To Make Iran Feel Maximum Pressure, the U.S. Should Reinstitute Sanctions on Its Most Dangerous Nuclear Projects

Later this week, the White House will decide whether to renew five waivers of sanctions on Tehran’s civilian nuclear program. The waivers were instituted as part of the 2015 agreement with the Islamic Republic, and President Trump has continued to renew them even after withdrawing from the agreement. But Andrea Stricker and Behnam Ben Taleblu argue that the U.S. should let the waivers on two of the most dangerous aspects of the Iranian nuclear arsenal—its reactors in the cities of Fordow and Arak—expire:

Despite the passage of four years since the deal entered into force, Tehran has still not converted the [Fordow] facility into a “nuclear, physics, and technology center” for relevant international scientific cooperation, as it pledged. Moreover, Tehran has slow-rolled any genuine effort [to do so].

Since the 2015 deal was reached, information from a treasure trove of secret archive documents relating to Iran’s nuclear program indicates that this once covert and highly fortified facility was originally planned for weapons-grade-uranium production for one to two nuclear weapons per year. Its past intended use, coupled with the fact that it is buried deep underground, is why Iran considers Fordow a strategic facility and, accordingly, delayed its conversion for more peaceful purposes. . . . Canceling the waiver for Fordow would signal that Washington will not bless any of these moves, and it would be a step toward righting a wrong from the nuclear deal that permitted Fordow to remain open in the first place.

At issue in Arak is whether Iran has already circumvented restrictions on the plutonium pathway toward nuclear weapons, [which Iranian officials have as much as admitted to doing]. Continuing to waive sanctions related to Arak would amount to the administration throwing its hands up in the face of Iran’s bragging about how it bypassed one of the few nonproliferation achievements of the nuclear deal.

There is no substitute for U.S. leadership on the matter. The Trump administration continues to use the rhetoric of maximum pressure against Iran. Revoking and suspending two waivers related to the regime’s illicit nuclear activities would go a long way toward backing up this rhetoric with concrete policies.

Read more at Foreign Policy

More about: Donald Trump, Iran, Iran nuclear program, Iran sanctions, 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