Ex-Intel Chief: Iran Deal Good for Israel

[DonViejo]

Jonathan Alter

Yes, it’s true: If Obama can toughen the penalties for cheating and pivot to confronting Iran’s support for terrorism, he will enhance Israel's security.

-snip-

I spoke recently with Ami Ayalon, a former head of Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service, and a former chief of the Israeli Navy. Even as he explained that the issue "is not black and white," he reeled off a list of former defense ministers and chiefs of Shin Bet and Mossad who agree with him that, "when it comes to Iran's nuclear capability, this [deal] is the best option."

"When negotiations began, Iran was two months away from acquiring enough material for a [nuclear] bomb. Now it will be 12 months," Ayalon says, and the difference is significant to anyone with a background in intelligence. "Israelis are failing to distinguish between reducing Iran's nuclear capability and Iran being the biggest devil in the Middle East," he says.

Why has the response been more emotional than logical? "It's very easy to play with fears in a fearful society,” he says.

For a country that usually has a sure sense of its own security interests, Israel can be strangely obtuse about the true existential threats it faces. Many Israelis and American Jews resent Jimmy Carter for his strong views opposing the occupation of Palestinian territories and his use of the word "apartheid" to describe the situation there. They rarely recognize that by engineering the Camp David Accords, Carter removed the existential threat posed by the Egyptian army, the only force capable of driving Israel into the sea.

Now they dislike President Obama for striking a deal that, at a minimum, delays Iran's ability to destroy Israel with a nuclear bomb.

Ayalon and several of the other Israeli war heroes who appeared in The Gatekeepers, an acclaimed 2012 documentary about Shin Bet, endorse Obama’s best argument for the agreement -- that the alternative is much worse.

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/21/ex-intel-chief-iran-deal-good-for-israel.html

[NightWatcher]

1. This deal is bad for Bibi and anyone else who wants to start war against Iran

So unless you make your money off of war, this is a good deal for you.

Bibi is some type of demon who wants us to be pulled into a war that he cannot win (nor could we, I'm afraid).

[annabanana]

2. I wish this vital info could PUSH INTO

the national discourse.

BiBi and his war party are NOT the whole of Israel.

see here:


https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/blog/jewish-peace-advocates-support-iran-nuclear-deal