Analysts and pro-Israeli sources in Washington believe that Israel will try to fix its relations with the US, after it failed to prevent the temporary agreement with Iran, which, on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a "historic mistake".
The sources said that Netanyahu's aggressive policy against the Obama administration, reflected by frequent grating remarks, did not meet the test of results. The clauses that Israel sought to have included in the demands on Iran during the negotiations and in the final wording of the agreement were, at best, barely mentioned.
On the Iranian issue, Israel influenced Congress, not the administration, said a pro-Israeli source. After such a failure, tactics must be changed.
"The New York Times" described it this way, "… But the reality is that the weeks of harsh [Israeli] and personal condemnations [against President Barack Obama] leading up to the agreement on Saturday left Israel sidelined in the Geneva process [for a permanent agreement with Iran], and its relations with Washington under severe strain.
"With its ability to influence the deal through diplomatic channels accordingly limited, Israel will now deploy its intelligence resources to monitor the process. Among the expected areas of scrutiny will be whether construction at the heavy-water reactor in Arak is halted as demanded in the interim deal; whether Iran installs new centrifuges or uses its advanced ones in violation of the agreement; how the Obama administration enforces the remaining sanctions; and the seriousness of the promised increased inspections."
The Obama administration is hoping and striving for a change in the Israeli tone, and is careful not to respond to verbal provocations emerging from Jerusalem. However, in private conversations, US officials do not conceal their frustration at Israel's conduct. Outwardly, the White House takes care to show that Israel is in the loop, and on Sunday, Obama called Netanyahu to update him on the interim agreement with Iran.
According to the statement by the White House spokesman, Obama told Netanyahu that the US would seek a comprehensive agreement with Iran in the coming weeks (responding to Israeli concerns that the interim agreement would become a permanent agreement), and that Washington and Jerusalem should immediately begin consulting about the comprehensive agreement. Obama said that he understood Israel's doubts about Iran and promised that the US was still committed to Israel's security.
In a series of interviews on Sunday, US Secretary of State John Kerry commented about the Israeli angle regarding the developments with Iran. "From this day, for the next six months, Israel is in fact safer than it was yesterday because we now have a mechanism by which we are going to expand the amount of time in which [the Iranians] can break out [to obtain nuclear capability] rather than narrow it. We are going to have insights into their program that we didn’t have before,” he told CNN.
There are conflicting views about a link between the agreement with Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. One assessment holds that the negotiations with the Palestinians has fallen victim to the agreement. "The New York Times" quotes administration officials as saying that they believed that Netanyahu would be able to separate his anger about the Iran deal from any decision about whether to make concessions to the Palestinians. But outside experts have their doubts.
However, experts outside the administration are not so sure. "The Palestinian issue is the big casualty of this deal," "The New York Times" quotes Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute as saying. "Now that they have an Iran deal, over the strong objections of Israel, it’s going to be very hard to persuade Netanyahu to do something on the Palestinian front."
However, there are also assessments that Netanyahu could use the Palestinian issue as a bargaining chip with the US, in an effort to influence the comprehensive agreement with Iran. "In the end, Netanyahu will have to decide who he is more afraid of, the Iranians or the Americans," said a pro-Israeli source.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 25, 2013
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