With Iran Nuclear Deal Looking Likely, Mideast Girds for Confrontation

Washington is abuzz with talk about a pending return to the Iran nuclear deal. Supporters say the move would prevent war even as all sides in the Mideast seem like they are gearing up for military confrontation.Aiming for a public relations boost before the midterm election, members of the Biden administration are briefing favorite reporters about concessions they say American negotiators managed to extract from Iran. At Tehran, officials are also boasting — about American concessions. In Israel, Prime Minister Lapid today disparaged what he called a “bad” deal that “cannot be accepted as it is written right now.” Israel’s defense minister, Benny Gantz, is scheduled to arrive in Washington tomorrow for meetings at the Pentagon.The state department confirmed today that it has sent a long-awaited response to Iranian comments on a “final” European Union offer to renew the deal. Washington sources are convinced that even if it is delayed a few days, the deal’s completion is very near. “There are technical details to be worked out, but very few,” a senior congressional staffer familiar with the negotiations told the Sun, adding that an American-Iranian deal to renew the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is basically “done.”Before the November midterms, President Biden is eager to fulfill a campaign promise on rejoining the deal, and the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, wouldn’t have let negotiations advance this far unless he was on board, the source said. “Israel is not against any agreement,” Mr. Lapid told foreign reporters at a Jerusalem press conference. “We are against this agreement, because it is a bad one.”The deal, he added, would enrich the Islamic Republic, and the “money will not build schools or hospitals. This is a $100 billion a year that will be used to undermine stability in the Middle East and spread terror around the globe.”He added that a deal “does not obligate Israel.” Jerusalem isn’t a party to the deal, and its officials have long insisted that such an agreement would not derail their plans to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear state by any means necessary, including sabotage, assassinations, cyber attacks, and possibly even air attacks against nuclear and missile installations.According to a London-based Arabic-language website, Elaph, Israeli F-35 fighter jets have infiltrated Iranian airspace several times in the past two months, avoiding detection by Russian and Iranian radars and air defense systems. Elaph often relies on unnamed sources, and is seen by some as a favorite site for leaks from Israeli military officials. If so, telling of clandestine F-35 infiltrations is meant as a warning that they were a dress rehearsal for a major military operation. Israel has reasons to worry even beyond the nuclear file. Today at Beirut, the Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah, hosted his Palestinian Islamic Jihad counterpart, Ziad Al-Nakhalah. They discussed the recent Israeli operation against the PIJ in Gaza and coordinated strategy.Both Hezbollah and the PIJ are Iranian proxies controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ foreign arm, al Quds, which is tasked with exporting the Islamic Republic’s ideology through “resistance,” as well as terrorism against American and Israeli targets. The IRGC has urged the PIJ to extend its base beyond Gaza into the northern West Bank. PIJ increasingly launches attacks in Israeli cities from there. This summer Israeli forces and PIJ terrorists have clashed almost daily at Jenin and its environs. Meanwhile, a state department envoy, Amos Hochstein, is shuttling between Beirut and Jerusalem in a diplomatic attempt to negotiate a Hezbollah-instigated maritime dispute between Israel and Lebanon. Mr. Nasrallah is threatening to launch a “war” if his excessive demands to control Mediterranean areas rich in gas reserves are not satisfied. In addition to Israel, Ayatollah Khamenei and the IRGC’s threats and violent attacks affect America, where recent asssaination plots against former U.S. administration officials and regime opponents have been exposed. According to an analysis by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Tehran stands to receive up to $1 trillion by the end of the decade if the nuclear deal is implemented. The IRGC would be a major beneficiary even as the Biden adminsitration maintains it would remain on America’s terror list. Keeping the IRGC on that list “now looks like a legal sleight of hand,” the FDD chief executive, Mark Dubowitz, says, and the renewed Iran deal would “allow tens of billions of dollars to flow to terrorists.” Resistance is mounting on Capitol Hill. “I intend to systematically fight the implementation of this catastrophic deal, and will work with my colleagues to ensure that it is blocked and eventually reversed in January 2025,” Senator Cruz said in a statement. Democrats, even beyond the Senate’s foreign relations committee chairman, Robert Menendez, also have reservations. “Under this proposal Iran would benefit from immediate sanctions relief in return for getting back to a flawed deal that expires soon,” Representative Kathy Manning, a Democrat of North Carolina, said in a recent interview. Deal proponents have long pushed back, arguing that the only alternative to the diplomatic path is war. As the JCPOA renewal nears, the promise that it would prevent armed hostilities seems as shaky as its central goal — blocking Iran’s path to a nuclear bomb.

With Iran Nuclear Deal Looking Likely, Mideast Girds for Confrontation

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