Why Netanyahu Is Still Wrong on Iran

Posted March 3, 2015

Why Netanyahu Is Still Wrong on Iran

March 3, 2015

This morning, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will give a contentious address before Congress. Due to the politicization of the speech – Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) did not consult the Obama Administration in inviting Netanyahu, and invited the Prime Minister in the middle of an Israeli election campaign – a quarter of congressional Democrats have announced they will not be attending. But members of Congress don’t need to attend Netanyahu’s speech to know the message he’ll deliver – the Prime Minister has made clear his opposition to any agreement with Iran which would allow it to maintain an enrichment capability. This belief that the international community could negotiate a deal in which Iran would give up this capability is simply unrealistic. Netanyahu and members of Congress need to engage seriously with what a deal can realistically achieve – and with the consequences of not reaching a deal. With this in mind, there are constructive ways that Israel and Congress can work with the Administration toward an agreement that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

The United States is working towards a good deal with Iran. “Netanyahu would argue for…the deal where Iran has no nuclear capability whatsoever,” Ilan Goldenberg, Director of the Middle East Program at the Center for a New American Security, said on an NSN press call on Monday. “The problem is that it just does not exist. It’s not realistic.” What is possible, said Goldenberg, is an agreement that makes trying to build a nuclear weapon so difficult and dangerous that Iran is effectively deterred from attempting it. There are two ways Iran could violate an agreement: either a “dash” for a bomb using existing facilities or a “sneak out” at locations hidden from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In either case, Goldenberg explains, the constraints and monitoring of an agreement would make constructing one bomb take at least a year – and a usable arsenal of several bombs another year – and would ensure that Iran’s efforts are detected and halted by the international community. As President Obama said in an interview with Reuters on Monday, “If, in fact, Iran is willing to agree to double-digit years of keeping their program where it is right now and, in fact, rolling back elements of it that currently exist…if we’ve got that, and we’ve got a way of verifying that, there’s no other steps we can take that would give us such assurance that they don’t have a nuclear weapon.” [Ilan Goldenberg via NSN, 3/2/15. Barack Obama via Reuters, 3/2/15]

Any potential deal must be judged by the alternatives, which could include the unraveling of the international sanctions regime and even war. “Members of Congress who seem primed to oppose whatever agreement emerges from the negotiations usually base their opposition on the idea that rejecting the agreement would clear the way for a ‘better deal,’” Paul Pillar wrote recently for Reuters. “That belief is a fantasy. If the agreement reached in these negotiations is killed, there probably won’t be another chance for many years. There is no mysterious process that could cause a better deal to materialize.” Ilan Goldenberg and Robert Kaplan of the Center for a New American Security echoed that sentiment and stressed their concern about the consequences of collapsed talks in a recent article. Goldenberg and Kaplan “believe the results might be more dangerous for Iran, the United States, and the Middle East than an imperfect deal that keeps Iran a healthy distance from a bomb and gives the United States reasonable confidence that it could catch an Iranian attempt to dash to a weapon, without eliminating Iran’s nuclear program.” They outline how the collapse of the talks could escalate tensions in the Middle East to a region-wide hot war, fought by conventional forces and terrorist proxies. “Congress should think long and hard before it tries to subvert the Iran nuclear talks,” they conclude. “Let’s wait a bit longer to see what kind of a deal, if any, the Administration manages to strike with Iran. There will be enough time then for Congress and others to act in order to avoid a sell-out of our principles.” [Paul Pillar via Reuters,2/25/15. Ilan Goldenberg and Robert Kaplan, 2/13/15]

Despite Prime Minister Netanyahu’s disruptive speech, Israel can play a constructive role in preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom (Ret.), a Visiting Fellow at the Center for American Progress formerly of the Israel Defense Forces, said in NSN’s press call on Monday that he had concerns that the Israeli government’s current approach is “harming major interests of the state of Israel,” including causing “harm to the strategic relationship between the state of Israel and the United States.” Instead, Brom said, Israel “should prefer working with the USA on ways of devising an agreement that will be good enough. It will not be perfect…But it will be good enough to deter Iran from dashing out to a nuclear weapon.” Goldenberg, in the same press call, explained what a more constructive approach might look like, saying “the way you do this, the way Israel has done this in the past and the traditional smart thing to do would be for Israeli experts to come sit down with American experts in the security dialogue to walk through okay, we are really concerned about how the deal might be violated and lets walk through together what the consequences of a violation by Iran might look like, defining what a violation is…That is a much more productive use of joint Israeli-US cooperation on a question like Iran that could help us both get to a better place.” [Shlomo Brom and Ilan Goldenberg via NSN, 3/2/15]

Congress should take care not to jeopardize an agreement before it is reached, and should channel its efforts towards constructive legislation instead. Dylan Williams, Director of Government Affairs for J Street, discussed on NSN’s press call what Congress will be looking for in Netanyahu’s speech. “If Netanyahu really wants to talk Iran,” Williams said, “what he needs to answer for members of Congress is the question of what is his alternative to the diplomacy he is challenging. Members of Congress have been saying openly that if the Prime Minister is asking for a war, that’s something he needs to say very clearly, because the alternative to successful negotiations in the minds of many in Congress is military action. A military action that both Israeli and U.S. intelligence and security experts believe may not be successful in preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and in fact might even spur it to engage in activities that would accelerate elements of its program that could be used to make a nuclear weapon.”

President Obama said on Monday that he’s “less concerned, frankly, with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s commentary than I am with Congress taking actions that might undermine the talks before they’re complete.” Those actions include the Kirk-Menendez bill, currently on hold, which would introduce new sanctions on Iran, and the new Corker bill, which would delay the implementation of any agreement by two months as Congress reviews its terms. The Administration has said President Obama will veto the legislation if it is passed. Instead, Congress should focus on more constructive approaches, like the proposal by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) that “states that the Senate is prepared to enact additional sanctions against Iran if current diplomatic efforts fail, but refuses to prejudge the outcome.” [Dylan Williams via NSN, 3/2/15. Barack Obama via Reuters, 3/2/15]