Israeli politicians oppose Iran deal with patriotic front


July 24, 2015
Sarah Benton

This post features the two most reputable dissenters on the Israeli condemnation of the Iran nuclear deal: Isaac Ben-Israel and Ariel E. Levite


Supporting the Iran nuclear deal: Isaac Ben-Israel who has served as head of the Israel Space Agency in the Ministry of Science and Technology since 2005.

Israeli media drowns out pro-Iran-deal voices

Israeli politicians condemning the agreement with Iran have monopolized the conversation in Israel

By Mazal Mualem, trans. Sandy Bloom, Al Monitor
July 21, 2015

The widespread Israeli media coverage of the nuclear agreement between six world powers and Iran was accompanied by bitter cries of politicians from right and left alike who described the deal as a national disaster. This overpowered the important voices of those who argued that the agreement would actually improve Israel’s position, and not the reverse.

Two of the dissenting opinions are expressed by Isaac Ben-Israel  — a reserve general, professor, chairman of the Israeli Space Agency and recipient of the Israel Defence Prize — and professor Ariel Levite, former deputy director general of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission [see below]. These two experts wrote articles in which they presented the positive aspects of the agreement from Israel’s perspective. But their chances of garnering appropriate public attention were nil given the apocalyptic rage prophecies of the politicians.

From the moment the agreement was signed on July 14, the Israeli public only heard one-sided commentary on the deal’s implications. The key personage who set the tone was, of course, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who declared that the agreement paves Iran’s way to the atom bomb. But even the heads of the opposition parties, Zionist Camp leader Isaac Herzog and Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid, also took part in the effort. They lambasted the agreement as threatening to Israel, and targeted Netanyahu as being responsible for the debacle. Lapid even demanded a national commission of inquiry to investigate the failures in foreign policy that led to the bad agreement (in his words). “We thought it would be a bad agreement, but it is even worse than we expected,” Lapid said.

There are not enough words to list the headlines created by ministers and Knesset members, high- and low-level ones alike, including those with very limited knowledge of nuclear matters. All of them acted in concert to explain to the Israeli public that the agreement signed in Vienna paralleled the notorious Munich agreement of 1938. Politicians from right and left all regarded condemnation of the agreement as a litmus test of their patriotism. They fear that any positive statement regarding the deal will turn them into an enemy of the people. That is exactly as shallow as it sounds. Even mainstream media that does not want to be viewed, God forbid, as left-wing or Jew haters, contributed its part in setting the tone of this narrative. And when the public discourse is filled with hysterical tirades and shallow patriotism, it is no wonder that those on the other side are unable to make their voices heard.

Thus Levite’s important and reasoned article in the Israeli daily Haaretz (July 15) was sidelined and had no influence on the public discourse, despite his credentials in nuclear matters. Levite, who is held in very high esteem as a nuclear researcher and who has closely followed the Iranian issue in recent years, wrote an article titled, “The good, the bad and the ugly nuclear agreement.” In it, Levite clearly and concisely explained that while certain sections of the agreement cause justifiable worry in Israel (such a hasty removal of the sanctions, a slow and convoluted supervisory apparatus and the almost immediate ability of Iran to upgrade its centrifuges), there are also sections that improve Israel’s position.

Levite argued that the positive change relates to the limitations Iran committed itself to in the agreement. “For a period of no less than 15 years Iran has undertaken not to enrich uranium beyond a low level, to eliminate or convert its significant stockpile of higher enriched uranium and to refrain from setting up any new enrichment facility, nor produce new centrifuges. Iran will also go down to a sole active uranium enrichment facility.” Levite also notes the sweeping prohibition on Iran to conduct research and development that could serve nuclear bomb projects and missile warheads.

Another person who tried to break out of the unified media chorus line was Ben-Israel. Ben-Israel is one of the greatest experts on the Iranian research programme and its significance for Israel. In an article written for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth (and in an interview for the Walla website), Ben-Israel argued that the deal has several positive aspects. He said the agreement is not as dangerous as it is perceived by the Israeli public and decision-makers. “What we have here is a non-dialogue between people who don’t want to listen. The agreement is not bad at all, it’s even good for Israel. … The United States president said that the deal distances Iran from a nuclear bomb for a decade or two, and he is correct. It distances the threat for a long time, it averts an atom bomb for 15 years, and that’s not bad at all.”

Even former Mossad head Efraim Halevy, who has long maintained that Iran does not constitute an existential threat to the State of Israel, presented on Israeli state radio a more balanced view regarding the deal. At the margins of the public discourse can also be heard the statements of Amos Yadlin, the former chief of defence intelligence, and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak. All of these voices seemed to try to dampen the national panic.

Ben-Israel told Al-Monitor that he was disappointed over the way the important discussion of the nuclear deal has taken place in the media, and the lack of impact his words and Levite’s article had on the public. “This shows the great problem affecting the Israeli media. Our media is not a dictatorship media, yet no dissenting voice is heard. On the other hand, every junior Knesset member suddenly becomes a nuclear expert and explains why the deal is terrible.”

Ben-Israel uses no small measure of sarcasm when talking about politicians.

‘Dr.’ Yair Lapid and ‘nuclear expert’ Buji [Isaac] Herzog are fuelled by political calculations. As far as the media is concerned, we evidently are unable to compete with the superior wisdom of deputy ministers who explain how terrible the deal is. It is no coincidence that the other side of the coin is expressed by professionals in the security system. Levite, Halevy and I were all very familiar with the [Iranian nuclear] issue.



Ariel Levite, centre, in Beijing November 2014 to discuss the P5+1 talks and particularly any impact on Iran-China relations. On his right is Tong Zhao, an associate in Carnegie’s Nuclear Policy Program based at the Carnegie–Tsinghua Centre for Global Policy and on Levite’s left is Zhao Weibin, a senior colonel and a research associate at the Centre for China-U.S. Defence Relations at the Academy of Military Science of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.

The good, the bad and the ugly nuclear agreement

The accord with Iran has both heartening and disturbing elements, but the biggest surprise in it is the size of the American wager.

By Ariel E. Levite, Haaretz
July 17, 2015

One must admit that the nuclear deal finally thrashed out in Vienna between Iran and the powers earlier this week is fundamentally different from the package we were led to expect by all the parties’ public statements, as well as their interim agreements.

It is even utterly different from the parameters for the agreement, which were laid out both in the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA) (the interim agreement made in Geneva on November 2013) and in the Parameters for the deal (concluded in Lausanne, March 2015). The outcome is an agreement that is simultaneously good, bad and ugly. Its bottom line is a strategic gamble, which to Barack Obama’s United States seems calculated. Israel is justifiably far from persuaded that this indeed is the case.

So what has changed? On the good tally are the restrictions Iran has agreed to adhere to. For a period of no less than 15 years Iran has undertaken not to enrich uranium beyond a low level, to eliminate or convert its significant stockpile of higher enriched uranium and to refrain from setting up any new enrichment facility, nor produce new centrifuges. Iran will also go down to a sole active uranium enrichment facility.

Iran has also undertaken to redesign the Arak reactor so that it can no longer produce significant quantity of plutonium, and for the same duration refrain from setting up additional heavy water reactors and separating irradiated fuel.

No less positive and significant is the surprising addition to the agreement of a sweeping ban on Iran’s engagement in activities, including at the research and development level, that could contribute to the development of a nuclear explosive device. This commitment will remain in force in perpetuity. In other words, not only has Iran explicitly undertaken not to seek or acquire nuclear weapons under any circumstances, it has also formally forsaken (albeit on the fuel cycle side for only 15 years) the option of proceeding along the two paths that must come together in order to yield a nuclear weapons capability.

The major change for the worse in the agreement lies in the sweeping and airtight commitment made to Iran to swiftly remove (within a mere few months) all the nuclear related sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council, the European Union and the United States (which are within the discretionary powers of the administration’s) even in the face of Congressional objections. Iran has also been promised that all of the sanctions on its missile activity will be removed within eight years and on conventional weapon trade already within five years. Equally significant is the commitment to convert forthwith of all the preceding UN Security Council and the International Atomic Agency imposing on Iran demands and prohibitions and sanctions into a mutual and reciprocal arrangement. Iran has thereby been given a formal standing to hold back from delivering on its side of the deal if its partners to the deal are not living up to their obligations to Iran.

The clauses restricting Iran’s research and development and acquisition of advanced centrifuges are not entirely encouraging either. Even in the absence of a genuine peaceful rationale Iran will be permitted to continue (albeit at a modest scale for the first eight and a half years) to develop and test newer and much more efficient centrifuge models. These will make it technically possible for Iran to rapidly and dramatically scale up its enrichment effort if it breaks out of the agreement or upon its expiration.

The ugly side of the deal pertains to the agreed-upon mechanisms for verifying the implementation of Iran’s commitments and the re-imposition of sanctions should Iran violate the agreement. These lay out a very complex, slow, and uncertain mechanism, which would nominally allow for inspecting every facility, but at a considerable delay and only after overcoming numerous procedural (and political) hurdles en route. The clauses in the agreement pertaining to the re-imposition of sanctions in case of Iranian violations are nominally appealing but in practice equally difficult to apply.

In both cases we are dealing with a mechanism enabling Iran (with the support of its prospective allies) to delay and impede the application of verification measures and sanctions re-imposition provisions. Consequently, Iranian encroachment on and less than blatant violations of the agreement will be excruciatingly difficult for the IAEA to catch and document even if it does, will hardly result in any severe penalty on Iran. Furthermore unilateral steps that might have been contemplated in response to Iranian pursuit of a weapons capability or even encroachment and violations on the earlier agreements now become illegitimate unless sanctioned by this complex arbitration mechanism.

What all this boils down to is a real surprise at the nature and magnitude of the US gamble. The US has come out squarely to endorse a deal that tries to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons predominantly relying on positive inducements to get Iran to comply with its new formal commitments. These incentives include rapid normalization of Iran’s status, lots of money and later on provision of conventional weapons and nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Iran’s track record to date as well as its regime’s character make this bet into a huge gamble, even if (as the US administration hopes) the agreement ends up bolstering the more moderate faction in the Iranian leadership.

So how does Israel view this outcome ? Israel is certainly heartened that Iran will not come into possession of nuclear weapons any time soon. At the same time it is greatly concerned, justifiably so, over the agreement’s long-term repercussions, both in the nuclear domain and on Iran’s regional behaviour. Yet Israel harbours few illusions that much good will come out of attempting to undermine the agreement. This assessment undergirds Israel’s security cabinet’s decision earlier in the week emphasizing that Israel is no party to the agreement and is therefore not bound by it. Israel is thus determined to preserve and strengthen its deterrence and ability to act independently against Iran should circumstances requiring so arise. Ultimately, though, it is clearly preferable to spare Israel, if at all possible, the need to take independent action against Iran.

Hence, it is supremely important to get the United States, France and Germany to make complementary commitments to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, contain and diminish the risk inherent in the agreement and strengthen Israel’s capacity to respond to those threats posed by Iran’s that the agreement might accentuate. An effort to secure these commitments must be made soon, employing bilateral agreements, parliamentary legislation and resolutions by the UN Security Council and the International Agency for Atomic Energy.

The writer is a Senior Associate in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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