Israel at War: The Iran Nuclear Deal

How the Israeli prime minister attempted to stop Obama's nuclear deal with Iran.

On October 7, 2023, Palestinian militants led by Hamas launched an invasion against Israel from the Gaza Strip. It became the first direct conflict in Israel’s borders since 1948, and Israel’s first formal declaration of war since 1973. Worse still, it threatens to undermine the ongoing negotiations to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, both of whom are US allies. Peace in the Middle East has proven frustratingly elusive yet again. 

As these momentous events continue to unfold in the coming days, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is back in the headlines of American media. The US maintains a special relationship with Israel, and the instability of the region directly affects American foreign policy. Nowhere is this more evident than in the controversy over the Iran Nuclear Deal. Prime Minister Netanyahu is a determined opponent of Iran, which he regards as an aggressive totalitarian power seeking nuclear weapons. 

Despite being a foreign leader, Netanyahu played a pivotal role in the domestic politics of the US in 2015 surrounding the Iran Deal. The Israeli leader expressed his uncompromising opposition, and warned that any such deal with Iran would be tantamount to appeasement. 

“America’s founding document promises life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Netanyahu warned Congress. “Iran’s founding document pledges death, tyranny, and the pursuit of jihad.” 

Obama’s foreign policy

President Obama was outraged by Netanyahu’s opposition to his administration’s deal with Iran. The White House regarded the Israeli prime minister’s activism as almost an act of usurpation. It was perceived as a direct attack on Obama’s foreign policy legacy. 

Obama took great pains to extend the olive branch to the Islamic world. He sought to assure Muslims around the world that the United States respected the dignity and rights of all people, including the freedom of religion. 

The president struck back at Netanyahu’s cautionary rhetoric, insisting that a deal with Iran was the only way to prevent its pursuit of nuclear weapons short of war. Obama felt that the only way to monitor Iran’s nuclear weapons with any precision was through a formal agreement. 

The clash between Netanyahu and President Obama was public and bitter. Their relationship was very strained. 

Fighting terrorism

Netanyahu had a long history of fighting jihadist terrorism. In his early 20s, he had his first taste of military conflict. Palestinian terrorists, from a group called Black September, hijacked a plane bound for Israel. The world watched to see how Israel would react. 

Lieutenant Netanyahu was summoned as part of a special Israeli strike force. This would be the equivalent of an American Navy SEAL. 

Disguised in white overalls as mechanics, Netanyahu and the other Israelis managed to overtake the hijacked plane and eliminate the terrorists. It was a masterful success. In the days following the raid, Netanyahu received praise and recognition from the Israeli government. 

Education

Netanyahu received his education in the United States. Nicknamed Bibi, he and his two brothers, Yoni and Iddo, left Israel when he was aged 7. 

His right-wing father, a historian by trade, fled Israel as a voluntary political exile after being refused tenure at Hebrew University. Later in life, Netanyahu would inherit many of his father’s political opinions. He began to see the world as fundamentally hostile and dangerous, eternally plagued by a murderous anti-Semitism, which culminated with the Nazi Holocaust. 

Living in the United States, Bibi became very Americanized. He fell in love with American culture, language, and ideals. He attended elementary school in New York, and high school in suburban Philadelphia. Through this process, Bibi learned to speak flawless American English. 

War of 1967

In 1967, Jordan’s King Hussein signed an agreement with the other Arab states, which were all united in their hostility toward Israel. Thousands of tanks from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria amassed along Israeli borders. The head of the Palestine Liberation Army, Ahmed Shukri, incited a jihad to murder the Jews and wipe out Israel. 

In a surprise air attack, Israel managed to achieve a lightning victory against their Arab foes. Aircraft, infantry, artillery, and tank corps poured across the Sinai peninsula. In a mere matter of six days, Israel won. 

Israel’s victory was so sweeping and decisive, that it created seismic efforts on the region. Over a million Arabs were displaced, and forced to live in refugee camps. 

By the conclusion of this war, Israel now possessed the Golan Heights, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Sinai. It had more than tripled its territorial expanse. This occupation would bring Israel into sustained conflict with the Palestinian inhabitants of those lands. 

Netanyahu was a senior in high school at the time of the Six Day War. He skipped his graduation to fight in the trenches on behalf of his country. The 18-year-old Bibi witnessed a turning point in Israel’s history, and it dramatically shaped his political worldview. Netanyahu’s brother, Yoni, was killed in action. He wrote a book about it, called Letters of Yoni, which became one of the most widely read works of literature in Israel.  

Throughout the 1980s, Netanyahu made a career on TV promoting Israel’s cause. He cast the conflict with the Arabs as a war between good and evil. A determined opponent of Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organization, or PLO for short, Netanyahu argued that the creation of a Palestinian state would only facilitate more violence and aggression against Israel. A persuasive and charismatic speaker on Israel’s behalf, Netanyahu won appointment as an official spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington. 

Oslo Accords

Going into the 1990s, the Clinton administration worked to broker peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. 

In these negotiations, Israel was represented by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a military veteran of the Six Days War and a national hero. The Palestinians were represented by Yasser Arafat, the chairman of the PLO. 

The Oslo Accords were designed to establish a formal peace process. Under these terms, the Palestinians would receive their own state in exchange for recognizing Israel’s right to exist. 

It was a historic peace agreement. Optimism abounded. For the first time, the two sides expressed a willingness to recognize one another. Both leaders shook hands, as President Clinton encompassed the two men with his open arms. This became an iconic photo. The prospect for peace appeared very promising. 

But there were tensions on both sides. Back in Israel, Netanyahu emerged as a rising political star on account of his opposition to Oslo. He organized a coalition of supporters, drawn from ultra-religious voters and security-minded conservatives. Week after week, fierce protests broke out across the country. Israelis were deeply skeptical of Oslo, and they were unwilling to recognize the legitimacy of a terrorist organization. As leader of the conservative Likud Party, Netanyahu became the public face of the Israeli opposition to Oslo. Netanyahu and his supporters regarded Oslo as an unworkable agreement, and a flagrant Western betrayal. 

One Israeli extremist even assassinated Rabin. It immediately ruptured what appeared to be a very promising peace deal. Because of Rabin’s death, many Israelis turned against Netanyahu and his coalition. Peace rallies were held in Tel Aviv. 

Piece by piece, Oslo began to unravel at an alarming rate. On the Palestinian side, terrorist activity resumed. Hamas staged a bus bombing against Jerusalem. Over the course of nine days, 59 people were killed. Hundreds more were injured. The resurgence of Palestinian terrorism appeared to vindicate Netanyahu’s skepticism of the deal. Slowly, his political reputation was rehabilitated. 

Peace through strength

In the immediate aftermath of Oslo, Netanyahu was elected as Israel’s new prime minister. 

The new Israeli leader attempted to work through the peace process, although his critics accused him of being too slow. He pulled Israeli troops from the West Bank city of Hebron, and signed a treaty to further implement Oslo. 

President Clinton expressed impatience with Netanyahu. Meanwhile, Arafat had his own reservations, as did many Palestinians. Jerusalem’s fate was the most contentious issue. Angry Palestinians took the streets, launching an Intifada of violent protest. Many Palestinians were fed up by years of stalled negotiations. 

Netanyahu understood the Palestinian violence as a vindication of his skepticism. This view spread from Israel’s right-wing into the general society. He saw the peace process as an act of weakness, and resolved to get tough on terrorism. 

Obama Nation

On September 11, 2001, Islamic extremists struck the Twin Towers in New York. President Bush’s rhetoric resonated with Netanyahu’s view of the world. But this changed with the stratospheric rise of Obama in 2009. Obama had been a relatively unknown senator from Illinois. Many Israelis, including Netanyahu, viewed him with skepticism. 

Obama presented himself as a transformational president. He sought to radically redirect the War on Terror. In his inaugural address, the American president called for a new way forward with Muslims. He wanted to break from Bush’s blunder in Iraq, as well as the longer tradition of American estrangement from the Arabs. 

Obama’s first phone call was to Arafat’s successor, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. His first TV interview was with an Arab network. Obama explained how members of his family were Muslims, and how he had lived in Muslim countries. He sought to encourage Muslims around the world to cooperate with the United States. 

In his 20s, Obama had been a political activist in Chicago, not long after the city had elected its first mayor, a man named Harold Washington. Much of Obama’s approach to politics was inflected by the inclusive rhetoric of the Civil Rights movement. He prided himself on the unique ability to bring together disparate people in a common cause. The movement included an alliance between African-Americans and progressive Jews. Obama was elected to the White House with the vote of 70% of American Jews, who shared his confidence that a peaceful solution in Palestine was possible. 

Obama made conciliatory speeches in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. He gave a particularly noteworthy speech in Cairo. Obama’s tour skipped over Israel, and this was perceived negatively by the Israelis. When Netanyahu was again elected prime minister, Obama faced a challenge against his efforts to recalibrate Middle Eastern policy.  

Arab Spring

The division between Obama and Netanyahu was seen in the two leaders’ divergent approach to the Arab Spring. When a Tunisian named Mohammad Bouazizi lit himself on fire in protest against an oppressive government, democratic movements ignited across the Middle East. Within weeks, thousands of protests erupted in Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, and Egypt. 

For Obama, the Arab Spring posed a unique opportunity to remake the Middle East into a more democratic fashion. He watched with delight from his TV in the White House. 

In Egypt, hundreds of thousands gathered to protest President Hosni Mubarak. But Mubarak had been a traditional American ally. Although the president supported the Egyptian protestors, many Obama cabinet officials were very uneasy about turning against Mubarak. On phone calls, Obama demanded that Mubarak step down. But the Egyptian president was in denial, and he insisted that the protests would pass over. Obama repeated these demands publicly. 

The Israeli prime minister was appalled at Obama’s course of action in Egypt. He viewed the Arab Spring with much more skepticism than his American counterpart. To Netanyahu, these radical upheavals were a troublesome crisis that would end up favoring Islamic jihadists. He feared that the collapsed regimes of the Middle East would be replaced by Muslim extremists. He predicted the Muslim Brotherhood would seize power in Cairo within a couple of years. 

Ten days after Obama’s phone call, Mubarak resigned. The collapse of Egypt’s government sparked fear among America’s allies in the region. With Obama in the White House, America did not seem to be a reliable ally. But the White House continued to regard Egypt’s regime change as a positive development. For the first time, the president began to openly demand an end to Israeli occupation of the Green Line. 

Israel was horrified by Obama’s calls for a return to pre-1967 borders. Netanyahu immediately convened an emergency meeting. He was fuming with rage. He regarded Obama’s rhetoric as an embarrassment. The Israeli prime minister grew increasingly antagonistic against President Obama. At the Oval Office, he accused the Palestinians of having ties to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. 

Strike on Iran

Obama’s antagonism toward Netanyahu grew more public, and more embarrassing. The president’s popularity plummeted with the American electorate, as he faced re-election. 

Netanyahu seized the opportunity, and encouraged US voters to support an Israeli preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear capabilities. The Israeli leader requested that the US impose a red line on Iran, and sought American support should a war break out. 

The Obama White House was outraged. He doubled down on his commitment to negotiating with Iran. By the fall of 2012, the relationship between Obama and Netanyahu had deteriorated so much, that Obama did not even sit in the same room with the Israeli leader. 

Netanyahu took unprecedented steps by openly favoring Obama’s electoral rival, Republican candidate Mitt Romney. The prime minister’s Jewish supporters in America initiated a media campaign against the Iran nuclear deal. 

But Obama took wild steps of his own. His administration undertook secret negotiations with the Iranians in Oman. Meetings went on for months, but they were uncovered by Israeli intelligence. 

Netanyahu’s opposition to Obama’s Iran Nuclear Deal grew increasingly alarmed and vocal. He met face-to-face with State Secretary John Kerry at Ben Gurion Airport. “This is a very bad deal,” Netanyahu told the press emphatically. “And Israel utterly rejects it.” He unfavorably called it “the deal of the century for Iran” and “a very dangerous and bad deal for peace in the international community.”

In an emergency phone call from Air Force One, President Obama attempted to calm down Netanyahu. He sought to assure him that the deal would make Israel safer. But it didn’t work. Netanyahu felt that the Iranians would not back down without the use of military force. Anything less than intervention was seen as appeasement. 

The Deal

Faced with unrelenting opposition from Netanyahu, President Obama sought to persuade the American electorate of the merits of his Iran Deal. Obama argued that the deal would restrict Iran’s nuclear program by enabling international inspections in exchange for sanction relief. 

Obama’s approach to Iran was shaped by the apparent failure of the Iraq War. The president felt that military interventions in the Middle East had been misguided and costly. To Obama, the invasion of Iraq had been a hasty and ill-fated decision. Saddam did not have any weapons of mass destruction, and it only served to discredit the US in the eyes of the world. In the wake of this, Obama was eager to repair America’s standing, especially among Muslims internationally. Now, he was determined to find a diplomatic solution to Iran. 

It was March of 2015. Just as the Obama administration prepared to sign its controversial deal with Iran, Netanyahu flew into Washington. He gave a speech to the Republican-dominated Congress, hoping to make a last-ditch effort to kill Obama’s deal. “We must all stand together to stop Iran’s march of conquest, subjugation, and terror,” Netanyahu pleaded to his American audience. The Israeli prime minister received 26 standing ovations. Many Democrats boycotted the speech to express their solidarity with Obama. Without the Democrats, the Republicans alone were not able to stop the deal. 

Netanyahu’s crusade to stop the Iran Deal was a failure. In its aftermath, the Palestinians became increasingly unrestful. But Netanyahu’s audacious efforts left a lasting impression on the American public, President Obama, and US-Israel relations.

Learn More