The post-nuclear deal era has finally and belatedly arrived. It was officially launched Oct. 27 with the visit of Israeli Defense Minister Moshe (Bogie) Ya’alon to Washington. Israeli security sources call this visit “fateful” regarding Israel’s ability to cope with future repercussions of the controversial deal with Iran. After Ya’alon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit the United States, where he will meet with President Barack Obama in November.

Both of these visits are supposed to help Israel “make a fresh start” in the unstable relations that prevail between Washington and Jerusalem. Obama and Netanyahu will never like one another in this life, but the prime minister’s office and, mainly, the Defense Ministry hope that it will be possible to turn over a new leaf and try to forget what was, and focus on what will be — or to be more precise, to focus on what Israel hopes will be in a coming 10-year period.

Almost all the senior officials in Israel’s security system, in the Israel Defense Forces and Defense Ministry thought that Israel should have come to terms with the nuclear agreement as soon as the ink dried and not wage the furious and desperate rearguard battle that was conducted in the attempt to block the agreement in the US Congress. This “scorched earth” battle waged by Netanyahu and Ya’alon was called “a dangerous gamble” by higher-ups in the Israeli security system, due to its potential for harming Israel’s special relationship with the United States. The gamble failed. Now, Netanyahu and Ya'alon will try to prove that they did not lose too many Israeli assets or strategic interests with this bet. They will try to quickly move on to a "business as usual" mode, attempting to demonstrate that nothing significant was harmed in the multibranched, indispensable web of connections and assistance that Israel has in the United States.

Prior to Ya’alon’s arrival in Washington, the requisite “compensation package” request had been put together in Israel; it is this package that Ya’alon (and Netanyahu in his wake) will ask for from the Americans. It all starts with money: In the last decade, Israel received about $3 billion a year in military assistance from the United States. Of this, Israel is obliged to spend 80% to purchase US defense equipment from American companies. Israel hopes to increase this sum significantly over 10 years beginning in 2017. It is anticipated that Israel will ask for $4.5 billion a year, with the goal of closing on $4 billion; this constitutes an increase of a third over the current assistance. According to Israel, this uptick is required in order to address the repercussions of the nuclear agreement in the region, and mainly to cover the actions that Israel will have to take vis-a-vis a significant Iranian empowerment and intensification of the "terror war" Iran conducts against Israel through its various proxies.