Just over a year and two months ago, when Naftali Bennett entered the prime minister's office, he decided to reopen the Iran file. He took it apart and then reassembled it. Bennett was well aware of Netanyahu's position espousing outright rejection of President Obama's nuclear agreement signed in 2015.
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As the then vice-president to Obama and current US President, Joe Biden announced his intention to return to the agreement from which Trump pulled out, Bennett decided to examine whether the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), as the nuclear deal is officially termed, is really as bad as that for Israel. As he has shown in the past, that Bennett is not afraid of defying convention.
The conclusion he reached was yes, it is that bad, but the argument was somewhat surprising. It was not the international legitimacy that Iran's nuclear program was to gain that he saw as the main damage of the agreement, but rather the hundreds of billions of dollars that would be injected into the terror conglomerate operated by Iran in New York, Buenos Aires, Paris, Berlin, Ankara, Mumbai, and throughout the Middle East, and above all, of course, against Israel.
In other words, according to Bennett, supporting the agreement would have been a logical step if only it would delay the eventuality by a few years. Undeniably, the trillion dollars that will flow into the Iranian economy by 2030 according to the estimate of the Washington-based FDD (Foundation for Defense of Democracies) Institute, or even one tenth of this sum according to other estimates, will certainly empower its killing machine.
At the end of this road, Israel will be staring at two intertwined nooses to be wrapped around its neck. Iran will be both a nuclear threshold power and will operate an expansive and colossal terror empire. The potential damage was now definitely worth the effort, concluded Bennett, and he set off on a campaign against Biden's move. Unlike Netanyahu however, Bennett did not voice his concern by shouting from the treetops. He sought to avoid a head-on collision with the US Administration, just as Netanyahu would have done were he still in power. Not many people are aware of the fact that towards the end of his tenure, Netanyahu decided not to repeat his earlier outright confrontation with the Americans, should the US decide to return to the nuclear agreement.
Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with the professional working-level officials, who supported his address to Congress in 2015 and the accompanying campaign of diplomatic pressure at the time, now came to the conclusion that it would not be appropriate to duplicate that effort. Though his speech did bolster public opposition to the nuclear agreement in the USA, in the end, it did not stop Obama from signing it while simultaneously generating considerable collateral damage. After the ensuing fierce showdown, the professional civil servants in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who had supported Netanyahu's address in 2015, strongly recommended not to repeat it. Together with Lapid, who in any case has decided to raise the banner of reconciliation with the Democrats, Bennett adopted another approach. Instead of blocking the agreement itself - putting a spoke in its wheels. In other words, the Israeli message does not focus on the disastrous result of the agreement – a nuclear device at the end of the road – as there is absolutely no way of persuading the Americans of this. Instead, Israel is pressing on more peripheral points, creating
bumps along the sidelines, that might derail it.
The most prominent example of this was Israel's raucous opposition to the removal of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from the US list of FTOs (Foreign Terrorist Organizations). Following drawn-out discussions, Biden eventually adopted the Israeli position, he stood firm against the Iranians and the agreement was delayed for another few months.
Since midweek, when it became clear that the Americans and the Iranians are on the verge of signing, Lapid has begun to walk along the path charted by Bennett. The main focus of Israel's criticism has been leveled against the potentially more peripheral implications of the deal. On Wednesday, a senior diplomatic official summoned a group of foreign journalists serving in Israel and voiced considerable concern over the severe concessions being offered by the USA.
He underscored the fact that "There is concern that the numerous ramifications of removing the sanctions on Iran have not been taken into account. This is a very bad deal that will give Iran 100 billion dollars a year to be used for undermining stability across the Middle East and spreading terror globally, funding the IRGC and the Basij paramilitary forces that oppress the Iranian people, attacks on US bases in the Middle East, reinforcing Hizballah, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, as well as individuals trying to murder novelists in New York."
There are those who believe that even at this current juncture, Israel is still able to obstruct the agreement by delivering messages that do not target its core essence, but rather its side effects. It is simply not possible to change the obstinate desire of Biden and his staff jump off the cliff. Being caught out by a bump on the road to the precipice is the only thing that might save them, and us.
The sea is the same old sea
Who still remembers Tama (National Outline Plan) 37H? In April 2011, the National Council for Planning and Construction made a dramatic decision. Following a hysterical campaign waged by green organizations and residents of Israel's coastal strip, it was decided that none of the offshore platforms producing gas in Israel's economic waters would be set up on land. Tamar, Leviathan, Dalit, Noa, Shimshon, and Karish too were sent out to the open seas.
The arguments for pushing these platforms out to sea were not wholly unreasonable. Our country is small and densely populated, and a gas filtration facility does not really do anything to enhance this. Serious concerns of a potential environmental disaster and subsequent air pollution were also clearly understandable. Heavy public pressure ensued and the defense establishment's recommendation to locate the platforms on land, as this would make them much easier to protect, was pushed aside.
Thus, most of the offshore platforms were established 20 km (12 miles) from Israel's coastline. Energean PLC, which in 2016 purchased the rights to the Karish gas field, decided that if a land-based platform is out of the question, then it would be better to locate it far out at sea. The company wanted to avoid any quarrel with the public and also preferred the economic consideration that would provide it with a much better basis to exploit the gas deposit it had purchased.
Consequently, unlike the other offshore platforms, Karish is not exactly a rig but more of a floating ship. It is located about 100 km (62 miles) from the coast of Haifa – in other words, it is much harder to defend due to this distance.
It is important to point out that when Karish's location was decided, nobody, in their wildest dreams, thought that Lebanon would one day claim this to be its sovereign territory. But general security-related warnings had clearly been issued. Under the panic campaign waged by the opponents to the "Gas Framework" (those, whom had we listened to their advice would have left Israel without any energetic security and with inflation double that of the current rate that is already undermining the economy – all credit here to Netanyahu and Yuval Steinitz for resisting their pressure), these warnings fell on deaf ears.
More than a decade has elapsed, and in late September gas production is due to begin in Karish – an act that Nasrallah views as a causus belli, for the first time since 2006. Of course, we must not give in to the threats of an evil terrorists. But in In retrospect, shouldn't we have listened just a bit more to what those wearing green uniforms had to say rather than heeding the green activists?
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