Netanyahu won the elections in Israel and therefore, it is essential to identify his possible scenario for Iran. Netanyahu is fascinated with the personality and politics of Winston Churchill and the study of his politics during the Second World War was the subject of his doctoral dissertation at Harvard University and has repeated Churchill's words in his speeches during World War II repeatedly. To interpret Netanyahu's thinking against Iran, the study of Churchill's policy in World War II, based on the absolute priority of bringing America into the war with Germany and Japan, could be enlightening. From the beginning of World War II, both as the First Lord of the Admiralty and later as the British Prime Minister, Churchill tried everything to get the United States into the war against Germany and Japan. The severity of his actions was such that when Joseph Kennedy (father of John F. Kennedy, the assassinated US president) was the American ambassador in London, after meeting with Churchill, wrote in a cable to the US State Department: This man has only one priority in his life, and that is to lead America to war with Britain's enemies, and the US should be very cautious about his belligerent provocations. As another instance, after the end of the US ambassador’s mission in Tokyo, he wrote to the US Department of State: Even if my vessel is attacked and sunk by unknown ships or German submarines on the way back home, the US should consider the possibility that this attack is a false flag operation by Britain and the US should not go to war with Germany or Japan under any circumstances. A few months before that, Churchill personally wrote in a secret cable to the British ambassador in Japan, who tried to reduce the tensions between the US and Japan with the help of American ambassador in Tokyo: Preventing a war between the US and Japan is not part of the duties of the British ambassador, nor is it in London's interests. During the past years, Netanyahu has tried to follow the same policy in bringing the US to a war with Iran. In most of his speeches, especially the annual speeches of the United Nations General Assembly, he has always compared Iran to Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s and he has considered any appeasement and reduction of tension between the US and Iran (including the JCPOA) as concessions that the Europeans and the US gave Hitler at the beginning of his rise to power. Netanyahu claims that the only way to contain Iran is the military option and war. During the Obama era, Netanyahu did everything to prevent the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to be implementedOne of the most important reasons for Netanyahu's public and unprecedented support of Matt Romney, Obama's rival in the US 2012 Presidential Election, and his anti-Obama speech in Congress was to prevent the Obama administration from reaching an agreement with Iran. In the Trump era, Netanyahu also tried his best to create a military conflict between Iran and the US and came close to this goal during the assassination of General Soleimani. To reach this stage, the two preliminary actions in which Netanyahu had a direct role were: First, encouraging Trump to withdraw from the JCPOA and second, entering the name of Iran as the main responsible for the killing of American forces in Iraq and the Middle East in the official reports of the US government and as a result including The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) ( in the list of State Department’s terrorist groups (Actions that all previous US governments, including George Bush's administration, had strictly avoided before Trump).
Netanyahu has repeatedly emphasized in his interviews that he played the main role in Trump's withdrawal from the JCPOA and he even said that he never had a personal request from Trump for the other two big favors of Trump for the Israel (i.e. moving the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Israel's sovereignty over the Golan heights) and that his only request from Trump was his withdrawal from the JCPOA. According to the sum of what was said, in the case of Netanyahu's re-election as Prime Minister, in addition to Israel's ongoing offensive actions against Iran (subversive actions, terror, provoking ethnic or religious groups, inciting Iran's neighbors, continuing attacks in Syria and other places to Iran’s friends, etc.), he will place the prevention of the JCPOA reviving negotiations at the top of his foreign policy priorities. If he fails to do so and the negotiations succeed, he will repeat the same staged scenarios of the Trump era during the next US president's term, and if the sanctions- lifting negotiations are not successful, he will not find a big obstacle in his way. Perhaps it is for these reasons that the Biden administration wish to not see Netanyahu in the office again. As a result, the more the negotiations to reviving JCPOA are accelerated, the more difficult Netanyahu's job will be and the longer this process lasts, the easier it will be to realize Netanyahu's scenarios. Therefore, with this consideration, the Biden government should abandon false excuses to finalize the negotiations and make the necessary political decisions as quickly as possible.
Dr. Alireza Miryousefi, senior fellow of the Center for Political and International Studies and director for legal and international studies
(The authors are responsible for the content of the content and do not represent the views of the Center for Political and International Studies)