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Debate over Iran Deal Underlined Israel's Power

(Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies-Bar-Ilan University) Col. (res.) Dr. Eran Lerman interviewed by Ariel Kahane - "Today Hamas is much worse off than it was in the past. It's true that they are preparing for the next war, and there's no reason to think they won't start one, but the fact that Hamas says, 'We need to kill the Zionists, but not this week,' that's the best deterrence we can achieve." While many in Israel see the the nuclear agreement with Iran as a failure by Netanyahu, Lerman thinks the struggle actually "underlined the power of the leader of a small state in the Eastern Mediterranean, who was the only one to dig in his heels against the agreement....The fact of the matter is that a serving president of the United States, in his second term, and on a central issue for him, chose to avoid a vote in Congress, and instead deployed a filibuster to prevent the vote, because he doesn't have 50 senators who'll support him, never mind 67. All this because of the stand taken by this one leader. For me, this tells us that Israel's power is not insignificant." "We're in a new world in which Syria doesn't exist, Lebanon is a fiction, Jordan is Israel's ally, and Egypt is a partner. When I entered the job [at the National Security Council] in 2009, none of this existed....We need to be very patient. Our struggles are not hopeless. We are a sovereign people that has exercised its right to self-definition in its homeland....Today we are engaged in a struggle over our story, our justifications, and our future. That requires a lot of hard work, but it's not impossible." Col. (res.) Dr. Eran Lerman served for six years as deputy for foreign policy and international affairs at the National Security Council in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office.
2016-02-26 00:00:00
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