by Dan Margalit
Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu will speak at the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday. Two
speakers ahead of him the representative from North Korea -- the country
that has trampled all over its pledge to stop producing nuclear weapons
-- will take the podium.
By the time Netanyahu
addresses the U.N., he will have spoken with U.S. President Barack
Obama. It is likely that his conversation with Obama will not be an easy
one; that he will suggest that the American president see past Iranian
President Hasan Rouhani's good English and look for his actions instead,
and that he will ask him to remember how deals with terror states, the
likes of which are represented by the speaker that precedes him at the
U.N., usually turn out.
The fact that Israel is
not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty is secondary to the
fact that Iran, Syria, Iraq and Libya, which have signed it, have
breached it. Not only will Obama struggle to reach a deal with the
obstinate Iranians, he will soon learn that their signature it set in
ice.
The U.S. is not pushing
to balance the Israel-Iranian equation by demanding that Israel subject
the Dimona reactor to international supervision. Others do, including
Israeli Jews. But Obama's speech at the U.N. linked the Iranian nuclear
threat and the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, whose very existence is
encountering growing criticism from within Netanyahu's own coalition.
U.S. Ambassador to
Israel Dan Shapiro explained to Channel 1's Ayala Hasson that Obama had
stressed the importance of both issues without linking one with the
other, but the connection was clear and it does not seem like Netanyahu
would be able to sever it. All he can do is try to position the Iranian
nuclear threat as the top priority among the region's other volatile
issues.
The assumption that the
Iranian threat cannot be resolved because the negotiations with the
Palestinians are treading quicksand is not true -- quite the opposite.
When the Iranian issue is resolved it would be easier to reach an
understanding regarding the local conflict. Reality, however, has
created a climate in which it would be hard for Netanyahu to present
Obama with a concrete plan of action.
An idea was raised
recently saying that Netanyahu should push for Obama to stipulate that
any dialogue with Iran must involve a suspension of all centrifuge
operation for the duration of the talks. The problem is that Israel had
rejected a similar suggestion regarding a temporary moratorium on
settlement expansion in Judea and Samaria for the duration of its
negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. Netanyahu will therefore
have to offer Obama a different stipulation to present to the Iranians.
It is doubtful,
however, if the weary Western democracies are willing to lift a finger
at this point. The "Winds of Munich" -- as U.S. Secretary of State John
Kerry called it regarding the Syrian issue -- are blowing across the
West, which seeks to embrace Rouhani. Obama's phone conversation with
him was made to look like an Iranian gesture. When the
appease-at-all-cost approach dominates international diplomacy, no one
wants to listen to serious arguments warning against the trap being set
by the nations making up the axis of evil.
It is true that Netanyahu would
have been wiser to instruct the Israeli delegation to the U.N. to remain
in their seats during Rouhani's speech -- a gesture of sorts to his
allaying (and more deceitful) rhetoric -- but that was a matter of
decorum. The fact is that the danger has not diminished and Netanyahu's
concerns and warnings are valid.
Dan Margalit
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=5817
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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