For Barack Obama, striking a nuclear deal with Iran may turn out to be the easy part. The president’s biggest struggle now is facing down Israel and its supporters in the US as they attempt to rally opposition to the deal. The administration knows this and it is quietly confident that it can take on the Israel lobby in Congress – and win.
Beneath all the arcane details about centrifuges and break-out times, the Israeli-American dispute over Iran is quite simple. The Israelis want the complete dismantlement of the Iranian
nuclear programme. The Americans and their negotiating partners want to freeze it in the first instance – and also recognise that any final deal will have to leave Iran with some nuclear capacity.