Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will address the US Congress on Tuesday. The speech is set to become one of the most controversial of the more than 100 joint session addresses that have been delivered by world leaders and dignitaries to the US legislature since the 19th century.
US National Security Adviser Susan Rice has even asserted that the visit is “destructive to the fabric of the [US-Israeli] bilateral relationship”. Such comments by a top White House official are remarkable and underlines what is becoming a significant breach in a traditional pattern of bipartisan support for Israel in Washington.
The reasons for the controversy, and highly unusual public recriminations, are at least threefold. Firstly, at a time when the relationship between the Israeli prime minister and US President Barack Obama is already rocky, the speech was arranged by House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, a leading Republican, without prior knowledge of the White House.
Secondly, while Congress is constitutionally entitled to invite Netanyahu, the address comes just two weeks before the closely fought March 17 Israeli elections. Numerous Democrats have indicated their concern that the prime minister, who leads the conservative Likud Party, is being given such a prominent platform so close to the ballot, which could give him domestic electoral advantage. In the words of White House spokesman Josh Earnest, the US-Israeli alliance “can’t be reduced to a relationship between the Republican Party and Likud”.
A third reason for controversy is that Netanyahu will use his speech to bolster his fierce criticism of Obama’s policy on Iran. Indeed, the prime minister has become the White House’s most vocal international opponent on this issue, although other key US allies, from the Saudi Arabian to Canadian governments, also share significant concerns.
At a time when there is also discontent towards Obama’s Iran policy in Congress, especially amongst Republicans, the White House rightly fears that Netanyahu will catalyse this opposition. A significant number of these critical lawmakers want to see bills passed in both the House and Senate levying additional sanctions against Tehran, which has the potential to torpedo the international negotiations (although Obama could possibly veto any such laws).
All of these US political fireworks come as the potential nuclear deal with Iran, brokered by the P5+1 (US, Britain, France, China, Russia + Germany), is approaching a March 31 deadline for a framework accord. The most recent talks, which ended on February 23, have made some progress and will resume tomorrow.
It is reported that a breakthrough deal is emerging that will curb Tehran’s nuclear programme for at least a decade with gradual easing of both economic sanctions and constraints on its uranium enrichment. However, even if a framework agreement is reached, final details of a permanent deal may still not be secured by the proposed July deadline, especially given the opposition from conservatives in the US and Iran.
The preliminary deal reached in 2013 between the P5+1 and Tehran froze key elements of the latter’s nuclear programme, but not (yet) permanently dismantled them. Amongst the key bones of contention in the negotiations is how fast sanctions will be lifted in the event of a final agreement and how far Iran needs to go in unwinding its nuclear facilities. To be sure, no deal that Tehran is likely to agree to will eliminate its ability to build a nuclear weapon. US Secretary of State John Kerry asserts that it will currently take Tehran around “two months” to produce sufficient material for such a bomb. However, buttressed by greater international monitoring and oversight of Iran’s programme, the P5+1 want to significantly lengthen this ‘break-out period’ to at least a reported 12 months. This is a sensitive issue with conservatives in Tehran.
Temporary ban on enrichment
It is unclear if any deal could allow both Iran and the P5+1 to plausibly claim ‘victory’. The most likely such outline would be for prohibitions to be placed upon the nature and number of centrifuges that Tehran uses for enrichment. Moreover, the P5+1 could seek to make permanent the current temporary ban on uranium enrichment beyond 5 per cent purity, which would still allow the country to service its nuclear energy sector.
While such an agreement would have major critics, with Israel potentially reserving the right to take unilateral military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it may give the P5+1 enough to assert it has significantly disabled Tehran’s potential to build nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani could try to sell the deal to conservatives in Tehran on the basis that it secures the international legitimacy of the country’s long-standing position that it has the right to enrich uranium.
A deal would represent a major foreign policy win for Obama and Rouhani. This is not only because, as Obama has said, a deal would “take a big piece of business off the table and begin a long process in which the relationship not just between Iran and [the US] but the relationship between Iran and the world, and the region, begins to change”.
It would also constitute a key victory for long-standing efforts to combat nuclear nonproliferation. And this at a crucial moment when, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, more than 40 countries have expressed interest in joining the ‘club’ of 30 states with nuclear energy.
For Rouhani, a final agreement is key to revitalising the Iranian economy. Moreover, it will also give him opportunity to bolster reformists, many of whom are key supporters, before the 2016 Iranian parliamentary elections.
Taken overall, momentum is building for a framework deal this month, which could significantly exacerbate the rift in US-Israeli relations, especially if Netanyahu is re-elected. If such an agreement is reached, domestic and international critics of Iran-US rapprochement are likely to raise the tempo of their opposition and could yet derail a final nuclear settlement before July.
Credit: Andrew Hammond is an Associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics, and a former UK government special adviser.