Sometimes you have to fight battles you cannot win because fighting – regardless of the outcome – advances a larger cause.
Israel’s
fight against the nuclear deal the major powers, led by US President
Barack Obama concluded with Iran was such a battle.
The battle’s futility became clear on July 20, just six days after it was concluded in Vienna.
On July 20,
the US administration anchored the deal – which paves the way for Iran
to become a nuclear power and enriches the terrorism-sponsoring
ayatollahs to the tune of $150 billion – in a binding UN Security
Council resolution. Once the resolution passed, the deal became
unstoppable.
Most of the frozen funds that comprise the $150b.
would
have been released regardless of congressional action. And the
nonproliferation regime the US developed over the past 70 years was
upended the moment the deal was concluded in Vienna.
The fight in
Congress itself probably couldn’t have succeeded even if the
administration hadn’t made an end run around the lawmakers at the
Security Council.
After Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, passed the law obligating Obama to
secure the support of a mere third of the members of either House to
implement his nuclear deal, its implementation was a foregone
conclusion. The US Constitution gives sole power to approve
international treaties to the Senate and requires a minimum of
two-thirds approval for passage. Corker turned the Constitution on its
head when he went forward with his bill. Far from curbing Obama’s
executive overreach, Corker gave Obama unprecedented power to enact his
radical, reckless nuclear agenda.
So if the fight against the
deal was doomed to fail, why did the Israeli government decide to fight
it for all it was worth? And why is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
still fighting it even though there is no longer any way to stop Obama
from enabling Iran to sprint across the nuclear finish line? By fighting
Obama’s nuclear deal, Israel seeks to advance two larger efforts.
First, it uses the battle to expand its capacity to act without the US
to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Second, it is shaping
its relations with the US both for the duration of Obama’s presidency
and for the day after he leaves office.
As far as Iran’s nuclear
program is concerned, Obama’s deal has not impacted Israel’s options for
preventing the mullahs from getting the bomb.
Even before the US
betrayed Israel, its Arab allies and its own national security
interests and closed a deal that will transform Iran into a nuclear
power and a regional hegemon, there was no chance that the Americans
would take action to prevent Iran from developing atomic warheads.
That
prospect was taken off the table in November 2007. The National
Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program published that month
falsely – and scandalously – asserted that Tehran abandoned its nuclear
weapons program at the end of 2003.
The NIE was a bureaucratic
coup. CIA analysts, notorious since the 1970s for their biased and
politicized analyses, used the falsified NIE to block then-president
George W. Bush from dealing with Iran. After losing the public’s support
for the war in Iraq, and after failing to find Saddam’s WMD (which
magically fell into the hands of Islamic State 11 years after the US
invasion), Bush was powerless to oppose an official assessment of the
intelligence community that claimed Iran was not a nuclear proliferator.
As
for Obama, in early 2008, even before he secured the Democratic
presidential nomination, he announced that he wanted to negotiate with
then-Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
At no time since was there any evidence supporting the notion that Obama would lift a finger to prevent Iran from going nuclear.
In
other words, for the past eight years it has been apparent to everyone
willing to see that Israel has but option for preventing Iran from
acquiring nuclear weapons.
By fighting so strenuously against
Obama’s nuclear deal, Israel improved its ability to carry out a
military strike against Iran’s nuclear installations in two ways.
First, it removed the most serious domestic obstacle to carrying out such a strike.
Last
week’s publication of audio recordings of former defense minister Ehud
Barak discussing of Iran’s nuclear program revealed that for the past
several years, Israel’s military and intelligence brass have blocked
operations against Iran’s nuclear installations three times. In 2010,
2011 and 2012 the IDF chief of General Staff and senior generals
supported by hesitant cabinet members refused to carry out instructions
they received from Netanyahu and Barak to prepare to carry out such a
strike.
There is no doubt that one of the main reasons they opposed lawful instructions was their faith in Obama’s security pledges.
For their part, the Americans did their best to subvert the authority of Israel’s elected leadership.
Over
the past seven years Washington has sent a steady stream of senior
officials to “oversee joint Israeli-American efforts” regarding Iran. It
is now obvious that this “unprecedented cooperation” was never aimed at
strengthening Israel against Iran. Rather, its aim has been to erode
the government’s power to make independent decisions regarding Iran’s
nuclear installations.
Had Netanyahu kept his criticism of
Obama’s decision to give Iran a free hand to develop nuclear weapons
quiet, the generals might have shrugged their shoulders and expressed
gratitude for the shiny new weapons Obama will throw at them to
“compensate” for giving nukes to a regime sworn to annihilate the
country.
By making his opposition public, Netanyahu alerted the
nation to the dangers. The top commanders can no longer pretend that US
security guarantees are credible. Now they will be forced to kick their
psychological addiction to worthless American security guarantees,
accept reality and act accordingly.
Better eight years late than never.
The
Americans weren’t the only ones paying attention to Israel’s fight.
Israel’s Arab neighbors also saw how Netanyahu and Ambassador to the US
Ron Dermer left no stone unturned in their efforts to convince
Democratic lawmakers to oppose it. And the regional implications are
already becoming clear.
As the Saudis’ willingness to stand with
Israel in public to oppose this deal has shown, our neighbors have been
deeply impressed by the diplomatic courage Israel has shown. If and when
Israel strikes Iran’s nuclear installations, our willingness to openly
oppose the administration will weigh in our favor. It will impact our
neighbors’ willingness to cooperate in action aimed at removing Iran’s
nuclear sword from their necks and ours.
By fighting the deal,
Israel has also worked to shape our relations with the US in a favorable
way both in the short and long term.
Obama has another year and
four months in office. (503 days, but who’s counting?) Even before the
fight over his nuclear deal began in earnest, Obama made clear that he
intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the US-Israel
alliance and to weaken Israel internationally.
In the first
instance, his Democratic and progressive surrogates’ anti-Semitic
assaults against New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, and the
Justice Department’s coincidental indictment of pro-Israel New Jersey
Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez communicated a clear message to
Democratic lawmakers: Any Democrat who supports Israel against Obama
will be targeted.
By acting in this way, Obama has communicated
the clear goal of transforming support for Israel into the foreign
policy equivalent of opposing abortion: a Republicans-only position.
Internationally,
there can be little doubt that until Obama leaves office, he will seek
to harm Israel and the UN. He may as well seek to harm our economy by
quietly instituting administrative trade barriers with the US and
Europe.
Israel’s fight against Obama’s nuclear deal has
diminished Obama’s ability to use his full power to harm it while
preparing the ground for relations to be repaired under his successor.
Until
Netanyahu spoke before the joint houses of Congress in March, Obama’s
nuclear deal was largely outside the American discourse. The fierce
public debate began only after Netanyahu’s address. True, on Wednesday
Obama got the support of his 34th Democratic senator and so blocked
Israel’s efforts to convince Congress to vote down the deal. But his
victory will be Pyrrhic.
Obama’s success will backfire first and
foremost because thanks to Netanyahu’s move to spearhead the public
debate in the US, today two-thirds of Americans oppose the deal. Since
Iran will waste no time proving just how devastating a mistake Obama and
his fellow Democrats have just made, Obama’s success makes him far less
free to enact further steps against Israel than he was before the deal
was concluded. The public no longer will give him the benefit of the
doubt.
Moreover, since the deal is as bad as its opponents say it
is, and given that most Americans oppose it, Obama’s successor will
face no impediments in canceling the deal and adopting a new policy
towards Israel and Iran.
Then there are Obama’s Democratic followers in Congress.
Today
some commentators argue that Obama’s victory over opponents of his
nuclear deal – first and foremost AIPAC – spells the demise of the
pro-Israel lobby in the US.
Thankfully, they are mistaken.
Just
as it failed to prevent then-president Ronald Reagan from selling AWACs
to Saudi Arabia in 1981, so AIPAC had no chance of preventing Obama
from moving ahead with his Iran deal.
AIPAC has never had the power to defeat a president intent on advancing an anti-Israel policy.
We will only be able to measure AIPAC’s power after the 2016 elections.
Given
that the nuclear pact will fail, there will be plenty of Democrats
challengers who will be eager to use their Democratic incumbent
opponents’ support for Obama’s nuclear madness against them. AIPAC’s
public fight against the deal has set the conditions for it to extract a
political price from its supporters who preferred Obama to US national
security.
If AIPAC extracts a price from key Democratic lawmakers
who played crucial roles in approving the nuclear deal with Iran, it
will prevent Obama from turning support for Israel into a partisan issue
and emerge strengthened from the fight.
On Wednesday, after Maryland’s Sen. Barbara Mikulski became the 34th senator to support Obama’s nuclear deal, PBS’s senior anchorwoman Gwen Ifill tweeted, “Take that, Bibi.”
Obama’s
win is Bibi’s loss. Bibi failed to convince 12 Democratic senators and
44 Democratic congressmen to vote against the head of their party. But
by fighting against this deal, Netanyahu removed the main obstacle that
kept Israel from taking action that will prevent Iran from going
nuclear. He reduced Obama’s power to harm Israel.
The fight
strengthened American and American- Jewish opposition to the nuclear
deal, paving the way for a Democratic renewal after Obama leaves office.
And finally, Israel’s public battle against Obama’s deal paved the way
its abrogation by his successor.
All in all, a rather glorious defeat. |
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