Iran’s Ahmadinejad compares West to a ‘mosquito’ | csmonitor.com.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , a day after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that the West is ‘not going to wait forever’ for Iran to accept a UN-backed nuclear deal.

posted November 01, 2009 at 10:46 am EST

US drops demand for Israeli settlement freeze – Telegraph.

By Adrian Blomfield in Jerusalem
Published: 4:51PM GMT 01 Nov 2009

 

Hillary Clinton dropped demands for a halt to Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank Photo: AFP

Signalling an end to the brief flirtation with the Palestinian cause, the US secretary of state flew to Jerusalem to voice full American support for Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

In an effort to repair badly strained US-Israeli relations, she heaped praise on Mr Netanyahu, lauding his offer to limit settlement construction – even though it falls well short of President Obama’s original demands.

She said: “What the prime minister has offered in specifics on restraints on a policy of settlements… is unprecedented in the context of prior to negotiations.”

Risking the ire of the Arab world, she also joined Israeli calls for an immediate Palestinian return to the negotiating table without preconditions.

America’s about-turn on the most contentious issue stalling a resumption of Middle East peace talks has delighted Israel.

But it will also damage Mr Obama’s reputation as a peacemaker for many Arabs, bolster critics who have accused him of naïvety and enhance a growing sense of betrayal in the Palestinian territories.

The Palestinian leadership immediately rejected Mrs Clinton’s demand to return to negotiations without a resolution on the settlements issue and gave warning that the peace process was “in a state of paralysis”.

“The result of Israel’s intransigence and America’s back-peddling is that there is no hope for negotiations on the horizon,” said Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian leader.

Delivering a landmark speech to university students in Cairo five months ago, Mr Obama sought to reach out to the Arab world by speaking of his sympathy for Palestinian “suffering” and the “humiliation” of occupation.

In a major policy declaration, he also rejected the legitimacy of Israeli settlement in the West Bank saying: “It is time for the settlements to stop.”

Presented with a subsequent demand from Mrs Clinton for a total settlement freeze without exception, Israel recoiled while the Arab world rejoiced.

Critics, however, denounced Mr Obama for setting Israel an unrealistic goal, pointing to the huge domestic opposition that Mr Netanyahu would have faced had he imposed such restrictions on the 500,000 settlers living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

“Obama came with a very idealistic conceptualisation of the Middle East that didn’t exist,” said Eytan Gilboa, an Israeli political scientist. “He created very high expectations in the Arab world with his excessive focus on the settlement issue. Now he has lost credibility on both sides.”

Israeli government officials hailed Mr Obama’s climb down as a diplomatic victory.

Danny Ayalon, the deputy foreign minister, claimed that Israel’s policy of refusing to give into US pressure had paid off, while his cabinet colleague Daniel Hershkowitz declared: “The US administration understands what we have always said – that the real obstacle to negotiations are the Palestinians.”

Yet while the United States and Israel may once more be friends, the confusing shifts in the Obama administration’s policy seem to bode poorly for the prospects of a peace settlement.

Mr Abbas, America’s most important Palestinian ally, has already been severely weakened by the United States after he was persuaded to withdraw support for a UN report that accused Israel of war crimes during its winter offensive in Gaza.

Facing unprecedented public uproar and fury from within his own party, Mr Abbas had to back down.

Mrs Clinton’s demand that he return to negotiations leaves the Palestinian leader in an invidious position. Observers say that were he to do so with his condition of settlements still unrequited, he could be toppled.

Free Article for Non-Members | STRATFOR.

A Diplomatic Tumult

I

RANIAN OFFICIALS SAID THEY WILL SUBMIT A COUNTERPROPOSAL to the P-5+1 plan on Iran’s nuclear enrichment program on Thursday. Tehran clearly hopes that the counterproposal and ensuing negotiations will buy it time, but a number of forces appear to be shifting on the global stage that might change Iran’s calculus.

For one thing, U.S. National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones was in Moscow on Wednesday, and the future of Iran was one of the items up for discussion. Jones came to Moscow with a clear message: As far as the United States is concerned, all options are on the table with regard to Iran. So far, Moscow has not considered U.S. threats of military action against Iran and its nuclear program as legitimate (and has quietly laughed at the idea of sanctions). But the arrival of such a power player with this message could change Russia’s calculations.

Backing Jones up on Wednesday was Israeli opposition leader and former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who carried the same message to Moscow. Israel, too, considers all options to be on the table, and long has expressed the view that imposing additional sanctions against Iran would be meaningless. But Israel also sent a very clear message to Moscow by having Defense Minister Ehud Barak meeting with leaders in Central Europe — driving home the message that the Israelis know how to prod the Russians where they are most tender. There is no shortage of players hostile to Moscow along Russia’s Western periphery, and Israel easily could supply weapons to Europe, should it be so inclined. Israeli diplomatic moves were not limited to Russia, however: Israel and France also engaged in talks on Wednesday, and the situation with Iran was discussed.

Meanwhile, in the Mediterranean, the United States and Israel are conducting their largest and most complex bilateral ballistic missile defense exercises — exercises that were uncharacteristically delayed by a week before they started.

On the domestic front, word has reached STRATFOR that the government is laying the groundwork to permit the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to be tapped. The SPR, which sets aside more than 700 million barrels of crude oil, was designed expressly to keep the country running in the event of a war in an oil-producing region.

With all of these processes in motion, it is clear that a great deal of preparation is taking place. The Israelis have made it clear that they have no use for a soft approach to Iran, but they need the United States on board. The Americans would prefer to avoid taking military action against Iran — the impact on oil prices and the fragile global recovery would be profound — but Washington cannot possibly make gasoline sanctions work if Russia refuses to cooperate. But Moscow has more leverage than just the threat of breaking sanctions. For years, Russia has threatened for years to sell S-300 strategic air defense systems to Iran, a move that would greatly complicate any air strikes against that country.

With so many players pursuing their disparate aims, there is no single clear outcome that we are prepared to predict. There is clearly pressure building on Iran, but there appears to be a lack of clarity among the actors as to who is capable and willing to do what. From our perspective, it appears that all options — including military action – truly might be under consideration by the United States. It is not yet clear that Iran has adjusted to this, but talks between Washington and Moscow are certainly not a comforting thought to Tehran.

For the moment, it is unclear which statements and actions amount to posturing, and which indicate intent. Nor is it clear where the tripwires lie. This means that we must watch and wait for the next whiff of intelligence. For the countries in play, it means that the negotiations are exceedingly complex, and that the chance of miscalculation is high.