Towards A Nuclear Agreement

Note

A Hebrew-language version of the op-ed appeared in Haaretz on November 9, 2014.

The translation was provided by the author.

The negotiations between the P5+1, under the leadership of the United States, and Iran on the nuclear issue are reaching a moment of truth, as the final deadline for an agreement, on November 24, nears. It is still unclear whether the sides will be able to bridge the gaps, but the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem has already allowed it to be known that Israel opposes the emerging agreement and may even conduct a major campaign against it, partly by mobilizing the new Republican majority in Congress against it. It is hard to think of a greater mistake.

In practice, there is no way to prevent an American president, who is determined to circumvent the Congress and act unilaterally, from implementing the agreement. Moreover, once an agreement is reached, with American support, it will gain international acceptance and become a done deal, so that any attempt to derail it will be too late. An attempt to do so will be viewed by the administration as a further example of a long list of recent Israeli actions which it viewed as being intentionally provocative and in this case even as a "declaration of war" in advance of its remaining two years. Given Israel's international isolation, this is a battle that we can only lose, unless Netanyahu's true aim is to prepare the ground for a military attack in Iran.

Israel sought an agreement which would leave Iran without any uranium enrichment capability whatsoever, or at most a few hundred centrifuges, ensure the dismantlement of the reactor in Arak, the enrichment facility at Fordow and other nuclear facilities, and provide for especially invasive inspections, all designed to leave Iran a few years away from a practical nuclear capability. The United States, which shared Israel's objectives up to the interim agreement last autumn, came to the conclusion that an agreement such as this was not attainable and that there was no choice but to leave Iran with a few thousand centrifuges and to convert the reactor in Arak and the other facilities to alternative uses, so that Iran would remain 6–12 months from a nuclear capability. An agreement such as this means that the Iran's nuclear threat will not be completely eliminated and that it will remain a threshold state in practice, but that its nuclear capabilities will be essentially frozen and the problem will be postponed to the future.

The question at this point is no longer whether the agreement is good for Israel, but whether we can live with it, given the alternatives. Barack Obama has no intention of acting militarily, as was hoped — not so secretly — in Jerusalem, and he has already made it clear that in the absence of an agreement he intends to return to the sanctions regime. For Israel this will be a major reversal and failure of a two-decade long effort to bring Iran to the moment of truth.

In the event that Iran rejects the agreement, despite the incentives provided and the heavy economic price it has already paid, this will be an indication of its intention to renew nuclear developmental efforts even at the expense of heightened sanctions, in other words, of the danger of a collapse of the overall effort to contain Iran's nuclear program.

Israel will then be left with the sole option of a "blue and white" (i.e. Israeli) attack on Iran, an option which is clearly undesirable, even if we may ultimately be forced to go that route when all other possibilities have been exhausted. An Israeli strike will cause an international uproar, heavy pressures for additional sanctions on Israel and most of all a confrontation with the United States. Moreover, it is likely to lead to the launching of thousands or even tens of thousands of rockets at Israel and may even affect the processes under way in the Arab world, at a time when the United States and other countries are conducting strikes in Syria and Iraq, thereby refocusing international attention on Israel.

All of this would be a tolerable price in the face of a potentially existential threat, if military action was truly capable of eliminating it. The Iranian nuclear program, however, long ago past the stage where it could be destroyed by military action, because Iran now has the knowledge necessary to reconstitute it at any point. As a result, even a fully successful military attack will not gain more than a few years.

The postponement gained by a military attack may actually end up being longer than what opponents believe, because it can be used for further interdiction measures and to apply additional international sanctions. It is also quite possible that Hezbollah's response will not be as severe as presumed, given the current circumstances in the Middle East. Moreover, in a region undergoing daily upheaval one should not belittle the importance of a few year time gain. Nevertheless, in the absence of better options, Israel should hope that the negotiations are successful and recognize the bitter truth, which is that, as in so many other cases, we are talking about crisis management, not resolution. In Israel's case, that too is something.

Netanyahu, who deserves considerable credit for having successfully placed the Iranian issue at the center of the international agenda, unfortunately went too far in the last year, turned himself in the eyes of the world from the champion of the cause to an annoyance, and undermined the strategic coordination with the United States. The idea of conducting a public campaign against the agreement, while mobilizing the Congress against the president, borders on the irresponsible. It should be remembered that Members of Congress, pro-Israel as the may be, are first of all Americans and their allegiance is to the president. Anyone thinking of a public campaign, or military action, should present it as part of a significant diplomatic initiative towards the Palestinians. In fact, this is desirable in any event.

The author was a deputy national security adviser.

Statements and views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author and do not imply endorsement by Harvard University, the Harvard Kennedy School, or the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.