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Why Netanyahu Broke Publicly with Obama over Iran
(Washington Post) David Ignatius - Yuval Steinitz, Israel's minister of intelligence, said Wednesday in an interview that the public rift between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu over the Iranian nuclear issue has been building for more than two years and reflects a deep disagreement about how best to limit the threat of a rising Iran. He said that the nuclear agreement contemplated by Obama would ratify Iran as a threshold nuclear-weapons state, and that the one-year breakout time sought by Washington wasn't adequate. "From the very beginning, we made it clear we had reservations about the goal of the negotiations," he explained. "We thought the goal should be to get rid of the Iranian nuclear threat, not verify or inspect it." Netanyahu's skepticism reached a tipping point last month when he concluded that the U.S. had offered so many concessions to Iran that any deal reached would be bad for Israel. He broke with Obama first in a private phone call on Jan. 12. "The temptation [for Iran] is not now but in two or three or four years, when the West is preoccupied with other crises," Steinitz said. If Iran chose to "sneak out" at such a moment, it would take the U.S. months to determine the pact had been violated, and another six months to form a coalition for sanctions or other decisive action. By then, it might be too late. What the U.S. is saying to Iran, in effect, is "if you agree to freeze for 10 years, that's enough for us." But that won't work for Israel. "To believe that in the next decade there will be a democratic change in leadership and that Iran won't threaten the U.S. or Israel anymore, I think this is too speculative." "Iran is part of the problem and not part of the solution - unless you think Iran dominating the Middle East is the solution," Steinitz concluded. People who think that a nuclear deal with Iran is desirable, as I do, need to be able to answer Steinitz's critique.