by Andrew Day at The American Conservative
President Donald Trump’s efforts to get a nuclear deal with Iran have met a formidable obstacle: the Israel lobby.
Pro-Israel think tanks, lobbying groups, and analysts are urging Trump to ramp up sanctions on Tehran, make unreasonable demands, and issue more threats of war, rather than secure a landmark accord. They have also sought to delegitimize Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, who met with Iran’s foreign minister on Saturday to lay the groundwork for substantive negotiations. Witkoff, a trusted friend of the president, appears to have succeeded, with more talks scheduled for this weekend.
As the Israel lobby seeks to undermine the Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts, some Iran doves and MAGA conservatives have urged the president to pursue American, not Israeli, interests. This line of argument is compelling, but in the case of Iran negotiations, it overlooks an important consideration: A U.S. agreement with Tehran would serve Israel’s interests too.
Last Saturday, I laid out the basic reasons why in a post on X: “A deal would rein in Iran’s nuclear program, sideline its hardliners, stabilize the region, and avert a war that many Americans would blame on Israel.”
The same reasons also applied back in July 2015, when President Barack Obama struck the original Iran nuclear deal over strong objections from pro-Israel voices in America as well as the Israeli government itself. The lobbying group AIPAC burned tens of millions of dollars on a campaign to block that agreement, and in March 2015, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with astonishing chutzpah, gave an address to Congress opposing the U.S. president’s diplomacy. “That deal will not prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu declared.
A few months later,…
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