Brigadier General (Res.) Professor Jacob Nagel is a former head of Israel’s National Security Council and a former national security advisor (acting) to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He is currently a visiting professor at the Technion and a visiting fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (@FDD). Tzvi Kahn is a senior Iran analyst at FDD.
Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice-president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, where Behnam Ben Taleblu is a senior fellow focusing on Iran. FDD is a non-partisan national security and foreign policy institute in Washington.
The White House and State Department should press Cairo to conduct thorough inspections of all Iranian vessels that transit the Suez Canal. Egyptian authorities should turn back those which are not in full compliance with maritime laws and regulations. Cairo should, at minimum, halt Iranian tankers that deliberately turn off the transponders that transmit their location to other ships – a common practice among sanctions-busting vessels seeking to obfuscate their location and provenance.
John Hannah is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focusing on U.S. strategy. During the presidency of George W. Bush, he served for eight years on the staff of Vice President Cheney, including as the vice president’s national security advisor.