When the deal on Iran was announced, Amos Yadlin quipped that the official reaction in Israel might lead one to think Iran had been given a green light to develop nuclear weapons. The head of the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies (and former chief of military intelligence) was responding to comments like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “the deal is a historic mistake,” former National Security Council head Yaakov Amidror’s, “a failure of diplomacy,” and Israeli Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz’s “the deal is based on “deceit and self-delusion.”

Skeptics are right to be concerned. But there’s lots of daylight between Israel’s official, heavy-handed and scornful position and sober analysis of the deal’s positive and negative elements. That discussion is ongoing in Israeli security forums and shouldn’t be ignored.

To begin with, the interim deal is just that – a framework that allows negotiations to continue. At best, it freezes Iran’s capabilities and rolls back several egregious aspects, but doesn’t destroy them. Clearly, a permanent deal will have to be far tougher.

This leads to the unresolved debate over the end game. Israel wants to destroy Iran’s capability to develop nuclear weaponry and so far has insisted on removing all enriched uranium. (Iran can enrich its low-grade civilian use uranium to nuclear-weapons levels within a few months.) But the interim agreement implicitly acknowledges that Iran will continue to enrich civilian-use uranium in future, giving it more leeway than previous UN Security Council resolutions. This critical question will have to be addressed.

There are numerous other issues to consider and forthcoming negotiations may well fall apart. If the West stays firm, then failure will clearly be Iran’s fault. But if the Geneva negotiations had failed, Iran would have forged ahead with construction of its heavy water plant for plutonium enrichment, uranium enrichment would have continued, sanctions might have cracked and Israel would be blamed for pressing for a deal that would bring Iran to its knees.

The issue of trust has been invoked frequently in the last 10 days. When it comes to Iran, assume it can’t be trusted, but wants to ease the crippling burden on its economy. That’s why the sanctions regime must hold tight now without further reductions and why monitoring mechanisms must be strictly executed by the International Atomic Energy Agency and adhered to by Iran during the interim period.

At core, though, is the question of Israelis’ trust in U.S. President Barack Obama. They know his (and the American public’s) aversion to military action and don’t believe his assurance that all options remain on the table. To make a permanent deal happen, Obama has to work hard with hardliners in Washington who oppose the interim deal and may try to undo even what’s already been agreed to and, most importantly, to assuage Israeli concerns.

Finding common ground depends on Israel, too, and one can only hope that rhetoric is quickly replaced by substantive, co-operative dialogue. Because so far, at least, a deal is better than no deal, and it’s certainly better than a risk-fraught Israeli strike. And if successful, it might be a first step toward defanging Iran as the key destabilizing force in the region.

Shira Herzog