Netanyahu lays out campaign for US to maintain course on Iran
Israel is hoping that the new US administration will conduct an intimate strategic dialogue with Israel’s allies in the region before making a final decision on the Iran nuclear issue.
Ahead of Joe Biden’s inauguration as the 46th president of the United States, a broad and fairly cohesive political coalition of Middle Eastern capitals are preparing to present the new administration in Washington with a clear and determined stand: There is no going back to the original 2015 nuclear agreement between world powers and Iran. Iran must not be rewarded for its actions. Conditions have changed as has the situation on the ground. The United States must leverage the achievements of the sanctions on Iran.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will likely be the unofficial leader of this Middle Eastern front and the one to present its position in Washington. He is coordinating positions with Israel’s Gulf allies (although he has encountered recent difficulties with Saudi Arabia, angered by the leak of his late November meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman), as well as those in Amman and Cairo.
“Some states in the Middle East are even more stressed out than Israel about the changes in the White House,” a senior political official in Jerusalem told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “They are troubled by the people with which [President-elect Joe] Biden has surrounded himself, by the fact that [former President Barack] Obama’s people, who were involved in negotiations with Iran on the nuclear agreement, have been appointed to senior positions in Biden’s administration, and by what they regard as an exaggerated focus on human rights and democratization.”
The official was referring to the appointments of Anthony Blinken as secretary of state, William Burns as CIA director and former Iran deal negotiator Wendy Sherman as deputy US secretary of state. Netanyahu has tasked Mossad chief Yossi Cohen with trying to mobilize this nervous group in order to make it clear to Washington that the region has undergone change. His prospects of success are uncertain.
