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Current Iran Framework Will Make War More Likely
(Washington Post) Moshe Ya'alon - Israel has made clear its grave concerns about the Iran nuclear framework's fundamental elements and omissions. The vast nuclear infrastructure to be left in Iran will give it an unacceptably short breakout time to building a bomb. Iran's long-range ballistic missile program - a threat to Israel as well as the rest of the Middle East, Europe and the U.S. - is untouched. The sanctions on Iran will be lifted, while restrictions imposed on its nuclear program will expire in about a decade, regardless of Iran's campaign of murderous aggression in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere; its arming, funding, training and dispatching of terrorists around the world; and its threats and violent efforts to destroy Israel, the region's only democracy. To justify the risks inherent to the framework, its supporters have posited three main arguments: that the only alternative is war; that Iranian violations will be deterred or detected because of "unprecedented verification"; and that, in the event of violations, sanctions will be snapped back into place. These arguments have one important feature in common: They're all wrong. As a former Israel Defense Forces chief of general staff and as a combat veteran forced to bury some of my closest friends, I know too well the costs of war. I also know that Israelis are likely to pay the highest price if force is used - by anyone - against Iran's nuclear program. No country, therefore, has a greater interest in seeing the Iranian nuclear question resolved peacefully than Israel. Our opposition to the deal is because the terms of the framework - which will leave an unreformed Iran stronger, richer and with a clear path to a bomb - make war more likely. The alternative is a better deal that significantly rolls back Iran's nuclear infrastructure and links the lifting of restrictions on its nuclear program to an end of Iran's aggression in the region, its terrorism across the globe and its threats to annihilate Israel. This alternative requires neither war nor putting our faith in tools that have already failed us. The writer is Israel's minister of defense.