Consolation Prizes

"Hezbollah is sponsored of course by Iran, which is why the United States will continue to help Israel counter Iranian malign influence in the region."
U.S. Defence Secretary Ashton Carter at Hussein Lookout, Israel

From left, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) 91st Division Commander Moni Katz, Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon, US Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Deputy Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Yair Golan pause as they walk from viewing Hula Valley at the Hussein Lookout, near Kiryat Shmona, Israel, Monday, July 20, 2015, in northern Israel along the border with Lebanon. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, Pool)

"We greatly disagree when it comes to the agreement with Iran and fear for the future in the aftermath of its signing."
"Yet we discuss this issue in a fully open manner, alongside many other issues of great importance."
Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Ya'alon, Tel Aviv

"Friends can disagree about whether it [the Iran deal] will work. And we will be watching Iran very closely to see. But there's no disagreement about the ultimate objective. We cannot let Iran have nuclear weapons."
"And there's no disagreement about the threats Israel sees every day from Iran's destabilizing activities, from terrorists like Hezbollah and Hamas and [the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant group]."
U.S. Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, Tel Aviv

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon (right) meets with US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter (left) at the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv, on July 20, 2015. (Matty Stern/US Embassy Tel Aviv)

Conciliatory now, after defensiveness and deliberate obtuseness over Israel's legitimate concerns with its very existence threatened by a malign power seeking regional conquest and Israel's destruction that is now effectively a nuclear-threshhold state, with the blessing of the United Nations Security Council in the wake of a preliminary agreement thrashed out between Britain, France, United States, China, Russia and Germany. Oh, and of course the ever-obliging, cunning Republic of Iran.

No other country has the skills to haggle successfully with other than Iran, though at one time it was assumed that Greece had the market covered on that cultural advantage. Iran knows how to smile and check-mate, deny and convince, obfuscate and endure, all the while permitting no agency other than its own to drive its agenda. So that 'agreement' that was finally reached saw the world powers clambering down from all of their final and non-negotiable stances.

While Iran craftily guided the process, urging diplomacy onward to ever greater heights of capitulation to its honourable needs and succeeding finally in 'reluctantly' approving a mutually-agreed-upon agenda that secures for it all the methods, equipment and expertise and avails it requires to reach its indomitable goals under the aegis of Allah whose will they pursue.

Mr. Carter's personal assurances that Israel needn't be overly concerned over the fact that a financially resurgent Islamic Republic of Iran will now have the wherewithal to fulsomely fund the terrorist groups that act as proxy militias at Iran's command, will, with little doubt amuse Israel's enemies and do nothing to calm Israeli apprehensions, and with good reason. Even with the promise of endowing Israel with the new U.S. F-35 warplane.

The brief and tenuous collaboration between Saudi Arabia and Israel in the hope that they could together persuade the U.S. administration that the deal President Obama lauded as fruitful and the only solution under the circumstances, is now effectively sundered, as Saudi Arabia has resurrected its one-time alliance with Hamas in the hope it can persuade it to quit its ideologically-funded ties with Iran.

The much-hailed 'limits' on Iran's nuclear aspirations as an exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic are illusory; their impact will have a very short restraining effect and in view of the fact that Iran had demonstrated amply in the past that it has the capability of overriding any illusion of an outside agency determining its trajectory on the nuclear file, nothing has been achieved.

 Other than to free Iran to further its manifold plans; destabilizing further the Arab nations in the geography, charging its terrorist militias toward international atrocities, finding black market sources for the materials and expertise it seeks in achieving its nuclear end-game, and enlarging its threat credibility with the acquisition of nuclear warheads to match its more powerful ballistic missile arsenal for regional control through fear and intimidation.