Even for those in Washington who have seen it all, Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Wednesday was a political spectacle like no other. The closest analogy anyone could conjure up was the 1951 homecoming address to Congress by General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War, in which he challenged President Harry Truman’s decision to fire him as field commander for threatening a wider war with Red China. Like Netanyahu, MacArthur was repeatedly interrupted by thunderous applause from the Republican-led House of Representatives.
Then, as now, the real target of the speech was a sitting Democratic president. But there was a big difference back then. MacArthur was an American, a popular war hero and a possible candidate for president on the Republican ticket. Netanyahu, although he has mastered American rhetoric, is prime minister of a foreign country.
One explanation for the high drama is that Netanyahu and Barack Obama don’t care for each other. But far more important is the fact that a nuclear pact with Iran seems to be the White House’s single highest foreign policy priority, while the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon is a matter of the highest national concern for Israel. When the highest priorities of two democratic countries are at stake, their leaders differ so profoundly and the subject matter is so consequential, it’s no wonder we are witnessing such a noisy confrontation.
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Israel believes the international team negotiating with Iran has shown too much flexibility. Originally the negotiators did insist that Iran stop all enrichment. But after more than a decade of comprehensive sanctions had failed to cause Iran to capitulate, western countries concluded some enrichment verifiably for civilian purposes could safely be allowed under the supervision of UN inspectors. Fearing Iran will one day kick out the inspectors and develop a weapon, Israel sees even low-level activities as too great a risk.
Much attention has been paid to Netanyahu’s argument but not to Obama’s rationale. Since he tends to avoid public clashes, it’s worth understanding why he has allowed a disagreement with an allied country to reach this unprecedented level of animosity. Securing an agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear programme would no doubt add to Obama’s legacy. A breakthrough has been at the top of his agenda from day one. Within weeks of his inauguration, he sent a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but was rebuffed. Later in 2009, Obama failed fully to endorse the Green Revolution, which brought hundreds of thousands of Iranians onto the street. Reportedly, the president wanted to assure Tehran that the nuclear file was Washington’s focus, not regime change. But none of these initiatives bore fruit.
Change came only with a new Iranian president elected on an explicit promise to work with the West to solve the nuclear issue and eliminate the increasingly painful sanctions imposed by America, Europe and the rest of the world. Sure enough, since the widely despised Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was replaced as president by Hassan Rouhani, progress has accelerated to the point where an agreement is within reach.
Above all, Obama is determined to avoid pressure from Israel and American conservatives to use military power against Iran. His mission is “to end the era of war”, not to start another one with Iran. Now, with his hopes of pulling all American troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq by 2016 shattered by the emergence of Isis, agreement with Tehran has taken on an even greater urgency. If completed and effective, it is fair to say that an Iran deal would be a game changer. It would not only forestall the possibility of a revolutionary Islamic regime brandishing the ultimate weapon, but it would also prevent the nuclear arms race that would probably ensue if Iran did go nuclear. Imagine a Middle East where Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel all have nuclear weapons.
By contrast, a successful pact and the rapprochement between Washington and Tehran likely to accompany it could well reshape the geopolitics of the greater Middle East, in much the same way that Richard Nixon’s opening to communist China transformed the geopolitics of the Cold War. Just as Nixon and Henry Kissinger were then able to play Beijing off against Moscow, an opening to Iran would allow Washington to influence leading Sunni and Shiite countries across the volatile Middle East, instead of being forced to work only with the Sunni side.
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Indeed, policy makers have long lamented America’s reliance on the likes of Saudi Arabia with all its ideological baggage, Turkey with its mercurial and authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Egypt, which has returned to populist military rule after a failed experiment with Islamic democracy.
Given the spreading crises in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and possibly Lebanon, the Middle East is desperate for outside intervention. With an Iran deal, the White House hopes that its diplomacy would be empowered by ties to Tehran and thus able to promote stability and wield influence without resorting to the use of American troops or air power.
That’s the theory, anyway. Given its transformative potential, this strategic rationale surely helps explain why Obama is determined to push ahead despite strenuous opposition at home and the vehement denunciations of Netanyahu.
Notwithstanding his political motives on the eve of Israel’s election, Netanyahu has risked his relationship with the White House over this issue. I suspect his unstated concern is that Obama will not hold out for the best possible terms because the president is desperate for success, for his legacy and for the new leverage it will bring to American diplomacy.
In this case, then, the politicians aren’t exaggerating when they say this is a big, big deal. It’s big enough for an American president to have the policy fight of his political life. Round 1 is now over, but if Netanyahu is re-elected later this month, you can be sure there will be a round 2.
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James Rubin was assistant secretary of state under President Bill Clinton