Israel (Washington Insider Magazine) -While Donald Trump must be held historically accountable for reneging the United States from the Iranian Nuclear Deal, or the JCPOA, the Likud party of Israel, as well as the Prime Minister at the time, Benjamin Netanyahu, must be held accountable as well for their part in this matter. The constant and consistent pressure campaign that was led by this Israeli political force since the deal was first spoken of, and eventually agreed to, by the Obama administration and Europe, set the groundwork that would lead up to the future machinations, such as the show that Netanyahu put on in front of the United Nations in the weeks preceding Donald’s decision; all of this helped to set the stage for the United States’ ultimate verdict under Donald Trump itself.
The Israeli government, dating back years and continuing currently, has been absolutely obstinate in regards to Iranian progress and acceptance within the international community of nations. They have done, and often said, everything within their power to keep Iran, a rival regional power, in the most dire of all straights, even as multiple global and domestic catastrophes put Iranians in real, existential peril. Yet even after “King Bibi” was, for all intents and purposes, deposed by the rest of the Israeli political machine, which deemed him too powerful and too self-absorbed, there has been no grand thaw of sorts regarding Israeli-Iranian relations.
The new boss, who, to paraphrase a famous old song, is quite similar to the old boss, Naftali Bennett, is no kinder or gentler than the man he replaced regarding either the Palestinians and Palestine or the Iranians and Iran; his coalition administration is similarly apathetic too, and that has extended to even Washington DC’s hopes to recreate the aforementioned nuclear deal between Iran and the most powerful nations and collectives of the world.
The original JCPOA, while internationally celebrated by traditional American friends and foes alike, was always hated by two main groups, within and without the United States. The American Republicans, for one, first decried the deal that Barack Obama’s administration negotiated and then signed with Hassan Rouhani’s, as one that favored Iran and endangered the states and their allies. Meanwhile, Israel also stated numerous times, in defiance and contradiction to the rest of the world, that this agreement would only lead to Iran getting the nuclear bomb by the end of the nuclear term of approximately 15 years.
Needless to say, both groups were wildly incorrect, and their choices, and how they came to be applied by Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and now Naftali Bennet, leave Iran much closer to having access to nuclear weaponry than ever they have previously been before. This has left Joe Biden in the unfavorable position of trying to remedy a situation that he already previously believed was solved when he was the 47th Vice President of the United States.
Yet this is where the circumstance currently sits at. On the one hand, the American populace wishes for a remade JCPOA agreement, and Joe Biden wishes to make this innovation a larger, more sustainable part of his own legacy, while on the other, the Iranian government, now led by Ebrahim Raisi and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are steadfast, and are now demanding that a part of any new deal will include a provision protecting the deal from the unilateral whims of a Republican-led American government. The Republicans too are trying to dissuade the current President and administration from attempting to resuscitate an Iranian deal, while Israel attempts to achieve very much the same objective from their place within the international community.
Neither group wishes for this innovation now any more than they previously did, even as the consequences for effectively destroying the original pact become more evident by the hour; the difference of course, is that Republicans are attempting from within the nation, while Israel attempts to influence foreign policy of its longtime, enabling and empowering ally. While all of these reactionaries can take pride in having derailed this major diplomatic breakthrough in the past, and would presumably take credit for future innovations in this matter as well, they must also be accountable, at least to some extent, for the domestic innovations that swept moderates from political office across the country in the years after the Trump administration first broke the JCPOA. That has all culminated with the election of Ebrahim Raisi just months ago, as Hassan Rouhani’s two terms were running out, along with further Principlists across the country, and news that Iran is so much closer to nuclear weaponry than they have previously, and ultimately ever wanted to be.
And so, to be sure, this stance that both Israel and the reactionaries of the American nation are displaying cannot be allowed to further rule the hour as it relates to international foreign policy vis-a-vis Iranian. It is disintegrating a circumstance that appeared stabilized as the 2016 United States Presidential Election neared, and that now appears a more fraught and desperate situation than ever before. Reports continuously suggest that even as negotiations are set to pick back up as November ends, that the talks are in dire straits, and this position is good for no one across the greater world.
“It is not sufficient that the state of affairs which we seek to promote should be better than the state of affairs which preceded it; it must be sufficiently better to make up for the evils of transition” – John Maynard Keynes
Israel wishes still today to keep Iran as a second-class nation within the region and international community, and believes that doing so will enable greater regional hegemony for Israel itself; they say anything that they can to drive this point home, and have even threatened military intervention against the nation. They believe, like Donald Trump and the American Republicans, that the only way Iran should be allowed to rejoin the diplomatic and economic international community is through complete and entire submission to only the most extreme practical or political demands that reactionaries can think of.
This type of logic is the very same that John Maynard Keynes once warned about when he violently railed, through language mind you, about the Allied Treaty of Versailles that would help to create the reactionary political climate that would overtake Germany and the Weimar Republic in late 1932, early 1933. It is the type of logic and negotiating tact that leaves no room for amicable relations between two nations because it, foundationally speaking, does not consider the disadvantaged party in a fair, equitable and reasonable light.
When some reactionary discusses how they would “deal with Iran,” it is always fascinating to hear how unevenly one powerful side, feeling no responsibility for anyone but themselves or their own nation in a very materially tangible sense, would just demand such unreasonable requests from their target. They often say that if Iran does not wish to capitulate, that they can simply go on suffering, nevermind that the Iranian government has previously stated that these sanctions, allegedly targeting specific individuals and not an entire country, do not hurt those individuals whatsoever, while causing great suffering for the nation’s population.
Listening to these folks is the surest way of learning that they have never seriously negotiated anything of an internationally or even domestically political nature. Great, multilateral international relations, whether diplomatic or economic, are not born from entirely one-sided deals, any more than great interpersonal relationships are born out of consistently one-sided, entirely self-serving requests. All great relationships come from give and take; they come from caring not only for themselves and their own contingent, but for the side that they are looking to agree to terms with.
While Joe Biden and Washington as a whole continue to scrap about this, even as the President’s administration looks to rekindle negotiations with Iran, in hopes of inspiring and even better, longer-lived endeavor, Israel too must come to understand the good, proper logic behind working to bring Iran back within the boundaries of the modern international community. While Israel continues to sit in a position of relative military, economic and diplomatic power within both the region and broader global stage, there can only be greater stability for them in growing less paranoid and combative in all of their behaviour.
As the Palestinian discussion is, indeed, a discussion and essay for another time, Iran and Iranians must be thought of by Israel should they wish to lead positively and not vaingloriously. Israel has worked on its regional ties recently, albeit with economic hegemony and success in mind, through the Israeli-UAE agreement signed shortly before the departure of Donald Trump from the Presidential office, yet this, if anything, only hurt relations between those parties and Iran; Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, remains on the fence with both Israel and Iran. In any event, Iran must be considered as worthy of fair discourse and negotiations as those stalwarts of humanitarian behaviour, the United Arab Emirates.
Now, while Israel is not likely to break into true, honest negotiations with Iran, especially as a hardliner now currently rules as both the President and Supreme Ayatollah of that nation, that does not mean that they cannot and are not able to act in a way that can begin to heal the chasm that Israel has already, at least on the superficial political level, have began bridging with other regional polities and powers over the previous years and decades. While Joe Biden cannot allow for Israel to derail his volition in regards to restarting the JCPOA, all parties involved might benefit, other than the American Republicans, by ceasing their own campaign against this work.
This would help Israel in multiple ways, of which none are small or minor to be sure. Israel would finally appear on the right side of reactionary behavior within the greater international stage, easing the pressure that they themselves often feel because of their own support of what amounts to apartheid in Palestine. The relationship between American Democrats, of which first began to noticeably deteriorate under Barack Obama, in large part thanks to his own views of Iran, could also begin to heal itself, and a more liberal influence in Israeli politics could do nothing for that country but help it progress past the highly volatile, military state that it has been for some decades. They would also be dissociating themselves from the previous American administration, headed by Donald Trump, and this action would be a tacit admittance regarding the previous pressure campaign that the country went upon to get the first deal broken apart.
Yet still further on down the line, this decision would, to be sure, create a new, even if minor opening for improved relations between Iran and Israel. While the lack of resistance by Jerusalem would prove a welcome sight to the entire world sans American reactionaries, it would surely be noticed by Iran too, and might, even if not immediately, serve to create some type of potentially positive dialogue with that nation moving forward.
Now, to be sure, I do not anticipate the current Israeli administration to heed this writer’s advice on this matter. They have their own public views on all of this of which I have laid out, and they, for the most part, firmly disagree with many of my conclusions and much of the greater logic which makes it up; they threaten violence with the expectation that the US would back them to some extent, and so would believe my analysis to be of an extremely idyllic nature and therefore, without much value.
Yet this does not, of course, mean that it is not all the correct course for Israel to embark upon, as while Israel is firmly a part of the greater international community of nations, it is not held in great, universal esteem because of many of the actions and behaviours that the nation has previously undertaken, and still actively pursues, to create, secure, and further itself and its toxic Jewish supremacy, while oftentimes ignoring both international reproach and law.
They have the backing of the United States, however, and so that has long enabled them to skirt much of the rightfully aimed criticism levied from other, quite powerful and influential nations themselves. But how long can that last, and how many more Israeli international incidents can this relationship take before it is reduced by the sheer weight of the collective blights upon the Israel national visage? This same question, to be sure, might be asked of the United States itself, and yet that too is a discussion for a different essay; Israel itself, as well as the hope regarding a new JCPOA, is however, the discussion of this piece.
And so, it would be very much in Israel’s best interests, diplomatically and practically speaking, in the regional sense, as well as regarding the entire, massive nuclear question, for them to either support this innovation being tried for by Joe Biden, or at the very least, to stop mounting the PR campaign that acts as a resistance to it. When one takes away the religious biases or disdain from the entire circumstance regarding Iran and the rest of the world, there is no reason not to look to make real progress in the relationship, for the sake of the entire world and international community itself.
The time to make real change again is now, and regarding the JCPOA, the time will not last forever. It will, if not grasped by Joe Biden and the rest of the world, flitter away in spite of these great, mutually shared interests. Iran wants this no more than the United States, or for that matter the nations like Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and even China. Yet the time for talking without true purpose is all gone. Only positive actions at this point will save the world, which includes Israel, from the alternative that all countries wish to avoid, even as some have previously worked against those very principles because of political, national or personal biases.
Israel must either be overcome by the Biden administration, or else they must stand aside for the proper course of action to be executed and practically enabled and secured moving forward. There is no other course, for in this way, Israel stands in the way of international progress as much as it creates a real and true barrier to the reduction of potential nuclear proliferation of the malevolent sort, which, again, does nothing to protect or secure, in any way, the nation of Israel itself. Joe Biden himself has no practical domestic or international course, and he himself knows this as well as I do; how he goes about overcoming the obstacles previously and presently put in his way will be worth watching as everything evolves, and yet, Israel can help him, as well as themselves, by reversing their current and previous course in regards to Iran moving forward.
