Benny Avni: Message to Iran: ‘The Era of Lies Is Over’
https://www.nysun.com/foreign/message-to-iran-the-era-of-lies-is-over/91542/
As Israel’s new government settles in, President Biden and Prime Minister Bennett agree to disagree on Iran — which means we could be at the start of a geopolitical game of good-cop-bad-cop.
Addressing the Knesset before the Sunday vote that made him premier, Mr. Bennett said that “as the greatest threat to Israel, the Iranian nuclear project is reaching a critical point.” The Mideast, he added, “is yet to recover from the effects of the first nuclear deal, which emboldened Iran to the tune of billions of dollars, and with international legitimacy.”
Renewing it “is a mistake that will once again lend legitimacy to one of the most discriminatory and violent regimes in the world,” Mr. Bennett said. Then he made clear that “Israel will not allow Iran to be equipped with nuclear weapons. Israel is not a party to the agreement, and will maintain full freedom to act.”
Freedom to act is key to the new government’s Iran policy, as it was for Benjamin Netanyahu when he was prime minister.
Yes, Yair Lapid — the new foreign minister and alternate prime minister — said one of his top goals is to repair relations with America’s Democrats. Addressing the foreign ministry staff, he said that Israel must prepare for renewal of the JCPOA. Yet he insisted that “this is a bad deal” and that “Israel will use every option at its disposal to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon.”
In an interview last week, outgoing chief of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen, detailed some secrets behind the Israeli methods — sabotage of Iran’s nuclear facilities, assassinations of top nuclear scientists, and, most glaringly, taking an entire nuclear archive from a warehouse at the heart of Tehran and safely smuggling it to Israel.
“It was important” to us, Mr. Cohen told Channel 12’s Ilana Dayan, “that the world will see” the archive, in which Iran preserved its past nuclear arms program for future use. At the same time, he added, it should “also resonate with the Iranian leadership, to tell them, dear friends: one, you have been infiltrated; two, we see you; three, the era of lies is over.”
The archive’s documents were shared with the International Atomic Energy Agency and several intelligence agencies, including America’s. Yet, even after the exposure of Tehran’s duplicity, the Biden administration remains intent on rejoining the deal the Iranians were violating.
A sixth round of negotiations to revive the deal was just launched in Vienna. Separately, also in Vienna, Washington emerged increasingly at odds with the head of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, who recently reported on Iran’s denying inspectors’ access to sites the archive documents exposed. Despite such violations, America and European powers nevertheless blocked a resolution at the IAEA board of directors to demand full access. Mr. Grossi vowed to push on even without such a resolution.
As Mr. Biden’s rushes to re-ink the deal, his supporters argue that since America left the agreement, Iran’s nuclear program advanced, and it is now closer to a bomb than before. Opponents counter that even so, the 2015 deal allows several restrictions on Iran’s to expire soon. The final sunset would allow Tehran to develop by the end of this decade as many nuclear weapons as it desires.
David Albright, president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, told me recently, “If you’re scared by what’s happening now, you should be terrified by what’s going to happen in 2030.” After gaining unprecedented access to the nuclear archive, Mr. Albright says America should keep sanctions on while awaiting a better deal, rather than rush to rejoin now.
In its latest concession, however, Washington arranged a transfer of Iranian funds to the United Nations through a South Korean bank after Tehran lost its General Assembly voting rights because it couldn’t pay its UN dues. Until last week such transfers were banned by American sanctions on Iran’s banking sector.
Mr. Biden’s damn-the-torpedoes rush to renew the Iran deal is widely unpopular in Israel (and among Iran’s Arab neighbors). As Mr. Bennett indicated, and as reported in the Israeli press, the new government is set to approve new operations already in the Mossad pipeline, regardless of the Vienna talks.
Most Israelis believe such clandestine methods are more effective than the multilateral diplomacy with a regime that vows to annihilate Israel.
It took Mr. Biden three weeks after the January 2021 inauguration to contact Mr. Netanyahu. By contrast, he called Mr. Bennett hours after he was sworn in as prime minister. Such display of goodwill is likely to last only if Mr. Biden comprehends that to take credit for preventing Iran’s race to a bomb he needs the Israelis to do the dirty work America refuses to engage in.
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