Netanyahu's Perpetual 'Concern' for Peace
When President Donald Trump voiced cautious optimism about renewed indirect discussions with Iran concerning its nuclear program, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promptly arrived in Washington with a different agenda. His stated goal: to expand any future negotiations beyond nuclear issues, insisting on including Iran's ballistic missile capabilities and its support for allied resistance
movements like Hezbollah. This push for an ever-wider scope of demands is a well-trodden path. It mirrors the exact strategy employed in the lead-up to the 2015 JCPOA, where similar attempts to incorporate non-nuclear issues were rejected by Iran. For over two decades, Israeli officials have consistently invoked the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon, a narrative that began with Ariel Sharon's
1999 claim of Iran being "less than five years" from a bomb, a timeline Netanyahu himself reiterated in 2012 at the UN General Assembly. Yet, the 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate, affirmed in 2011, concluded with "high confidence" that Iran had halted its weaponization program in 2003. The current framing of a 'deal' presented to the public conveniently ignores that Iran has been subjected
to over 45 years of crippling Western sanctions and daily threats to its sovereignty, including the 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup that overthrew its democratically elected government. The call for Iran to unilaterally disarm its defensive capabilities while receiving no security guarantees, from actors who routinely violate international law, exposes a profound double standard. The United States,