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3/3/15, "Obama needs to provide real answers to Netanyahu’s arguments," Washington Post Editorial Board
"THE CONCERNS about a prospective nuclear agreement with Iran raised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a speech to Congress on Tuesday are not — as the White House was quick to point out — new. They had, for example, been spelled out in Senate hearings, as an editorial
we published last month recounted. Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to repeat
this case before a joint meeting of Congress in defiance of the White
House and leading Democrats risked turning what should be a substantive
debate into a partisan scrimmage.
Nevertheless, Mr. Netanyahu’s arguments
deserve a serious response from the Obama administration--one it has yet to provide. The White House has sought to dismiss the Israeli leader
as a politician seeking reelection; has said that he was wrong in his
support for the Iraq war and in his opposition to an interim agreement
with Iran; and has claimed that he offers no alternative to President
Obama’s policy. Such rhetoric will not satisfy those in and out of
Congress who share Mr. Netanyahu’s legitimate questions.
His
speech singled out “two major concessions” he said would be part of any
deal the United States and its partners conclude with Iran. The first is
the acceptance of a large Iranian nuclear infrastructure, including
thousands of centrifuges for uranium enrichment. The second is a time
limit on any restrictions, so that in as little as a decade Iran would
be free to expand its production of nuclear materials. Consequently,
Mr. Netanyahu said, the deal “doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb; it
paves Iran’s path to the bomb.”
The Israeli prime minister’s most
aggressive argument concerned the nature of the Iranian regime, which
he called “a dark and brutal dictatorship” engaged in a “march of
conquest, subjugation and terror.” Saying that the regime’s ideology is
comparable with that of the Islamic State, he asserted that it could not
be expected to change during the decade-long term of an agreement. He
proposed that controls on the nuclear program should be maintained “for
as long as Iran continues its aggression in the region and in the
world.”
In essence, this was an argument that Iran must be
sanctioned and contained while its clerical regime remains in power.
That has been the explicit or de facto U.S. policy since 1979, but
Mr. Obama appears to be betting that detente can better control Iran’s
nuclear ambitions and, perhaps, produce better behavior over time. Yet
he has shied from explicitly making that case; instead, his aides argue
that the only alternative to his approach is war.
Mr.
Netanyahu strongly disputed that point. “Iran’s nuclear program can be
rolled back well beyond the current proposal by insisting on a better
deal and keeping up the pressure on a very vulnerable regime,” he said.
Is that wrong? For that matter, is it acceptable to free Iran from
sanctions within a decade and allow it unlimited nuclear capacity?
Rather than continuing its political attacks on Mr. Netanyahu, the
administration ought to explain why the deal it is contemplating is
justified — or reconsider it." via Free Rep.
.
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