Both US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are expected to use their speeches at the UN General Assembly session this week to rally support for a tougher line on Iran, but theirs may be a cry in the woods against an Iranian nuclear agreement that enjoys solid international support.

Akiva Eldar writes, “With the Iranian nuke agreement signed and sealed, the issue of the bomb threat is off the international agenda. Netanyahu might actually feel himself bereft up on the podium without having a drawing of a nuclear bomb to clutch.”

Ben Caspit reports that there are divisions between Israel’s political and military leaders about which tack to take on Iran, and “it is not a strategic argument, either. The top brass of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Military Intelligence and Mossad all realize that the Iranians have not shelved their ambition to become a nuclear power — nor will they. The difference is that the defense establishment has accepted the nuclear deal as a fact and managed to find certain positive opportunities in it. The IDF has reorganized in accordance with the new situation, and its multiyear planning program 'Gideon' has been formulated on the assumption that the Iranian nuclear threat has been placed in the deep freeze for a decade. Senior Israeli defense officials have emphasized the opportunity it affords Israel to deal with other problems, reprioritize and take advantage of this window in Iran's nuclear schedule. The political leadership, particularly Netanyahu and [Minister of Intelligence and Transportation Yisrael] Katz, sees things very differently. … Netanyahu is an experienced alarmist who shares this position. So apparently does Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman. Given these circumstances, Israel's military leadership will have no choice but to acquiesce to the position of the political leadership, which is the ultimate authority in the matter.”

Eldar suggests that Netanyahu may pick up the thread on North Korea to make his case on Iran. “The prime minister can provide proof, of course, of the close cooperation between the Iranian ayatollah regime and the communist ruler in Pyongyang,” he writes. “For example, the cable sent by the US State Department to the embassy in Beijing, part of the batch of documents leaked to WikiLeaks, indicated that Iran and North Korea make use of their national airlines’ cargo flights to transport nuclear technology and components. According to information collated by Israeli experts, quite a few Iranian liquid-fueled ballistic missiles and related launchers were developed based on know-how and technology provided by North Korea.”