To Netanyahu, Peace Is an Existential Threat

To Netanyahu, Peace Is an Existential Threat

by Trita Parsi at the Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/trita-parsi/netanyahu-congress-iran-speech_b_6782600.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

"SNIP...............


And it's not the specifics of the deal that is the problem, but the very notion of a deal involving the US and Iran. In fact, his Minister of Defense declared that any deal would be a threat.

Netanyahu's hypocrisy is astounding. As I describe in A Single Roll of the Dice -- Obama's Diplomacy with Iran, Netanyahu has always opposed diplomacy with Iran. Not because he feared it would fail, but precisely because he feared it would work. When President Obama took office in 2009 and began his outreach to Tehran, Netanyahu launched a campaign to undermine Obama centered on four key areas.

First, he pressed Congress to impose new sanctions on Iran before talks began, presumably to ensure that the escalatory measure would ensure that diplomacy never took off at all. Second, he pressed Obama to adopt the Bush administration's completely unrealistic goal to eliminate all Iranian uranium enrichment. Again, such a measure would ensure that diplomacy never took place -- the breakthrough in diplomacy took place once the US dropped that demand.

Third, Netanyahu wanted Obama to continue Bush's rhetoric of insisting that the military option remained on the table. Obama had famously stated that the conflict with Iran could not beresolved by issuing threats, and wanted to create an atmosphere conducive to diplomacy. Making war threats would achieve the opposite, which Netanyahu undoubtedly understood.


.............SNIP"