Bibi goes to Washington: what the media forgot to discuss

There has been recently much commotion about the Israeli prime minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu's speech before the US congress. The prime minister was supposed to lobby against the approaching nuclear deal between Iran and the United States. He was accused of a) breaching the protocol by accepting the invitation from the House speaker John Boehner without consulting with the presidential Administration; b) using the speech (two weeks before the Israeli elections) to boost his re-election chances; and c) playing the partisan divisions in the US and thus undermining the US-Israel relationship.

Citing the above-mentioned "breach of protocol" and the unacceptability of interfering in Israeli elections, US president Obama refused to meet with the prime minister during his visit to Washington, and Vice-president Joe Biden, as well as several dozens democrats, boycotted the speech.

Since much of the coverage focused on the prime-minister's personality (e.g., here), I will leave it out and focus on the aspects of the US-Iran nuclear deal and the Netanyahu's visit which remained largely undiscussed.

1. If Iran goes nuclear, what does it mean for Israel?

If Iran does go nuclear, it will pose a threat to Israel and the Middle East. True, Israel might (or might not) have the second strike capability. From the game theory prospective the Cold War between Iran and Israel is quite different from the Cold War between USA and USSR (or Pakistan and India) due to very different size of these countries. Indeed, the strategy of a Cold War is based on weighing the risk of a nuclear attack versus attacking first and facing the enemy's retaliation. If one can (or believes that he can) neutralize the enemy's ability to retaliate, striking first becomes the preferable option. In this sense, the small size of Israel may create additional insensitives for the first strike by Iran, since Israel can be destroyed by one bomb, while Iran may survive hits killing several millions. This in turn creates greater insensitives for the Israeli first strike...

2. If Iran goes nuclear: what does it mean for the Middle East?

Even if we assume that Israel has sufficient deterrence to prevent direct Iranian attack, Iranian nuclear weapon would change the balance of power in teh Middle East with the countries non-aligned with Iran (starting with Saudi Arabia) either seeking a nuclear weapon of their own or seeking protection of Israel. In the former case we we face a nuclear form of a known question: if everybody had a gone, would it make us safer? In the latter case, there may be interesting motives for peaceful settlement between Israel and Arab states, but also all the unpleasantness of the confrontation between two dominant powers - with proxy wars and a risk of nuclear confrontation driven by a minor miscalculation (aka Cuban Missile Crisis.)

3. Even if Iran doesn't go nuclear: what does it mean for the world?

We don't know whether Iran really goes nuclear. But even if it doesn't, it is already in violation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty - as certified by the UN watchdog. The Nuclear non-proliferation treaty prohibits the five acknowledges nuclear powers from selling nuclear technologies and materials to non-members of the treaty. The non-nuclear members of the treaty are allowed to buy such technologies in exchange for their obligation not to develop nuclear weapons, which is guaranteed by not enriching uranium beyond certain grade, not using certain technologies and making their nuclear facilities transparent for international inspection. These obligations are violated by Iran, who, as a signatory of the treaty, has purchased nuclear technologies from Russia (e.g., the Busher reactor)

It seems that by signing a treaty with Iran Obama effectively destroys the non-proliferation regime... although it has already done so a few months ago in a "landmark" nuclear deal with India (who, like Israel, is not a treaty member). This is a problem for the World as a whole.

4. Obama's motivations in raising scandal

Whatever were the motivations of Mr. Netanyahu, the situation would not have grown to be so absurd, if the Obama administration and the Democrats didn't make so much fuss about "the breach of protocol". To be sure, Obama administration has ignored, and even committed itself much greater breaches of protocol. For example, a year ago it hosted the un-elected Ukrainian prime-minister just before the elections that were supposed to legitimize the un-democratic change of power in Kiev. The breach of protocol in this case is particularly noticeable, since in parallel the administration took great pains not to show any support for the military coup in Egypt, even though it brought to power a US ally.

There may be multiple motivations for Obama and Democrats politicizing the scandal:

a) To support a more friendly Israeli party in elections (which immediately makes them look duplicitous due to the accusations against Netanyahu that the speech was a pre-election stunt)

b) To avoid the public discussion of the Iranian deal: the administration wants to take credit for the "landmark nuclear deal", but, as I noted before, its effect on nuclear non-proliferation may be devastating. It is worth reminding that not so long ago, during 2010 Nuclear Security Summit, Mr. Obama still was promoting his vision of the World without nuclear arms.

c) Finally, while supporting Israel always make for good US foreign policy, bushing it often makes for a good policy domestically, especially for the Democrats - who still get to be supported by very liberal Jewish community, but whose party is also a home to multiple anti-semitic and anti-Zionist crowds. In this sense the Netanyahu's speech merely brought out of the closet the partisan divisions regarding Israel that has already existed in the US.

5. Behavior of the Israeli left
Israeli left has made extensive use of the quarrel between the President and the prime-minister in its election campaign, but did it in a way characteristic of the Israeli left: by trumpeting a largely non-existent issue of the damage to the US-Israeli relations. It is surprising, because the prime-minister exposed himself by openly stating that he considered the issue of Iran as superseding all the domestic problems. Focusing on tehse domestic problems, e.g., by proposing a serious economic program, could have done a lot of damage to Netanyahu's standing. This was not done... to the detriment of the Israeli left and of Israel as a whole.