by Mitchell Plitnick

John Kerry’s words at a report-back to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent shock waves all the way to Jerusalem. “Unfortunately, prisoners were not released on the Saturday they were supposed to be released,” he said. “And so day one went by, day two went by, day three [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Mitchell Plitnick

John Kerry’s words at a report-back to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee sent shock waves all the way to Jerusalem. “Unfortunately, prisoners were not released on the Saturday they were supposed to be released,” he said. “And so day one went by, day two went by, day three went by. And then in the afternoon, when they were about to maybe get there, 700 settlement units were announced in Jerusalem and, poof, that was sort of the moment. We find ourselves where we are.”

That was well outside the usual boundaries of discourse for top US officials, and it certainly got noticed. Kerry’s own State Department subordinates quickly rushed to reaffirm that “…today, Secretary Kerry was again crystal clear that both sides have taken unhelpful steps and at no point has he engaged in a blame game.”

But the message was clear and Kerry himself has taken no steps to truly back off from it. He technically didn’t “blame” Israel. Rather, as he put it, “I only described the unfolding of events and the natural difficulties involved in managing such a complex and sensitive negotiation.”

The message, in a nutshell, is that the Obama administration is fed up with Bibi Netanyahu and his antics. That’s been welcomed by the vast majority of thinking analysts and observers who understood long ago that Israel has acted as the major obstacle to talks and that US pandering to Netanyahu was only going to harden the Israelis’ positions. But that welcome needs to be cooled a bit.

However frustrated Kerry may be by Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declining to accept a US-brokered deal that was absurdly lopsided in Israel’s favor, the peace process must, apparently, go on. The United States continues intense efforts to bring the two sides back to the table despite the fact that months of talks have only been counter-productive and that the current goal of the talks is to find a framework for talks. At this point, the entire Oslo process is little more than a joke. If anything, it resembles a zombie from the television show, The Walking Dead — it’s really dead but it just keeps walking around and making noise.

Despite Kerry’s testimony, he’s staying in the business of bringing Israelis and Palestinians back to the table, and there’s one reason: the only goal remaining on the Obama administration’s agenda is to prevent the talks from completely breaking down on their watch. Yet it seems even that modest goal is beyond Kerry’s grasp. According to Israeli officials, the method for bringing the talks back to zombie-life is to re-issue the offer Abbas pre-empted with his application to fifteen international treaties and institutions. The only changes apparently on the table are compensation to Israel for Abbas’ heinous crime.

Despite Abbas’ unusually bold action in those applications, his track record of submission suggests he will cave-in again. Still, it’s hard to see how he can justify such a turnaround under these circumstances. So, it’s slightly more likely that he will not agree to this. But the most likely outcome is that the Israelis and Palestinians will continue to squabble, and that the deadline of April 29 will be upon us before Kerry can put the sham talks back together.

Given the beating the US is taking around the world over other issues, especially Ukraine; and the always-tenuous balance of maintaining the Iran nuclear talks, Kerry may have no choice but to finally give up on this poorly planned and even more poorly executed attempt to secure a resolution of the Oslo process. It’s now too late, but given the enormous amount of energy Kerry has devoted to this quixotic task, he may not be able to admit it. In any case, the US now must choose between looking foolish by giving up or looking even more foolish by pressing on in this effort when it’s clearly not prepared to do what it would take to get something done.

Abbas has pretty much mapped his post-talks course, and it certainly seems like most Palestinians are anxious to see it happen. That is, increased activism at the United Nations, including applying for accession to the Rome Statute, which would allow the Palestinians to bring Israeli leaders to the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges. Israel is very concerned about that, and that’s why despite the total harmlessness to Israel of the Palestinians’ fifteen international applications, Israel is reacting with increased threats, including an announced intention to steal the tax revenues Israel, by agreement, collects for the Palestinians.

In fact, it is in Israel where we have seen the most activity in response to the breakdown in talks, and none of it is encouraging. The Israeli opposition took days to comment. Zehava Gal-On, head of the left-wing Zionist Meretz Party had, as one would expect, the clearest criticism, saying Israel had given the United States “the finger.” The ostensible leader of the opposition, Isaac Herzog, was less harsh, but called for new elections. That would, however, be foolish as recent polls clearly indicate a strengthening of the right-wing majority. The two parties within Netanyahu’s coalition — HaTnuah and Yesh Atid — which are supposed to be holding Bibi’s feet to the peace talks fire, scrambled desperately to find credible ways to support Netanyahu instead.

Netanyahu’s critics have come from his right flank, in two different ways. First, Trade and Labor Minister, Naftali Bennett of the religious HaBayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) party called for Israel to annex large chunks of the West Bank to punish the Palestinians for their fifteen applications. While there is no chance Israel will do that in the near future, Bennett has been pushing annexation since he rose to the top of his party and has vowed to intensify the public campaign in this direction. Given the ongoing rightward trend among Israeli citizens, this is a cause that could gain considerable momentum going forward.

Then, Netanyahu’s Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman continued his efforts to position himself as the next Prime Minister by meeting with Kerry and publicly stating that Kerry didn’t blame Israel for the breakdown. Lieberman thus gave the impression of himself as a true diplomat, an image the radically right-wing and historically undiplomatic leader of the largely Russian Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home) party, has been trying to cultivate ever since he came back to his post after being suspended while under investigation for corruption charges. Lieberman still invites great skepticism among Israelis, but his image is definitely improving.

Bennett, having gotten wind of the attempt by Kerry to revive the talks, then publicly declared that he would pull HaBayit HaYehudi out of the government if the previously arranged deal, or anything similar, went through. Bennett is known for bombast, and the fact is that this stance of his is not supported by his own party. Even HaBayit HaYehudi Housing Minister Uri Ariel, who played a central role in derailing the talks by announcing new settlement construction just as Kerry was trying to put a crutch underneath the discussions, disagrees with Bennett.

Still, these challenges from his right flank are serious for Netanyahu in the long-term, although right now, his popularity is rising among Israelis. That is probably more dismaying than anything else. Israel has, at last, killed the Oslo process and Abbas’ apparent willingness to continue working with the United States to keep them going for no discernible purpose is not winning him any points among his own public.

In the end, the situation is merely a more concentrated form of the one which has held for most of the Oslo era. The United States insists on both managing the process and keeping it going. It calls on the Israelis and Palestinians to make “hard choices” and take “bold steps,” yet administration after administration is unwilling to make its own choices and take its own steps in the face of expected political backlash to bring about a deal. Israel keeps its own goal front and center; that being to make sure that it minimizes, or even eliminates, the possibility of any significant Israeli concession. And the Palestinian people wait for a leadership that will defend their interests and recognize that cooperation with the United States will never get them to their goals of independence and self-determination.

by Kelsey Davenport

In two months Iran could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb, according to Secretary of State John Kerry’s testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 8. In isolation, this number sounds alarming, but in context, Iran is years, not months, away from a deliverable nuclear [...]]]> via LobeLog

by Kelsey Davenport

In two months Iran could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb, according to Secretary of State John Kerry’s testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 8. In isolation, this number sounds alarming, but in context, Iran is years, not months, away from a deliverable nuclear weapon and the United States is negotiating to extend that timeline even further.

Highly enriched uranium alone does not give Tehran a practical weapon. Iran would need to be able to build the explosive package and fit the bomb onto a missile. The US intelligence community has consistently testified since 2007 that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program years ago and that there is no hard evidence that Iran has restarted these activities.

Compared to the alternative, two months demonstrates a rollback in Iran’s capabilities. If Iran, the United States and its negotiating partners had not reached the interim Joint Plan of Action (JPA) in November 2013, that time window would be weeks, not months. That two-month window will also grow longer as Iran continues to follow through on its commitment under the JPA to eliminate its stockpile of uranium that could be more easily enriched to weapons-grade.

While Washington negotiates with Iran on a comprehensive deal that will put even more time back on the clock, it is important to consider how long it would take Iran to “break out” from its commitments and produce enough highly-enriched uranium for weapon. But this is only one factor of the final deal, which should be considered in its entirety.

Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) said in the April 8 hearing that limiting Iran’s nuclear program to a 6-12 month breakout timeline under the final deal is not enough and that a deal must “dismantle Iran’s nuclear weapons program.” However, Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. It is also naïve to regard these conditions as feasible. Eliminating Iran’s centrifuges and enriched uranium stockpiles would be an ideal nonproliferation goal, but Iran is highly unlikely to agree to such terms and the United States already agreed in November that Tehran would be allowed to enrich uranium based on its practical needs. Those needs are small and the comprehensive deal should scale back Iran’s uranium enrichment accordingly.

Menendez and his colleagues in Congress must remember that negotiations require compromise, and policymakers must not jeopardize prospects of reaching a good agreement with Iran. They must also remember that a deal will include stringent monitoring and verification in addition to what is already in place that will quickly alert the international community if Tehran deviates from its commitments.

This does not, of course, mean that the United States should accept unlimited uranium enrichment. Menendez said that a deal must prevent Iran from having a path to a nuclear bomb. This is a reasonable demand. Iran should be restricted to only producing uranium enriched to civilian power reactor grade, and the amount produced should be tied to its civilian power needs. In exchange for significant sanctions relief Tehran should also allow international inspectors more extensive access to its nuclear facilities, visits on short notice, and provide more-timely information about future nuclear facilities.

Including these measures in a deal would ensure that Iran could not — if it decided to — dash to build a nuclear weapon before the international community would detect such activities and be able to block them. Evidence suggests that Washington’s team is already placing significant emphasis on achieving comprehensive monitoring and verification measures on Iran’s nuclear program beyond the standard International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring that Iran is already subject to as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Setting limits on Iran’s ballistic missiles would also increase international confidence that Tehran cannot deliver nuclear weapons, but requiring it to dismantle all missiles large enough to deliver them would be akin to the severe missile limits imposed on Saddam Hussein’s vanquished Iraq in 1991. A 150-kilometer range limit on Iran’s ballistic missiles would remove its most effective deterrent against its regional adversaries. Like any other state existing in such circumstances, Iran would likely view this as an unacceptable compromise to its national security.

While Iran may be willing to commit to some confidence building measures in these areas that will give the international community more information about flight tests, missile deployments, and even warhead loadings, Tehran will not agree to dismantle its short and medium-range ballistic missiles, which it sees as vital to its security in a hostile region.

Moreover, capping Iran’s ballistic missile development to small, very short-range systems is not essential for a comprehensive final deal. Strict monitoring and verification of Iran’s nuclear program would provide enough transparency and the confidence that Tehran is not pursing nuclear weapons, as well as the ability to detect a change in its behavior.

Of course, to get Iran to agree to any of these limitations, Congress must be prepared to pass legislation to lift proliferation-related sanctions and accept a civil Iranian nuclear program, which includes uranium enrichment. If Iran is not convinced that Washington is ready to take this step, a deal is highly unlikely.

Reaching a final deal with Iran will not be easy. Members of Congress should give our diplomats the best chance to negotiate a verifiable nuclear agreement with Iran by avoiding sabotage through unreasonable demands on centrifuge numbers and breakout timelines, which compromise only part of the issues at hand. A comprehensive deal remains the best chance to guard against an unrestrained and unmonitored Iranian nuclear program, but it must include enough reasons for Iran to agree to it.

– Kelsey Davenport is the Nonproliferation Analyst for the Arms Control Association. She focuses primarily on developments related to the nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea and nuclear security issues.