Thoughts from various sources about Netanyahu’s speech to Congress today

Sen. Bernie Sanders: (1)

Congressman Jerry Nadler, one of the most prominent Jewish members of Congress and a self-described Zionist: (2)

More from Nadler’s press release: (3)

Prime Minister Netanyahu also ignored the warning signs that pointed to Hamas’ October 7th horrific attack, and championed the policies that led to Hamas’ increase in funds, power, and military capability. He has continued to go against advice of Israeli security leaders and has already started to plant the seeds to seek to blame military leadership for the failings of October 7th, shifting responsibility away from his policies and politically motivated decisions. There are still 120 Israeli hostages in Gaza, including 8 Americans, and Prime Minister Netanyahu has yet to secure an agreement that would return them to their families. Only two weeks ago an Israeli security official was quoted in the Israeli press as saying that “Netanyahu pretends that he wants a deal, but is working to torpedo it. He’s dragging out the process, trying to stretch time until his speech in Congress.”

The impetus for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s address has little to do with Israel’s security, nor with the United States’ support for Israel. The address is the next step in a long line of manipulative bad-faith efforts by Republicans to further politicize the U.S.-Israel relationship for partisan gain. [my emphasis]

Gideon Levy warns about the war dynamic in Israel itself, which is unlikely to produce restraint in the immediate future without the US exercising its influence by drastically reducing US military aid to Israel.

HANNO HAUENSTEIN: Many of the declared goals of the war — to free the hostages, to eliminate Hamas, etc. — have hardly been met nine months in. Is there no sense of doubt in the Israeli public about this ongoing carnage we’re seeing in Gaza?

GIDEON LEVY: Here Israel is divided. You cannot claim that goals were achieved when Hamas continues to launch rockets and most of the hostages weren’t released. Internationally, Israel is turning into a pariah state. But the right wing will argue it’s all because we didn’t fight strongly enough, because we didn’t kill enough. They believe the Israeli army is not decisive enough. On the other side, there are many who start to understand, after nine months’ delay, that this war can’t achieve its goals because they are unachievable by definition. These are things people like myself said from day one. But still, nobody draws any real conclusions from it, which should have been to stop the war today — not tomorrow, tonight. If after nine months it didn’t achieve anything, it won’t achieve anything after another nine months except more killing and more destruction. Why continue it? (4) [my emphasis in bold]

As Dahlia Scheindlin points out, Netanyahu is likely to use his campaign speech for convicted felon Donald Trump before a joint session of Congress tonight to continue his decades-long project of trying to get the US involved in a direct war with Iran.

Yes, decades:

"Ladies and gentlemen, time is running out. We have to act."

Speaking to a joint session of Congress, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was somber and his face was smooth. He was possessed of an absolute conviction about his mission.

"Unreconstructed dictatorships ... based on tyranny and intimidation" were terrorizing the Middle East, he warned. "The most dangerous of these regimes is Iran, that has wed a cruel despotism to a fanatic militancy." A nuclear armed Iran would be catastrophic for Israel, the Middle East and "for all of mankind." He urged the international community to isolate Iran, warned that deterrence might not be enough and that time was running out.

It was 1996. (5)

Iran is obviously hostile to Israel and heads the informal but real “axis of resistance” that includes Hezbollah and the Houthi forces in Yemen. Scheindlin points out that Netanyahu’s efforts to improve Israeli security in relation to Iran have so far failed.

One of the most striking reasons for that is that Netanyahu has been so bent on provoking a US war with Iran that he even opposed the Obama Administration’s successful and effective US agreement with Iran to forego nuclear weapons with an effective inspections process. Netanyahu’s last appearance before a joint session of Congress was in 2015, when he came there to lobby against the Obama Administration’s efforts to conclude that arms-control agreement with Iran.

Scheindlin explains three approaches the Israeli government has take to improve their security against Iran:

Between 2010 and 2012, Netanyahu had sufficiently detailed plans to attack Iran militarily that certain members of his own government or security chiefs were worried. including two Mossad chiefs – Meir Dagan and his successor, Tamir Pardo – and Moshe Ya'alon, then a minister, reportedly opposed the strike. Pockets of Israeli civilians also protested in fear of full-blown war.

The plans faltered. Why? Netanyahu, probably jittery due to lack of international support [i.e., the Obama Administration was unwilling to be pulled into a war with Iran], shifted to a lower-profile military approach. By 2013, Israel initiated airstrikes in Syria to prevent the entrenchment of Iranian forces there, or to hit Iranian weapons convoys. This became known as the "campaign between wars" (or in more idiomatic language, the "shadow war"). According to foreign sources, Israel occasionally assassinated nuclear scientists, deployed cyberweapons or struck at centrifuge production sites. Zimmt points to mixed results, since certain actions caused Iran to build back better, so to speak.

The bottom line is that Iran's nuclear program marched on, and Iranian-backed militias remained in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Israeli strikes in Syria increased over the last few years, yet Hezbollah continued to gorge itself on weapons.

She also notes that the US war in Iraq under the Cheney-Bush Administration, which Netanyahu enthusiastically supported, “Iraq in the 1980s – with U.S. and Western powers backing Iraq – helped drive the increasingly ‘paranoid and defensive mind-set’ [Sanam Vakil of Chatham House] in Iran that fueled the regime's commitment to the regional proxy network, which it views as core to its own survival.”

That war by the Cheney-Bush Administration – backed by then-Senator Joe Biden – divided and weakened Iraq in a way that drastically increased Iranian clout by removing Saddam Hussein’s rival Sunni regime in Iraq. With Iraq’s large Shia Muslim population, Iraq is now has much better relations with Iran.

Trump, Israel, Iran, and war

This US-Iranian nuclear agreement (JCPOA) functioned well until then-President and now convicted felon Donald Trump just discontinued it. Not because the Iranians were violating it – the strong inspection provisions prevented that – but because Trump didn’t like it and he reflexively supported Israel’s super-hawkish position, as he still does now. Biden had pledged to try to revive the agreement.

“President Joe Biden said that the United States would return to the JCPOA if Iran came back into compliance, but after more than two years of stop-and-go talks, the countries are nowhere near a compromise, and as of late 2023, provisions of the agreement have started to expire.” (6) There has been no revival of the agreement since 2023. For whatever combination of reasons, the Biden Administration failed to achieve that goal.

Trump, Israel, and MAGA “isolationism”

Given the fake “isolationist” posture the Trumpistas use as a concession to antiwar sentiment in the US, it’s worth keeping how the Orange Man approached the JCPOA, i.e., with no concern for diminishing the risk of war.

Dieter Vieweger wrote in 2023:

However, the relationship between Israel and Iran remained cool. In the face of the Gaza crisis in 2014, [Iranian President] Hassan Rouhani sided with the Palestinians. In the Syria war, Iran stood firmly on the side of Bashar al-Assad and consequently in opposition to Israel.

With Donald Trump's assumption of the Presidency of the US, Israel's criticism of the nuclear agreement with Iran received new support. For him, the agreement, which came into force in 2016, was "the worst deal of all time" anyway. On May 8, 2018, Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the nuclear deal with Iran. At the same time, he wants to reinstate the sanctions against the country [which he did].

The European Union, on the other hand, pointed to the Vienna nuclear agreement [JCPOA] as the best possible result of international diplomacy. In their opinion, it had prevented a nuclear arms race and the unpredictable regional power Iran had been integrated into international agreements.

Consequently, Germany, France and Great Britain tried to maintain the economic and financial advantages for Iran with a kind of "barter" with the special purpose vehicle "lNSTEX" (Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges). They hoped that Iran would continue to meet its contractual obligations under the nuclear agreement despite the US termination. Nevertheless, the project remained ineffective because the European companies were not protected from US sanctions. As a result, the Europeans failed to implement "INSTEX" - and without their support, the negotiated nuclear agreement lost all political and economic attractiveness for Iran. [my emphasis] (7)

Trump likes to claim that no new wars started during his Presidency. Of course, He didn’t pull out of Afghanistan as President Biden eventually did. But his ill-considered approach to the Abraham Accords with Saudi Arabia and his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s official capital didn’t nothing to advance a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

Peace is an active process. Whether it’s Trump, Biden, or Harris, uncritically following whatever Benjamin Netanyahu wants the US to do is irresponsible and a really bad idea.

As Scheindlin writes:

By the mid-2010s, Netanyahu fiercely supported the punishing international economic sanctions on Iran. But there had been sanctions on the Islamic republic since 1979 and the regime became more hard-line in recent decades, not less. That's not actually surprising: international sanctions on regimes often fail to achieve their overriding aim. …

Netanyahu went on to harangue the next U.S. administration, and Donald Trump finally withdrew from the deal in May 2018 despite Iran's overall compliance. Netanyahu's precise level of influence on Trump is debated, but it clearly mattered.

The damage was tremendous. [Raz] Zimmt [of Tel Aviv University] considers it to be Netanyahu's biggest strategic mistake. Chatham House's Vakil observed that the Iranian leadership feels burned, unlikely to place its faith in diplomacy again. "They don't see any benefit from compromise with Washington right now and have no trust in their American counterparts. The experience of the JCPOA was such a letdown for Iran," she said.

By 2020, Iran was no longer committed to the deal and accelerated its nuclear program. Thus, Netanyahu's preferred policy not only pushed Iran toward nuclear breakout – it also damaged American credibility and undermined the diplomatic path altogether, despite some demonstrable initial success. [my emphasis]

Netanyahu has been a disaster for Israel.

For the US to agree uncritically to his demands on foreign policy would be and is reckless and foolish.

Notes:

(1) LIVE: Congress should not be inviting Netanyahu, a war criminal, to a joint session. Senator Bernie Sanders YouTube channel 07/24/2024.<https://youtu.be/X2xc5M4r_Mo?si=feFKi0KpAOppTYef> (Accessed: 2024-24-07).

(2) Nadler, Jerry (2024): X/[Twitter] 07/23/2024. <https://x.com/RepJerryNadler/status/1815844483046445483> (Accessed: 2024-24-07).

(3) Nadler on PM Natanyahu Joint Address. Jerry Nadler House website 07/23/2024. <https://nadler.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=396209&s=09> (Accessed: 2024-24-07).

(4) Gideon Levy: Getting Rid of Netanyahu Is Not Enough. Jacobin 07/17/2024. <https://jacobin.com/2024/07/gideon-levy-interview-west-bank-gaza> (Accessed: 2024-24-07).

(5) Scheindlin, Dahlia (2024): Netanyahu Will Warn Congress About Iranian Aggression. But His Iran Policy Has Been a Colossal Failure. Haaretz 07/24/2024. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-07-24/ty-article-magazine/.premium/netanyahu-will-warn-congress-about-the-iranian-threat-his-iran-policy-has-been-disastrous/00000190-e00c-d2bf-a7f9-f0ff06130000> (Accessed: 2024-24-07).

(6) Robinson, Kali (2023): Council on Foreign Relations 10/27/2023. <https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-iran-nuclear-deal> (Accessed: 2024-24-07).

(7) Vieweger, Dieter (2023): Streit um das Heilige Land (8.Auflage), 290-291. Munich: Penguin Random House My translation from German.