Israel Matzav: @BarakRavid's tempest in a teapot

Sunday, April 12, 2015

@BarakRavid's tempest in a teapot

Israel's mediabots are tweeting this article by Barak Ravid (and Ravid is retweeting it which is why I have seen it even more times) all over social media. The article cites two 'senior Israeli officials' who claim that Prime Minister Netanyahu told his cabinet recently that 'our biggest fear' is that Iran 'will honor the nuclear deal.'

The meeting of the security cabinet was called on short notice on April 3, a few hours before the Passover seder. The evening before, Iran and the six powers had announced at Lausanne, Switzerland that they had reached a framework agreement on Iran’s nuclear program and that negotiations over a comprehensive agreement would continue until June 30.

The security cabinet meeting was called after a harsh phone call between Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama over the agreement with Tehran.

The two senior Israeli officials, who are familiar with the details of the meeting but asked to remain anonymous, said a good deal of the three-hour meeting was spent on ministers “letting off steam” over the nuclear deal and the way that the U.S. conducted itself in the negotiations with Iran.

According to the two senior officials, Netanyahu said during the meeting that he feared that the “Iranians will keep to every letter in the agreement if indeed one is signed at the end of June.”

One official said: “Netanyahu said at the meeting that it would be impossible to catch the Iranians cheating simply because they will not break the agreement.”

Given that we are between governments, it's kind of hard to say who is in the security cabinet right now, but hopefully it's not Yair Lapid or Tzipi Livni, who were in the security cabinet until Netanyahu fired them, precipitating our most recent election.

In any event, what all the Leftists are leaving out (and Ravid is happy to see them do so) is the second half of the report, which makes clear that Netanyahu's fear is entirely rational.

Netanyahu also told the ministers that in 10 to 15 years, when the main clauses of the agreement expire, most of the sanctions will be lifted and the Iranians will show that they met all their obligations. They will then receive a “kashrut certificate” from the international community, which will see Iran as a “normal” country from which there is nothing to fear.

Under such circumstances, the prime minister said, it will be very difficult if not impossible to persuade the world powers to keep up their monitoring of Iran’s nuclear program, not to mention imposing new sanctions if concerns arise that Iran has gone back to developing a secret nuclear program for military purposes.

Sounds like good reason to fear Iran keeping to the agreement for 10-15 years, doesn't it? And just imagine if they manage to violate the agreement in secret, as they have done so many times before.

What could go wrong?

Labels: AIPAC, Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Bob Corker, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, P 5+1, Ron Dermer, security cabinet