WarSclerotic

Ahmadinejad Warns Iran Sanctions Will Backfire | Middle East | English.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has rejected efforts by the United States to engage in diplomacy about its nuclear program, warning that additional sanctions will only make Tehran more determined.

Mr. Ahmadinejad spoke during a televised speech Saturday to workers at the opening of a new industrial site in the southern Iranian city of Sirjan.

He said U.S. President Barack Obama had offered Iran “three or four beautiful words” but nothing of substance, adding that the U.S. has not lifted existing sanctions or reduced its level of propaganda.

Also Saturday, Iranian atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi told Iran’s ILNA news agency that his department has submitted plans for two new nuclear facilities to President Ahmadinejad, and that construction could start by August.

The U.S. is calling on members of the United Nations Security Council to approve a fourth round of sanctions against Iran because of its nuclear activities.

The United States and its allies suspect Iran is enriching uranium to develop nuclear weapons, a charge the Islamic Republic denies.

Separately, The Wall Street Journal says IAEA and Western intelligence investigators are trying to determine how an Iranian firm was able to obtain special hardware for enriching uranium.

In a report published Saturday, the U.S. newspaper quotes unnamed officials who say an Iranian company closely linked to Iran’s nuclear program acquired critical valves and vacuum gauges, despite sanctions intended to keep such equipment out of Iran.

The officials say the equipment was made by a French company that until December was owned by U.S. industrial conglomerate Tyco International.  The French and U.S. companies told the Journal they had no knowledge of the case.

The report says the International Atomic Energy Agency launched the probe after receiving an e-mail alleging that illicit goods were being sent to Iran, through an intermediary representing a Chinese company.

The Palestinians: Why Negotiate? The U.S. Will Extract Concessions For You – International Analyst Network.

03 Apr 2010

When Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post attacks Obama’s outrage over the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee’s decision to approve the construction of 1,600 housing units in Ramat Shlomo (a post-1967 Jerusalem neighborhood) as “ideological – and vindictive,” you know that Obama has made a serious political blunder.

The administration has apparently decided to provoke a diplomatic crisis with Israel over a construction project that was plainly in keeping with past U.S.-Israeli undertakings concerning East Jerusalem. Israel’s official position for the last forty years has been that East Jerusalem’s status will not be negotiable in any future land-swap agreement with the Palestinians. This policy, however distasteful it may be to the Obama Administration, did not prevent the conclusion of peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, nor did it preclude the Palestinians from negotiating with Israel for more than fifteen years after the Oslo Accords of 1993. Now, suddenly, it has become a major issue with this administration, and an impediment to world peace. Apparently, a zoning dispute in Israel’s capital city is more important than addressing the nuclear threat posed by Iran.

This dispute has affected American credibility with Israel, our European and Asian allies, as well as the Arab and Iranian world. As Robert Kagan notes in the Washington Post: “The president has shown seemingly limitless patience with the Russians as they stall an arms-control deal that could have been done in December. He accepted a year of Iranian insults and refusal to negotiate before hesitantly moving toward sanctions. The administration continues to woo Syria without much sign of reciprocation in Damascus. Yet Obama angrily orders a near-rupture of relations with Israel for a minor infraction like the recent settlement dispute — and after the Israeli prime minister publicly apologized.” As a consequence, Netanyahu has been threatened with diplomatic isolation – a taste of which he encountered during his recent visit to the White House. Dictators and tyrants have received better treatment.

The Obama Administration seems to see Israel as obstructionist, defiant and intransigent. Since evidently Obama could not coerce Israel to acquiesce to his demands through quiet pressure, he brought such pressure into the public domain by insisting upon demands to which no Israeli government can acquiesce – demands that include giving the U.S. a veto over any Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear installations. To enforce this demand, Obama ordered an embargo of the Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs) – the super bunker-buster bombs that he had earlier promised to Israel. These munitions have since been diverted to the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.

Nor is this the first time the current U.S. administration has interfered with Israel’s qualitative military edge. A January 2010 Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) Report notes that “the White House has so far blocked key weapons projects and upgrades for Israel, rejecting requests for AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopters while approving advanced F-16 multi-role fighters for Egypt …. Israel’s request for the six AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopters was blocked by the Obama Administration in June — the same time the Egyptian sale was approved.”

Obama also told Netanyahu to tow the line on his foreign policy by demanding that Israel hand over areas adjacent to Jerusalem (specifically Abu-Dis, where Palestinian government institutions were previously established) to exclusive PA control; cease all Jewish construction in East Jerusalem; give serious consideration to releasing 1,000 convicted Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons “as a goodwill gesture;” establish a Palestinian state within the next two years (which could allow for the deployment of U.S. forces who would inhibit Israeli counter-terrorism operations in Judea and Samaria); open a Palestinian commercial interests office in east Jerusalem; renew peace talks with Syria; agree to negotiate the partition of Jerusalem; withdraw from West Bank “settlements”, disputed territories included; and agree to the “right of return” of hostile foreign Arabs to pre-1948 Israel.

The Obama administration considers establishing a Palestinian state central to other regional goals; it also believes that the Palestinians, led by Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad, are ready to run a country. It is wrong on both counts. For some unfathomable reason, Obama does not yet understand that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not territorial. It is existential. Yet, the consequences arising from Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza; the continuous incitement taking place in Palestinian society through its mosques, media, schools, and government sponsored events, and the enormous concessions – rejected by Mahmoud Abbas – that the governments of Barak (2000) and Olmert (2008) were prepared to make on both Jerusalem and the West Bank prior to the Second Intifada, together with Israel’s continuing efforts to negotiate a durable and lasting peace, are rarely if ever mentioned by this Administration.

Netanyahu’s acquiescence to a Palestinian state, a ten-month moratorium on Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria that specifically excluded Jerusalem (a fact this Administration now dismisses), and the dismantling of hundreds of checkpoints and roadblocks apparently means nothing to an administration whose long term strategy seems to demonstrate to America’s enemies that the U.S. is prepared to force a Czechoslovakian type of deal on Israel to concede everything, while giving the Palestinians a pass – including their dedication of tournaments, streets, marketplaces and a town square outside Ramallah to “martyrs” whose sole “accomplishments” have been slaughtering Israeli men, women and children. One explanation is the desire of this administration to demonstrate to our enemies that there is no length to which it will not go to betray its friends in the name of “peace.”

Under such circumstances, why should the Palestinians agree to negotiate with Israel when they are content to watch a U.S. administration extract concessions significantly greater than any they could ever hope to achieve though bilateral talks? Diehl’s editorial in the Washington Post lays the blame for the current crisis squarely on President Obama, whom it accuses of treating Netanyahu “as if he were an unsavory Third World dictator, needed for strategic reasons, but conspicuously held at arms’ length.” Diehl goes on to say: “Obama picked a fight over something that virtually all Israelis agree on, and before serious discussions have even begun….A new administration can be excused for making such a mistake in the treacherous and complex theater of Middle East diplomacy. That’s why Obama was given a pass by many when he made exactly the same mistake last year. The second time around, the president doesn’t look naive. He appears ideological – and vindictive.” And, according to Caroline Glick: “Obama has pocketed Netanyahu’s concessions and escalated his demands …… With the U.S. President treating Israel like an enemy, the Palestinians have no reason to agree to sit down and negotiate.”

The fact is that neither George Mitchell nor Hillary Clinton nor Robert Gates, nor the president himself has obtained a single concession from the Palestinian Authority – not one. Since the Oslo Accords of 1993, seventeen years of efforts under three presidents and six prime ministers have led nowhere. The President has spent more time provoking our friends than he has challenging our enemies. His constant attempts to engage with Iran, Syria and Turkey combined with his delay in signing the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act, suggest that he views developing U.S. relations with these anti-American regimes as his primary foreign policy goal. Given that each of these leaders has demanded that in exchange for better relations, Obama must abandon Israel as a U.S. ally, his recent behavior can be explained in strategic terms rather than as pique over new apartment buildings in Jerusalem.

Seeing a potential break between Washington and Jerusalem, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas have done everything possible to undermine the U.S.-Israeli relationship even more. Palestinian incitement and violence against Israel and Jews have increased as we have seen in renewed missile attacks from Gaza and Arab riots across Israel and the West Bank. And why not? If the Obama Administration is to adopt the policies of Israel’s enemies, how can Israel’s enemies be any less aggressive than the president of the United States?

As a result, the Administration’s constant affirmations of its commitment to Israel’s security – from Obama in Washington, to Mitchell and Biden in Israel, to Clinton at the AIPAC Conference last month – ring hollow. The Obama Administration has jeopardized not Israel’s stature, but its own regional interests and its international credibility. It is not seen as a reliable ally by the Israelis, the Europeans, the Asians, and especially by the Arab/Persian world.

The Obama Administration had best not delude itself: The Arab Street will never support America. When the U.S. distances itself from Israel, it does not win influence with the Arab world. It only justifies the Arab world backing away from any peace settlement, and earns their scorn. Moreover, an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement will not solve America’s problems with Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan or al-Qaeda contrary to statements issued by some Administration officials. As Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus said in his testimony before Congress recently: “Even if the U.S. were to announce a total military and economic boycott of Israel tomorrow, nothing would induce radical Islamists to lay down arms against America. Even if America joined the global jihad and offered to fight shoulder to shoulder with al-Qaeda, the extremists would not accept the offer, and give up their attacks against U.S. targets. For extremist regimes like Iran, Israel is a secondary target. Their main problem is the Western world and its leader, the United States.”

Obama says Israel must prove that it is committed to peace. It is unfortunate that his Administration is not making the same demands of the Palestinians, the Syrians and the Iranians. Israeli settlements are not the root of America’s woes.

Mark Silverberg is a foreign policy analyst for the Ariel Center for Policy Research (Israel), a Contributing Editor for Family Security Matters, Arutz Sheva (Israel National News) and the New Media Journal and is a member of Hadassah’s National Academic Advisory Board. His book “The Quartermasters of Terror: Saudi Arabia and the Global Islamic Jihad” and his articles have been archived under www.marksilverberg.com and www.analyst-network.com

Obama constantly puts Mideast blame on Israel | Bemidji Pioneer | Bemidji, Minnesota.

On all fronts, President Barack Obama’s policies in the Middle East are failing. So what is the president doing? Taking it out on America’s closest ally, Israel.

The administra-tion’s top priority in the region should be to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. That’s clearly not happening.

Obama’s second-biggest priority — if not his first, given the president’s campaign pledges — is to get U.S. troops out of Iraq.

That plan was going along nicely until Iraq’s elections — a tribute to Bush administration policy, but claimed as a success by Obama officials — produced a political deadlock that may lead to violence and extend the U.S. troop presence.

And, third, Obama wants to be the president who finally produces a two-state peace between Israel and the Palestinians. But that’s not happening, either, largely because of mistakes made by the administration itself.

(Afghanistan is in South Asia, not in the Mideast, but the administration’s courageous policy isn’t going very well there, either, with Afghan President Hamid Karzai entertaining Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, abetting rampant corruption and accusing the United States of trying to dominate his country.)

Obama gives every indication of believing the “Arab narrative” of what blocks Middle East peace — namely, Israeli (not Palestinian) intransigence.

His animus isn’t into Jimmy Carter territory yet — Carter likens Israel to apartheid South Africa — but Obama is given to outbursts of rage at Israeli “provocations,” but none to those committed on the Palestinian side.

Contrast the reaction of the administration to the March 11 dedication of a square in Ramallah, interim capital of the Palestinian Authority, honoring a terrorist with the Israeli announcement March 9 of construction of 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem.

The square in Ramallah now honors Dalal Mughrabi, leader of a Palestinian terror squad that killed 38 Israelis aboard a bus in 1978, 13 of them children.

When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on March 22, she said that the dedication “insults families on both sides of the conflict who have lost loved ones.”

But she incorrectly blamed the action on “a Hamas-controlled municipality,” when it was not authorized by that terrorist group, but by Fatah, the party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. She did not condemn him.

By contrast, on Obama’s personal orders, the administration fired every verbal gun in its arsenal at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the Jerusalem announcement — even though it knew he was blindsided and embarrassed by right-wingers in his own government.

It was, as the administration said, “an insult” to visiting Vice President Joseph Biden, who “condemned” it. That was a reasonable reaction.

But then, on Obama’s orders, Clinton upbraided Netanyahu in a 45-minute phone call publicized by the administration, and her spokesman said that Netanyahu had drawn the entire U.S.-Israeli “bilateral relationship” into question.

When Netanyahu spoke to AIPAC, he made it clear that Israel would not stop building in its capital, Jerusalem, even though it has frozen settlement activity in the West Bank.

He then went to the White House — and was treated like a pariah, denied customary photographs with the president, let alone a press availability.

Also, according to reports from the Israeli side, Netanyahu’s aides stayed past midnight in the White House and had to ask for food and water.

It’s conceivable that Obama’s approach is directed more at Netanyahu than Israel and that he hopes, as Bill Clinton did, to drive the Likud leader from office and have him replaced by a less hard-line prime minister.

But Obama’s whole approach neglects some facts. During Clinton’s final months in office in 2000, Israel agreed to a peace plan substantially turning the West Bank over to Palestinian rule. It was rejected by then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Right-wing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew Israeli forces from Gaza in 2004 — whereupon Hamas took over the territory and began firing rockets at Israeli towns.

Before he left office in 2008, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered Palestinians the most generous peace plan yet, and they refused to take it.

Now, they are refusing even face-to-face negotiations with Israel. Why? Because last March, Obama and Clinton demanded total cessation of Israeli settlement activity on former Palestinian territory — whereupon that became the Palestinians’ precondition for participation in peace talks, which have yet to resume.

Obama has been publicly pounding on Israel for concessions but never publicly leans on the Palestinians.

Meantime, the administration is leaning on Iran, but ineffectually. Clinton said at AIPAC that “the United States is determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons,” and if Iran persists, “our aim is not incremental sanctions, but sanctions that will bite.”

Obama said he anticipated that the U.N. Security Council would agree to sanctions within “weeks,” but the truth is that China and Russia are blocking them and, if finally persuaded to impose some, will see that they are weak.

Obama should be doing what Bill Clinton did to prevent Serbia from committing genocide in Muslim Kosovo: go outside the U.N., form a European “coalition of the willing” and cut off Iran’s gasoline.

Iran may have enough highly enriched uranium to test a simple Hiroshima-style bomb in 2011. It would be a huge embarrassment to Obama a year before he seeks re-election.

It would also be a dire threat to Israel, whose existence Iran has vowed to end. Israel will be sorely tempted to attack Iran to prevent its developing a bomb.

Obama surely doesn’t want that. It could create chaos in oil markets and the world economy, not to mention the Mideast.

But Obama’s persuasive power with Israel? It’s fading fast — and it’s his own fault.

Morton Kondracke is executive editor of Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill.

Ahmadinejad warns Israel against second Gaza war.

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Rep. Trent Franks: This time, Israel will not walk into the ovens | Washington Examiner.

By: Rep. Trent Franks
OpEd Contributor
April 2, 2010

(AP/Shaigan)

A Jewish author, Primo Levi, was once asked what he had learned from the Holocaust. He replied, “When a man with a gun says he’s going to kill you – believe him.”

At this moment, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a man who, in the same breath, both denies the Holocaust ever occurred, and then threatens to make it happen again, is arrogantly holding a gun with which he vows to wipe the state of Israel off the map.

But where is the Obama Administration?

Israel remains the truest friend America has in this world, and our two nations need each other now as much as we ever have; because a nuclear Iran represents a threat to the paradigm of freedom for the entire world. It also represents a truly fundamental, existential threat to the state of Israel.

Yet, in recent days, Israel has received more open rebuke from the Obama administration for plans to build houses in Jerusalem than Iran has received for building a secret uranium enrichment facility to build nuclear weapons that would threaten the entire world.

Israel’s enemies and ours see such open criticism as a weakening of the Israeli-American alliance, and an opportunity to boldly advance violence against Israel and the hegemony of our common enemies in the Middle East— most notably, Iran.

With each well documented new discovery by the International Atomic Energy Agency over the last several years, Iran has dramatically shifted its stories about its uranium enrichment efforts. In the beginning it had claimed it had no centrifuge program at all.

When we discovered Iran had its first operational centrifuges (fewer than 150 in back 2005), I began calling for Iran to be referred to the U.N. Security Council because it was becoming obvious to reasonable and unbiased observers that it was Iran’s true intent to ultimately develop nuclear weapons. That was five years ago.

Today, the Iranian program includes over 8,000 centrifuges. A total of only 3,000 centrifuges is the commonly accepted figure for a nuclear enrichment program that can be used as a platform for a full industrial-scale program capable of churning out enough enriched uranium for dozens of nuclear weapons.

Iran has also begun to enrich uranium to 20 percent, which is four times the amount necessary for peaceful domestic energy production. It also means that they are 70% of the way to weapons grade uranium capable of fueling nuclear warheads.

The regime has built underground enrichment facilities at Natanz and the newly discovered secret underground facility at Qom, and they continue to test medium- and long-range ballistic missiles that could be used to deliver a nuclear payload.

The IAEA reports that Iran has already manufactured enough uranium hexafluoride to ultimately build at least 20 nuclear warheads.  It has also been reported that Iran has now experimented with polonium. Polonium is a radioactive isotope with only one known purpose on earth: to trigger a nuclear explosion.

This overwhelming evidence, along with Iran’s languishing economy and literally centuries’ worth of natural gas reserves, makes Iran’s claim that it seeks nuclear capability solely for peaceful purposes ridiculous beyond my ability to express.

Iran is the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism and continues brazenly to provide support to its proxies, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and other jihadist terror groups. It should send a chill down our spines to consider that the same willingness Iran has demonstrated to proliferate missile technology to its terrorist proxies would undoubtedly also become a willingness to proliferate nuclear weapons technology to terrorists.

Osama bin Laden has called it a religious duty for al-Qaida to acquire nuclear weapons.

Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has stated, “My worst nightmare is terrorists with nuclear weapons. Not only do I know they are trying to get them, but I know they will use them.”

This is indeed the greatest danger of all. If Iran steps over the nuclear threshold, rogue regimes and terrorists the world over will have access to these monstrous weapons.  No wonder the nation of Israel is concerned.

Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said many years ago: “In our long war with the Arabs, Israel has always had a secret weapon: No alternative.”

Today, that reality remains unchanged for the tiny nation that could fit into my congressional district twice.  Israel has very few options and no margin for error. Israel understands that Iran is currently ruled by a regime whose present leaders believe that Armageddon is a good thing, and that it is God’s will for them to annihilate America and Israel.

A responsible Israeli leader facing such a mortal threat  from a nuclear armed terrorist state must and will do whatever is necessary to defend his people. Israel will not walk silently into the gas chambers again.

The choice before Israel and the free world is no longer one between a world as it is now, or the way the world might be after a military strike to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons. Rather, our ultimate choice now is between what the world will be like after a preventative strike on Iran, or what the world will be like after Iran gains nuclear weapons.

If and when the people of Israel find themselves with no time left and no choice but to defend themselves by taking preemptive military action to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, the Obama administration will owe an apology to the whole world for failing to act, but especially to Israel for leaving them with no choice but to act on behalf of all of us.

America and the Western world will then have a moral responsibility to stand with Israel in whatever follows.

Rep. Trent Franks, R-AZ, is a co-founder of the Israel Allies Caucus and is a member of the House Strategic [Nuclear] Forces Subcommittee.

Despite Obama’s sanctions, Ahmadinejad can keep smiling – Haaretz – Israel News.

One must admit the new sanctions against Iran pushed by the United States government, in coordination with China and Russia, are too little too late. Washington does not intend to attack Iran.

Furthermore, the draft of sanctions the U.S. has suggested to China and Russia in an attempt to put an end to the Iranian nuclear race can also mean that Washington understands that the notion of a nuclear Iran is one that must be reconciled with.

Restricting the movement of leaders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (such as preventing them from taking ski vacations in Europe), or enforcing various insignificant financial restrictions, will certainly not stop the uranium enrichment programs at Iranian nuclear facilities.

Just yesterday U.S. President Barack Obama announced that there is evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, and warned that the entire Middle East would be ‘destabilized’ if they succeed in attaining nuclear arms, and further trigger an arms race in the region.

Yet it is highly unlikely that Obama’s chosen line of action to stop this growing trend will prove to be the right one. In an interview on CBS Obama stressed that a united international community will back the soon-to-be-approved sanctions against Iran.

That is true.

The President said that a nuclear Iran is not only bad for America’s national security, but also for the entire world. An impelling proclamation, but not what is going to stop the Iranians.

The President went on to say that in time Iran’s economy will be influenced by their actions. “We’re going to ratchet up the pressure and examine how they respond but we’re going to do so with a unified international community,” Obama said.

The trouble is that time is exactly what is lacking in the equation. According to analysts across the globe, Iran will be able to manufacture nuclear warheads by the end of this year. Perhaps Tehran is not in any particular rush to produce nuclear weapons so as to avoid provocation. Yet while the Americans debate what to do with Iran after the expected failure of the current sanctions, the centrifuges will continue to enrich uranium in either the Natanz or Qom nuclear plants.

Furthermore, it must be noted that China, for its part, is in no hurry to accept Obama’s flattery, and is maintaining an ambiguous standpoint. The spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry in Beijing has reiterated his country’s traditional stance, saying that they still prefer a diplomatic solution, which they will continue to stride to achieve. What does this mean? It is unclear. Perhaps Beijing does not accept even the draft of light sanctions.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can continue to smile.

And of course, Tehran did not hesitate to respond. Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said after meetings in China that “In our talks with China it was agreed that tools such as sanctions have lost their effectiveness, ” adding that “”Iranians are familiar with sanctions … We consider sanctions as opportunities … We will continue our [nuclear] path more decisively.”

This is the standard and well known Iranian reply, which will continue to be Tehran’s guideline as long as the U.S. administration persists to attempt to gain a supportive and sympathetic international community to back Oabam, rather than focusing on more decisive action to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

And what about Israel? In the case in which nothing unforeseeable occurs, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will threaten, warn, etc. However, without Washington’s permission to proceed to attack Iran, which is currently nonexistent, Israel will also have to get used to the notion of a nuclear armed Iran.