Bibi The Terminator

Throughout the nego­ti­a­tions between the P5+1 and Iran, the divi­sion of roles was clear. Netanyahu and Israel played Bad Cop. Obama and Kerry were the Good Cops bear­ing car­rots. Back when the process was just get­ting under­way, this even worked. “If we don’t tight­en sanc­tions,” the Americans could say to their super­pow­er inter­locu­tors, “who knows what those ‘cra­zies’ in Jerusalem will do.”
In any nego­ti­a­tion, it helps to have a bad cop to point to and, of course, what role would any­one expect the prime min­is­ter of Israel to play in this negotiation?

But Netanyahu refused to take the American administration’s stage direc­tion and play a sup­port­ing role as a flash­light-wield­ing Mall Cop. Instead, he played it to the hilt, a Terminator: the mod­ern day destroy­er, armed to the teeth, run­ning red lights with­out see­ing what’s in front of him, and will­ing to pay a heavy price to achieve his sin­gle-mind­ed objective.

Unlike a Mall Cop, a Terminator is liable to coör­di­nate activ­i­ties with the Republicans, med­dle in US elec­tions, lec­ture President Obama in the Oval Office, allow his asso­ciates and offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tives in the US to leak infor­ma­tion against the US pres­i­dent, and even arrive in Washington unin­vit­ed in order to deliv­er a provoca­tive speech before Congress.

The Israeli pub­lic, by the way, evi­dent­ly prefers Netanyahu as a rag­ing Terminator, but even rage even­tu­al­ly has its lim­its. In diplo­mat­ic terms, Israel was the los­er in this bat­tle over the nuclear agree­ment. In nego­ti­a­tions, the true job of the bad cop is not to ter­mi­nate the talks, but rather to help the good cops get the best pos­si­ble deal.

When it came to the talks, we didn’t even count

In terms of the nuclear threat, Israel’s sit­u­a­tion is bet­ter than it was before the his­toric treaty was announced in Vienna. Instead of an Iran suf­fo­cat­ing under sanc­tions while per­sist­ing in its nuclear arms race, the Islamic Republic has now been accept­ed as a legit­i­mate mem­ber of the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty. We still face a ter­ror­ism-spon­sor­ing state out­spo­ken­ly hos­tile to Israel, but it’s a ter­ror­ism-spon­sor­ing state with­out a nuclear bomb in the fore­see­able future.

In con­trast, look where Israel now stands: We’re not even on the map. No one took us into account in the talks. The White House has already made clear that there will be a veto if need­ed to over­come any con­gres­sion­al action that obstructs exe­cu­tion of the agree­ment, and even before Netanyahu could respond in English, John Kerry com­plete­ly dis­missed his remarks, call­ing his crit­i­cism of the deal “way over the top.”

Kerry was try­ing to say that the bad cop with whom the US coop­er­at­ed at the out­set turned out to be a prophet of doom at best, or an out-of-con­trol Terminator at worst, one who can­not read the map correctly.

Many offi­cials in Jerusalem and in the secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment here in Israel share this assess­ment. To out­siders they join the cho­rus bemoan­ing the dis­as­ter that befell us, but behind closed doors they talk about the alter­na­tive that nev­er came to be, about Israel’s increas­ing iso­la­tion, and pri­mar­i­ly about why Israel should not sac­ri­fice its fore­most strate­gic asset – its rela­tions with the United States – pre­cise­ly when we have absorbed a blow vis-à-vis Iran.

Obama’s lesson in leadership

While the Israeli government’s Security Cabinet is busy declar­ing that Israel is not com­mit­ted to the agree­ment, and gov­ern­ment min­is­ters are encour­ag­ing their col­leagues in the oppo­si­tion to attack the agree­ment in English and storm Capitol Hill, it seems all the talk about bunker-bust­ing bombs and secret under­ground facil­i­ties is keep­ing the new real­i­ty from breach­ing the Prime Minister’s Office and adja­cent Cabinet con­fer­ence room.

There is an agree­ment. Six super­pow­ers have signed it. The American pub­lic sup­ports it. Democratic con­gress­men are also politi­cians, and they will not oppose the pres­i­dent as they approach an elec­tion year. There is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get anoth­er defense pack­age. And, believe it or not, a win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty has just opened for a polit­i­cal ini­tia­tive lead­ing to a new region­al order in the Middle East.

There is also room to reflect on the man­ner in which we read the map and the glob­al bal­ance of pow­er through­out this peri­od. Indeed, despite the sanc­tions and dire warn­ings of a loom­ing holo­caust, under Netanyahu’s watch Iran reached a point at which it is three months away from a nuclear bomb. There are always dan­gers. But per­haps rather than insult­ing the American pres­i­dent and accus­ing him of naiveté and lack of under­stand­ing regard­ing the Middle East, we should try to learn some­thing from him with respect to his approach as a leader.

Barack Obama was elect­ed because he offered hope and change, and he cur­rent­ly enjoys rel­a­tive­ly high sup­port rat­ings because he is final­ly offer­ing div­i­dends as well. Meanwhile here in Israel, we have a lead­er­ship that plays up fears and promis­es to defend us against tomor­row, while neglect­ing oth­er press­ing items on today’s agenda.

The real choice fac­ing the Israeli pub­lic is whom to believe and whether we will throw our lot in with the seem­ing­ly naïve West, which prefers cre­ative diplo­ma­cy and chang­ing hori­zons over anoth­er war, or go it alone and hun­ker down in our admit­ted­ly dif­fi­cult neigh­bor­hood, depend pri­mar­i­ly on force and announce to the world that we have the pow­er to defend our­selves, even if that means that we march alone in this bat­tle – all the way to the top of Mount Masada, if it once again comes to that.