Inside Bibi's Bunker - By Chuck Freilich

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's use of a cartoon bomb to illustrate Israel's red lines regarding the Iranian nuclear program may have elicited guffaws among the foreign-policy punditocracy, but the issue is no laughing matter. In fact, Israel's entire defense bureaucracy has long been engaged in an exhaustive assessment of what is undoubtedly among the most difficult decisions Israel has ever faced -- and perhaps the most difficult since David Ben-Gurion declared independence.

Israelis remain divided over what to do about Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Many believe that a nuclear Iran poses an existential threat, in the truest sense of the word, and that Israel must do everything within its power to prevent such an outcome. Others believe that the threat is "merely" dire, though probably not existential, that Israel should do everything within reason to prevent it -- but not necessarily everything possible -- and that Israel could, in extremis, live with a nuclear Iran.

In the past year these differences became public, with former senior officials accusing Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak of irresponsible behavior, and various ministers and senior defense officials indicating that they oppose military action at this time. Conversely, Netanyahu and Barak issued a number of statements in August aimed at preparing the Israeli public for a conflict with Iran. With his speech at the United Nations, Netanyahu has now begun preparing the international community as well.

How these debates will be resolved depends on Israel's unique policymaking process. The question of whether to strike Iran is not just up to Netanyahu: In Israel, like other parliamentary democracies, the premier is merely "first among equals" -- not the chief executive or commander in chief, as in the United States. With the exception of very limited circumstances, such as responding to imminent attacks, the Israeli prime minister requires cabinet approval for all national security decisions. Indeed, even compared with other parliamentary systems, the Israeli premier's prerogatives are quite limited.

National security decision-making in Israel, at the highest level, is conducted in four forums. First, the cabinet plenum, which is made up of all government ministers, is the senior statutory forum for decision-making. It has, however, become so large, politicized, and leak-prone that it is rarely the true locus of policy formulation. Second, the Ministerial Committee on Defense (MCoD) is designed to be a forum for expedited and discreet decision-making -- but it suffers from the same pathologies as the plenum and thus is often not where decisions are really made. Third, informal subcabinet committees such as the current "Forum of Nine," a ministerial body assembled by Netanyahu to deal with high-level security issues, lack legal authority to make formal decisions but are nevertheless the arena where much substantive policy debate takes place. And finally, the informal consultations convened by the premier, which include the defense minister and a handful of trusted ministers and relevant senior defense officials, are also an important venue for policy formulation.