Prime Minister’s Office gears up for battle in US against Iran accord

To the question of whether this deal makes it less likely that Iran will get a nuclear weapon, the talking points say the opposite is true.

By HERB KEINON
Updated: JULY 27, 2015 06:55
Israeli cartoon warns - Iran is worse than ISIS‏ (photo credit: PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE)
Israeli cartoon warns - Iran is worse than ISIS‏
(photo credit: PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE)
Despite US Secretary of State John Kerry’s warning Friday that Israel would be more isolated than ever if Congress were to reject the Iran deal, the Prime Minister’s Office on Sunday drew up a document with answers to half a dozen questions to be circulated among those in the US arguing against the July 14 agreement.
To the question of whether this deal makes it less likely that Iran will get a nuclear weapon, the talking points say the opposite is true and that the deal provides Iran with two paths to the bomb.
Either the Iranians will violate the deal, as they have done in the past, and develop a bomb by cheating on the accord, or they will abide by the accord and then, in about a decade, when the central restrictions on its program are automatically removed, will be able to “carry out unlimited enrichment of uranium with full international legitimacy,” the document says.
“Iran’s breakout time at that point will be close to zero, as the US president himself has said,” it goes on.
While in the immediate future Iran might have more difficulty developing a bomb, the talking points add that the deal “all but guarantees that Iran will be able to make an entire nuclear arsenal in a decade or so.”
As to the argument heard often from President Barack Obama and other senior officials in the US administration, that the only alternative to the deal is war, the paper notes that Israel had consistently promoted two different alternatives.
“First, Israel supported the policy of ‘dismantle for dismantle,’ whereby the sanctions regime would be dismantled only when Iran’s military nuclear program is dismantled,” it says. “This policy was based on successive UN Security Council resolutions and was US policy until 2013. Its implementation would have genuinely closed the Iranian nuclear file.”
Israel’s second alternative, according to the document, was that in the absence of a complete roll-back of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, there should at least be a significant roll-back with severe restrictions on Iran lifted only when it stopped its regional aggression, support of global terrorism and efforts to destroy Israel.
The deal, the document says, makes war more – not less – likely because Iran will be able to fill its coffers to fund its subversion, and because other countries in the Middle East, expecting Iran to become a nuclear power, will begin their own nuclear programs.
The PMO’s talking points stress that while the deal provides around-the-clock surveillance of Iran’s declared nuclear facilities, the inspection mechanism is “sorely lacking” about covert nuclear weapon activities at undeclared sites.
“The deal gives Iran 24 days before they have to allow inspectors into suspicious sites before there is even a violation,” the document says. “Twenty-four days gives Iran plenty of time to conceal illicit behavior because not all nuclear weapons activities leave detectable traces.”
The paper takes issue with one of Obama’s central arguments, that in the absence of a deal the international sanctions regime would have fallen apart.
“The most important of these sanctions were those that passed in the United States with strong bipartisan support,” it says. “Faced with the choice of doing business with Iran or with the United States (whose economy is more than 40 times larger than Iran’s), countries and companies around the world did the right thing – both economically and ethically. They will continue to do so if sanctions are maintained or intensified, which is essential for convincing Iran to accept a better deal that substantially dismantles its military nuclear program.”
Another frequently heard argument by the administration is that the deal makes Israel and the region safer since it is preferable to confront a non-nuclear Iran regarding its terrorism and regional subversion.
But, according to the PMO document, “this deal will not prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.” Rather, “it will enable Iran to get many nuclear bombs in a decade or so and could spark a regional nuclear arms race.”
As to the question of what Israel will do now that the deal has been adopted by the UN Security Council and the EU, the document – which notes that throughout the negotiations Iran continued to call for Israel’s annihilation while providing offensive weapons to its proxies on Israel’s borders – stresses that Israel was not a party to the negations and therefore is not bound by the deal.
Israel, it said, “will always reserve the right to defend itself, by itself, against any threat.”