Let us assume for a moment that a major terrorist attack with multiple casualties occurs in downtown New York this week and that it can be traced back to Tehran. Would President Barack Obama instruct Secretary of State John Kerry to maintain a “business as usual” approach toward Iran in the negotiations to freeze its nuclear program in return for lifting sanctions? Let us assume that a Mexican anti-American terrorist organization with thousands of missiles supplied and funded by Iran aimed its missiles at major cities across the southern United States. Would the president need Congress' approval to demand that continued negotiations depend on the immediate removal of those missiles from his country’s border? Now replace New York with Aden, Yemen, and Mexico with Lebanon. Instead of the southern United States, substitute northern Israel. Now, these hypothetical questions become very real indeed. From a moral perspective, and from a strategic one as well, is there any room to lift a single symbolic sanction on Iran as long as it attacks one country after another in the Middle East and supports regimes and terrorist organizations that massacre innocent civilians?

In an article published April 8, Hanin Ghaddar, editor of the Lebanese website NOW, wrote, “The threat was never Iran’s nuclear program; it has been and still is Iran’s interventionism. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and their proxy militants in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, encompass the real source of danger.” According to this Lebanese journalist, giving up on the goal of attaining a nuclear bomb is a very small price to pay for the lifting of sanctions, because it will enable Iran to bolster its proxies in Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. In fact, Ghaddar warns that the lifting of sanctions could lead to nothing less than a full-blown regional war, so she calls on the United States and its allies to immediately formulate a regional strategy to include ways to restrain Iran and its allies. According to her, the need to prevent desperate Sunnis from finding solace in the arms of radical groups such as al-Qaeda and the Islamic State and to defend peaceful Shiite civilians from the ayatollahs’ proxies takes precedence over any nuclear agreement.

Professor Matti Steinberg of Jerusalem is a Middle East scholar who agrees that the major threat posed by Iran lies in how it is taking advantage of the disintegration of the Arab order to embark on regional adventurism. Nevertheless, in a conversation with Al-Monitor, Steinberg shared his belief that under no circumstances should Iran be presented with a demand that it put a stop to its involvement in other countries of the region as a precondition for a nuclear agreement. He asserted, “On the contrary, the time left until the signing of the agreement and immediately afterward should be used to rein in Iran’s border infringements.” He emphasizes that the strategic objective should be the dismantling of the Revolutionary Guard units responsible for foreign interventions. In other words, Iran should be forced to transition from a “revolution” into a “state.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also asking that the conventional threat that Iran poses to Israel be included in the agenda of the six powers negotiating with Tehran. He is increasing his efforts to cause what he considers a bad deal to fail by demanding that Iran recognize Israel’s right to exist. Actually, he is not introducing anything truly earth shattering with this demand. Iran’s violent rhetoric against Israel has been the primary reason behind every Israeli government's struggle to prevent a nuclear Iran. Furthermore, this rhetoric is the reason why Israel has refused for decades to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in regard to the dozens of nuclear weapons that Israel is hiding in Dimona according to the foreign press.