Israel’s Leading News Paper Haaretz Said; “Iran Nuclear Framework Agreement: Not a bad deal!”
Israel will have a hard time fighting this agreement, or portraying it as bad; if Iran upholds the terms, its nuclear threat will be severely mitigated.
Thursday night’s dramatic declaration of a framework nuclear agreement between Iran and the world powers surprised almost everyone outside of the locked negotiating rooms at the hotel in Lausanne, Switzerland, including the doubtful, cynical journalists waiting outside those rooms over the past eight days for the results. Also surprised, though they’ll never admit it, were many officials, including Israelis, who have vehemently attacked the emerging deal in recent months.
In contrast to the messages conveyed in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at Congress, the Israeli government’s public position over the last two years and the Pavlovian response that came out of Jerusalem on Thursday night, the framework agreement is not a bad deal at all. In-depth examination of the details shows that the deal includes many positive aspects that preserve Israeli security interests and answer some of Jerusalem’s concerns.
Iran perhaps scored some victories in terms of the narrative. Its rights, as it sees them, were respected by the world powers, and Iran can declare that its nuclear facilities won’t be closed, that uranium enrichment will continue, and that the humiliating sanctions will be lifted. But the world powers made significant achievements of their own on the real practical issues.
The framework agreement levels many restrictions on the Iranian nuclear program for generations to come. The Israeli government’s claims that in a decade, Iran’s nuclear program will be normalized in the eyes of the world, and that the Islamic Republic could then do as it wishes, have turned out to be baseless.
Correct, the limitations on the number of centrifuges Iran will be allowed to operate will expire in 10 years’ time. It would have been preferable if that timeframe was longer. However, over the next 15 years, Iran won’t be able to enrich uranium past 3.5 percent, and at that level, it cannot be used for nuclear weapons. The most the Iranians could do with such uranium would be to use it for peaceful purposes, or leave it in storage, collecting dust.
Also, the tight, invasive oversight of Iran’s nuclear program as defined by the framework, which will certainly be fleshed out in the final agreement, includes allowing UN inspectors into every Iranian nuclear facility, as well as uranium mines and storage facilities for a period of between 20 and 25 years.
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