May 14, 2018 — Jerusalem, Israel
By Eran Lerman
The dramatic decision by President Trump to "nix" the JCPOA, and its immediate aftermath, seem to confirm the worst suspicions that Americans and Israelis, on one hand, and Western Europeans, on the other, tend to harbor about each other. For many Israelis and quite a few Americans, little has changed since the bad old days of Munich in 1938: eager to appease evil, European leaders are busy reassuring Tehran that the JCPOA can and should be kept alive, oblivious to Iran's lies, subversion, and exterminatory intent towards Israel, and focused instead upon short-term financial gain. Across the Atlantic, all too many Europeans – in high office or in public discourse – suspect, indeed fear, that Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu are reckless warmongers who will not rest until the entire region is dragged into a bloody conflagration, and have now ditched a highly beneficial agreement without formulating any coherent alternative.
A closer look reveals a more nuanced reality, although Trump has repeatedly made clear that in both style and substance nuance is not his forte. Prior to his declaration on May 8, Trump was in fact engaged with the three European partners led by the 3M: Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, and Theresa May – in a strategic conversation that seemed to be narrowing the transatlantic gap on the JCPOA.
Moreover, the emerging European position did seem to offer a commitment to solve the main problems Israel has identified as vital, and which had been at the core of the prime minister's message back in 2015: Iran's ballistic missile program; the IRGC’s subversive and terrorist activities; and above all, the "sunset clauses" that lift almost all limits on uranium enrichment by the middle of next decade. In his recent speech in Congress, Macron spoke of four pillars – these three, alongside the preservation of the JCPOA; and a few days later, it seemed as if all 3Ms were reading from the same script.
Theoretically, Trump could have chosen this moment to reinstate the waiver for a limited period, giving the Europeans more time to put the package together in detail, and then coerce the Iranians into accepting it. But his instinct was, apparently, that this would amount to setting foot on a slippery slope. Iran would gain the impression that the U.S. was fearful. The Europeans would start "slip slidin' away," as Paul Simon would have put it, and the moment of decision would be gone.
His lesson from the Korean episode (so far!) was that negotiations should be held with the U.S. in possession of the best possible range of options, including raw threats ("if Iran threatens us… they will be hit as few nations have been hit before," conjuring up harrowing sights from Hamburg, Haiphong—and Hiroshima). Better to opt out altogether than to be tied down to a common strategy or fall prey to former Secretary of State John Kerry's manipulative intervention on behalf of the existing agreement.
This leaves the frustrated and somewhat bewildered Europeans in a delicate but possibly useful position. They were put in an unappealing light in the eyes of their own constituencies – first trying to befriend the undiplomatic American brute and then being kicked in the face by him. They are committed to the intrinsic value of the JCPOA, which their governments helped negotiate. They instinctively fear any set of options that may lead to armed conflict if all else fails.
Yet at the end of the day, they are also well aware of the danger Iran poses – and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, side by side with Israel, have been busy sending the message (backed, in the case of the UAE at least, by lucrative economic transactions). They are as adamant – Macron certainly took a firm stand – about the need to prevent Tehran from turning Syria into a subject state. All three, in their own way, are committed to Israel's survival. It is both misguided and harmful to simply dismiss them as a bunch of spineless supplicants at the Ayatollahs' gates.
A better way to conceptualize what has just happened is to use an old image from the playbook of police questioning: Trump as the "bad cop" coming close to the point of a violent eruption and smashing the furniture; Europe as the "good cop" offering the terrified Iranian suspect a glass of water and a way out: "give us something" so we can shut him up. The immediate purpose is – and indeed, should be, from an Israeli point of view as well – to dissuade the leadership in Tehran from abandoning the JCPOA altogether and embarking on a crash effort to enrich uranium and dash to within sight of the bomb.
Beyond that, it would fall to Europe to try and solicit an Iranian offer on the three other pillars of Macron's speech – missiles, subversion, the sunset clauses. This is not going to be easy. Iran's initial reactions, even prior to Trump's announcement, were utterly and unequivocally negative: after all, for Iran, the "sunset clauses" are the very reason they welcomed the JCPOA in the first place. Paradoxically, if Macron's four-pillars is to have any chance, it will be because of the leverage now generated by Trump's brutal behavior (which would soon be complemented by equally brutal sanctions and the reinstatement of draconic secondary restrictions on any entity doing business with Iran). "Help us help you" may be an old trick, but it has been known to work, particularly under serious duress.
Where does this put Israel? To judge by the rhetoric of many of its leaders – particularly against the background of the Embassy move (and the shameful absence of key European diplomats from the ceremony) – Trump is The Man, and Europe has once again written itself out of the game. If Americans are from Mars, as a famous essay once claimed, Israelis are all the more so. And yet some voices within the Israeli establishment and the mainstream political spectrum have argued that the European position has been evolving in the right direction, and a way should be found to sustain the momentum.
This nuanced position is indeed enhanced by the remarkably positive European reactions to Israel's firm (and deliberately disproportionate) military reaction to the IRGC provocations on the Golan border. Europeans who understand Israel's need to defend herself and are all too aware of Saudi Arabia's anger at having her citizens under Iranian missile fire, should not be shunned. They should be engaged in a serious conversation about the common ultimate goal – blocking Iran's path to a nuclear weapon – and the various ways to get there.
In the present afterglow of Netta Barzilai's amazing win at the Eurovision song contest – placing the coming round "next year in Jerusalem" – perhaps Israelis will be more open to a multilayered dialog with the key European players. Even if not, organizations with long and useful experience in such engagements, with AJC quite prominent among them, should play their own role in adding nuance and color to the present black-and-white (and often bleak) debate.
Eran Lerman is the former deputy for foreign policy and international affairs at the National Security Council in the Israeli Prime Minister's Office. Prior to that, he served as director of AJC Jerusalem.
