Bibi brought down the house this morning.
He arguably got more applause than President Obama did during this year’s State of the Union address and offered a cogent, impassioned and logical criticism of the Iranian nuclear deal being currently negotiated in Switzerland by Secretary of State John Kerry.
Netanyahu’s speech offered insight into the inner workings of the Iranian/Israeli relationship and spelled out, in no uncertain terms, the threat that Iran poses not only to Israel, but also to the world.
Up until this point, the details of the Iranian deal have largely been kept a secret. This has put outside observers in a precarious position as they are unable to judge the merits of the deal and its potential for actually curbing Iran’s route to a nuclear weapon.
Today, Netanyahu went a long way to lifting that cloud of secrecy by highlighting the two major concessions that the deal makes to Iran which concern him – and by extension Israel – the most.
Firstly, it leaves Iran with all of its enrichment infrastructure in place thereby allowing the opening for Iran to restart its program at any time and be only a year away from the bomb. Secondly, there will be no way for the international inspectors – they will be in charge of enforcing the deal – to actually stop Iran if it decides to move ahead with their nuclear program.
If past behavior is any guide, and I believe it is, Iran has consistently shown a complete disregard for international norms and conventions, violating sanctions provisions whenever it pleases.
This isn’t to say that sanctions are ineffective and can’t be in this case – I believe that we need to even tougher with them. The point is that we’re putting a degree of trust in Iran that they certainly haven’t earned.
