Today, it was reported that the Iranian nuclear deal will probably not happen.
“It is good news and bad news at the same time,” Dr Mordechai Kedar tells Israel National News. “The good news is that Iran will not get the international approval for their nuclear aspirations. And Iran might suffer sanctions for a long time.”
Kedar, who is a researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA) and the Vice President of Newsrael, explains that the positive aspect is that the Americans are not returning to the agreement but the bad aspect is that Iran now has no constraints and has permission to do whatever it wants.
While that statement may sound like Kedar is in favor of an agreement, the exact opposite is true. He comments that any agreement is worthless because Iran does whatever it wants.
“Iran did whatever they liked and Israel proved it by stealing the archives of the nuclear program and by showing to the whole world how they were lying, they did whatever they liked,” he says.
If there’s no deal, what does he think the world’s responsibility is in terms of Iran?
Kedar believes that the only thing the Iranians understand is a “credible threat.”
“I have a lot of evidence that only a credible threat will change their behavior,” he says. “The world, meaning the civilized world and in particular Joe Biden, should send them a message. ‘Dear Iranians, we know what you are and we know how you lied to use throughout the years and you have exactly one week to dismantle all the facilities and here are all the names of the facilities which are connected to the nuclear program. You have to dismantle everything, ship everything to use and you have exactly a week to accomplish the whole thing. If you fail to do it within one week, we are going to flatten you.’”
Kedar explains that this kind of threat “is the only thing which will be taken seriously by the Iranians.”
But he believes that an Iran deal might have have been signed if not for the Ukraine war, which tied Iran in with Russia.
“Joe Biden today tends to think about the world in terms of good and bad. If you are one of the good guys, you are with us. If you are one of the bad guys, like Putin because of what he is doing in Ukraine... this means Biden was pushed to this mindset by the war in Ukraine, to believe and understand that the world is divided between the bad guys, Putin and his friends, the Chinese and the Iranians, and the good guys with the Americans, the British, the French and the democracies in the world.”
Looking at the world from a good versus evil viewpoint makes it easier to see the Iranian regime in a realistic manner, Kedar says.
“To wake up from the dreams about the ability to tame Iran, about the ability to appease all these things which defined the Obama era, and when it came to the Iranians and this actually is what stood out psychologically behind the JCPOA (Iran nuclear deal), the thinking or the belief that if you just give them a good deal they will become responsible, the good guys. Now the war in Ukraine pushed the Biden administration today to realize the world actually is divided between the good guys and the bad guys.”