There is a growing risk of large-scale war along Israel’s northern borders in the coming year, in large part due to Iran’s increasing “determination and daring,” one of Israel’s leading national security think tanks warned Monday.
Each year, the Tel Aviv University-affiliated Institute for National Security Studies prepares a “strategic assessment” of the threats facing the State of Israel and the steps it believes the country should take to protect against them. The think tank, which is largely made up of former senior defense and diplomatic officials, presents those findings to the president.
On Monday, INSS director Amos Yadlin, a former head of Military Intelligence, provided President Reuven Rivlin with the institute’s assessments for 2020, including a warning that there is a “rise in the likelihood of war” in light of a variety of security, political and diplomatic factors.
In his speech after receiving the assessment, Rivlin lamented that Israel was facing this threat at a time of “political paralysis,” in which the country has not had a functioning government in over a year.
“The political paralysis in Israel is coming at an especially terrible point in time,” he said. “Instead of shaking hands and coming together to meet the Iranian threat, we have entered into a very problematic internal tailspin.”
“At the heart of the 2020 strategic assessment is the tension between the clear strength of Israel and its impressive successes in various areas and the possibility that this positive situation will be found to have been temporary and precarious,” the think tank said.
“This event, in our view, gives greater weight to the possibility of aggravation and the need to compose a new Israeli strategy. Killing Soleimani will create a new context and necessarily holds the potential for a strategic shift, whose scope and dimensions it is too early to predict,” the think tank said.
“The killing of Soleimani could lead to a scenario that demands Israeli consideration and coordination with the United States: a large-scale war between Iran and the United States,” it said.
The think tank pointed to Iran and its proxies as the major threat facing Israel, both in the form of some type of direct clash with Israel and — though less likely for 2020 — the potential development of an Iranian nuclear weapon.
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