Keep beating that talking point until we’re sure it’s dead

Moshe Ya’alon is an important man. You don’t get to become Israeli defense minister without already being important, and being Israeli defense minister makes you far more important than that. So when Moshe Ya’alon has something to say or write, it must be important. It was with that in mind that I read his op-ed in the Washington Post yesterday on how terrible the Iran nuclear framework really is. After deriding the efficacy of nuclear inspections and predicting that international sanctions will not be successfully reimposed on Iran should it be found to have violated the terms of an agreement (two arguments whose logical conclusion can only be that there must be no deal under any circumstances, that Iran must either be kept under sanction forever without nuclear monitoring or that there must be, inevitably, a war), he concludes thusly:

The choice is not between this bad deal and war. The alternative is a better deal that significantly rolls back Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and links the lifting of restrictions on its nuclear program to an end of Iran’s aggression in the region, its terrorism across the globe and its threats to annihilate Israel. This alternative requires neither war nor putting our faith in tools that have already failed us.

What Moshe Ya’alon is saying here is definitely important, and I agree with him, because (full disclosure) I would like us to get a better deal with Iran as well. Something that’s “better” is, after all, almost always preferable to whatever you’re already getting, isn’t it? Among many other things, I’d like a better car, a better bank account, better grass on my lawn, better fruit at my local supermarket, a better body fat percentage, certainly better weather today (below 50 and rainy is the worst), and, well, I should probably stop because this could literally go on forever. So hell yeah, I’d love a better deal with Iran. I’d love it if the US could get Iran to dismantle all of its nuclear infrastructure apart from a couple of civilian reactors, swear off supporting Bashar al-Assad and Hezbollah, and end its ballistic missile program. And then maybe we could get all the current nuclear-armed states (including the one we’re not supposed to talk about in polite company) to dismantle and destroy all their nuclear weapons, and all their conventional weapons while we’re at it, and we could all live in peace and harmony forever. But that deal isn’t on the table. The deal that is on the table is being lauded by actual arms control experts as a good deal that does as much as could reasonably be expected to ensure that Iran doesn’t develop a nuclear weapon, certainly more than no deal, which is the real measuring stick.

But this idea that “the alternative to a bad deal is a better deal, not war” is a favorite argument of Ya’alon’s boss, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (although he and some of his Republican pals need to tighten up their message discipline a bit), and Ya’alon is running it again here. So given that “better” is preferable, we owe it to ourselves to carefully excerpt and analyze the section of Ya’alon’s piece in which he explains how a better deal could be forged. Or rather, we would owe it to ourselves, if Ya’alon had bothered to talk about it. Somehow, in the midst of his 850 words on the subject, Ya’alon never got there. Say, you don’t suppose that this whole “better deal” thing is just a tired talking point without a shred of substance behind it, do you?

No, let’s not play this game. Ya’alon‘s opposition to this Iran deal has nothing to do with this potential deal in particular. It is a general opposition to any deal with Iran. Israel currently opposes any deal with Iran because the status quo with respect to Iran’s nuclear program is a cornerstone of Netanyahu’s “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain” approach to governance. When Israelis start to wonder why, 6 years into his term as PM, the country’s economy is still sputtering, Netanyahu can terrify them back into complacence with the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon. When the rest of the world starts wondering why the only concessions Israel seems to be willing to make to the Palestinians involve dropping warning leaflets on them just before the missiles strike, he can deflect most of their attention onto the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran. Take that narrative away, and suddenly Netanyahu might have to work a whole lot harder to cover up his own failures.