Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the US Congress last Tuesday was a direct snub to President Barack Obama and an intrusion into American domestic politics. It does not augur well for future US-Israeli relations, especially if Netanyahu remains in office.
In a nutshell, Netanyahu appealed to the Republican-controlled Congress not to approve any deal between Washington and Iran over the latter’s nuclear programme – just two weeks before he faces his own election in Israel.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s speech to congress was controversial from the start, because the Republican Speaker, John Boehner, invited him without consulting the White House. This is a massive breach of protocol and rightly so Mr Obama announced he would not meet with Netanyahu during his visit to Washington, especially because of the impending Israeli election.
After the speech, which Obama did not listen to, the US President said that after reading the transcript he concluded that Netanyahu had not “offered any viable alternatives” to negotiating with Tehran and had said nothing new.
“The alternative that the Prime Minister offers is ‘no deal’, in which case Iran will immediately begin once again pursuing its nuclear programme, accelerate its nuclear programme without us having any insight into what they are doing and without constraint,” Obama said.
In his speech Netanyahu warned that the deal under discussion with Teheran could “pave Iran’s path to the bomb” rather than block it and that Iran was a “threat to the entire world”. He also said: “We’ve been told that no deal is better than a bad deal. Well this is a bad deal, a very bad deal, we’re better off without it.”
Israel’s Prime Minister said that the deal relied heavily on international monitoring when Iran “plays a pretty good game of hide and cheat with UN inspectors”.
Netanyahu’s speech was well received by the Republicans in Congress – in fact it was quite pathetic seeing how many times they gave the Prime Minister a standing ovation – but was criticised by a number of senior Democrats, many of whom, including Vice President Joe Biden, stayed away.
Nancy Pelosi, leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives, looked miserable throughout the speech and later issued a statement saying Mr Netanyahu’s address was an “insult to the intelligence of the United States” that had left her close to tears. One Democratic congressman, John Yarmuth, said the speech was “straight out of the Dick Cheney playbook – fearmongering at its worst”.
Although I believe Mr Netanyahu did engage in scaremongering, I have no doubt that his speech did strike a chord with a large number of conservative Americans, who remain suspicious of both President Obama’s foreign policy and his attempt to engage with Iran in order to arrive at a sensible nuclear deal.
The alternative that the Prime Minister offers is ‘no deal’, in which case Iran will immediately begin once again pursuing its nuclear programme- Barack Obama
However, although the Republican invitation to Netanyahu was clearly an attempt to embarrass Obama, it looks like this backfired. A recent CNN poll found overwhelming opposition to the way the Republicans handled the invitation, with 63 per cent of respondents saying it was wrong for Boehner to invite Netanyahu without first consulting Obama.
Furthermore, Obama’s ratings have now gone up since Netanyahu’s speech, which shows that most Americans are not thrilled with the idea of a foreign leader criticising the President of the US on home soil.
The potential deal with Iran involves the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China (known as the 5 + 1) attempting to reach an agreement with Teheran to curtail its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief. The target is to reach a late March deadline for an outline agreement which would then theoretically be followed by a detailed deal by the end of June.
Negotiations are at an advanced but delicate stage, which shows just how irresponsible Netanyahu’s speech was. The 5 + 1 powers want to curtail Iran’s ability to enrich uranium, which can be used to make reactor fuel but also nuclear weapons. The main sticking point seems to be how to limit Iran’s development and use of centrifuges that enrich uranium, as faster enrichment would reduce the time Iran would need to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a weapon.
What Obama is proposing is that Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity would be significantly curtailed and subject to international inspections. Iran’s “nuclear breakout” capacity would be pushed to one year which would allow international inspections to detect a violation of any agreement.
The proposed deal would be valid for 10 years, by which time, it is hoped, Iran would have embarked on reforming its economy and political system, as well as playing a constructive role on the world stage. In return for such a deal sanctions on Iran would be lifted, breathing a new lease of life on the Iranian economy.
Such a deal might seem too good to be true but Obama and the other world leaders deserve to be supported in their attempt to broker such an agreement which if adhered to and stringently monitored would really open up an important new chapter in the regional politics of the Middle East.
Such an accord would represent a ray of hope in a turbulent region which has only seen bad news over the past few years. Surely it is worth a try?