Where the Netanyahu government differs from its predecessor
The new government is prepared to stand up to the Biden administration when necessary.
By Caroline Glick
JNS
December 29, 2022
Netanyahu was sworn in Thursday as Israel's new prime minister
With the swearing-in of the latest Netanyahu government, Israel will
embark on a new course in foreign policy—and just in time. For the past
year-and-a-half of the Bennett-Lapid-Gantz government, Israel’s foreign
policy ceased to be independent. In the days and weeks before Naftali
Bennett, Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz formed their coalition, they
committed themselves to a policy of “no surprises” for the Biden
administration. The promise, which became the basis for the government’s
actions in the months that followed, meant that under their
stewardship, Israel subordinated its foreign policy to the White House.
It took no action of which the administration disapproved and either
supported every administration policy or avoided taking any steps to
substantively undermine President Joe Biden’s actions in the region,
whether in relation to Iran or the Palestinians, Saudi Arabia or Lebanon
or elsewhere.
As the Biden administration aggressively pursued its strategy of
realigning the U.S. away from Israel and the Sunni Arab states by
legitimizing Iran’s nuclear weapons program and enriching the regime
through nuclear diplomacy, Israel stood on the sidelines. It
occasionally clucked its opposition to the contents of the deal being
negotiated, but it supported the Biden administration’s slavish, indeed
fanatical commitment to strategic appeasement of Iran in exchange for
temporary and substantively insignificant nuclear concessions on Iran’s
part.
In August, Iran seemingly ended the negotiations when it rejected the
U.S.’s European-transmitted “final offer” and came back with still more
demands for U.S. concessions. Iran’s key demand was for the U.S. and
the International Atomic Energy Agency to close the U.N. nuclear
watchdog’s investigation into three nuclear sites that Iran had failed
to declare. Iran’s failure was a material breach of both the 2015
nuclear deal and of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it is
a signatory. Iran also demanded that Biden’s restoration of the U.S.
commitment to the 2015 deal be binding on future U.S. administrations.
Since there is no way for Biden to legally agree to Iran’s second
demand, and acceptance of Iran’s first demand would involve the
destruction of the NPT, which has formed the basis for global
non-proliferation efforts for the past 50 years, the Biden
administration tried its hand at holding out for a better offer.
Negotiations were suspended.
Bennett and Lapid insist that the failure of Iran’s ultimatum in
August was their doing. But no one takes them seriously, with good
reason. Throughout the months preceding Iran’s rejection of the
administration’s “final offer,” Bennett and Lapid could barely get Biden
to take their calls. When emissaries like former National Security
Advisor Eyal Hulata were dispatched to Washington to speak with Biden’s
underlings, they weren’t praised as allies standing with the Biden
administration despite its hostile policies. The administration
officials barraged them with demands for concessions to the
Palestinians. Hulata and other senior officials, like Bennett, Gantz and
Lapid themselves, were hard-pressed to find anyone in the Biden White
House, Pentagon or State Department to talk with about Israel’s concerns
over the administration’s capitulation to Iran.
A month after Iran ended the negotiations, regime forces in Tehran
murdered Mahsa Amini for failing to wear her headscarf in the manner
dictated by the regime’s misogynist regulations. Amini’s death sparked
the freedom revolution that has been ongoing for more than a hundred
days.
The force and staying power of Iran’s young revolutionaries caught
the Biden administration by surprise. Rather than recognize that the
events on the ground in Iran represent the first viable prospect for
regime change since the Islamic revolution of 1979, the administration
has treated it as a regrettable distraction. Instead of supporting the
revolutionaries and helping them to bring down a regime that has been
waging war against the United States for 43 years, the administration
diminishes the significance of events on the ground and steadfastly
refuses to walk away from its strategy of appeasement and capitulation
to the regime as it murders and tortures its young opponents.
The administration insists that the nuclear talks are on the back
burner. But a report at MEMRI.org Tuesday revealed that the talks are
actually heating up. On Dec. 26, Iranian Majlis National Security and
Foreign Policy Committee member Javad Karimi-Ghodusi told an Iranian
news outlet that European and Iranian negotiators met at a summit in
Amman, Jordan earlier this month. There, Iranian Foreign Minister
Hossein Amir Abdollahian, his deputy and Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator
Ali Bagheri, French President Emmanuel Macron and the E.U.’s High
Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy
Josep Borrell moved forward with the nuclear talks. The Biden
administration was not physically present in the discussion, but
according to Karimi-Ghodusi, it was partner to the agreements reached.
At a press conference after the meeting, Amir-Abdollahian said, “An
opportunity was created to discuss additional issues connected to the
nuclear talks. … We informed [Macron and Borrell] that if they respect
our red lines, we are willing to take the final steps in order to arrive
at an agreement.”
Karimi-Ghodousi said that, in Amman, the Biden administration and the
International Atomic Energy Agency acquiesced to both of Iran’s chief
demands. They will close the IAEA’s investigation of the three nuclear
sites that Iran failed to disclose, and the Biden administration will
make its economic concessions binding on its successors at least in the
commercial arena.
Israel is aware of the situation. Earlier this week, Haaretz
reported that the IDF General Staff has concluded the administration is
still committed to reaching a nuclear deal and that the Pentagon
supports this position. Rather than stand up to the administration and
make clear that continued appeasement of the regime makes absolutely no
sense both in light of the regime’s nuclear capabilities and the
revolution on the streets from one end of Iran to the other, the now
former Lapid-Gantz government continued toeing Biden’s line until it
finally left office on Thursday.
The most prominent institution promoting the administration’s
position in recent weeks and months has been IDF intelligence. Maj. Gen.
Aharon Haliva, who heads the Military Intelligence Directorate, and his
head of research Brig. Gen. Amit Sa’ar, wholeheartedly supported
Lapid’s decision, two weeks before the election, to agree to a Biden
administration-dictated gas deal with Lebanon—which Iran controls
through its Hezbollah proxy. Under the terms of the deal, Israel
surrendered economic and territorial waters to Lebanon along with the
natural gas field located in those waters. Israel’s capitulation put
billions of dollars in gas concessions into Hezbollah’s hands and gave
Iran-Hezbollah a foothold in the eastern Mediterranean.
As for Iran itself, on Dec. 4, Sa’ar’s department held a conference on the freedom revolution that they invited Reuters
to cover. Sa’ar said that the revolution is doomed to fail. His
statement was reported prominently in the Iranian and U.S. media. It
demoralized the revolutionaries and justified the Biden administration’s
refusal to support them.
This week, Israel Hayom reported that, as Netanyahu and his
ministers put the final touches on their coalition deals, IDF
intelligence determined that it is in Israel’s interest to initiate a
new nuclear deal with Iran for the U.S. and Europe to advance. The
message was clear: As far as the outgoing government and its allies in
the IDF are concerned, Israel’s foreign policy should continue to be
subordinate to the Biden administration. As a consequence, the thrust of
Israel’s policy towards Iran should be capitulationist rather than
confrontational.
Members
of the new Israeli government, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, pose for a group photo at the president's residence in
Jerusalem, on December 29, 2022.
This brings us to Netanyahu and his national security team. All
senior members of it—from Defense Minister Yoav Galant to Foreign
Minister Eli Cohen to Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer—are unified
in their belief that Israel’s foreign policy must be independent in
general and towards Iran in particular. While Netanyahu and his team are
eager to work with the Biden administration where possible, they have
no compunction about opposing the administration when necessary. Where
Bennett, Lapid and Gantz opted for subservience to Washington, Netanyahu
and his team believe that Israel’s foreign policies should be directed
towards the unswerving pursuit of the national interest.
Over the course of the campaign, and in a steadily escalating fashion
as he prepared to return to office, Netanyahu has spoken
enthusiastically about the prospect of reaching a peace agreement that
will formalize Israel’s relations with Saudi Arabia. Those still sub rosa relations were the foundation of the Abraham Accords.
The rationale for a Saudi deal is overwhelming for both countries.
Leaving aside the economic potential of such an agreement—which is
massive—the strategic implications are a game changer. An Israeli-Saudi
normalization agreement, like the agreements Israel concluded with the
UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan in 2020, is a means to withstand the
Biden administration’s realignment away from America’s allies and
towards Iran. By strengthening its bilateral ties with the Arab states
bordering Iran and other key states in the region, Israel expands its
strategic footprint and is capable of developing defensive and offensive
capabilities by working in cooperation with likeminded governments. By
working with Israel openly, Saudi Arabia sends a clear message to Iran
and its people that Saudi Arabia will not be cowed into submission by
the regime that is currently brutalizing its youth.
Netanyahu has already made a statement in support of the
revolutionaries in Iran. At this point, with most experts assessing that
Iran has crossed the nuclear threshold and has enough enriched uranium
to produce up to four bombs per month, it is obvious that Biden’s
nuclear diplomacy has nothing to do with nuclear non-proliferation.
There are only two ways to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed
state—direct action targeting Iran’s nuclear installations and regime
change. Netanyahu’s willingness to stand up to the Biden administration
and stand with the Iranian people and Israel’s regional partners makes
regime change more likely, and direct action against Iran’s nuclear
installations more likely to succeed.
Over the two months since the Israeli elections, the opposition and
its supporters on the Israeli and American Jewish left have stirred up
hysteria by claiming that the most significant distinction between the
Lapid-Gantz government and the Netanyahu government centers on social
policies related to non-religious Jews. This claim is false, and
maliciously so. The Netanyahu government has no intention—and never had
any intention—of curtailing the civil rights of non-religious Jews.
Their goal is to expand civil and individual rights, by among other
things, placing checks and balances on Israel’s hyper-activist Supreme
Court and state prosecution.
There are many differences between the previous government and the
Netanyahu government. None of them have to do with civil rights. The
main distinction is that the Netanyahu government has made securing
Israel’s national interests its central goal in foreign and domestic
policy. Its predecessors were primarily interested in getting along with
the hostile Biden administration, under all conditions. Netanyahu and
his ministers will work with the Biden administration enthusiastically,
when possible.
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