Another Bad Iran Deal Seems to Be on Its Way. How Should Israel React?

This week, indirect talks between Washington and Tehran resumed in Vienna, and the Israeli government might soon find itself reliving the situation of 2014 and 2015: with its most important ally poised to make a dangerous agreement with its most dangerous enemy. Elliott Abrams suggests how Jerusalem might best respond:

First, let’s be clear on what constitutes the danger. It is that the United States will agree to what’s called a “less for less” agreement. . . . Instead of the “maximum pressure” campaign the Trump administration had underway, in “less for less” the United States would release certain sanctions—for example, allowing Iran to collect about $7 billion it has in frozen accounts in South Korea—if Iran made certain moves, such as halting enrichment of uranium above a low percentage and exporting the uranium it has already enriched above that percentage.

How should Israel react? First, it should do just what it is doing now: explain patiently, forcefully, and diplomatically why such an agreement is dangerous. This does not require attacks on President Biden nor any moves that would give rise to accusations of partisan intervention in U.S. politics, but Israel’s unhappiness with and disapproval of the kind of deal that is likely—if there is any agreement at all—should be very clear in public and in private.

Second, Israel should be very clear that it will not consider itself bound by such an agreement. It has said exactly that, retaining the right to act to protect itself against Iranian progress toward building a nuclear weapon regardless of the American position or any deal with Iran. This is precisely what Prime Minister Naftali Bennett did on January 10.

Read more at Tablet

More about: Iran nuclear program, Naftali Bennett, US-Israel relations

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF