In December 2003, Israeli intelligence was blindsided. Without warning, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi announced he was abandoning his nuclear weapons program. It wasn’t just that Israel hadn’t known a deal was in the works – it didn’t even know there was a nuclear program to begin with.
For a nation built on the doctrine of “Never Again,” and where existential threats are measured not in years but in missile flight times, it was a chilling revelation. Mossad and Military Intelligence scrambled to assess how such a program had been missed. Special teams were set up to deconstruct the failure, and one of them would go on to uncover a similar project just four years later – a nuclear reactor being built in the deserts of northeast Syria.
Gaddafi’s about-face was, in theory, a success story for nuclear nonproliferation. But what followed was a cautionary tale. Eight years later, the same West that had praised Libya’s disarmament watched from the sidelines as rebels pulled Gaddafi from a drainage pipe and executed him. His regime had been dismantled. His country had been shattered.
Which brings us to Iran.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long pointed to Libya as the gold standard for how nuclear programs should end – not with partial rollbacks, half-baked deals, or promises of moderation, but with total dismantlement. No centrifuges and no uranium. Nothing. That is what happened in Libya where everything was dismantled and that is what Israel wants to see happen in Iran: centrifuges, conversion, heavy water, fuel cycle infrastructure. It wants everything to go.
The thing is that Iran, too, has studied Libya.
A lesson for survival
For the Islamic Republic, Gaddafi’s fate is a textbook case for why not to disarm. He gave up his weapons and he was then overthrown. Maybe, had he kept his nuclear program, his regime would have survived. That is the lesson for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
And that is exactly the source of the impasse. Netanyahu knows the Iranians won’t accept the Libyan model. He also knows that President Donald Trump – now back in the Oval Office – might be preparing to cut a deal anyway. So, Israel’s premier is staking out a maximalist position. Not because he believes Trump will deliver Libya 2.0, but because if that’s the goalpost, then just maybe, Washington will settle somewhere a bit closer to it.
A “better deal” than the JCPOA of 2015? Perhaps. But only if the bar is set high enough from the start.
THE SCENE in the Oval Office earlier this week said it all. As Trump and Netanyahu sat side by side, the president dropped a bombshell: Direct talks with Iran were underway. Netanyahu didn’t flinch. He didn’t object. His eyes darted across the room, but he said nothing.
Contrast that with 2014-2015. Then, Barack Obama was president and Israel had just fought a brutal war with Hamas. Netanyahu learned that Washington had been holding secret talks with Tehran, and he erupted. He went to Congress, bypassed the White House, and delivered a speech that triggered a diplomatic firestorm.
This time, though, Netanyahu is silent – partially because he still hopes to influence the process, but also out of a fear that if he pushes too hard, he will become Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was thrown out of the White House after arguing with Trump.
But silence in Washington doesn’t mean silence at home.
The true test will come if and when a deal materializes. While Steve Witkoff has proven a unique ability to broker deals with Hamas, Iran is a whole new level, and the Iranians have managed to wait out two other presidential terms until Trump returned to office. They believe time is on their side.
And yet, this may be the moment when time runs out.
Iran is vulnerable today like never before. Its air defenses were crippled by Israel Air Force strikes in April and October. Hamas has been devastated in Gaza, and Hezbollah has been significantly weakened in Lebanon. The twin pillars of Tehran’s proxy strategy are broken. If their whole raison d’etre was to make Israel think twice before striking Iran’s nuclear sites, that is no longer the case.
Washington recognizes this, too. But where Israel sees an opportunity to strike, the US sees an opening to negotiate.This is the gamble: that weakened proxies and degraded defenses will make Iran more amenable to a deal. That Tehran, faced with unprecedented vulnerability, will take what it can get before things get potentially worse.
But Israel is wary. While Israel would not object to a deal, it wants one that does not leave Iran in possession of its nuclear infrastructure. It wants real dismantlement – Libyan-style. American officials, on the other hand, argue that such demands are unrealistic and that the most that can be achieved now is a rebranded version of the Obama-era agreement, although with some cosmetic changes to make it “bigger” and “better,” the way Trump likes it.
If that’s where the talks land, Netanyahu will face a brutal choice: fight the deal and risk being seen as undermining Trump, or accept it and open himself to charges of capitulation from the political opposition back home.
But that, ultimately, is what Israel’s nuclear dilemma has always been about: making impossible decisions in impossible circumstances. Choosing between bad and worse and between the risks of inaction and the consequences of standing alone.
Libya is a lesson for both sides. For Israel, it is a model of what should be the objective, and for Iran, it is a warning of what must not be repeated.
The writer is co-author of a forthcoming book, While Israel Slept, about the October 7 Hamas attacks and is a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, a global Jewish think tank based in Jerusalem.