What Mr Graham and his colleagues should be most concerned about is that this ill-starred foray into the Middle East has ended up leaving the Iranian regime stronger than it was before the war, and more threatening than it was under Mr Obama’s nuclear deal, which Mr Trump tore up in one of his fits of childish pique.
The problem now is that Mr Trump has endowed Iran with a far more useful option than any nuclear device: the effective weaponisation of the Strait of Hormuz. This is a weapon of mass economic destruction of unique power. It was given satisfactory proof of use during the conflict, when not even US armed forces and a naval counter-blockade could prevent an enfeebled Tehran from taking the world economy hostage.
Whatever piece of paper the Americans and Iranians eventually sign, the ayatollahs and the Revolutionary Guards will always have that potential for blackmail easily at their command. And that is why America has lost this war.
Accusing Netanyahu of leading Israel to a “diplomatic disaster much worse than Obama’s agreement” with Tehran in 2015, Liberman told reporters ahead of his weekly faction meeting in the Knesset that Israel “must inform the US that we do not accept any linkage, any connection, between the Iranian arena and the Lebanese arena.”
An Israeli who had been briefed on the deal with Iran, and who requested anonymity to discuss diplomacy, listed Israel’s main problems with the proposal:
- There are no clear answers regarding the treatment of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, and not enough curbs on Iran’s nuclear program, with the deal appearing to rely on Iranian good will.
- Instead of creating the conditions for the collapse of the Iranian government, the deal would allow funds to start flowing back into its coffers.
- The deal lays out no clear mechanism for forcing Iran to halt its support for its proxy forces. But it would mean the suspension of Israel’s campaign against Hezbollah, the militant group it is fighting in Lebanon.