For more than four decades, Iran has had an ongoing romance with the bomb, but it has not obtained a nuclear weapon. It should be made clear that Iran has not managed to develop a nuclear bomb not because it wasn’t up to the technology. On the contrary, Iran, like North Korea, could have handily dealt with the technological challenge. It was just a few months away from its first nuclear bomb on the eve of signing the nuclear agreement with the world powers in 2015. [...]
Iran doesn’t have the bomb because it never decided that it is a national necessity. The widespread Israeli belief that Iran is determined to go nuclear reflects the politics of fear that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has developed into an art form, but is not based on reality. In fact, Iran’s ongoing battle with a number of countries on the nuclear issue hasn’t been a battle over the atom bomb itself but rather over how close it would be able to come to the “option” to develop a bomb. Iran itself has never publicly addressed the right to develop a nuclear weapon, instead making reference to its right to enrich uranium as a non-nuclear country and signatory of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. [...]
Trump’s decision is more damaging to the agreement than meets the eye. The U.S. president has the ability to establish a sanctions regime – including sanctions against entities that trade with Iran – to such an extent that it could bring about the collapse of the deal even absent the withdrawal of the other world powers. Trump is even prepared to do damage to the foundations of the transatlantic alliance, which has been the basis of the world order since the end of World War II, just to prevail over his European allies and force them to also abandon the agreement. He is easily prepared to destroy what exists without proposing a positive alternative, other than a vague aggressive assurance that he has the capacity to bring Iran to its knees and to achieve a better deal. [...]
But it’s important for Israelis to understand that the alliance with Trump and his administration is likely to be shown as unreliable in short order. It should be remembered that there has not been a single president in the history of the United States whose public standing has been so fragile. Trump could find himself in a battle for his own survival within months in the face of attempts to remove him from office.
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