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Iran as a Challenge to Jerusalem and Washington

(JNS) Brig.-Gen. (res.) Michael Herzog - Israeli-American disagreement on Iran is a strategic dispute of the first order, one pertaining to what Israel sees as the greatest threat to its national security - Iran's nuclear ambitions and plans. Both sides agree about the nature of the Iranian threat, that Iran should be prevented from achieving military nuclear capability, and that the use of diplomatic tools to achieve that end is preferable to the use of military force. Israel argues against returning to an agreement that is fundamentally flawed - one that does not, by any means, block all paths toward nuclear weapons. Moreover, once Iran returns to the original agreement after most of the punitive sanctions have been lifted, it will dig in its heels and refuse to proceed towards an improved agreement. If Iran remains in the original deal, within a decade most of the restrictions on its nuclear program will be removed as per the agreement's "sunset clauses," and it will then be able to become a legitimate nuclear threshold state. From Israel's point of view, such a scenario is intolerable. Furthermore, Israel does not believe that, at the moment of truth, there would be enough time or international political will to block Iran from quickly crossing the threshold to military nuclear capability. Israel sees Iran as a close and direct threat of the highest strategic order, and itself as having narrow security margins in the face of that threat. The U.S., in contrast, is a distant global power with wide security margins and different priorities, including a growing weariness of wars in the Middle East. Israel perceives the U.S. as relatively tolerant of a scenario in which Iran becomes a nuclear threshold state, and as lacking the political will to confront Iran, also considering that its partners in the agreement are uninterested in doing so. Israel may ultimately have no choice but to shoulder the burden of halting Iran's nuclear program, should diplomacy prove fruitless. The writer is a Senior Fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, and an International Fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
2021-07-01 00:00:00
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