Doesn’t the
Lausanne deal pave the way for a nightmarish not-so-distant future in which
Iran is nuclear, the Middle East is nuclear and the world order collapses?
By Ari Shavit
Barack Obama is a sophisticated
interviewee; the U.S. president knows how to hide his argument’s weak points
behind cool curtains of clear, insightful and ostensibly well-balanced words.
But my dear friend and distinguished colleague Tom Friedman is an excellent interviewer.
Instead of being confrontational and petty, he knows how to wrench far-reaching
statements out of his subject.
That’s the
origin of a historic scoop that surprisingly seems to have escaped the
attention of the U.S. media. “Iran will not get a nuclear weapon on my watch,”
the president told his
country’s most important journalist; The New York Times also
included a video of the interview. I repeat, Obama told Friedman: “Iran will
not get a nuclear weapon on my watch.”
Since the
Lausanne deal was announced a week ago, it has provoked innumerable worrisome
questions. Why is there no similarity between the Farsi and English versions of
the text? Why do the Iranians insist that the sanctions will be lifted
immediately and that they will be able to continue enriching uranium in high
quantities and developing advanced centrifuges without restrictions?
Why, even
according to the American version, will the Iranians be able to keep an
underground nuclear facility at Fordo and a nuclear reactor at Arak? Why, even
according to the American version, is it not clear whether the fissionable
material (approximately 10 tons) will be leaving Iran and whether international
inspectors will have free access to every site in the country?
And what’s
supposed to happen 10 years from now? Don’t we want to live after 2025? Doesn’t
the Lausanne deal pave the way for a nightmarish not-so-distant future in which
Iran is nuclear, the Middle East is nuclear and the world order collapses?
The 15 words
that Obama said to Friedman turn the question marks into exclamation marks. And
they were uttered in his own voice as the camera whirled: “I’ve been very clear
that Iran will not get a nuclear weapon on my watch.” In other words, the man
leading a hair-raising historic adventure says he’s committing that Iran will
not become nuclear before January 20, 2017.
It’s not the
21st century that the president is trying to save. It’s not the next 21 years
that the president is promising to stabilize. All Obama is promising is that in
the next 21 months Iran will not produce or assemble its first nuclear bomb.
What are
Israelis supposed to do with such a short-term commitment by the president? And
what are the Saudis, Egyptians, Turks, Jordanians and Emiratis supposed to
think? And responsible Europeans? And far-sighted Americans?
The
Obama-Friedman interview doesn’t set off one alarm bell, it sets off a
thousand. And when we add all the fateful questions
about the Lausanne agreement, we get a strong feeling that something very dire
is happening right before our eyes. We begin to suspect that the Obama-Khamenei
agreement will not prevent Iran from going nuclear, but will only postpone the
achievement by a few years.
The next 80
days are critical. History is watching us all closely. Where did we stand, what
did we say and what did we do when the most important decision of our time was
made? There will be no forgiveness for our mistakes. There will be no pardon
for weakness, apathy or pettiness. The ordinary politics of left versus right
is no longer relevant, nor is the love for Obama and hatred of Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, or vice versa.
This is a
time of trouble for Jacob — a time of trouble for every Israeli, Arab, European
and American who favors stability and sanity. In the balance is the world in
which our children will live or die.
***
