"I'm not trying to kill any deal. I'm trying to kill a bad deal," Benjamin Netanyahu said as he worked the Sunday talk shows, per the New York Times. But Israel was mum on what a good deal might look like until yesterday, as Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz released a list of changes to make the framework "more reasonable," per the Times. "The deal has to be made on the assumption that Iran might violate it," Steinitz says, per the Wall Street Journal. On Israel's list:
- No more Iranian research and development on weapons.
- An unspecified but reduced number of operational or standby centrifuges.
- Complete shutdown of the Fordo facility for uranium-enrichment purposes, a step beyond the simple banning of enrichment in the Obama-sanctioned deal.
- Iranian transparency on past military-focused nuclear activities.
- Iranian agreement to send its uranium stockpiles packing to another country (which Iran has made clear it won't do).
Israel's demands amount to what the
Journal calls "a dramatic rewrite" of the deal, unlikely to find traction on either side of the negotiating table. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, GOP Sen. Bob Corker, widely praised for reaching across the aisle, is said to be working hard to get a bill passed—with a thumbs-up from both parties—that allows Congress to approve any Iranian deal before it takes effect, per the
Times. (For President Obama, the negotiations have been
"personally difficult.")
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