Biden’s Plan B for Iran

OPINION:

As President Biden has scheduled a July visit to Israel, where he will meet with a caretaker government, he will likely need to deal with a failure to conclude a new nuclear deal with Iran. The most recent attempt at a new nuclear deal with Iran that would bring back the 2015 JCPOA, canceled by former President Donald Trump, has gone nowhere. Even U.S. representative for Iran Robert Malley is sanguine about any further discussions.

Both Mr. Biden and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi claim to support a return to the JCPOA but the gridlock seems insurmountable and there is no more political will to make further concessions needed to restore the accord. Under Mr. Biden, the U.S. already caved in on the issues of Iran’s support to terrorists and further development of ballistic missiles. The remaining issue of the Trump-era sanction designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization was even on the table with no response from the Iranians.

Iran viewed lifting the terrorist designation as an essential step to reverse Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign. Under bipartisan pressure, Mr. Biden resisted removing the terrorist designation without assurance that the IRGC will take steps to reduce tensions in the region. In reality, Mr. Biden has no additional tools for countering the IRGC and was willing to concede this point to get an agreement. That didn’t even work. Clearly, the Biden administration thought it would be easier to make a deal with the Iranians than has proven to be the case and most experts now see this at a dead end.

While Iran suggested their position might be softening, they have failed to come up with any new to address this impasse, and simply walked away from a suggested draft. At the same time, Iran’s expanding nuclear program continues to erode the nonproliferation benefits of any new deal.

Mr. Biden will soon visit Israel where the new caretaker government under the new Prime Minister Yair Lapid will challenge the Biden team to answer the question of how they plan to deal with the problem, as Iran continues enriching uranium and will soon be at the nuclear threshold power to go nuclear in a matter of weeks.

The stark reality is that Mr. Biden needs to focus on a new strategy — a Plan B for dealing with the Iranians, which many believe will be a regional security alliance with the U.S. including Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.

This would not be a formal alliance like NATO, obligating members to come to each other’s defense in case of attack, but it would involve greater coordination among the members, including intelligence, early warning and common responses to possible attacks from Iran and its proxies throughout the region, most importantly being the Iranian proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon.

A joint deployment for such strategic challenges in the Middle East was at the center of a scenario used in an Israeli military exercise during May in the “month of war” — an escalation with Hezbollah on the northern border that moved into other arenas and involved Iran indirectly. Israel does not expect the U.S. to engage directly in any such conflict and launch attacks on it in Beirut or in the Lebanese Bekaa Valley, and the U.S. has no such intention.

The IDF exercise shows, however, that there is a wide field here for cooperative efforts — opening of emergency depots; intelligence sharing; and the establishment of a regional air defense system which the U.S. wants to upgrade through a broader regional initiative. In support of this concept, the U.S. has recently sent a large military delegation, with an unprecedented number of generals and admirals coming to Israel, for joint planning efforts.

This potential alliance evolved as the likelihood of a new agreement with Iran faded. Following the success of Mr. Trump’s Abraham Accords, it became clear that military coordination with the U.S. had to be upgraded, and expanded to include allied Arab nations. A new military alliance must focus on countering Iranian ballistic missiles and drones as well as support for terrorist proxies. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates all need to be part of this alliance. From all indications, there is strong support for this among the parties.

Operationally this would involve the deployment of Israeli radar in these Arab countries; intelligence cooperation; and early warning of the launching of Iranian missiles and drones and their interception. This is in the interest of Israel and the Arab countries that have already been the subject of Iranian attacks. U.S. involvement is also important due to the large number of military forces in the region, where American bases are in danger of attack.

The Biden administration hopes to use his visit to the region to publicly announce the launch of the regional defense system. In the most optimistic scenario, Saudi Arabia would also agree to join openly. Supporting this has been a secret meeting that took place in the Sinai at Sharm al-Sheikh in March.

Organized by the U.S., the participants included IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi and senior army officers from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. It was part of the U.S. effort to promote a regional aerial defense system against Iran, convened after American fighter jets shot down two Iranian drones in Iraq that were apparently on their way to attack Israel.

This incident in Iraqi airspace shows that there is already cooperation between the U.S. and various regional states, including intelligence sharing, linked radar systems and the deployment of interception methods. An official announcement of this alliance would be considered an American achievement, and Mr. Biden’s team is using the Iranian threat to underscore the need for such an alliance.

Mr. Biden’s main goal is reconciling with Saudi Arabia, as the U.S. needs the Saudis to increase oil production to reduce the havoc wreaked by the global energy crisis caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At the same time any regional progress, and certainly progress that brings Israeli-Saudi relations out into the open, would be an important bonus. For an administration that has thus far failed on everything else, it would be a very welcome win indeed.

• Abraham Wagner has served in several national security positions, including the NSC Staff under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He is the author of the recent book “Henry Kissinger: Pragmatic Statesman in Hostile Times.”