“They should have launched a major campaign, they could have changed the Biden administration’s stance,” argues Ron Dermer.
Ron DermerReuters
Ron Dermer, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, has sharply attacked both Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, for failing to take effective action against the emerging Iran nuclear deal.
Dermer served as Israeli ambassador in Washington for seven years and was considered highly influential. His latest comments were made on a podcast for JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, of which he is a senior fellow. In his speech, he excoriated Israel’s leaders for not exerting influence over the Biden administration in its stance toward Iran and preventing a deal seen as favorable to Iran from being signed, Israel Hayom reports.
According to Dermer, Bennett and Lapid could have recruited Arab leaders to their side of the argument, which would have increased the likelihood that the United States administration would pay attention to their concerns.
“Bennett and Lapid published a joint announcement on the issue, but Israel has not made this [Iran] a central issue and has not launched a campaign,” Dermer said. “As someone who served in Washington, I can tell you that there are ways of doing this. I would have given dozens of interviews, held meetings with Congressmen, and made sure they were broadcast on social media, television, all the main channels such as CNN, MSNBC, NPR… all the channels that the Democrats listen to.
“They should also have held meetings with Arab leaders,” Dermer continued. “They held that Negev Summit, but they should have held a joint interview with an Arab foreign minister on the topic of Iran. Democrats across the country and on Capitol Hill would have watched such an interview. That’s how a campaign should be conducted.”
Dermer also stressed that the current composition of the coalition, including elements from the extreme-left to the right, presents an unique opportunity for Israel to present its views as representative of Israel as a whole rather than solely the opinions of one part of the political spectrum. He added that in 2015 when the original nuclear deal was signed, then-President Barack Obama presented the deal as favorable to Israel, a claim that the current U.S. adminstration is not even attempting to make, something that Israel should be highlighting.
“Israel has been virtually silent on the Iran issue,” Dermer said. “If the government had been pointing out the dangers inherent in the deal, over and over again, this would have led to more and more Congressional members from both parties opposing it. Furthermore, if we had pushed our Arab partners to express themselves in opposition to the deal, this would have conveyed a critical message and led the administration to conclude that ‘it’s not worth it.'”
According to senior Israeli analysts, the new nuclear deal with Iran is basically ready and is just waiting for Iran’s final response for all parties to sign.
Of course, Dermer is quite correct. As Bibi previously noted in an interview, Ben Gurion had no idea of how to motivate the friendship between the US and Israel to support Israel’s cause and defense. With the empowerment of this radical Leftist-Arab govt, the clock turned back to those days when BG was left apoplecticly dealing with stone-faced American diplomats who could only be influence by appealing to the American voters who could bring a political threat to bear. Bibi understood this lever of support and came to demonstrate its use to greatly support the will of the American public and the defense of Israel, and was seen as a great threat to Israel’s enemies. The wisdom of Bibi’s policy was seen to allow no cover of silence under which vulnerable politicians might find comfort in supporting the radical Israel policies of their radical party while Bibi was on American television daily extolling the obvious threat poised by bad policies.
Bennett was always capable of making an argument and carrying Israel’s case before the American people, but to do so he needed to challenge the American overlords of his Leftist ally Lapid. This was, of course, among the many Leftist concessions he struck in pursuing his rise to power. Hence, his decision to cut the Faustian bargain of supporting Lapid’s Leftist policy of obscuring the increasing daylight between Israel and the US simply came to strengthen Israel’s enemies with only Israel’s impotent requests in the balance, an impotence that was the price of Bennett’s premiership. Hence, the very crime he accused Bibi of commiting, partisan politics for political gain, was at the root of this sharp betrayal of Israel’s interests.
It was never a point of disrespect that drew Bibi to let the daylight pursued by the US to be exposed for all to see. It was always his intent to let that daylight speak for itself as it stood quite apart from the views and dispositions of the American public, who have always been Israel’s true ally, something that the Bennett/Lapid bargain purposefully left untapped to appease and benefit their US Leftist partners.
Shame on Bennett! Your many betrayals will have a lasting impact.