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Israel Believes Washington Did Not Maximize Its Leverage with Iran
(Washington Institute for Near East Policy) David Makovsky - The crux of the Israeli critique of the Iran nuclear deal is that the U.S. did not use its full leverage in the negotiations, and that Washington's objective evolved during the talks from eliminating Iran's program to merely constraining it. From Israel's perspective, time was on Washington's side, first because Iran's main source of revenue, oil, saw its price halved in the past several months, and second because the world was united against any Iranian nuclear enrichment by dint of six related UN Security Council resolutions. More broadly, Israel believes that Iran has never made a strategic decision to disavow nuclear weapons, and that the West has moved more toward Tehran during the talks than vice versa. Israeli officials also believe there is a lot of wishful thinking about Iranian intentions. The writer is director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at The Washington Institute.