The U.S. Should Punish Iranian Nuclear Violations with the Full Force of Sanctions

At the end of next week, Washington’s invocation of the “snapback” clause of the 2015 nuclear agreement with Tehran—which allows a single party to reinstitute sanctions on the Islamic Republic if it violates the deal’s terms—will go into effect. But the UN Security Council believes the American move to be illegitimate, since the White House withdrew from the agreement in 2018. Richard Goldberg argues that the U.S. can proceed nonetheless:

Detractors claim that the refusal of most Security Council members to recognize America’s triggering of the snapback leaves the United States more isolated, ignoring widespread support from across the Middle East. These claims dismiss a more fundamental truth: doing nothing would give Iran uncontested international legitimacy in developing its conventional, missile, and nuclear capabilities.

President Trump [should next] announce an executive order threatening the full range of financial sanctions against any firm connected to the transfer of conventional arms, ballistic and cruise missiles, drones, and related components to Iran. Though not covered by the UN embargo, transfers of air-defense systems like the Russian S-400 should be included.

If a Russian or Chinese defense firm tries to sell weapons to Iran, that firm and all the supporting institutions involved in the transaction would face secondary U.S. sanctions. Sanctions would apply not just to new sales but also to maintenance and modernization of existing equipment. Banks, underwriters, shippers, ports, freight forwarders, and other logistics firms would have to choose: involvement in Russian and Chinese military sales or a cutoff from the U.S. financial system and market.

China has gone to great lengths to distance its state-owned energy companies and banks from illicit oil transactions with Iran. Last November, a Russian state-owned nuclear fuel company suspended its work at an Iranian facility after U.S. sanctions were reinstated. Russian and Chinese diplomats can make all the speeches they want; their state-owned enterprises, nonetheless, typically make financially prudent decisions.

In other words, the U.S. doesn’t need Security Council buy-in to make sanctions work.

Read more at Washington Examiner

More about: Donald Trump, Iran, Iran sanctions, U.S. Foreign policy, United Nations

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