The New Multi-year Plan of the IDF and the Agreement with Iran

The new Israel Defense issue No. 28 is making its way to subscribers and stores. A first peek: Amir Rapaport's column from the new issue, analyzing current and future events in the region and the defense establishment

The New Multi-year Plan of the IDF and the Agreement with Iran

Pursuant to the agreement: the “nuclear” agreement signed between the P5+1 and Iran in July 2015 is an event of historic proportions that will affect the Middle East for decades. The top-priority assignment of the Israeli intelligence services after the signing of the agreement is to deliver proof that the Iranians are fooling the entire world.

It is safe to assume that all of the surveillance satellites and all other intelligence gathering resources will attempt to pick up every speck of dust or any irregularity in the local power consumption that might betray the Iranians’ continued journey toward the bomb. The Iranians are no fools, however. They will not risk anything during the 60-day interval until the agreement is endorsed by the US Congress, with or without a veto by President Barack Obama, remaining very cautious until the sanctions currently imposed on them have been lifted.

What will they do a few months from now? Well, that is a completely different story. The situation will change radically. It will happen fast, as even if formally the sanctions are to be lifted gradually, in effect, the whole world is already racing to do business with the Iranians. The sanction regime is disintegrating very fast. The Russians are already planning arms sales to Iran on the scale of US$ 30 billion, including their state-of-the-art S-300 missile defense system. The Americans hope to make money, too: the USA will sell arms and aircraft on the scale of dozens of billions of dollars to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Emirates. It is reasonable to expect that they will offer Israel an increase of their defense aid package and a few new weapon systems as “compensation” for the arms reaching the Arab countries and for the Iranian rearming.

Meanwhile, the ‘conventional’ arms race is just one result out of many pursuant to the historic reconciliation agreement. A nuclear arms race is expected to begin as well: Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey will estimate that Iran would reach an atomic bomb sooner or later, and seek their own “Sunni Bomb” as a counterweight to Iran’s “Shi’ite Bomb”.

The recent historic development was received as no surprise in Israel. The Israeli defense establishment and political echelon had estimated in advance that President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry would strive for an agreement with Iran at any cost, and that the Iranians, too, will make that assumption, so they would have no real reason to back down from any of their basic stands in the negotiations.

The declaration that Israel is not bound by the agreement could hint to the fact that Israel may continue to operate against the Iranian nuclear program, whether by means of an overt attack or by covert operations, as Israel may deem appropriate. In fact, Israel does not have a practical option of staging an attack in Iran without engaging in a confrontation with the entire world. Such an attack is not currently on the agenda, at least not without undisputable proof that the Iranians are actually fooling the entire world and are pressing on with their military nuclear program.

Israel has positioned itself as the leader of the campaign against the agreement. This blurs the fact that the Iranian bomb threatens not just us but the entire Middle East, with implications even as far as the Balkans and the Caucasus (even there, an Iranian nuclear superpower is conceived as a major threat). Moreover, the Israeli-Arab conflict is currently marginal compared to the Sunni-Shi’ite conflict and the confrontations within the Sunni community between ISIS and everyone they regard as “infidels”. Under these circumstances, Iran’s rearming and evolving into a nuclear threshold country with an international license is far from being an Israeli-only concern.

The “Gideon” plan: regardless or pursuant to the nuclear agreement, the IDF is preparing to implement a new long-term plan for the five-year period beginning in 2016, under the codename “Gideon”.

If the “Gideon” plan is actually implemented, it will be the first multi-year plan the IDF implements since the conclusion of the “Tefen” plan in 2011. None of the plans prepared during the tenure of Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz as IDF Chief of Staff were actually implemented, first and foremost – because of the reduced defense budgets allocated by the Israeli government in 2013 and 2014. The shortage of funding led the IDF to halt training activities in 2014, just before Operation Protective Edge. The government had known about this well in advance and authorized this default.

The “Gideon” plan should implement quite a few of the lessons derived from Operation Protective Edge and transfer the IDF, within five years, into an era where Iran is already regarded as a nuclear state and the enemies surrounding us are organizations with no uniforms or permanent bases, but with hundreds of thousands of high-precision rockets aimed at Israeli population centers and strategic objectives. The primary scenario for which the IDF is preparing is a multiple-theater confrontation, and the working assumption is that it would be required to pass another power test in the form of a war within the next few years.

Iran will not only become a nuclear state sooner or later, but will evolve into a regional empire that pumps massive funding into the organizations it supports, including Hezbollah. On the bright side – Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf States will improve their relations with Israel as the threats imposed by Iran and ISIS intensify.

The truth is that IDF has been engaged in an effort to adapt to the wars of the present and the future for some time: since 1985, the number of tanks was reduced by 75%, the number of aircraft was reduced by 50% and the number of UAVs – Unmanned Airborne Vehicles – increased by 400%. The number of reservists was cut down by hundreds of thousands. Soon, Israel will take delivery of the fifth Dolphin-class submarine built by German shipyards, and in two years’ time, a sixth submarine will be delivered. In December 2016, the first F-35 future fighters will arrive in Israel, and next year IDF will begin the process of adopting the David’s Sling missile defense system which complements the Iron Dome system. The development of the Arrow-3 missile system is in high gear and massive efforts are under way in an attempt to find a solution to the subterranean tunnels – the most complex operational challenge encountered by IDF during Operation Protective Edge.

Generally, the IDF has evolved into a technological war machine based on a state-of-the-art communication network capable of linking resources in the air, at sea and on land in real time in order to engage targets that pop up even for a few seconds before they disappear (or before they are destroyed). The number of heavy ground platforms is decreasing and some of the ground formations are becoming more agile (and are also employing unmanned vehicles, among other things).

As far as manpower is concerned, the “Gideon” plan includes a 6% reduction of staff elements and command centers, along with a set command ratio of one to five – for example, one Lieutenant-Colonel officer for every five Major officers, with the intention of reducing the number of officers in IDF staff and command elements. Chief of Staff Eizenkot also plans to reduce various layouts that are not a part of the core of IDF activities, like the IDF Corps of Education, IDF Rabbinate, IDF Radio and other layouts. Additionally, the various units of the Artillery Corps will be reorganized and several battalions and divisional artillery groups will be demobilized. In their place, long-range precision rocket units are being established. The number of Major-General officers in the IDF will be reduced by four.

Chief of Staff Eizenkot did not elaborate on it during his briefings, but the IDF Ground Arm will be assigned a higher priority after years of having been neglected in favor of the strict precedence assigned to the IAF and Intelligence Directorate. The Chief of Staff is also determined to set up a cyber warfare command within two years. Initially, it seems that three Brigadier-General officers will be assigned to handle this activity – one will be responsible for defensive operations on behalf of the C4I Directorate, another will be responsible for offensive operations on behalf of Intelligence Unit 8200 and a third officer will coordinate the entire activity under the Deputy Chief of Staff. When the cyber warfare command is established, the C4I Directorate will be reduced and the cyber warfare activity will be taken out of Unit 8200, but would still remain within the Intelligence Directorate.

As far as the IDF is concerned, the plan is moving ahead from the planning stage to the implementation stage, but in the summer of 2015 it is not yet clear whether the budget required in order to implement it will be found. The ball is in the government’s court.

Syria: while world attention has been drawn to Iran this summer, in Syria it appears that the civil war that has been raging there for the past four years is approaching the moment of decision.

Over the last few months, Assad has sustained massive losses in territory and personnel. Similarly, Hezbollah, fighting alongside the forces of the Assad regime against the various rebel groups, has also sustained heavy losses, with the number of Hezbollah combatants killed in action totaling 1,300 (higher than their death toll in the Second Lebanon War). The forces of ISIS are consolidating their hold in Syria, along with secular and more moderate rebel forces, and the war is gradually leaking into the territory of neighboring Lebanon. All of the above notwithstanding, Assad appears to be determined not to relinquish his throne. Israel’s objective, at this point, is to prevent the Syrian civil war from seeping into Israeli territory.

The relocation to the south: the summer of 2015 marks a serious development in the plans of IDF regarding the relocation to southern Israel. This major project has begun to materialize with the inauguration of the training base complex located to the south of Beersheba.

Despite the massive size of the new complex, the induction of this element has been a marginal move compared to the moves that are still on the agenda – the relocation of all of the technological units of the IDF C4I and Intelligence Directorates to the Negev. The next stage in the plan will be the issuance of a solicitation for the construction of a new C4I campus in the south. This tender will be issued by the end of 2015. When the relocation of all of the IDF units to the south has been completed, within 5-7 years, IDF will benefit from new technological infrastructures. As far as the southern region is concerned, the IDF will constitute a primary anchor in the creation of a common technological environment, along with academia and Israeli as well as multinational high-tech industries.

IMI: the most significant development in the defense industry sector has been the tender for the privatization of IMI. This process has been gaining momentum and information rooms have been opened recently for the benefit of the 10 groups that remained in the race for IMI’s acquisition.

The tender is expected to be decided by the end of this year. This process will change the face of the Israeli defense industry, in preparation for another significant move – the offering of a substantial percentage of the shares of IAI to the public (IPO).