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After the Iran Agreement

Yaakov Lapin interviews Maj.-Gen. (res.) Uzi Dayan - Maj.-Gen. (res.) Uzi Dayan, a former IDF deputy chief of staff, noted that without the U.S.-led diplomatic drive, which included waves of biting sanctions on Iran, Iran could have already gone nuclear. "Iran is still not nuclear, and this is an achievement." However, "the deal is intolerable for Israel....Iran is the leading terrorist state, and received international approval to be a nuclear threshold state, despite the knowledge that Iran seeks to have nuclear weapons later on." The Vienna agreement's level of inspections is far from what is desired. "Inspections do not deter Iran. They allow it to cheat," he said. Moreover, the mechanism described in the deal for identifying and declaring Iranian violations "does not lead anywhere." "Those who trusted the U.S. for a good deal - there's nothing to trust. All of the states in the Middle East do not trust Washington for their security." Should the agreement be ratified and implemented, Israel will have to take on the responsibility of warning about Iranian nuclear violations, according to Dayan. Simultaneously, Israel should seek to tighten intelligence cooperation with the U.S. and establish ground rules about what should be done in case of an Iranian violation. The Vienna accord pushes Israel into a space in which the country must defend itself without coordination with the free world, Dayan said. Yet striking now is "not the right thing to do. We can only do it when there is no choice. We can seriously harm the Iranian nuclear program, but we can't strike like the Americans for three consecutive months."
2015-07-27 00:00:00
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