During the Iran nuclear talks in Lausanne, Trita Parsi tweeted that Bibi sees “peace as an existential threat.” It’s unclear whether he sees it as an existential threat to his political career, to Israel, or both.
His statements since the framework agreement came a few days ago have been increasingly shrill, unpersuasive, and desperate. He went on every U.S. Sunday political talk show that would have him (three, to be exact) trumpeting his disdain and dissatisfaction. However, his objections, which had been increasingly sidelined in the days running up the deal’s announcement, now appear irrelevant: the U.S. has gotten many of the Iranian concessions it sought (though not the ones Israel sought) in terms of restraining its nuclear program. These are terms that most reasonable observers agree go a considerable distance to responding to Israeli concerns. Even Israeli moderates like the nation’s most popular columnist, Nahum Barnea, and the former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, say the deal is far better than they thought and one Israel should be able to live with. No less a pro-Israel advocate than Dianne Feinstein, has abandoned the good ship, U.S.S. Lobby and told Bibi to “contain himself” and learn to live within his limits (to his surprise, undoubtedly, as he didn’t imagine he had any).
Now that Bibi understands he’s lost this round, he’s prepared a new series of demands for the next round of negotiations which will lead to a June 30th final deal. The demands range from the detailed and technical, to the global and outrageous. As for the latter, Bibi decided his ploy of demanding Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state worked so well in torpedoing the last set of Israel-Palestine peace talks, that he decided to introduce a version into the Iran talks. Iran should be made to recognize Israel as part of the agreement.
It doesn’t matter to Bibi that this is a nuclear agreement and not one that tackles historic diplomatic issues going back to 1979. That’s irrelevant. Nor does Bibi care that Israel not only doesn’t recognize Iran, but it’s confiscated a joint Israel-Iran oil pipeline worth $1-billion. And despite repeated legal defeats in the courts, it’s refused to pay up or settle. Further, Israel has a set of draconian sanctions against Iran in place (sanctions it routinely violates, by the way). You’d think if Bibi truly wanted Iranian recognition he’d show it by removing them.
But hey, Bibi, don’t let anything as inconvenient as facts or reason get in your way.
Nor is he satisfied with stopping at this single demand. He also, according to FoxNews, wants to:
…Require Iran to stop its aggression in the region, its terror worldwide, and its calls and actions to annihilate the state of Israel.
In other words, he wants Iran to turn into a nice, little teddy bear; a compliant place which will no longer offer resistance to Israeli efforts to impose its own will on the region. Bibi wants to accomplish through this deal what he hasn’t been able to accomplish on the regional battlefields of Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza. Sorry fella, that’s not how the rules work. If you can’t impose your will on the battlefield and alienate the only ally who can further your interests at the negotiating table, you don’t get your way by trying to come through the back door.
Not to mention that Iran and many states in the region believe it is Israel that is the primary aggressor in the region; that Israeli terror poses a major danger; and that Israel is the one seeking to annihilate the Iranian regime, if not Iran itself. Note that several “serious” Israeli or pro-Israel “analysts” have suggested attacking Iran with nuclear weapons. One of them, Sheldon Adelson, will likely spent $200-million in the next election cycle to elect a president who would be willing to do precisely that.
Among the technical demands Israel is now advocating are the end of any advanced centrifuge use and closing of the Fordo advanced nuclear site. The deal agreed to last week placed significant constraints in each of these areas, but that doesn’t satisfy Bibi.
Netanyahu has other irons in the fire. In the Senate, several anti-deal bills are making their way through committee. The one with most Democratic support is by GOP Sen. Bob Corker. It calls for Senate approval of the final Iran agreement before sanctions against Iran will be lifted. It’s not clear what would happen to the agreement if the Senate rejects it. The hawks and GOP believe it will doom it. The President doesn’t trust the Senate and has spoken out against the proposed legislation.
Corker is a high-stakes gamble for Obama. He could go ahead with the deal even if it fails to pass Congress. But a defeat there might seal the deal’s fate. If the president does acquiesce to Corker and a vote on the deal, he has to trust Senators like Chuck Schumer, one of the Lobby’s savviest and most obliging figures. The ever-ambitious Schumer wants to replace Harry Reid as the next Minority Leader. His thinking on the deal is opaque: will he do Bibi’s bidding and try to sink the bill, doing so artfully so his fingers aren’t on the deed? Or will he stick with his president and advance his agenda by shepherding a deal through the Senate? One thing is for certain, Schumer just joined 12 other Democrats as co-sponsors on the Corker bill. He did this in defiance of Pres. Obama.
Despite Bibi’s protests to the contrary, he doesn’t want a “better deal.” He wants a dead deal. These new demands are dust thrown in the eyes of the world hoping it will blind them to the prospect for a resolution of decades-long conflict over Iran’s nuclear program. The world must not let him do it. It must say, as Obama is surely saying right now: no, you had your chance. You could’ve been inside the tent participating in the process. But you wanted to do things your way. To grandstand and curry favor with your pals in the GOP. Now, suffer the consequences.
There are also deeper motivations for the Israeli leader’s behavior. He’s not only afraid of Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions. He’s afraid of Iran as a powerful regional competitor. Not just a military or political competitor, but a commercial one as well. Along with Turkey, it poses the gravest threat to Israeli interests.
Israel for decades has been able exploit differences among the Arab and Muslim states. Either the differences were ethnic and religious (the Sunni-Shia split); or they were political (between authoritarian and populist political systems during the Arab Spring). Either way, Israel managed to wend its way among all the conflicting forces which might sabotage its interests. It managed to split its enemies and to defang whatever power they might have to resist Israeli interests.
A rapprochement between Iran and the west sets up that country as a rising power in the region. One that could become Israel’s most formidable rival either on the battlefield, at the negotiating table, or in the marketplace.
As a right-wing Israeli – I have to say this post is spot on. When Minister Yuval Sheinitz said Israel demands Iran recognise it as a Jewish state I thought to myself ” what is the bloody connection to the nuclear deal??” If that’s the best they can offer then perhaps the nuclear saga has been blown way out of proportion… Food for thought.
As a left-wing German I have to say, the world could be a better one IF both, Iran AND Israel, would stop any development of nuclear weapons and any support of terrorism.
If Iran would bomb Israel, the most powerful army of the planet – the US-army – would destroy Iran. Can anyone explain me the paranoia of Bibi? The “being-bombed”-threat to Iran is much more real for Iran than it is for Israel. Iran has no powerful patron, Israel has.
” Can anyone explain me the paranoia of Bibi? ”
Sure. Israel is the size of New Jersey. Iran is the size of Texas. If your land was being bombed, would you rather live in New Jersey or Texas? Factor in Hezbollah’s 100000 rockets and missiles, and you know what existential fear is.
@Hefe
Iran is almost two and a half times the size of Texas. I wouldn’t be pedantic about this if I hadn’t the impression that this deficient fact checking is rather characteristic for your contributions.
So Iran is very big and Israel is very small, and this size difference explains your “existential fear”.
One would imagine that the present Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo, and his two predecessors, Meir Dagan and Efraim Halevy, are aware of this size difference as well. Yet they don’t seem to think that there is an “existential threat” and the need for “existential fear” here. And they are, of course, not the only people in Israel who refuse to share Netanyahu’s paranoia – but they are certainly among the best informed.
I don’t claim to have any knowledge of military matters but I would imagine that in a nuclear conflict (which is what this alleged “existential threat” is said to involve) size difference doesn’t matter very much, except for that in the size of the nuclear arsenal – in which all the advantage would be on Israel’s side.
@Hefe
Let me amend that. Size difference would matter if the smaller country wouldn’t have a second strike capacity which, allegedly, isn’t the case with Israel. It has the whole extent of the Mediterranean for its nuclear submarines.
@ Arie Brand: But you must understand, my dear Arie, that El Hefe has superior analytical skills to all the intelligence chiefs & military chiefs who agree that Iran does not pose an existential threat. Hefe knows better–just coz.
“Israel is a very small country that can be destroyed with a single bomb,”
–former defense minister Moshe Arens.
Even Shimon Peres said in 2012 that humanity must “learn the lessons of the Holocaust and stand up to existential threats before it is too late. Iran is at the center of this threat.”
This comes down to a ‘battle of experts’, none of whom has the ability to predict the future.
@ Hefe: First, Shimon Peres is no expert. He’s a 91 year old pol. He hasn’t had any substantive contact with Israel’s nuclear program in decades. Nor does he know about or understand Iran or its nuclear program, such as it is. As for Arens, he hasn’t had any military or intelligence privileges for decades as well. To call either of them “experts” stretches the meaning of the term beyond credulity.
Your “experts” are the military high command & intelligence chiefs all of whom believe Iran is not an existential threat and that it is a horrible idea to attack Iran.
Ari Shavit wrote about Netanyahu:
“Benjamin Netanyahu is one of the most talented men I know. Even when I first met him—19 years ago—I was struck by the gap between his image (a shallow, arrogant salesman with a penchant for the good life) and his essence (intelligent, profound, possessing an admirable historical understanding and an uncommon sense of purpose)”
Shavit is not blind to his foibles “deep-seated suspiciousness, emotional miserliness, vindictiveness … lack of consistency, disloyalty” but judges nevertheless that “Netanyahu is a serious statesman, with an extraordinary comprehension and uncanny foresight.”
One would have thought that a man endowed with all these gifts would understand what the merest common sense tells us viz. that Israel cannot keep millions of human beings subjected in perpetuity. One would further believe that thus he would seek to use the 10 year window of opportunity offered by the recent deal with Iran to make peace with the Palestinians.
The Arab peace offer, which is roughly along the lines of UNSC Resolution 242, has been presented to him on a plate. It is worth recalling that this iniative received unanimous endorsement of the 22 nation Arab league and was approved in a vote of 56 – 0 by the 57 nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (the one abstention was Iran’s that in any case did not vote “no”).
So if Shavit is right and we do indeed have a man here who has all the qualities Shavit ascribes to him one would imagine that he would regard as his main task to get out of the blind alley Israel is presently in using the Arab peace offer as his vehicle.
But alas there is quite a different view of Netanyahu by a man who also claims to have known him for a long time:
“Binyamin is no intellectual. He is utterly devoid of any creative thinking, beyond tactical matters. His whole world view, his concepts and his philosophy have been absorbed from his father. Ben-Tzion laid down the conceptual tracks upon which the Binyamin train runs” wrote Uri Avery seventeen years ago in Ma’ariv. And much more recently he wrote:
“When Netanyahu the son transferred a part of Hebron to the Palestinian Authority, his father rebuked him and stated publicly that he was unfit for the job of prime minister .. But the son made a huge effort to remain true to his father’s views, and that is the main motivation for his policy. … he would not dare to face his father and tell him that he had given away parts of Eretz Israel… Netanyahu will never agree to be responsible for the establishment of the state of Palestine, will never conduct serious peace negotiations …”
Yuval Diskin, a former head of Shin Bet , tends to agree with this conclusion. Avnery wrote “ he stated that the only factor preventing peace negotiations with the Palestinians is Netanyahu himself. Israel can make peace with Mahmoud Abbas at any time, and missing this historic opportunity will bring disaster upon Israel.”
@Arie Brand: Ari Shavit is absolutely untrustworthy as an observer of human nature, including Bibi’s own nature. His politics & world view are equally atrocious. He’s a mini-Benny Morris. Someone who acknowledges ethnic cleansing & Nakba, but justifies it. Though Shavit appears to do it reluctantly & Morris eagerly.
Yes, I was rather surprised when I read Shavit’s characterisation of Netanyahu, rather like a man who, on hearing a sparrow, is told that it is in fact a nightingale.
Ari Shavit is equally untrustworthy as a historian.
http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2014/07/what-happened-at-lydda/
@ Hefe: You’re offering MARTIN KRAMER? Really?? THE Martin Kramer? THe one who declared that a little starvation might reduce the Palestinian population? The one who hates Palestinians so much he advocates starvation as a means of Palestinian population control?? You offer this dreck of a human being as proof that there wasn’t a Nakba or that it was a small Nakba or a justified Nakba? Puh-leeze.
If anything, Nakba was much worse than Shavit described it, not better.
Netanyahu might end up regretting this latest stunt of his.
Bibi: Iran must recognize the Jewish State or it’s no deal! I demand it!
World: No, that’s not necessary.
The danger is the precedent that sets, which may well come back to haunt him.
Bibi: The Palestinians must recognize the Jewish State or it’s no deal! I demand it!
World: No, that’s not necessary.
Bibi: Oh, s**t….
@Hefe
The threat of “mutually assured destruction” worked perfectly well during the cold war. Israeli alarmists, of which you seem to be one, have tried to claim that it wouldn’t work with Iran because it has a regime of “mad mullahs”. The diplomats who have just gone through tough negotiations with the representatives of this regime know otherwise. They dealt with perfectly rational, shrewdly calculating human beings.
And if Israel made its peace with the Arab/Islamic world along the lines suggested by the Arab peace plan there presumably would be no need even of that threat.
It might be that the secret of Netanyahu consistently ignoring the opinion of his own intelligence – and military chiefs on this matter is that the hullabaloo he makes about that alleged threat from Iran serves him as a magician’s trick – to deviate attention from what presumably is for him the main game viz. to get hold of as much of Palestinian land as he can get away with.
Comparisons with the holocaust are totally inappropriate. Is there no difference between the unarmed Jews of Nazi Europe, who were wholly unable to offer any real resistance, and the Israel of today – one of the most heavily armed states in the world?
All bets are off …
President Erdogan is on a 2-day visit to Iran’s president Rouhani with a personal message from Saudi King Salman delivered by deputy crown-prince Muhammad bin Nayef in Ankara. Turkey has been isolated from its neighbours after aligning with Egypt’s Morsi, Qatar, Hamas and the Muslom Brotherhood. The Syria catastrophe as a major result of the conflict between two regional Sunni powers. Turkey has expressed support for the nuclear framework deal between Iran and the US.