I don't have a positive word to say about this whole outline. But it seems to me that the one-dimensional view that we are exposed to in Israel misses one small question –
What was the alternative to the agreement?
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An Israeli attack would not have achieved a better result. That is no longer in dispute. Ask those who supported it, ask those who opposed it. The concept was based on the desire that an Israeli attack would drag the US into war with Iran. It was clear to everyone that an Israeli attack alone could not achieve a result that was worth the risk.
It would not have created the delay that the Lausanne agreement was supposed to create, only with much more risk, mainly from hundreds and thousands of Hezbollah missiles that would have changed the reality as we know it.
Netanyahu was certain that he, as an expert on America, was convinced that Obama would not be able to stand by while Hezbollah, due to Iranian orders, launched missiles at Israel in response to an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.
He may have been right, he may not have been, he certainly didn't convince himself, because the fact is that he didn't attack.
The best alternative, of course, would have been a real American attack. The US has the ability to create a much more significant delay, even to force regime change, but, what can you do, that wasn't in the cards at all.
The US was not willing to really consider it - except for empty talk.
This president came to power on the basis of opposing the war in Iraq. Even before he was even elected as a senator, he spoke out against the war in Iraq, from the gut, as much as Obama speaks from the gut.
President Obama would not lead an attack on Iran, certainly not after what the US paid in blood and money in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The other alternative was to continue the status quo. Sanctions, international isolation, secret war. It turned out that this outline did not prevent the Iranian nuclear program.
In fact, under this outline, Iran has reached 20,000 centrifuges (the agreement is supposed to leave it with 6,000), some of them of a particularly modern generation, capable of producing its first bomb within a few months.
In other words, Iran has been much closer to a bomb in the last year or two than it will be after the agreement.
If it wanted to break through and get the first bomb, it could have done so already, but it turns out that even the mullahs knew how to do their international calculations and avoid that.
Maybe this is an indication that they will not rush to violate the agreement and launch a bomb, when the entire international community has signed this agreement?
Okay, bad deal, the Iranians are cheating – this is not cynical, they earned our suspicion honestly, they stand behind the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah, Hamas and everything that is bad in the Middle East. That's true.
But what about the possibility that they will actually take advantage of this agreement to make a small reversal in their policy?
Let's remember that we belittled Rouhani and Zarif, claimed they violated the interim agreement (by all indications, they did not), and firmly determined that the sanctions regime would collapse (it did not collapse). Perhaps this agreement will provide fuel for the moderates in the Iranian regime, allowing them to gain a little more power against the mullahs and extremists.
Of course, Israel is forbidden from providing a forecast that is a milligram less than the darkest and most difficult scenario, but maybe this bad agreement is the worst in the minority.
