Netanyahu’s desperation could prompt him to sabotage the Vienna talks to restore the Iran nuclear deal

Benjamin Netanyahu is desperate. His first corruption trial has already started; he’s struggling to form a government that might keep him out of jail; even observers who recognize his past ability to squirm out of trouble think he may finally have come to the end of the line. 

As the talks continue in Vienna to restore the Iran nuclear deal, Netanyahu’s desperation could prompt him to extreme measures to try and sabotage the agreement — but, yet again, the U.S. mainstream media is ignoring the Israel angle. 

Here’s the latest: On April 6, Israel attacked an Iranian ship in the Red Sea with a limpet mine, in a move that Haaretz, the Israeli daily, said “looks like a deliberate escalation on Israel’s part.” Haaretz’s respected military correspondent, Amos Harel, reported that the target was an Iranian military spy vessel, a step up from the previous “dozens of attacks on Iranian ships in the area [that] have been attributed to Israel.” (The earlier allegedly Israeli attacks were partly aimed at “oil smuggling” — which is another way of saying “Iran’s efforts to export its own oil production despite the Trump administration’s harsh sanctions.”)

Haaretz also noted disapprovingly that Netanyahu had turned his speech at Holocaust Remembrance Day on April 8 into “a self-serving political tirade.” Instead of the “somberness, solemnity, humility, grace, historical perspective and valuable insight” you should expect, the prime minister took the occasion to warn Joe Biden that Israel would not respect a renewed Iran deal. Israeli observers have also noted that as Netanyahu’s desperation has grown in recent weeks he has increased his attacks on Israel’s democratic system and independent judiciary, sounding not unlike Donald Trump in the November 3-January 20 period. Alon Pinkas, a Haaretz writer, charges that Netanyahu

is driving and impelling Israeli democracy to commit spectacular suicide in broad daylight. Netanyahu. . . has become an affliction on Israeli democracy.

Very little of Netanyahu’s panic, and its potential impact on the Iran deal, have made it into the New York Times. Steven Erlanger, the paper’s Chief Diplomatic Correspondent for Europe, on April 5 published “The Iran Nuclear Talks Explained” — and he only mentioned Israel twice, in passing. Nowhere did he remind Times readers that in March 2015, after the Obama administration had first reached the Iran nuclear agreement, Netanyahu flew to Washington and addressed a joint session of Congress behind Obama’s back to try and sabotage the deal. Nor did Erlanger think it important enough to contact the Israel lobby today, and ask if they planned to repeat their vigorous efforts to stop the agreement this time around. 

On the plus side, a key mouthpiece for one segment of the lobby, the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is frightened that the Iran deal will be restored. As the Vienna talks got underway the other day, Mark Dubowitz, the FDD’s CEO, tweeted out gloomily:

The theatrics are boring. This will take a little longer than expected but the Biden administration’s capitulation is on its way.