Gee, You Think?

Unnamed former Israeli intelligence officials are now saying that the US unilateral withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal was a mistake.

As an aside, those officials, and their boss at the time Binyaman Netanyahu (יִמַּח שְׁמו) were the ones lobbying hardest for the US to ditch the deal.

A growing number of former Israeli security officials are publicly faulting their government for opposing a nuclear deal negotiated in 2015 between Iran and world powers, and warning that economic sanctions on Iran are not deterring it from dangerously advancing its nuclear program.

While Israel had applauded President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the accord in 2018, these former officials have concluded that his “maximum pressure” policy built primarily on sanctions has failed to prevent Iran from increasing the quantity and quality of its enriched uranium.

With negotiations over reviving the nuclear accord now struggling in Vienna, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has been echoing the ominous rhetoric of his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu, and accusing Iran of using “nuclear blackmail” as a bargaining tactic by escalating its uranium enrichment.

But former Israel security officials are increasingly critical of the role Netanyahu played in opposing the original agreement and urging Trump to abandon it. These officials say the accord was imperfect but that the alternative has been worse.

This was foreseeable.  The implementation of savage sanctions merely gave them the opportunity to crack down on domestic opposition and empowered the most radical in their government, much the same as 60 years of sanctions against Cuba has.

The US foreign policy establishment devalues the value of the United States keeping to its agreements and overvalues the effect of sanctions, and has for decades.  There is no learning process.