WASHINGTON — Maariv’s New York correspondent, Shlomo Shamir, reported last week that senior Western diplomats based in Washington and New York told him that after the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran is completed at the end of this month, a major diplomatic offensive is expected against Israel.
This new campaign, which will coincide with the annual U.N. General Assembly meetings in September, will respond both to the new harshly rightist Israeli government and its refusal to participate in a genuine peace process. Shamir’s sources expect, for the first time, to see serious economic sanctions targeted at Israel be put on the table.
Such a plan is already in the works in the form of working papers that encompass the fields of commerce, science, agriculture and culture. Shamir quotes a “senior Western diplomat:”
“Expect in the near term, a political attack against Israel of such proportions that it will surprise even the most pessimistic in Jerusalem. The coming months will be hard on Israel. This time Israel will pay a heavy price for its continuation of the stalemate. This time, it’s not even clear that Uncle Sam will be able to save Israel, and it may not even wish to do so.”
The United States has been a trustworthy ally in blocking such initiatives in the U.N. That’s why the completion of the Iran talks is key to this development. Putting relations with Iran on a new track is central to President Barack Obama’s foreign policy agenda for the last two years of his presidency. After that, he has no obligations, no political bills to pay. He will then be at liberty, should he choose, to alter course in U.S. relations with Israel.
After Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Obama, in his last final desperate appeal to the electorate before the elections, of personally sabotaging his chance of becoming prime minister, the U.S. president appears to have lost any semblance of trust in the Israeli leader. Virtually the entire world, minus the U.S. thus far, has come to believe that a round of very tough love may be the next step.
To be candid, there is always a whiff of doom-saying in the Israeli (and Jewish) psyche. The motto appears to be: expect the worst and you won’t be disappointed. So we have to take this with a very small grain of salt. This could represent an Israeli journalist noting the increasing paranoia around the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in Israel and tailoring an article to the prevailing winds. And if this bit of paranoia impresses a few Israelis with the gravity of the predicament they face, then all the better.
Indeed, Shamir is on to something important. Sanctions against Israel are coming. They are only a matter of time, and September could very well be that time.
When they do, it will mean a massive victory for BDS. This is a political program long derided by its Israeli adversaries as symbolic and abstract. They suggested it would never cause real economic damage to Israel and so was little more than a toothless tiger. In the event of a roll-out of a substantive plan for sanctions against Israel, the paper tiger will quickly become quite ferocious and quite real.
It’s ironic that the expected curtailment or cancellation of sanctions against Iran, which have been in place for decades in one form or another, would coincide with Israel possibly facing the very first round of international sanctions in its history. This could indicate the rise of Iran as a regional force and the gradual decline of Israel as the policeman of the region.
Israel spies on Iran nuclear talks
In an indication of Israel’s deep concern regarding the Iranian nuclear negotiations due to conclude by the end of this month, Kaspersky Labs reports that Israel introduced the Duqu virus, likely developed by IDF Unit 8200, into the computer systems of hotels in which the talks were conducted. This was an effort to tap into delegation computer and telecommunications systems so it could monitor the internal debates within and among the parties. Presumably, such information would enable Israel to anticipate what the final deal might be.
Considering Netanyahu’s adamant opposition to the nuclear agreement, it would also allow him to reveal details, talking points and secret negotiating positions that would sabotage the talks if revealed publicly. In fact, Obama accused the Israeli prime minister of doing precisely this during the controversy surrounding his planned address to the U.S. Congress.
Though there’s nothing unusual about Israel spying on international diplomatic activities, after all the NSA does this routinely regarding talks in which the U.S. has a vested interest, but it does indicate a heightened anxiety, even paranoia, coinciding with Israel’s fear of increasing isolation it faces through BDS and the sanctions campaign reported by Shamir.
Israel’s coming summer war with Hezbollah
Trita Parsi and Paul Pillar, in a Huffington Post article, express concern that Israel may be so desperate to derail the nuclear deal that it will seek a pretext to invade Lebanon this summer. Doing so would punish Israel’s inveterate foe, Hezbollah, and its Iranian ally. In such circumstances, the U.S. would be hard-pressed to do anything other than support Israel, as it’s done in virtually every military operation Israel has waged in Gaza or Lebanon for decades.
Pillar and Parsi suggest that in such a poisoned atmosphere, international powers would be forced to hold a nuclear deal with Iran in abeyance until the conflict and its aftermath pass. Netanyahu, they suspect, would use the time to appeal to Congress to stall approval of the deal, as it must do before it can be implemented.
To support their claim, the writers allude to alarmingly bellicose statements by Israel’s defense minister, Gadi Eizenkot, who threatened all-out assaults on Lebanese civilians in the next war resulting in “1.5-million” new refugees, and the incoming foreign ministry director general, Dore Gold, who warned that Israel “will have to destroy the [Hezbollah] weapons…in southern Lebanon.”
While not judging the likelihood of the dreadful scenario Pillar and Parsi project, it’s safe to say that Israel is desperate to avoid a nuclear deal and desperate to stave off a potential looming sanctions regime against it. In that context, almost anything is possible.