The Iranian nuke deal isn't about the nukes - it's about Israel
Abe Greenwald is spot-on in pointing out that the Iranian nuclear sellout isn't really about the nuclear weapons (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
If you think the United States just struck a poor nuclear deal with
Iran, you’re right; but if that’s your key takeaway, you’re missing the
point. Iran’s nuclear program was last on the list of the Obama
administration’s priorities in talking to Tehran. The administration
readily caved on Iran’s nukes because it viewed the matter only as a
timely pretense for achieving other cherished aims. These were: (1)
preventing an Israeli attack on Iran; (2) transforming the United States
into a more forgiving, less imposing power; (3) establishing diplomacy
as a great American good in itself; (4) making Iran into a great
regional power; and (5), ensuring the legacies of the president and
secretary of state as men of vision and peace.
The administration has always viewed
Israel as an intractable troublemaker and the main catalyst for the
region’s woes. An Israeli strike on Iran, especially if supported by the
United States, would have been yet another display of destabilizing
Israeli aggression that put Middle East peace further out of reach.
Barack Obama, therefore, repeatedly warned Israel against attacking
Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu complied, and for his compliance White House
officials taunted him in 2014 as a “chickenshit” whose window of
opportunity had closed. That window is now barred. The Iran deal states
that the U.S. will train Iranians to counter any sabotage attempts on
its nuclear facilities and systems. This is aimed at frustrating Israeli
action.
...
From the administration’s standpoint, the deal was a grand slam. If it
left Iran as an official nuclear power on the perpetual verge of a
breakout, well, that was always the bargaining chip to get everything
else. And with the United States having shown extraordinary cooperation
and forgiveness, the thinking goes, even a nuclear Iran will become a
less bellicose and more collegial member of the community of nations.
What good the deal has already done, the administration believes, will
continue to pay dividends. As is his wont, Obama is now declaring as
much. But by the time his vision is upended by facts, he’ll be out of
office, and we won’t have the luxury of fighting reality with
abstractions.
Greenwald understates the extent to which Obama's anti-Israel obsession drove this deal. As John Podhoretz wrote in his review of Michael Oren's Ally (which I am currently reading), for ideological reasons, Obama doesn't like that Israel exists. Period. That anti-Israel obsession led to the Iran nuclear deal more than anything else.
President Hussein Obama finally has a diplomatic achievement to which he can point. But it's not the one he was hoping for. The picture at the top is a photo of a handshake between incoming Director General of Israel's Foreign Ministry, Dore Gold (who has a kipa on his head and is at left) and Anwar Majed Eshki, a retired Saudi general and ex-adviser to Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the U.S. And there's much more to it than a handshake, and it's been going on for a year and a half.Eli Lake reports.
Since the beginning of 2014, representatives from Israel and Saudi
Arabia have had five secret meetings to discuss a common foe, Iran. On
Thursday, the two countries came out of the closet by revealing this
covert diplomacy at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.
...
It was not a typical Washington think-tank event. No questions were
taken from the audience. After an introduction, there was a speech in
Arabic from Anwar Majed Eshki, a retired Saudi general and ex-adviser to
Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former Saudi ambassador to the U.S. Then
Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations who is
slotted to be the next director general of Israel's foreign ministry,
gave a speech in English.
While these men represent countries that have been historic enemies,
their message was identical: Iran is trying to take over the Middle East
and it must be stopped.
Eshki was particularly alarming. He laid out a brief history of Iran
since the 1979 revolution, highlighting the regime's acts of terrorism,
hostage-taking and aggression. He ended his remarks with a seven-point
plan for the Middle East. Atop the list was achieving peace between
Israel and the Arabs. Second came regime-change in Iran. Also on the
list were greater Arab unity, the establishment of an Arab regional
military force, and a call for an independent Kurdistan to be made up of
territory now belonging to Iraq, Turkey and Iran.
We only have five of the seven points here, but notice what's missing: 'Peace between Israel the Arabs' is not the same as 'Palestinian state.' Well, maybe not.
Eshki told me that no real cooperation would be possible until Israel's
prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, accepted what's known as the Arab
Peace Initiative to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The plan was
first shared with New York Times columnist Tom Friedman in 2002 by Saudi
Arabia's late King Abdullah, then the kingdom's crown prince.
In any event, these ties go back a long time - all the way to the beginning of the Obama administration.
These ties became more focused on Iran over the last decade, as shown by
documents released by WikiLeaks in 2010. A March 19, 2009, cable
quoted Israel's then-deputy director general of the foreign minister,
Yacov Hadas, saying one reason for the warming of relations was that
the Arabs felt Israel could advance their interests vis-a-vis Iran in
Washington. "Gulf Arabs believe in Israel's role because of their
perception of Israel's close relationship with the U.S. but also due to
their sense that they can count on Israel against Iran," the cable
said.
Note - that was two months after Obama was inaugurated, and Netanyahu had already been elected by then and was forming a government (he was sworn in on March 31, 2009).
Obama finally has a diplomatic achievement: A burgeoning reconciliation between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
I am sure that many of you have heard about the 'selfie' above, which was taken at the Miss World pageant, and includes Miss Israel (left) and Miss Lebanon (second from left). I am sure many of you have also heard that the image caused a scandal in Lebanon, leading Miss Lebanon to accuse Miss Israel of 'photobombing' her, and to release a revised image in which Miss Israel is cropped out.
Jonathan Tobin is spot-on in arguing that the entire spat over this image is a 'Middle East for Dummies' moment, and shows why despite all of the efforts of hundreds of diplomats over tens of years, there is no peace in our region.
The exchange encapsulated the essence of why peace in the Middle East has eluded generations of diplomats.
The problem between Israel and Lebanon, which is a more cosmopolitan
place than many other Arab countries, isn’t a matter of borders or
disputes over settlements. Many Lebanese may hold grudges about Israel’s
intervention in their civil war and its occupation of a portion of that
country that ended in 2000. But any umbrage about that must be tempered
by the knowledge that the dispute was caused by the willingness of the
Lebanese to let the southern portion of their country be used as a
terrorist base of attack by the Palestinians, who operated a state
within a state in the south, for many years. The same is true now of
Hezbollah, which embroiled all of Lebanon in a pointless and bloody war
against Israel in 2006 because of their cross-border terror raids.
Nor are the Lebanese particularly exercised about Israeli settlement
policies or the plight of Palestinians in Hamas-run Gaza. Indeed, the
Lebanese are, as a result of their own experiences with armed
Palestinian militias and terror cadres during the civil war, even less
sympathetic to the Palestinians than Israelis.
The problem is a spirit of intolerance and rejection for the idea of a
Jewish state no matter where its borders might be drawn. That is a
hatred so deep that it can’t be bridged by creative diplomacy or
gestures of goodwill, such as those that infuse international events
like the Miss Universe contest.
It is a cliché for contestants at such competitions to say they wish
for world peace when asked for their opinions about the issues of the
day. But what happened to Miss Lebanon illustrates that the divisions of
the Middle East run so deep and are so primal that no amount of global
hooey like a beauty contest is enough to make the Arab and Muslim world
forget about their antipathy for Israelis.
Can you imagine what would happen if an Israeli consulate in the US did this?
On Friday, US consulate personnel from 'east' Jerusalem showed up at the Israeli encampment in Samaria known as Adei Ad to 'investigate' the alleged uprooting of trees by local residents. The consulate personnel were accompanying 'Palestinians.' They did not coordinate their visit with the Israeli security forces (as is the accepted protocol) and when the residents started throwing stones at them, at least one consulate security guard pulled a shotgun and an M-16 rifle.
An Israeli police spokeswoman said the delegation arrived at Adei Ad in U.S. diplomatic cars without first having coordinated the visit with Israeli authorities. She said the purpose of the trip was to inspect nearby trees that had been uprooted in what their Palestinian owners suspect was vandalism by Jewish settlers.
"Rocks were thrown at them by residents of Adei Ad. We are investigating. Arrests have yet to be made," the spokeswoman said. She said she did not know of any damage to the vehicles and had no further information on the delegates' identities.
An Adei Ad resident who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said that he had not witnessed the incident but had been told by fellow settlers who were involved that the U.S. delegates came within 50 yards (metres) of the settlement in two diplomatic cars accompanied by local Palestinians.
The resident said several settlers went out to confront the group. He declined to confirm or deny that the settlers threw stones, but said two armed diplomatic guards briefly emerged from the cars.
"One had a pistol, the other an M-16, and they pointed them at the settlers," the resident said.
Asked about this account, the Israeli police spokeswoman said: "We have no indication that anyone in the U.S. delegation brandished weapons."
Can you imagine if the Israeli embassy sent someone to investigate alleged vandalism (against Israeli citizens - here the 'Palestinians' may not have been American citizens) in the US? Everyone involved would be immediately declared persona non grata. And that's exactly what the revenants would like to see happen.
Acting Head of the Samaria Regional Council, Yossi Dagan, has filed a
request to the Minister of the Interior Gilad Erdan demanding he
immediately expel the American Consulate staff members who entered the
Samaria village of Adei Ad Friday and threatened Israeli Jews with an M-16.
"As revealed through Wikileaks few years ago, these supposed
'officials' are intelligence agents and spies in every respect," said
Dagan, adding "this time, they went too far and participated in a
provocative tour with the Palestinians in the southern
Samaria and north Binyamin, without any coordination as required with
the IDF and police, and pulled out a firearm and threatened Israeli
civilians."
"This is a crossing of all red lines," he continued. "This event
could have descended easily into bloodshed and only as a result of the
settlers' responsible behavior was [a scenario like that] prevented."
"I request that in view of the serious and criminal conduct, that
these [US] security guards and officials be deported," he added.
"If Israeli intelligence officials and armed Israeli security
guards stationed in one of the Israeli consulates in the United States
had participated in a political provocation without any coordination
with the police and threatened American citizens with weapons, at best,
they would be arrested and deported, and the more likely case would be
them spending several years in federal prison."
Indeed they would. The hostility of the 'east' Jerusalem consulate to Israel is well-known and this is not the first incident involving consulate personnel overstepping their bounds. It will be interesting to see what is said at the State Department briefing on Monday about this incident (there has not been a briefing since last Tuesday). But if the US makes a fuss out of this, Israel should push back hard.
QUESTION:
Toria, I don’t understand. Two weeks ago, you said it would be a bad
idea for Erdogan to go to Gaza. You were not particularly enthusiastic
about the Emir of Qatar going to Gaza. And now all of a sudden, it’s a
wonderful thing that the Egyptian Prime Minister went there?
MS. NULAND: Matt, we have a different situation, obviously.
QUESTION: Okay.
MS. NULAND:
We are in the process of trying to de-escalate a very, very dangerous
situation between Gaza and Israel. So the purpose was completely
different in this case, and can be helpful, we think.
QUESTION: It can be helpful because they’re talking to Hamas.
MS. NULAND: Because they’re talking to Hamas, they’re talking about the danger of this kind of situation.
QUESTION:
So the way that Hamas gets a stamp of U.S. legitimacy in terms of being
an interlocutor is to fire lots of rockets into Southern Israel, and
then you’re okay with people going to talk to them?
MS. NULAND: We have a –
we have an extremely dangerous and volatile situation. We have a
dangerous situation inside Gaza, we have a dangerous situation inside
Israel. It is not a matter of legitimating violence. This is a matter of
supporting diplomacy to get this to end, which is a different thing
than what the visits were intended to do before this.
The American Embassy in Cairo, in communication with detained American journalist and Bikya Masr Editor-in-Chief Joseph Mayton, reported that they cannot help in retrieving Mayton from Egyptian military detention, citing security and diplomatic concerns.
“The military has spoke on two specific times to embassy officials, telling them that I can leave when they come and get me,” said Mayton, speaking to Bikyamasr.com staff on Saturday evening.
“For two reasons they will not send someone to come get me. First, they say that there is a security situation in the area. Second, they told me that there is a tense diplomatic situation between the US government and the Egyptian security forces,” Mayton explained.
“They said they will not send someone until a US security officer gives them the ok. They told me that they are looking at other solutions,” he continued.
Compare this to the situation involving Ilan Grapel, where the Americans insisted that Israel pay the price for Grapel's release. I guess they haven't found a way to force Israel to take care of this one yet. Maybe they can give the Egyptians a few more F-16's.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
