WarSclerotic

“We, America, are not just hired lawyers negotiating a deal for Israel and the Sunni Gulf Arabs, which they alone get the final say on. We, America, have our own interests in not only seeing Iran’s nuclear weapons capability curtailed, but in ending the 34-year-old Iran-U.S. cold war, which has harmed our interests and those of our Israeli and Arab friends.”

By writing these frank words, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman managed to embarrass former Israeli officials and various pundits in the Israeli media who have tried to drive home the notion that Iran’s nuclear program is a U.S. problem. “Let them handle this,” those well-informed opinion-makers told us. “We must not interfere.”

But the problem is that Friedman’s frankness complicates things. He claims in his column that the Obama administration’s interests are not necessarily identical to Israeli or Saudi interests. As America and Iran moved rapidly towards a deal in Geneva, the U.S. allies in the region were caught off guard.

Just look at France. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told the press in Geneva last week that France would not accept a bad deal that would threaten Israel and the Gulf states. That is why the French negotiators torpedoed the deal, at least for the time being.

The French could not accept an agreement under which the heavy-water reactor in Arak continued to operate or a deal in that would let Iran enrich uranium to 20% purity. The French could not quite figure out why Iran would need to maintain the capacity to enrich uranium. As several countries have shown, you don’t need uranium enrichment if your goal is nuclear energy. French Ambassador to Tel-Aviv Patrick Maisonnave reiterated that stance on Wednesday.

During a visit to the United Arab Emirates this week, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that at one point during the Geneva talks all six Western powers had agreed on a formula but Iran turned it down “at that particular moment.” Kerry said that although Western parties thought it was a fair deal, including the French, Iran killed it.

But Kerry was not being candid with us. He forgot to mention that even though there was no daylight between France and the U.S. on the need to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear military power, France was insistent on getting more guarantees from Tehran.

“The U.S. secretary of state embraced the French position and it became the U.S. position and then the position of the six powers,” Maisonnave said.

On Sunday, in what can only be described as great timing, French President Francois Hollande will visit Israel. Considering the current state of the nuclear talks, the words of Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. president, come to mind: “Every man has two countries — his own and France.”