Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s open conflict with U.S. President Barack Obama over his diplomacy with Iran has not only served a blow to the U.S.-Israeli relationship. It has also collapsed Israel’s otherwise arguably successful Iran policy.
Contrary to Israel’s rhetoric, the fear of Iran getting a nuclear weapon has not been the driving factor of Israel policy on Iran since the early 1990s. Obviously, Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon would be highly undesirable for Israel. But that has not been Israel’s primary concern. Rather, the fear has been that Washington would end up finding a compromise with Iran that on the one hand would close off any Iranian path to a bomb, but on the other hand would lock in a shift in the regional balance of power in Israel’s disfavor.
Regardless of the details of a nuclear deal with Iran, a deal per se would reduce Washington’s tensions with Tehran, while not necessarily tempering the Israeli-Iranian rivalry proportionally. Israel will be “abandoned” to face Iran alone, Israelis fear. Moreover, a deal would signal, the argument goes, that Washington has accepted and will not contest Iran’s geopolitical advances in the region. Iran has hegemonic aspirations, Israel contends, and must be stopped, not accommodated. After a deal with Iran, Washington would be even more likely to shift its geopolitical focus elsewhere and be less intertwined with Israel’s needs.
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By now, Netanyahu has crossed the real “point of no return.” Confidence in him is completely lost in the White House, so he cannot adopt Obama’s posture. His only remaining options is to double down on opposing a nuclear deal with Iran, even at the cost of an open war with the American president, of damaging U.S.-Israel relations beyond Obama, and of making Israel a partisan issue.
Such is the logic of adopting extremist positions. Rather than depriving the other side of options and maneuverability, Netanyahu has painted Israel in a corner.
