The US and Iran finalized diplomatic talks in Switzerland this week, ending months of escalation and opening what the Trump administration is calling a new chapter of regional diplomacy. Israel was not in the room. The agreement, according to reporting confirmed in part by Vice President JD Vance on CBS, includes a 60-day US waiver allowing Iran to resume exporting oil and petrochemical products, the release of roughly $12 billion in previously frozen Iranian assets, and a reported $300 billion reconstruction fund backed by Gulf states. President Trump has publicly contradicted parts of the framework even as his administration has moved to implement it.
In this week’s episode of The Deep Dive, host Shifra Jacobs, filling in for Jacob Laznik, is joined by Ezra Taylor for a wide-ranging conversation on what the agreement actually contains and what it leaves out. Taylor argues that the deal, as structured, does not end the conflict between Iran and Israel but rather makes the next round of fighting more likely. He points to Lebanon, where research by Lt. Col. (res.) Sarit Zehavi of the Alma Center has documented Hezbollah broadcasting animated October-7-style invasion plans for northern Israel as early as 2012, and to the new agreement’s apparent constraints on Israel’s ability to respond independently to threats from the north. Quoting Iran’s parliament speaker on the way out of negotiations,”we never negotiate under threats or pressure”, Jacobs flips the familiar Israeli line back, noting the contrast with two decades of Western insistence on not negotiating with terrorists. American and Israeli deterrence in the region, Taylor argues, “is gone.”
The episode also takes in the political weather around the deal. Keir Starmer’s resignation as UK prime minister, a string of antisemitic incidents across continents this week, an assault in Berlin, an arrest in the Netherlands for a planned synagogue bombing in Haarlem, reported incidents in Greece and the Baltics, and a deadly shooting in a Jewish neighborhood in Montreal in which a Chabad rabbi was reportedly caught in the crossfire, and the question of how leaders across the West are still struggling to name the climate they now have to govern. Jacobs and Taylor close on the journalistic discipline they argue is now essential to reading any of this clearly: apply critical thinking, read multiple sources, and be wary of theatrical contradictions between political leaders that may be more strategy than rupture.
Source:
www.jpost.com
