Israel views extension of Iran talks as lesser of two evils
Israel's attitude, favoring no nuclear agreement with Iran over a bad one, resulted in it being denied any direct influence on this phase of the negotiations, even if some of its worries are legitimate and shared by the US Congress.
Officially, Israel kept a relatively low profile in light of the decision Nov. 24 by the P5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany) and Tehran to extend their negotiations to reach a permanent agreement over Iran’s nuclear program.
Nevertheless, Israel did not hide that it preferred this extension over the signing of the terms of agreement being discussed by the parties. “We always said that we would prefer no agreement at all over a bad agreement,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in response. In any case, as far as Israel is concerned, extending the talks is nothing more than the least of all possible evils. Though the interim agreement (the Joint Plan of Action) may have put the brakes on Iran’s race to nuclear capability, in Israel it is seen as the original sin, which allowed Iran to enrich uranium in its territory.
This “sin,” however, was coupled by several other weaknesses, which the Israeli government has since identified in the emerging permanent agreement. Most of these were pointed out publicly by Minister of Intelligence and Strategic Affairs Yuval Steinitz in an interview with Israeli daily Yisrael Hayom on Nov. 21. First, Israel is uneasy about the definition of the agreement’s objective as keeping Iran at least one year away from the capacity to break out to enough fissionable material for a single bomb. According to Steinitz, Israel would like to see that time frame extended to three years.
Second, Israel is concerned that the agreement could allow Iran to engage in research and development involving advanced centrifuges, and that it would not provide adequate protections regarding the nuclear capacity of Iran’s ballistic missile program. Third, the agreement under discussion, including the benefits that it would ensure Iran (particularly easing the sanctions against it) seems too independent of Iran’s required cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency over activities suspected of carrying possible military dimensions. The completion of an investigation into these open files, as mandated by UN Security Council Resolution 1929, is considered essential, since it would indicate what advances the Iranians made in the past, and what areas should receive particular scrutiny in the future.
