Robert Tait reads through Israeli media reaction to the interim Iranian nuclear deal and finds nothing but "grim reading" for Israel's prime minister. Much of the criticism boils down to Netanyahu's diplomatic style (or lack thereof):
Responding to Mr Netanyau's denunciation of the agreement as a "historic mistake" to which Israel would not be bound, the mass circulation Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper's Nahum Barnea wrote that the prime minister's words were prompted by a "sense of personal failure"."This happened on his watch, and it happened despite the fact that he turned this fight into the battle slogan of his term," Mr Barnea wrote, alluding to Mr Netanyahu's decision to make the perceived Iranian nuclear threat the defining issue of his premiership. "But in his position, personal disappointments cannot go to a person's head."
He dismissed the possibility of Israel responding it its unhappiness with the deal by conducting strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities.
In an analysis in the same newspaper, Alon Pinkas accused the prime minister of "behaving oddly in the international arena" - particularly towards the US, Israel's chief ally - even while saying that his criticisms of the agreement were justified.
"The public and blatant presentation of differences of opinion with the United States destabilises the alliance between the countries, weakens Israel's power of deterrence and also weakens the US, and consequently weakens Israel too," Mr Pinkas wrote.
These criticisms strike me as unfair. While it's true that Netanyahu's blunt style didn't endear him to the Obama administration, it's unlikely that a softer tone would have changed things significantly. That's because there's simply a fundamental divergence between the U.S. and Israel (and Saudi Arabia) on the issue.
The U.S. and its negotiating partners began negotiations with Iran with the same position that Netanyahu still holds: Iran cannot be trusted with any civilian nuclear program but especially one that affords Iran the ability to enrich Uranium on its own soil. This position wasn't arrived at on Netanyahu's behalf -- it had been endorsed by the last two U.S. administrations and UN Security Council resolutions.
It was also an untenable basis for a negotiated settlement (as opposed to abject capitulation on Iran's part).
Iran has had a nuclear program, on-and-off, since before the Islamic Revolution. It has become a point of national pride. Asking Iran to surrender it, root-and-branch, was never going to fly. So the U.S. and its negotiating partners have relented, indicating in the interim agreement signed in Geneva that they can live with some Iranian nuclear capability provided it is circumscribed and monitored.
This concession reflects a simple reality -- that the U.S. (and the other P5+1 powers) are not threatened by an Iranian nuclear program in the same way that Israel is and can thus afford to live with an Iranian civilian nuclear program that remains under international inspection. This divergence between the U.S. and Israel on Iran has been obvious for years now and has nothing to do with the personality of the respective leadership and everything to do with geography, military power and history. It seems ridiculous to argue that the Obama administration would have reached a different conclusion about the nature of the Iranian nuclear threat if Netanyahu had broached the subject more diplomatically.
To that end, two major questions remain. The first is whether the U.S. (and the other P5+1 players) has truly shifted away from their demand that Iran cease all of its domestic enrichment or whether this was a concession simply to facilitate an interim agreement (my wild guess is the former). The second, tied to the first, is how Israel will react if the U.S. position truly has softened and this softening is codified in a final, comprehensive agreement (military strikes or anxious acquiescing -- it's too hard to predict).
