‘The big drama looms’: Iran, not Gaza, is next test of US-Israel ties

 

‘The big drama looms’: Iran, not Gaza, is next test of US-Israel ties

By Michael Crowley

May 26, 2021 — 3.00pm

Washington: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took a moment to thank the Biden administration for its support during his country’s 11-day conflict with Hamas in Gaza — and then abruptly changed the subject and his tone.

“We discussed many regional issues, but none is greater than Iran,” Netanyahu said on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST), standing with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken after their meeting in Jerusalem. He pointedly added that he hoped the United States would not rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear deal “because we believe that that deal paves the way for Iran to have an arsenal of nuclear weapons with international legitimacy”.

The Israeli leader’s remarks lent a sour note to his welcome of Blinken. And it undoubtedly echoed a few thousand miles away in Vienna, where a fifth round of negotiations opened, aimed at bringing the United States and Iran back into compliance with the nuclear agreement, a top priority of Biden’s.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is opposed to a return to the Us-Iran nuclear pact. 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is opposed to a return to the Us-Iran nuclear pact. CREDIT:AP

As Netanyahu’s remarks made clear, the Gaza conflict appears to have earned Biden good will with the Israeli leader and his public. But the prospect of a US return to the nuclear deal threatens to generate new strains between Washington and Jerusalem on a subject that poisoned relations between President Barack Obama and Netanyahu.

”The big drama looms and that is the Iran nuclear deal,” said Jonathan Schanzer, a Middle East expert at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies.

“I think both Biden and Netanyahu realise that whatever discomfort both sides may have felt throughout this current conflict, it is small fries compared to the political friction that is looming,” Schanzer added.

Compounding the trouble is the conflict in Gaza, which has created angered Israelis and US Republicans over Iran’s ties to Palestinian militants. Most analysts say Iran played no active role in this month’s rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza, even though Tehran openly cheered them on.

But Tehran has for years provided the Gaza-based militant groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad with financial and military backing — and taught those groups how to build their own munitions.

Citing that relationship, 44 Senate Republicans signed a letter to Biden this month insisting that he cut off his negotiations with Iran, which they called “a longtime financial and material supporter of Hamas”.

The nuclear talks, in which the US is negotiating indirectly with Iran, are aimed at bringing the two nations back into compliance with the agreement, which was forged by the Obama administration and several other world powers. Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018 and subsequently hammered Iran with new sanctions, prompting Tehran to disregard the limits it had agreed to on its nuclear program.

Iran's Rouhani urges Biden to return to nuclear deal

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani urged the incoming US administration to return to a 2015 nuclear agreement and lift sanctions on Tehran, while welcoming the end of President Donald Trump's era of 'oppression and corruption.'

During an online talk hosted by the conservative Hudson Institute in Washington on Friday, Ron Dermer, who was Israel’s ambassador to the United States from 2013 until earlier this year, spoke at least as much about Iran as he did about the Palestinians.

Dermer, now a private citizen but still a confidante of Netanyahu’s, said the Biden administration was “engaged in an accommodation of Iran at best, and appeasement of Iran at worst”.

“It’s disastrous for Israel’s national security,” he added.

During his joint appearance with Netanyahu, Blinken said the administration was “consulting closely with Israel, as we did today, on the ongoing negotiations in Vienna around a potential return to the Iran nuclear agreement, at the same time as we continue to work together to counter Iran’s destabilising actions in the region.”

The prospects for a revived nuclear deal not only hinge on negotiations in Vienna, but on electoral politics in Tehran, where a list of seven contenders for the presidential elections next month was announced Tuesday by a panel of clerics that vets the candidates.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is in Vienna, where talks on reviving the Iran nuclear pact have resumed. 

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is in Vienna, where talks on reviving the Iran nuclear pact have resumed. CREDIT:GETTY IMAGES EUROPE

Two associates of President Hassan Rouhani, a moderate who was an architect of the original nuclear deal, were disqualified from the final list, virtually guaranteeing that the next president will be a conservative hard-liner closely aligned with the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The candidate most favoured to win is Ebrahim Raisi, the head of the judiciary.

While on the surface a hard-liner’s election may not bode well for the nuclear negotiations, it could have the opposite effect and even hasten an agreement before the election, some analysts said. Khamenei, despite his antipathy toward the United States, wants the negotiations to succeed but does not want a moderate as the next president.

Suzanne Maloney, vice-president and director of the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, called the news about Iran’s elections far more significant than the conflict in Gaza. She warned that negotiating with Tehran will grow increasingly difficult “as the Iranian leadership appears even more uniformly malevolent than it does today”.

That would be just fine with Netanyahu, who has strained Biden’s nuclear diplomacy with what intelligence officials say are recent acts of sabotage against key Iranian nuclear facilities. Speaking at a Monday award ceremony for agents of Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, Netanyahu suggested that his country was prepared to strike again.