Netanyahu is furious about the US-Iran deal:
Sheera Frenkel reports on Bibi’s bluster:
“There is no doubt that Netanyahu is a big loser in the Iran deal,” said Gil Hoffman, political editor at the Jerusalem Post. “His whole political career is built on two things: number one is that he persuaded Israelis that only he could protect them from Iran, and number two is his image as someone who could speak to the world in his perfect English in a persuasive way better than any other Israelis. And here he failed.”
What Karl Vick is hearing:
[I]n political circles, the primary reaction to the pact in Israel was alarm, both for the technical realities of the pact, and the political realities that Israel – which did so much to make the Iranian nuclear program a matter of global concern – no longer feels it is driving. “I’m worried twice over,” said Finance Minister Yair Lapid, whose Yesh Atid party emerged as a centrist power in the January elections. “Once from the agreement and its implications and I am also worried because we’ve lost the world’s ear. We have six months, at the end of which we need to be in a situation in which the Americans listen to us the way they used to listen to us in the past.”
John Bolton urges Israel to strike Iran unilaterally:
Undoubtedly, an Israeli strike during the interim deal would be greeted with outrage from all the expected circles. But that same outrage, or more, would also come further down the road. In short, measured against the expected reaction even in friendly capitals, there is never a “good” time for an Israeli strike, only bad and worse times. Accordingly, the Geneva deal does not change Israel’s strategic calculus even slightly, unless the Netanyahu government itself falls prey to the psychological warfare successfully waged so far by the ayatollahs. That we will know only as the days unfold.
Bob Dreyfuss doubts an Israeli strike is in the cards:
Israel’s reaction is, predictably, apoplectic. Naftali Bennett, Israel’s economic minister, said, “If five years from now a nuclear suitcase explodes in New York or Madrid, it will be because of the deal that was signed this morning.” But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will have trouble playing that card for long, since Israel is drastically isolated from the rest of the world and risks an open break with Washington. Already, some Israel leaders, such as President Shimon Peres and the newly installed leader of the Israeli Labor Party, have issued mild to moderate statement that undermine Netanyahu’s bluster. And, ironically, though, the harsh reaction from Israel will help Rouhani and Zarif sell the deal in Iran, since they can point to Israel’s criticism of the deal as a sign that it was, indeed, a victory for Iran’s “nuclear rights.”
Kerry defends the deal against Israel’s objections:
“I believe that 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 they [Tehran] can break out [toward making a nuclear bomb]. We are going to have insights to their programme that we did not have before,” he added.
Paul Woodward argues that Israel would have objected to any deal:
At a time when the diplomatic momentum was clearly not moving in Netanyahu’s favor, one might ask: why did he not back down from his maximalist demand on zero enrichment and find a way of offering qualified support for this emerging nuclear accord? Why hold on to a set of conditions that Iran would find impossible to accept?
The reason is that Netanyahu’s goal has never been for the nuclear issue to be resolved. It’s political value resides wholly in this remaining an unresolved issue and in Israel’s ability to cast Iran as a perpetual threat. For Netanyahu, any deal is a bad deal because absent an Iranian threat, Israel will find itself under increasing pressure to address the Palestinian issue.
The Dish 