Israel angles for benefits from new deal with Iran
Having reached the conclusion that a new Iran deal is inevitable, Israel is now focusing on getting tactical assurances and military support from the United States.
Israel’s struggle against Iran’s nuclear race and its entrenchment in the Middle East is reminiscent of the Israeli and global campaign against the coronavirus: dizzying reassessments, embarrassing intelligence flaws and a sense of chaos.
Israel’s current defense assessment, a complete about-face, is that Iran and world powers are likely to achieve a breakthrough and reach an agreement about the one signed in 2015 and from which President Donald Trump pulled out in 2018. This new assessment could also be upended in the coming weeks, suggesting that things around the negotiating table in the Austrian capital are also chaotic and do not lend themselves to forecasts or control.
Israel is hoping that the Biden administration can pull off an achievement that will help Israeli leaders sell a new agreement to their public. Israel’s best-case scenario is for the sides to delay the agreement's controversial sunset clause, which sees some restrictions on the nuke program lifted in 2025 and 2030. Israel views it as the greatest flaw of the 2015 agreement and argues that the clause would allow Iran to amass weapon-grade uranium after 2031.
Almost seven months after being forced out of office, the spirit of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lingers over the chaos. As head of the Knesset opposition, Netanyahu relentlessly attacks his successor, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, for giving in to the Biden administration. Netanyahu accuses Bennett of failing to mount an effective battle against the emerging deal, which Netanyahu regards as a modern incarnation of the 1938 Munich Agreement with Nazi Germany. It would surely hurt Bennett to be equated with the British leader who signed the deal with Hitler, Neville Chamberlain, depicting him as the Israeli leader who caved to the United States and allowed Iran to become a threshold nuclear state.
