility that Israel will bomb an unrepentant Iran has been well documented. The Wall Street Journal has highlighted on its editorial page the potential crisis this may pose for the Obama administration, while the Los Angeles Times has featured an editorial arguing that Iran’s lack of cooperation in September could lead to a unilateral Israeli response in self-defense.

These claims are not as incredible as they might sound. The saga of “The Arctic Sea” makes it clear that Israel is not kidding around, nor is it waiting upon developments. Israel will protect itself first and then send politicians to smooth things over when the issue has been rendered a fait accompli. Hopefully the United States and the rest of the world heed the warning left on that abandoned ship.


Alexander R. Konrad ’11, a Crimson associate editorial editor, is a history concentrator in Quincy House.