WarSclerotic

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

He gets away with insulting America

On Feb. 25, when the Iranian and Syrian presidents met in Damascus to confirm their military pact, they publicly mocked the US and its demands for Bashar Assad to distance himself from Tehran and made fun of secretary of state Hillary Clinton in person. On March, US Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman summoned Syrian Ambassador Imad Moustapha for a quiet reprimand.
But still the Obama administration is going easy on both Iran and Syria. In fact this week it asked the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee to confirm the appointment of Robert Ford as the first US ambassador to Damascus in five years.
Neither Clinton nor any other administration member has referred to Assad’s public insult to America and herself – in dramatic contrast to their harsh reaction to a bureaucratic step by Israel – for which prime minister Binyamin apologized – to approve the deposit of a long-term plan to build 1,600 homes in East Jerusalem. Since then, a week has gone by with Washington never tiring of berating Israel day by day.
The Syrian president has shown no contrition – nor was any demanded by the Obama administration – for joking: “We have met today to sign a separation agreement… We must have misunderstood because of a bad translation or our limited understanding, but instead signed an agreement to cancel visas.”
He was responding to Clinton’s assertion that his relationship with Iran was “deeply troubling to the region as well as to the United States.”
Assad took his time to reply to Washington’s diplomatic complaint. He finally relayed his answer not directly but through French president Nicolas Sarkozy, thereby turning a demonstrative cold shoulder to the United States government.

In his message, the Syrian president warned Washington frankly for the first time to stop expecting him to break off or degrade his ties with Tehran. In so doing, he has snatched a key Obama foreign policy goal out of the administration’s grasp. He explained that his bond with Iran was less ideological than strategic, grounded in the Arabs’ need to keep up their “resistance” to Israel. The Syrian-Iranian bond, says Assad, will peter out of its own accord when this need disappears.

Syrian contempt, intransigence and commitment to Arab violence against Israel have not discouraged the Obama administration in its courtship of this terror-sponsoring dictatorship. A senior emissary, John Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, later affirmed his belief that “it is important to have diplomatic representation in Syria.
On March 14, The Wall Street Journal wrote succinctly:
“Mr. Obama’s foreign policy pattern to date: Our enemies get courted; our friends get the squeeze. It has happened to Poland, the Czech Republic, Honduras and Colombia. Now it’s Israel’s turn.“

US Israel criticism ignites firestorm in Congress – News – Politics – bnd.com.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s fierce denunciation of Israel last week has ignited a firestorm in Congress and among powerful pro-Israel interest groups who say the criticism of America’s top Mideast ally was misplaced.

Since the controversy erupted, a bipartisan parade of influential lawmakers and interest groups has taken aim at the administration’s decision to publicly condemn Israel for its announcement of new Jewish housing in east Jerusalem while Vice President Joe Biden was visiting on Tuesday and then openly vent bitter frustration on Friday.

With diplomats from both countries referring to the situation as a crisis, the outpouring of anger in the United States, particularly from Capitol Hill, comes at a difficult time for the administration, which is now trying to win support from wary lawmakers – many of whom are up for re-election this year – for health care reform and other domestic issues.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gestures as he speaks during the visit of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, not seen, to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem, Monday, March 15, 2010. Lula da Silva is in Israel on the first official visit by a Brazilian leader. – AP Photo

• Story: Clinton slams Israel on housing announcement

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And those criticizing the administration’s unusually blunt response to Israel say they fear it may have distracted from and done damage to efforts to relaunch long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

“It might be well if our friends in the administration and other places in the United States could start refocusing our efforts on the peace process,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Monday.

“Now we’ve had our spat. We’ve had our family fight, and it’s time for us now to stop and get our eye back on the goal, which is the commencement of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks,” he said.

McCain and Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., both urged the administration to ease the tone of the dispute, which they said was demonstrating disunity and weakness to steadfast allies of Iran.

“Let’s cut the family fighting, the family feud,” Lieberman said. “It’s unnecessary; it’s destructive of our shared national interest. It’s time to lower voices, to get over the family feud between the U.S. and Israel. It just doesn’t serve anybody’s interests but our enemies.”

At least eight other lawmakers have offered similar concerns, and more are expected to weigh in after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton upbraided Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the housing announcement in a tense and lengthy phone call on Friday and White House officials repeated the criticism on Sunday’s talk shows.

“It’s hard to see how spending a weekend condemning Israel for a zoning decision in its capital city amounts to a positive step towards peace,” said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan. He complained that the administration was attacking a “staunch ally and friend” when it should be focusing on the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear problem.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., accused administration officials of using “overwrought rhetoric” in suggesting that the east Jerusalem housing announcement threatened U.S.-Israeli ties.

“The administration’s strong implication that the enduring alliance between the U.S. and Israel has been weakened, and that America’s ability to broker talks between Israel and Palestinian authorities has been undermined, is an irresponsible overreaction,” she said.

With tensions still high, former Sen. George Mitchell, the administration’s Mideast peace envoy, has delayed his departure to the region, where he is scheduled to hold separate talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, a U.S. official said.

Mitchell had been scheduled to depart Washington on Monday night. He still intends to go, but the timing is uncertain, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations.

The State Department on Monday said it was still awaiting a formal response from Israel to Clinton’s call and, while repeating elements of the criticism, stressed that the U.S. commitment to Israel’s security remains “unshakable.”

But spokesman P.J. Crowley also said a lot is riding on whether Israel agrees to take steps suggested by Clinton to underscore its commitment to the peace process and strong relations with America.

“We will evaluate the implications of this once we hear back from the Israelis and see how they respond to our concerns,” he told reporters.

Reaction to the administration was particularly intense from pro-Israel groups.

Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League, said he was “shocked and stunned at the administration’s tone and public dressing down of Israel on the issue of future building in Jerusalem.”

“We cannot remember an instance when such harsh language was directed at a friend and ally of the United States,” Foxman said.

Associated Press writer Robert Burns contributed to this report.

American Thinker Blog: Thanks Barack. It really didn’t have to come to this.

Jerry Philipson

Iran nuclear weapon development has slowed: U.S. | Reuters.

(Reuters) – The pace of Iran’s nuclear weapons development appears to have slowed, buying time for a new round of sanctions now and possibly more sweeping measures further down the road, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.

Comments by U.S. General David Petraeus and senior government officials underscored the Obama administration’s message to Israel and Gulf allies — that there is time to pressure Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons program by imposing more economic sanctions without resorting to force.

Obama’s top military advisers — Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — have made public their growing doubts about military action, warning Israel that an attack could have unintended consequences and merely set back Iran’s program temporarily.

During a visit to Israel last week, Vice President Joe Biden received assurances from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that his country would give a new round of sanctions against Iran a chance.

But the two governments appeared at odds over how forcefully and how soon to act if that round, now under consideration, does not succeed in persuading Iran to back down, U.S. and Israeli officials said.

“We have a common assessment: the regime is vulnerable at the moment and sanctions have a chance of having an impact. But this can’t be strung out for too long,” an Israeli official said on condition of anonymity.

While stressing its sense of urgency about the threat, the Obama administration has made clear it will need to assess the impact of whatever new sanctions are put in place before moving to additional measures.

“There is far more that unites Washington and Jerusalem than divides Washington and Jerusalem on Iran,” said Middle East expert David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Both countries believe U.N.-backed sanctions need to be tried, hoping that tougher measures can be averted.”

“Yet there are differences” over tactics and the right mix of sanctions to use, Makovsky said. In addition, “it seems the U.S. and Israel could have different clocks about how long sanctions are given a chance to work before more coercive measures are considered.”

SHIFTING ESTIMATES

U.S. officials cite estimates that Iran, which denies it is seeking to build nuclear weapons, could have a nuclear weapon by the middle of this decade.

“Iran has to go through a lot of steps before it produces a ‘no-kidding’ nuclear weapon,” said a U.S. official familiar with the intelligence.

Israel, which is believed to have the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal, sees an Iranian warhead by 2014 and believes a prototype may only be “months away.”

Asked at a Senate hearing when Iran would have a nuclear bomb, Petraeus said: “It has, thankfully, slid to the right a bit and it is not this calendar year, I don’t think.”

He did not elaborate.

Last month, the U.S. director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, said Iranian advancements in enriching uranium and other areas showed the government was “technically capable” of producing enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon in the “next few years, if it chooses to do so.”

Blair cited information published by the International Atomic Energy Agency showing that the number of centrifuges installed at Iran’s enrichment plant at Natanz had grown to more than 8,000 from about 3,000 in late 2007.

But he said Iran appeared to be “experiencing some problems” at Natanz and was operating only about half of the installed centrifuges, constraining its overall ability to produce larger quantities of low-enriched uranium.

Petraeus made clear on Tuesday that contingency planning was under way at the Pentagon should Obama decide on military action, noting that Obama had “explicitly stated that he has not taken the military option off the table.”

But he and other officials said the administration’s focus was on using sanctions to get Tehran to change its behavior.

Biden, in an interview with Reuters at the end of his Middle East tour, said the Obama administration’s outreach to Iran, dismissed by some as naive, helped galvanize the international community to address the Iranian issue.

While nuclear development may have slowed by some estimates, Washington believes Iran continues to expand the scale, reach and sophistication of its ballistic missiles.

In response, Washington has expanded what Petraeus called a “regional security architecture” that includes a network of shared early-warning systems and ballistic missile defenses.

Some lawmakers point to signs that the Obama administration is moving to a containment strategy, rather than one aimed at denying Iran a nuclear weapon. Petraeus called that a “big policy hypothetical,” describing U.S. policy as clear: “The president has said that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons.”

(Additional reporting by Phil Stewart in Washington and Dan Williams in Jerusalem; editing by Mohammad Zargham)

YouTube – Battlestar Judaica.mp4.

A new video I made about the current nightmare Israel is going through.

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Chazak V’Amatz…

Conservative News: Experts call Obama’s actions regarding Israel “counterproductive” and “outrageous.” – HUMAN EVENTS.

History News Network.

The Obama Administration is blustering that more drastic sanctions will be imposed on Iran if it does not stop enriching uranium, but Russia and China have undermined the threat by saying they will not support such sanctions. Meanwhile, Israel watches from the sideline and makes its own calculations of its national interest and stirring memories of 1981….

In 1981, a number of U.S. officials applauded Israel’s action, knowing the Iraqis were indeed a threat and that their government would probably never take such a bold step. These officials wanted to publicly support Israel and to justify the attack as an act of self-defense. State Department Arabists, however, vehemently objected and told Secretary of State Alexander Haig the United States would invite universal condemnation from the Arab world and the administration would “not have a Middle East policy for the next four years.” Instead of praise, the U.S. joined in the international condemnation of the raid….

A decade later, U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney sent the Israeli Air Force commander who oversaw the operation, David Ivri, an enlarged black-and-white U.S. satellite photograph of Osirak, taken a few days after the IAF raid. Cheney wrote an inscription: “For Gen. David Ivri, with thanks and appreciation for the outstanding job he did on the Iraqi nuclear program in 1981 – which made our job much easier in Desert Storm.”

President Obama should take this history into account as he allows Iran more time to develop its nuclear capability while trying to muster support for what are likely to be ineffective sanctions.

Republicans slam Obama’s hard line towards Israel – Israel News, Ynetnews.

House Republican Whip Eric Cantor says spat with Israel ‘jeopardizes America’s national security’, while another senior party member concerned about administration’s ‘softer approaches’ toward Palestinian Authority, Syria and Iran

Yitzhak Benhorin

Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other top officials said last week’s announcement of the new construction was insulting and damaging to efforts to revive long-stalled peace talks.

“To say that I am deeply concerned with the irresponsible comments that the White House, vice president and the secretary of state have made against Israel is an understatement,” said House Republican Whip Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in the House of Representatives.

“In an effort to ingratiate our country with the Arab world, this administration has shown a troubling eagerness to undercut our allies and friends.”

He said the administration’s public spat with the Jewish State “jeopardizes America’s national security.”

The government of hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave permission for the new construction in Jerusalem’s Ramat Shlomo neighborhood on March 9, just as Biden visited Israel, sparking a major diplomatic crisis.

Israel’s ambassador to Washington said bilateral relations have hit a 35-year low.

It also came just two days after the Palestinians had reluctantly agreed to hold indirect, US-brokered negotiations with Israel.

Senator Sam Brownback said in a statement that “it’s hard to see how spending a weekend condemning Israel for a zoning decision in its capital city amounts to a positive step towards peace.”

The Kansas Republican, a staunch defender of Israel in Congress, said it would be “far more worthwhile” for the administration to focus its efforts instead on shifting the location of the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a highly controversial proposal.

‘Israel indispensable ally’

There are no embassies in Jerusalem, as Israel captured and annexed east Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War in a move the international community does not recognize. Israel considers all of the city its capital despite Palestinian claims to east Jerusalem.

Brownback also urged the Obama administration to narrow its focus on the “growing Iranian nuclear threat,” referring to the Islamic republic’s continued defiance of international calls to halt its controversial uranium enrichment program. Israel considers Iran an existential threat.

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) issued a statement saying, “The Administration’s decision to escalate its rhetoric following Vice President Biden’s visit to Israel is not merely irresponsible, it is an affront to the values and foundation of our long-term relationship with a close friend and ally.”

According to the Republican leader, “The Administration has demonstrated a repeated pattern since it took office: while it makes concessions to countries acting contrary to US national interests, it ignores or snubs the commitments, shared values and sacrifices of many of our country’s best allies.

“If the Administration wants to work toward resolving the conflict in the Middle East, it should focus its efforts on Iran’s behavior, including its pursuit of nuclear weapons, its state-sponsorship of terrorism, its crushing of domestic democratic forces, and the impact its behavior is having, not just on Israel, but also on the calculations of other countries in the region as well as on the credibility of international nonproliferation efforts,” Boehner said in the statement.”House Republicans remain committed to our long-standing bilateral friendship with Israel, as well as to the commitments this country has made,” he added.

Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, demanded that the Obama administration halt its condemnations of “an indispensable ally and friend of the United States.”

“US condemnations of Israel and threats regarding our bilateral relationship undermine both our allies and the peace process, while encouraging the enemies of America and Israel alike,” she said.

Ros-Lehtinen added that she was “deeply concerned” about the administration’s “softer approaches” toward the Palestinian Authority, Syria and Iran.

Iran and Syria are the main foreign backers of the Shiite terror group Hezbollah but both deny that they provide anything other than moral support.

Washington also accuses Syria of turning a blind eye to militants crossing its border into Iraq.

U.S. envoy’s trip on hold as diplomatic crisis deepens – Haaretz – Israel News.

A visit to Israel by U.S. special peace envoy George Mitchell is on hold pending an Israeli response to a series of American demands, Army radio reported on Tuesday.

Mitchell had been due to leave Washington for Israel early on Monday but will delay his trip in a sign of the Obama administration’s growing anger at Israel’s refusal to stop building Jewish homes in East Jerusalem.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on has refused to draw a line under a crisis in Israeli-U.S. relations that erupted last week when Israel announced plans for 1,600 new housing units in Ramat Shlomo, an orthodox Jewish suburb beyong the Green line in the northeast of the city.

Israel would continue to build in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said on Monday.

“For the past 40 years, no Israeli government ever limited construction in the neighborhoods of Jerusalem,” he said.

Mitchell is thought to have delayed his travel plans until Tuesday ? but may cancel his visit to Israel altogether and instead fly straight to Moscow for talks with the ‘Quartet’ of Middle East peace mediators – the European Union, United Nations, the United States and Russia.

“We want to make sure that we have the commitment from both sides that, when he travels, we can make progress,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.

According to a report in The Washington Post on Tuesday, U.S. officials say that Mitchell’s visit will remain on hold until the White House receives an Israeli response to key demands.

Israel must reverse the approval for construction in Ramat Shlomo, make a “substantial gesture” towards the Palestinians and publicly declare that all of the “core issues” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the status of Jerusalem, be included in upcoming talks.

The three conditions, set by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a 43-minute telephone call to Netanyahu on Friday, have not been publicized by the U.S. – but Israel is expected to provide a formal answer on Tuesday, the Post reported.

American officials see a resolution to the current crisis as a test of Netanyahu’s commitment to ties with the U.S., the paper said.

“We have to have guarantees that these kinds of things will not happen again,” a senior U.S. official was quoted as saying, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

“If he is unwilling to make that kind of commitment, it raises the questions of how committed he is to negotiations – and it raises the question of how committed he is to the relationship between Israel and the United States.”

“He has to take a firm stand to prevent similar kinds of announcements that will have a negative effect on negotiations,” the official said.

NTI: Global Security Newswire – Iran Sanctions Battle Seen Dragging Into June.

France yesterday suggested it could take months longer to negotiate a fourth U.N. Security Council resolution addressing Iran’s disputed nuclear activities, Reuters reported (see GSN, March 12).

France, the United States and other Western powers have struggled to win support from China and Russia for additional U.N. economic penalties against Iran. The West has expressed concern that Iran’s nuclear program could support weapons development, but Tehran has denied having any military ambitions for its work.

All Security Council measures require the consent of the body’s five permanent member nations: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

“We are … talking and talking, trying to get an agreement by negotiation and at the same time working on sanctions. I believe that yes, before June it will be possible, but I’m not so sure,” French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said.

“Before June I hope, but who am I to hope or decide,” he said, noting that Paris had hoped to set up another set of Security Council penalties last month.

Punitive measures could hit Iranian insurance firms and financial institutions and impose new travel bans, but they would not hit the nation’s energy industry or wider economy, Kouchner said. “We are not talking about blocking the exportation (of oil products) from the Gulf of Hormuz, even if some strategic people are thinking about it. It will be simple, clear and economic.”

The European Union might consider adopting a separate set of sanctions, Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb said.

“Failing (U.N. sanctions), I think there is an emerging consensus inside the European Union that we will take some unilateral measures from the EU side,” Stubb said. “What those exact measures are have not been discussed in detail” (Luke Baker, Reuters I, March 14).

“I think we’ll be able to convince Russia and China and I’m quite hopeful that we’ll get something in the Security Council,” he added.

“Time is running out, so I’m sure this is going to be something, if the U.N. Security Council fails, that we’ll deal with when we have our EU foreign ministers’ meeting on [March 22],” Stubb said. “That’s when we’ll get into the detail (of possible sanctions) … There is consensus enough” (Luke Baker, Reuters II, March 13).

Asked if EU nations could come together in support of independent penalties against Iran, Kouchner said, “broadly yes, but we have to talk about what kind of sanctions. And first we should devote our strength and time to getting a resolution in the U.N. Security Council and we’re working on that.”

Washington plans to circulate a preliminary U.N. sanctions document late this month, Agence France-Presse quoted Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini as saying. The EU would probably not consider its own measures until the Security Council considers the proposed resolution, he said (Agence France-Presse I/Google News, March 14).

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband was expected to make the case for new U.N. sanctions on Iran to top Chinese officials during a visit to China that was under way today, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported.

“Britain and China haven’t only agreed on the goal that Iran should respect the [Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty] and not become a nuclear weapon state. We’ve also agreed on the means to achieve that, which is a combination of engagement and pressure. The engagement has been on the table with Iran for some time, and they have been refusing it,” he said (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, March 15).

Saudi Arabia last week rebuffed reports that it had indicated a willingness to lobby for Chinese endorsement of a new Security Council resolution on Iran, AFP reported.

“This issue is not true, it was not discussed during the visit of [U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates] who was in the kingdom recently,” an official source told Saudi state media (Agence France-Presse II/Google News, March 13).

Recent announcements that several major gasoline companies would end their business with Iran have forced Tehran to fall back on alternative suppliers, United Press International reported.

“The decision by European companies and Reliance to stop supplying Iran with (petroleum products) will force Iran into secondary and less-efficient markets in order to obtain petroleum, which will increase Iran’s transaction costs,” Cliff Kupchan, an Iran analyst with the New York-based Eurasia Group, told the UAE newspaper The National (United Press International, March 12).

Meanwhile, a former high-level Pakistani official indicated in 2006 that Tehran had sought complete nuclear weapons from Islamabad in the late 1980s, the Washington Post reported yesterday.

Pakistan did not seriously consider providing nuclear weapons to Iran, two former top military officials told the newspaper (Smith/Warrick, Washington Post, March 14).

Islamabad yesterday denounced the Post report, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

“It is yet another repackaging of fiction, which surface occasionally for purposes that are self-evident,” Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit said (Xinhua News Agency, March 15).

NATO would respond to a nuclear-armed Iran as a potential danger, the head of the military alliance told Gulf News in remarks published yesterday.

“While NATO as such is not involved in the Iran issue, we support international endeavors to find a political and diplomatic solution. But if Iran at a certain stage actually acquires nuclear capability, then we would consider it a threat against the alliance,” said NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

“This is also the reason we are considering the establishment of a missile defense system that we can start to deploy by 2011,” he said (see related GSN story, today; Habib Toumi, Gulf News, March 14).

In Washington, the Obama administration has yet to agree on how to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the New York Times reported Friday.

The administration has not established what Iranian achievements would constitute a “nuclear weapons capability,” creating uncertainly over what atomic progress the United States would tolerate in the Middle Eastern state, according to multiple high-level Defense Department and intelligence officials (David Sanger, New York Times, March 12).

In Tehran, the chief of staff to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed Israeli threats of military action against Iranian nuclear sites, Iran’s Fars News Agency reported.

“Any allegation about attacking Iran, specially by Israel, are absurd and nonsense because if Israel dared to attack Iran, it would not wait even one hour,” Esfandiar Rahim Mashae’i said (Fars News Agency, March 13).

Iran on Saturday announced the arrest of 30 people for allegedly probing secured Iranian computer networks for information on the nation’s nuclear scientists, the Indo-Asian News Service reported. The group had ties to the CIA, according to Iranian authorities (Indo-Asian News Service/Hindustan Times, March 14)