WarSclerotic

Things are much clearer in the vernacular than they are in diplomatic speak: The free world is pulling a fast one on us. And on itself. The agreement that the International Atomic Energy Agency reached with Iran is a pact among thieves. Thieves and liars. Everyone knows that this deal is not worth even the few words used to announce it.

At its core, the agreement is merely a goodwill gesture by the Iranians aimed at facilitating U.S. President Barack Obama’s re-election in November.

Sanctions could have effectively curbed Iran’s nuclear efforts, but only if they had been imposed consistently and if each successive round had been tougher than the previous one. They could have worked if Iran’s central bank had been completely shut down and the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz had been blocked. But, as always, Iran faced an impatient, oil-hungry West that was eager to achieve something that resembles a victory ahead of the U.S. presidential elections.

IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano traveled to Tehran this week, the way King Henry IV walked to Canossa in 1077. For a long time he voiced (in written reports) lofty declarations against the Iranian nuclear program, but when he arrived in Tehran he happily accepted hints and half truths and veiled lies and announced — with his head hung low — that an agreement was on the horizon.

The cunning Iranians pulled the rug out from under the six world powers that sent representatives to Baghdad for a second round of nuclear talks, starting today (Wednesday). What is left to talk about, now that the IAEA chief himself has given the Iranians his seal of approval?

The U.S. and Europe understand that this is a trick. The U.S. rushed to declare that facts on the ground, not the agreement with Amano, would be the determining factor. But Obama is only saying that to appease the Senate and the House of Representatives, who are wise to Iran’s cunning and are demanding harsher sanctions. Congress needs to be appeased, but no more than that.

The Iranians are playing games with the leaders of the world’s democracies, who are seeking short-term victories and looking to put out local fires. The scope of their vision goes as far as the nearest polling booth. They don’t have the time, or desire, to address the massive earthquake that could send shock waves through the entire world, but especially through the Jewish state.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have repeated time and again that not only are the Iranians creating the illusion of progress in talks to ease the pressure, but there is also the dangerous possibility that the U.S., Europe and the IAEA have lowered their demands. The world is asking for less than the absolute minimum. The Iranians will agree to these meaningless demands and enjoy a lifting of sanctions in return. Everyone will be satisfied in the short term, and no one will be sounding the alarm but Israel.

The efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear program are currently at an all-time low, sapped of energy. The West has stepped up the pressure over the last year, but lately, it has eased up. The main reason for this is that the likelihood of an Israeli attack on Iran has diminished in the public’s mind — both in Israel and abroad — thanks to remarks made by American officials and with the help of Israelis like former Mossad chief Meir Dagan and former Israel Security Agency director Yuval Diskin.

Netanyahu and Barak — and hopefully ministers Moshe Ya’alon, Shaul Mofaz and Dan Meridor — can restore credibility to the Israeli military threat, and reignite a real concern among the Iranians. That is, if the world hasn’t missed the boat on the military threat as well.

It is a bad outcome — but it is the least bad of the available options.

When world powers meet with Iran on Wednesday in Baghdad, they may reach an interim nuclear deal. Its precise outline is unknown, but it reportedly includes Iran’s agreement to cease weapons-grade uranium enrichment, ship its existing stockpile abroad for conversion into reactor fuel, and accept heightened inspections of its nuclear infrastructure. In exchange, Iran would be allowed to continue enrichment at low levels, and the punishing new American banking sanctions and European Union oil sanctions due on July 1 would be eased.

Iran has strategic reasons for wanting nuclear capability and has so far rejected all inducements to give up the effort. It has dangled the prospect of a diplomatic resolution in the past, only to renege, repeatedly using artifice and deceit, apparently in the attempt to gain time to complete development. It may be doing so again; however, the crushing weight of international sanctions — those in place and those that are imminent — may have finally changed Iran’s strategic calculus.

Still, the purported deal is no more than a stopgap measure. It would not resolve the issue.

Iran would be able to claim that it had forced the West to back off from the long-standing demand that it cease all enrichment activity and to accept its “right” to do so.

In practice, Iran would become a “nuclear threshold state,” with its nuclear infrastructure intact, a reserve of fissile materials and the potential “breakout capability” to build a bomb quickly. The deeply buried mountain facility outside Qom, which Israel believes may already put Iran’s nuclear production inside a “zone of immunity,” would continue to exist.

Perhaps worst of all, there is the risk that with the immediate danger removed, the West would lower its guard and in effect “declare victory,” turning its attention elsewhere. Ramping up serious multinational sanctions again would prove difficult.

Nonetheless, the interim deal would gain time, and that is the essential point. No other option, including a successful military attack, could achieve more. Iran has already developed the know-how and infrastructure needed to make a bomb; were a military attack to destroy all of its nuclear facilities, it could rebuild within a few years. An attack may still prove to be necessary, but if the few years can be achieved through diplomacy, this is obviously preferable.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deserves credit for successfully forcing the international community to finally address the Iranian nuclear threat seriously. For 15 years Israel has argued that the only measures that might, conceivably, force Iran to compromise are those that the West is now belatedly imposing. Netanyahu’s implied threats of military action were designed primarily to encourage those severe sanctions rather than to indicate an actual intention to attack. No one prefers a diplomatic resolution more than Israel; it would pay the price in international opprobrium after an attack, no matter its motives, and it would bear the brunt of retaliation by Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas.

In Baghdad, Iran must be made to understand that this is its last opportunity to reach a deal. In the absence of this agreement, the full force of the sanctions must go into effect as planned on July 1.

Moreover, any concessions made by the West should be for a limited time and contingent on a final agreement providing for a full cessation of Iran’s nuclear program. We can also hope that the processes of change underway in the region, which began with the Iranian demonstrations of 2009, may return to Iran and sweep away the mullahs, the best long-term solution to the threat Iran presents.

In the meantime, the least bad option may be good enough.

Chuck Freilich, a senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School, was a deputy national security advisor in Israel during Labor and Likud governments.

Israeli officials on Tuesday dismissed excited announcements by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of yet another “breakthrough” in diplomatic efforts to halt Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program.

Following talks in Tehran, IAEA chief Yukiya Amano declared that he had reached a tentative agreement with the Iranians that would hopefully lead to open inspections of facilities where Iran is believed to have recently conducted tests that are part of the nuclear bomb-building process.

The supposed breakthrough came just one day before members of the UN Security Council were to meet in Baghdad to discuss Iran’s continued defiance and the possibility of increasing sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak seemed flabbergasted that the IAEA would once again fall for what he and other Israeli leaders see as obvious delaying tactics by Iran.

“The Iranians are trying to reach a technical deal that will create the appearance of progress in the talks in order to alleviate [international] pressure…and postpone an escalation in sanctions,” Barak said, as he urged the West to stop playing the willful idiot in this scenario.

Addressing the Knesset, Israeli military intelligence officer Brig. Gen. Itay Brun said Iran is pushing full steam ahead to develop a nuclear weapon, and that the international community does not have time to continue playing diplomatic games.

Brun said that at this point, it must now be obvious that diplomacy has no chance of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Brun believes Iran will be able to test its first nuclear bomb by the end of this year, which would put it into what Barak previously referred to as the “zone of immunity.”

A senior Israeli official cited by The Jerusalem Post noted that North Korea had played a similar ruse on the international community by constantly agreeing to talks, before ultimately conducting two nuclear detonations. He joined Barak in wondering why the West was again allowing itself to be duped.

Many Israelis are beginning to suspect that the West has simply resigned itself to the idea that Iran will obtain nuclear weapons, which it will justify by insisting that Iran’s leaders would never actually launch such weapons at another nation, even the hated “Zionist entity.”

But Israel has faced very real existential threats before, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is adamant his nation will not allow a threat of this magnitude to arise unopposed. The Israeli belief that Iran would actually use nuclear weapons against the Jewish state was validated last week when former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar revealed details of a conversation he had in 2000 with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“In a private discussion we held in Tehran in October of 2000, Ali Khamenei told me that Israel must be burned to the ground and made to disappear from the face of the Earth,” Aznar told a briefing at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. “He meant physical termination through military force.”

Aznar shared is concerns with Netanyahu, but by all indications, Israel’s leadership is already preparing for an inevitable military showdown with Iran.

A senior unnamed Western diplomat told Reuters last week that the recent lack of warnings and military threats from Israeli leaders “tells you a lot about where things stand. I think they’ve gone into lockdown mode now. Whatever happens next, whatever they decide, we will not find out until it happens.”

In a very vague pronouncement on the situation of Israel’s readiness, outgoing Israel Air Force chief Ido Nehushtan told Channel 2 News that the air force “understands the missions it may be carrying out. It is devising operational plans. It is building its strength. It is innovating.”

When asked if he was referring to an attack on Iran, Nehushtan smiled and responded, “I think I’ve said enough.”