Parts of the intelligence and defense establishment view no deal as much worse than even a bad deal.
The absence of an Iran nuclear deal could spell more imminent nuclear danger for Israel and its allies, intelligence sources have indicated to The Jerusalem Post, although both the government of Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett have opposed the Iran deal.
Parts of the intelligence and defense establishment view no deal as much worse than even a bad deal.
The rationale from these sources is that Iran could jump to 90% weaponized uranium in a matter of weeks.
In addition, when adding up all the different levels of enrichment Iran has accumulated, it could break out to not only one nuclear bomb but in some estimates as many as four nuclear bombs.
ADVERTISING
True, Iran has not yet mastered a number of weaponization issues relating to detonating and delivering a nuclear bomb.
However, members of the intelligence and defense establishment who are in favor of a bad deal as opposed to a no-deal scenario say no deal might embolden Iran to try to master those skills, even at the risk of a potential attack by Israel or the US.
In contrast, if there is a nuclear deal with all of its warts, these sources say that Iran has a clear record of putting off the issue of weaponization in order to avoid the risk of an Israeli or US attack.
When faced with criticism that the new emerging nuclear deal would not delay Iran’s nuclear weapons program by 15 years as it did in 2015, but possibly only by two and a half years, these officials say that any amount of time that can be bought to delay the Islamic Republic from jumping forward should be taken advantage of.
There is also a belief by most of these officials that the ayatollahs would never actually use a nuclear weapon but they merely want to acquire it in order to strengthen their ability to achieve regional hegemony.
Some sources provocatively even suggest that the West did not do enough to relieve sanctions on Iran during the 2015 to 2017 period of the Obama administration.
In their alternative narrative, Iran is a bad actor but it can be encouraged by a mix of positive and negative incentives to indefinitely delay crossing the nuclear threshold.
This formula has kept Tehran at bay for around 25 years, they say. Not that this group is into naïve pacifism. They would approve of hits such as the one against a senior IRGC official, attributed to Israel this week. However, they wish to reap some benefit, however temporary, from US diplomacy and if diplomacy fails, they forecast much darker times than the government.