The
last few weeks have underlined that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
can be rhetorically and practically effective when dealing with external
threats, as he faced up to Syria’s vows to attack Israel in case of a
US strike on its territory. What’s less clear is how effectively he
grapples with ostensible tolerance from long-time foes, as in the charm
offensive being mounted by Iran’s sophisticated new president, Hasan
Rouhani.Netanyahu
was calm and level-headed in handling the Syria crisis. In the days
after US President Barack Obama threatened to punish the regime of
Bashar Assad for its August 21 chemical-weapons attack, and before a
Russia-brokered deal made such a strike
exceedingly unlikely, the prime minister was responsibility personified. Despite repeated
threats from Tehran and Damascus
that Israel would “come under fire” if the US intervened, Netanyahu
instructed his ministers to keep quiet and let Washington handle the
situation, while he himself issued well-balanced statements that did not
provoke Assad but, rather, deterred him from attacking by making it
plain that Israel would not hesitate to respond forcefully.Iran’s new campaign to win the hearts and
minds of the West, however, requires a different kind of reaction. But
although Netanyahu and his ministers anticipated the change of tone from
Tehran, they do not appear to have formulated an effective response;
instead, they are stubbornly repeating the same messages they issued
when the easy-to-demonize Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the public face of the
Islamist regime.Over the last few days, Rouhani has sent
message after message
signaling the Islamic Republic’s eagerness to engage with the West over
its nuclear program. Rouhani purports to have abandoned Ahmadinejad’s
warmongering, and has allowed it be
reported that it might be ready to compromise on the nuclear program –
even though, publicly, the president reiterates that uranium enrichment
is Iran’s right and that he has no intention of halting what he risibly
insists is a purely peaceful program.Iran has never sought — and will never seek — a
nuclear weapon, Rouhani promised last week on an American television
network, nor does it “seek war with any country.” These words are music
to American ears. If Netanyahu considers them to be utterly
disingenuous, and he plainly does, simply saying “I don’t believe him,”
or words to that effect, isn’t sufficient anymore. Sweet-talking,
reasonable-sounding, berobed Rouhani is a lot tougher to discredit than
the Holocaust-denying, gay-bashing, unkempt Ahmadinejad.The West — whose desire to avoid further
military misadventure was starkly illustrated by its response to Assad’s
chemical-weapons outrage — is unsurprisingly inclined to test Rouhani’s
sincerity. While
assuring Jerusalem that they will not be fooled by Tehran’s sweet talk, the Americans are
receptive to the idea of a possible détente. The
White House has not ruled out a possible Obama-Rouhani meeting on the
sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly this week in New York,
something that would have been unthinkable just a few weeks ago. French
President Francois Hollande is set to meet with Rouhani at the UN, as is
British Foreign Secretary
William Hague, even though Britain does not have diplomatic relations with Iran.Israel’s hugely skeptical response to
Rouhani’s slick PR may be entirely justified. But showing the new
friendly face of Tehran to be disingenuous requires more than a
recycling of the same-old bleak sound bites. Cartoon bombs — as unveiled
by Netanyahu at last year’s UN General Assembly — aren’t going to work
anymore. This year’s show is going to have to be more serious and
nuanced.“The Iranians are continuing to spin in the
media so that the centrifuges continue spinning. The real test lies in
the Iranian regime’s actions, not words,”
Netanyahu said in a statement Thursday
night, immediately after Rouhani’s peace-loving interview. The prime
minister reiterated, as he has done dozens of times in the past few
months, the four conditions the international community needs to demand
from the Iranians: halting all uranium enrichment, removing already
enriched material, shutting down the Fordo nuclear facility in Qom, and
discontinuing the plutonium track. Until these four criteria are
fulfilled, said Netanyahu, the world needs to “intensify the pressure,”
not ease it.
Likewise, Intelligence and Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said in an interview published over the weekend that
“Rouhani has launched a charm offensive on the West, but he plans to
charm his way to a nuclear weapon. While he sends letters to Obama and wishes the Jews a happy New Year, the centrifuges continue to spin. Not only has the [nuclear] project not stopped, it is galloping forward.”Israel has all the reasons in the world to be
wary. The Iranians are savvy tacticians and Rouhani is clearly willing
to go a long way rhetorically to persuade the West to ease sanctions
that are biting into the economy, while relentlessly inching toward the
bomb.Indeed, Steinitz predicted Rouhani’s reported
willingness to suspend uranium enrichment weeks ago. “He will come to
the West, just like he did in 2003 [when Rouhani was Iran’s chief
nuclear negotiator], and say: ‘Let’s make an interim deal. I’ll make a
few concessions here, you will make some concessions there,”
Steinitz told The Times of Israel in August.
The Iranians might even offer unilateral gestures, such as, for
example, halting uranium enrichment at the Qom facility for three or
four months, Steinitz said. “But after that, [Rouhani] will request
reciprocity. He will say, ‘Now show me that you are easing the sanctions
so that I can prove to the Iranian people that this approach pays.’ He
will come with a concept of confidence-building measures. He will say
there is no trust, and trust is built step by step.”The skeptical Israeli argument is sound; the
concern is that it is insufficient. Repeating the same mantra may
produce diminishing returns when the world’s perception of Iran is
changing. Tehran is remaking its image, rapidly, from a saber-rattling,
Holocaust-denying rogue state, bent on wiping Israel off the map, to a
peace-loving, truce-brokering, would-be haven of modernity.
Israeli leaders are not alone in doubting there’s been a genuine change
of heart, but many in the West, most notably President Barack Obama,
are disinclined to dismiss it out of hand.“Disparaging knee-jerk reactions” such as the
Prime Minister’s Office’s “obligatory too-clever-by-half pun about
‘spinning’ the media in order to keep the centrifuges ‘spinning,’
wouldn’t have cut it any more, even in the best of times,” Chemi Shalev
wrote from
the US in Sunday’s Haaretz. Israel needs to be aware that “Americans
are in a peace-in-our-time kind of mood,” in which they would like to
believe that Iran can really be a constructive partner in solving the
Middle East’s many problems, he noted.At junctures like this, dreaming of an era of
reduced conflict, even usually responsible leaders can allow themselves
to become forgetful — to put aside, for a moment, Iran’s appalling
history of fostering terrorism; to gloss over its brutal repression of
internal dissent; and to ignore the fact that much of its purportedly
peaceful nuclear program was constructed in secret, in breach of its
international obligations, and is plainly focused on attaining a weapons
capability.And even to forget that Rouhani is a creature
of the regime, not an opponent — a politician carefully selected as one
of only six presidential candidates approved by Supreme Leader Ali
Khamenei, a practiced diplomatic manipulator with the nous to have
temporarily frozen the Iranian nuclear program when it was feared that
the US would be coming for Iran after Iraq in 2003, only to revive it
again when the danger had passed.When Rouhani speaks a different
language to his predecessor, and the West seems ready to listen,
Israel’s disinclination to adapt risks isolation — rather than empathy —
for Jerusalem.Yes, regimes, even the most demonic, can
change. But Netanyahu’s and Israel’s interest lies in reminding the rest
of the West of the necessary barometers to measure that change —
encouraging the maintenance of pressure so that Tehran is prodded in the
right direction, pushing an incremental approach, where only measurable
change matters — not fine rhetoric.Thus far, Netanyahu’s relentless warnings
about Iran’s approaching nuclear weapons capability, and his
not-so-subtle threats to use military force as a last resort to prevent a
nuclear Iran, have done much to alert the world to the dangers. Even
Western officials who oppose the prime minister’s Iran policy admit
that.But when Rouhani speaks a different language
to his predecessor, and the West seems ready to listen, Israel’s
disinclination to adapt risks isolation — rather than empathy — for
Jerusalem. It hardly helps, of course, that much of the West already
regards Israel as being as much of an aggressor state as is Iran.“Respect him, but suspect him,” a common
Hebrew expression advises, yet embracing ostensibly friendly gestures by
enemy entities was never Netanyahu’s strong suit. That is also why his
answer was rather cold when, earlier this year, the
Arab League considered for the first time the possibility of mutually agreed land swaps in the framework of its Arab-Israeli peace Initiative, making a significant step toward Jerusalem’s position.At least Netanyahu said, at the time, that
Israel agrees “to discuss any initiative that is proposed and that is
not a dictate.” Iran’s current charm offensive, by contrast, is being
rejected outright… at least by the prime minister. Interestingly, as so
often, it has been President
Shimon Peres who has been more nuanced:
“The sanctions are doing their job and are influencing the leadership
in Iran,” Peres said Friday. “I hope we are hearing a new voice coming
from [Tehran],” he said.
Obama would
like to believe that the Syrian crisis is being solved through
diplomacy, and that the Iranian threat might just be averted in the same
way. Israel’s doubts are more than reasonable. But right now Rouhani is
singing a new tune, and Netanyahu risks sounding like a broken record,
repeating a song people would much rather not listen to anymore.
