Kerry to Israelis: Stop the ‘Hysteria’ over Iran Deal

TEL AVIV, Israel — Secretary of State John Kerry appeared on Israeli television over the weekend, telling seven-million-plus Israelis that critics of the emerging Iran deal were guilty of “hysteria.”

Israel, which sits a short missile flight away from potentially nuclear-armed Iranian warheads, and which has seen Iranian soldiers along its borders with Syria and Lebanon, has loudly protested the negotiations that the Obama administration has pursued with the Iranian regime.

Sources in Israel told Breitbart News privately, and bluntly, that based on the current U.S.-led negotiations with Iran, they expect Iran to develop a nuclear bomb. While some Israeli experts believe that Israel can develop military deterrents to an Iranian attack, others are concerned that an Iranian nuclear weapon would provide the regime with the additional impetus to take risks elsewhere. Already, Iranian soldiers and proxies have intervened in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Gaza.

Still, Kerry promised that the Iran deal would protect Israel: “We will not sign a deal that does not close off Iran’s pathways to a bomb and that doesn’t give us the confidence–to all of our experts, in fact to global experts–that we will be able to know what Iran is doing and prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon,” he said, as transcribed by the Times of Israel.

Reports emerged late last week that Arab states, which are also nervous about a nuclear Iran, are insisting on U.S. protection if the deal goes through. That protection could amount to defense treaties, meaning the U.S. would effectively be pledging to go to war on behalf of Arab states against Iran in the future, in order to avoid having to go to war against Iran today.

Some of the weapons reportedly demanded by Arab states, including the new F-35 joint strike fighter, would end Israel’s technological advantage–traditionally a core principle of U.S. foreign policy regarding regional arms sales.