Knesset Defense panel: Iran Deal has negative impact on Israel’s security
LAHAV HARKOV/J.Post/07/15/2015
The World Powers’ agreement with Iran authorizes its illegal nuclear program, the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee said in a joint statement by its 29 members Wednesday. “After receiving a comprehensive overview of the details of the agreement between Iran and the powers, we declare that this agreement has weighty, negative ramifications for Israel’s security,” the statement reads. “The agreement authorizes the illegal nuclear program Iran promoted, while violating repeated agreements by the UN Security Council and the IAEA.”
The committee said that removing sanctions will lead billions of dollars to flow into Iranian coffers, some of which can be used to strengthen Iranian global terrorism and Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.
The committee called on the government and Knesset to “continue to closely follow the precise and strict implementation of articles limiting Iran’s nuclear program, to ensure that Iran is not continuing to fool the international community as it did in the past, while strengthening the historic alliance between the US and Israel.” It took several hours for Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Tzach Hanegbi (Likud) to reach a consensus between the panel’s members as to what the joint declaration should say.
Hanegbi opened the committee meeting with a call “to overcome political differences and reach a consensus so we can make a joint declaration by the committee about the interpretations and meaning of the agreement.” However, in the meeting, which was closed to the press, several opposition MKs, including Shelly Yacimovich, Tzipi Livni and Nachman Shai of Zionist Union and Zehava Gal-On and Michal Rosin of Meretz, took umbrage with the way representatives of the National Security Council, Foreign Ministry and Strategic Affairs Ministry presented the agreement to them.
Deputy NSC chairman Yaakov Nagal called the deal “even worse than we thought,” and said “the bottom line is that Iran is allowed to continue enriching uranium on Iranian land and all the existing centrifuges will remain in Iran and not be dismantled.” Nagal said that Iran will be permitted to continue research and development of advanced centrifuges, along with the lifting of sanctions allowing a freer exchange of information, thus letting Iran significantly decrease the time necessary to break out, and after 15 years, all limitations on enrichment will be removed. The NSC official also pointed to holes in the IAEA inspection system, especially the fact that Teheran will have 24 days to prepare before inspectors arrive.
“Iran did not and will not abandon its military nuclear vision,” Nagal said. The Zionist Union and Meretz MKs criticized how emphatically negative Nagal and other officials were in their analysis, accusing them of political bias and only giving the government’s position, and saying they are not supposed to take a side. The opposition lawmakers also lamented that in the slides they were shown, any time it said Iran committed to something, the word “committed” appeared in quotation marks, used grammatically incorrectly to indicate skepticism.
Hanegbi said he would continue trying to work on a message from the committee on which all its members could agree.
Also in the meeting, MK Michael Oren (Kulanu), former ambassador to the US, said Israel should not count out the possibility that the agreement will herald a new era of closeness between Iran and the US, which may establish full and official diplomatic ties with Teheran.
Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid called the deal “Israel’s biggest diplomatic failure since the establishment of the state. The prime minister is not Winston Churchill before World War II, he is Golda Meir after the Yom Kippur War.”
Ehud Barak: Israel can live with a nuclear Iran
ARIEL BEN SOLOMON, GIL HOFFMAN, JPOST.COM STAFF/07/14/2015
The nuclear deal that the world’s leading countries reached with Iran on Tuesday will likely lead to the Islamic Republic becoming a nuclear power, but Israel can live with a nuclear Iran, because Israel is by far the strongest country in the region. So said former prime minister and defense minister Ehud Barak in an interview with Channel 2 Tuesday night. Barak was just one of many Israeli politicians across the political spectrum who slammed the deal; MKs from the Joint List were the only ones who praised it. “The agreement gives legitimacy to Iran to become a nuclear threshold state,” Barak said. “It allows [the Iranians] to subsidize terror and removes them from the noose of sanctions. It is fair to say that it will allow Iran to follow North Korea to become a nuclear power.”
However, while he said it was legitimate for Israeli politicians to go to the US to explain why the deal was problematic for Israel, he cautioned against interfering in American politics and said positive relations with the White House must be restored. He added that there was room to take advantage of the nuclear deal to set a new regional security order. “We need to define, together with America, what a smoking gun is, and what is an Iranian violation,” he said. “You don’t need to be a security expert to understand that the deal changes the security situation. You need the US to reevaluate the situation and maintain and develop the military option.” Meanwhile, opposition leader Isaac Herzog (Zionist Union) announced that he would be leaving for the US in the coming days to “demand a dramatic package of security measures for Israel.”
Voicing his disappointment over the deal at a Knesset press conference, Herzog said he had been in talks with AIPAC and other bodies in the US and that he intended to fly there as soon as possible to “clarify the nature of the risks stemming from the agreement [as pertains] to Israel and the rest of the region.”“With regard to security, I am more extreme than [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu,” Herzog said. “In light of the situation, we must do everything within our power to improve our security. I have full confidence in the power of the State of Israel, and the unity and the power of our society to face and overcome any challenge and risks that lie in its path. Even if there are internal disputes, Israel knows how to unite and fight together for security.”
Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid intends to lobby congressmen to vote against the deal, which he said made Tuesday “a bad day for the Jewish people.”Education Minister Naftali Bennett went further, declaring that “this day will be remembered as a black day in the history of the free world.” He spoke out against the deal on CNN, immediately after the network broadcast speeches by the American and Iranian presidents praising the deal.
“The history books have been rewritten again today, and this period will be deemed particularly grave and dangerous,” Bennett said. “Western citizens who get up for another day at work or school are not aware of the fact that about half a trillion dollars has been transferred to the hands of a terrorist superpower, the most dangerous country in the world, which has promised the destruction of nations and peoples. Today it may be us, tomorrow it may reach every country in the form of suitcase bombs in London or New York. Israel has done everything possible to warn of danger, and in the end it will follow its own interests and will do whatever it takes to defend itself.”
Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman warned that “the agreement with Iran will be remembered in history the same way as the Munich Agreement that led to World War II and the agreement with North Korea that led to its nuclearization.” Calling the deal “a total surrender to terror and unbridled violence in the international arena,” he stressed that Israel “needs to ensure at all times and in all circumstances that it will defend itself. Today, Israel needs to remember [the Talmudic axiom]: ‘If I am not for myself, who will be for me?’” Meanwhile, the Likud criticized opposition lawmakers for assailing Netanyahu’s policies in light of the nuclear agreement.“Instead of presenting a unified front on a fateful issue for Israel, on which there is no Right or Left, and on which everyone knows Israel’s security is at stake, some politicians are engaging in narrow political prattle at the expense of the interests of Israel,” the party said in a statement. “The prime minister never promised that there would not be a deal, only that Iran would not obtain nuclear weapons, and that promise still holds, today more than ever.”
The Joint List, however, welcomed the nuclear deal, saying in a statement that it was “a victory for the will of the Iranian people and its struggle to remove the siege and sanctions.” It added that Israel should now dismantle its own purported nuclear weapons program. Israel’s objections to the deal are based on its aim “to remain the only country with nuclear power in the region and to distract the international community from the occupation, which is the source of tension, war and instability in the Middle East,” said the predominantly Arab party. “We have to keep the region free from nuclear weapons,” it added. The list’s Arab nationalist Balad party and Islamic Movement-affiliated United Arab List party signed off on the statement, even though their ideologies seem to dovetail with those of the larger Islamic and Sunni world – which opposes Shi’ite Iran’s regional ambitions and is likely to be critical of the deal.
