Israeli Military: Iran Deal Could Ultimately Benefit Israel

Deal an 'Opportunity,' Likely to Restrain Iran

While Israel’s far-right government is angrily condemning the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran, Israel’s military intelligence corps is offering its own assessment, viewing the deal as largely positive, saying the only real “risk” is that it will make Iran a legitimate country.

That would make Israel’s constant threats to attack them, a cornerstone of their foreign policy for decades, tougher to sell. By contrast, the corps sees the deal as not only preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear arms, but likely to restrain Iran’s support for overt terrorist attacks.

This is the exact opposite of the assessment by the government itself, which is that the deal will mean Iran getting more aggressive in supporting regional terror groups by virtue of them having more money. Most of that money, however, is likely to go toward modernizing their economy after decades of embargoes.

To the extent that Iran picks up their foreign aid at all, it’s likely to be anti-ISIS centric, as they clearly view ISIS as a more serious near-term threat than Israel, doubly so since the P5+1 deal would make an Israeli attack ridiculously harmful for them diplomatically.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.