A Better Nuclear Deal with Iran Is Possible, and Sanctions Could Make It Happen

Iran’s oil exports have already dropped precipitously in anticipation of the reintroduction of U.S. sanctions, and this month its ministers of finance and labor, along with the head of its central bank, have been pushed out of office. These and other, similar signs suggest that the Islamic Republic is already suffering from Washington’s withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal. Now, argue Richard Goldberg and Jacob Nagel, the U.S. ought to take even harsher economic measures, which could—notwithstanding the supreme leader’s avowed refusal to hold talks—force Tehran to accept effective restrictions on its nuclear program:

Iran’s rejection of talks makes sense for now. The toughest sanctions suspended under the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, are not scheduled to return until November. That gives Germany, Turkey, Russia, and other countries doing business with Iran two more months to find workarounds that can help the regime survive, including pressuring the Belgium-based SWIFT financial-messaging service to keep Iran’s Central Bank connected to the international financial system. Iran, therefore, will want to wait for November to see whether any countries are successful in evading U.S. sanctions and, most importantly, whether their banks remain connected to SWIFT.

In addition to plotting various sanctions-evasion schemes, Iran’s leaders also might try to expand their nuclear and missile activities in hopes of regaining leverage. The Trump administration would be wise to focus on both tracks. Maximum pressure should come with maximum isolation, particularly in nuclear and missile sciences, to slow any regime attempt to advance its weapons program.

Though often overshadowed by high-profile oil and financial sanctions, key restrictions targeting civilian nuclear cooperation with Iran will return in November, too. Hundreds of people inside Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Defense Ministry, and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) will return to the U.S. Treasury Department’s blacklist. Under U.S. law, the procurement channel to Iran established by the nuclear deal will be off-limits to all foreign companies, including banks and insurers. Stopping the sale of dual-use equipment will again become a U.S. priority. . . .

These steps, alongside a sustained financial-warfare campaign, could be enough to convince the supreme leader that his regime’s only chance of survival is behavioral change. To increase the pressure, the Trump administration should target SWIFT’s board members with sanctions unless the cooperative disconnects Iranian banks. Trump should also consider imposing sanctions on the financial sector of Iran in its entirety, and blacklisting any other economic sector in Iran that has ties to the IRGC.

Read more at Foreign Policy

More about: Iran nuclear program, Iran santions, Politics & Current Affairs, U.S. Foreign policy

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society