WarSclerotic

AFP: Iran missile will strike Tel Aviv if hit: Khamenei aide.

TEHRAN — An aide to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said that the Islamic republic will strike Tel Aviv with its missiles if it comes under attack, Fars news agency reported on Tuesday.

“If the enemy takes its chance and fires a missile towards Iran, the dust from an Iranian missile strike will rise in the heart of Tel Aviv even before the dust from the enemy attack settles” in Iran, said cleric Mojtaba Zolnoor, who is Khamenei’s representative in the elite Revolutionary Guards.

Fars reported that Zolnoor made the comments at a mosque late Monday, where he also said Iran’s foes were aware that Tehran “has become a ballistic power.”

Iran has regularly boasted of its missile capability, saying it has an arsenal which can strike regional arch-foe Israel.

Israel and US meanwhile have never ruled out a military strike against Iran to stop its galloping nuclear programme.

France24 – Israel distributes biochemical war protection kits.

AFP – Israel Tuesday began distributing millions of protection kits against biochemical warfare, Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai announced, stressing the campaign was not linked to any imminent threat.

“We have equipped ourselves with millions of protection kits against biological or chemical warfare, and a massive distribution programme for the population started today,” Vilnai told army radio.

“Every family in Israel can receive these kits at home and be instructed on how to use them by Israeli postal workers, at an average cost of 25 shekels (five dollars), or pick them up free of charge at post office counters.”

The distribution came as an aide to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, quoted by the Islamic republic’s Fars news agency on Tuesday, warned that his country would hit Tel Aviv with missiles if it came under attack.

“If the enemy takes its chance and fires a missile towards Iran, the dust from an Iranian missile strike will rise in the heart of Tel Aviv even before the dust from the enemy attack settles” in Iran, said cleric Mojtaba Zolnoor.

Iran has regularly boasted of its missile capability, saying it has an arsenal which can strike Israel, which along with Washington has not ruled out a military strike to halt Tehran’s controversial nuclear programme.

But Vilnai emphasized the distribution of the protection kits was “not linked to any precise current threat.”

The Israeli government decided on January 5 to distribute eight million new gas masks, one for each citizen, by 2013 and already distributed gas masks to 70,000 residents of Or Yehuda, near Tel Aviv in February.

Israel has long feared chemical or biological weapons may be used against it in a future conflict involving the Jewish state’s arch-foes, Iran or Syria.

The country came under sustained attack during its 2006 war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, when more than 4,000 Katyusha rockets were launched at north Israel in 34 days, sending hundreds of thousands of residents fleeing south.

Gas masks were distributed to Israel’s population during the 1991 Gulf War over Kuwait when now executed dictator Saddam Hussein’s Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles armed with conventional warheads at Israel.

Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms – NYTimes.com.

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

President Obama on Monday discussing his new nuclear strategy, which would limit the conditions for using such weapons.

WASHINGTON — President Obama said Monday that he was revamping American nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons.

But the president said in an interview that he was carving out an exception for “outliers like Iran and North Korea” that have violated or renounced the main treaty to halt nuclear proliferation.

Discussing his approach to nuclear security the day before formally releasing his new strategy, Mr. Obama described his policy as part of a broader effort to edge the world toward making nuclear weapons obsolete, and to create incentives for countries to give up any nuclear ambitions. To set an example, the new strategy renounces the development of any new nuclear weapons, overruling the initial position of his own defense secretary.

Mr. Obama’s strategy is a sharp shift from those of his predecessors and seeks to revamp the nation’s nuclear posture for a new age in which rogue states and terrorist organizations are greater threats than traditional powers like Russia and China.

It eliminates much of the ambiguity that has deliberately existed in American nuclear policy since the opening days of the cold war. For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.

Those threats, Mr. Obama argued, could be deterred with “a series of graded options,” a combination of old and new conventional weapons. “I’m going to preserve all the tools that are necessary in order to make sure that the American people are safe and secure,” he said in the interview in the Oval Office.

White House officials said the new strategy would include the option of reconsidering the use of nuclear retaliation against a biological attack, if the development of such weapons reached a level that made the United States vulnerable to a devastating strike.

Mr. Obama’s new strategy is bound to be controversial, both among conservatives who have warned against diluting the United States’ most potent deterrent and among liberals who were hoping for a blanket statement that the country would never be the first to use nuclear weapons.

Mr. Obama argued for a slower course, saying, “We are going to want to make sure that we can continue to move towards less emphasis on nuclear weapons,” and, he added, to “make sure that our conventional weapons capability is an effective deterrent in all but the most extreme circumstances.”

The release of the new strategy, known as the Nuclear Posture Review, opens an intensive nine days of nuclear diplomacy geared toward reducing weapons. Mr. Obama plans to fly to Prague to sign a new arms-control agreement with Russia on Thursday and then next week will host 47 world leaders in Washington for a summit meeting on nuclear security.

The most immediate test of the new strategy is likely to be in dealing with Iran, which has defied the international community by developing a nuclear program that it insists is peaceful but that the United States and its allies say is a precursor to weapons. Asked about the escalating confrontation with Iran, Mr. Obama said he was now convinced that “the current course they’re on would provide them with nuclear weapons capabilities,” though he gave no timeline.

He dodged when asked whether he shared Israel’s view that a “nuclear capable” Iran was as dangerous as one that actually possessed weapons.

“I’m not going to parse that right now,” he said, sitting in his office as children played on the South Lawn of the White House at a daylong Easter egg roll. But he cited the example of North Korea, whose nuclear capabilities were unclear until it conducted a test in 2006, which it followed with a second shortly after Mr. Obama took office.

“I think it’s safe to say that there was a time when North Korea was said to be simply a nuclear-capable state until it kicked out the I.A.E.A. and become a self-professed nuclear state,” he said, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency. “And so rather than splitting hairs on this, I think that the international community has a strong sense of what it means to pursue civilian nuclear energy for peaceful purposes versus a weaponizing capability.”

Mr. Obama said he wanted a new United Nations sanctions resolution against Iran “that has bite,” but he would not embrace the phrase “crippling sanctions” once used by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. And he acknowledged the limitations of United Nations action. “We’re not naïve that any single set of sanctions automatically is going to change Iranian behavior,” he said, adding “there’s no light switch in this process.”

In the year since Mr. Obama gave a speech in Prague declaring that he would shift the policy of the United States toward the elimination of nuclear weapons, his staff has been meeting — and arguing — over how to turn that commitment into a workable policy, without undermining the credibility of the country’s nuclear deterrent.

The strategy to be released on Tuesday is months late, partly because Mr. Obama had to adjudicate among advisers who feared he was not changing American policy significantly enough, and those who feared that anything too precipitous could embolden potential adversaries. One senior official said that the new strategy was the product of 150 meetings, including 30 convened by the White House National Security Council, and that even then Mr. Obama had to step in to order rewrites.

He ended up with a document that differed considerably from the one President George W. Bush published in early 2002, just three months after the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Bush, too, argued for a post-cold-war rethinking of nuclear deterrence, reducing American reliance on those weapons.

But Mr. Bush’s document also reserved the right to use nuclear weapons “to deter a wide range of threats,” including banned chemical and biological weapons and large-scale conventional attacks. Mr. Obama’s strategy abandons that option — except if the attack is by a nuclear state, or a nonsignatory or violator of the nonproliferation treaty.

The document to be released Tuesday after months of study led by the Defense Department will declare that “the fundamental role” of nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attacks on the United States, allies or partners, a narrower presumption than the past. But Mr. Obama rejected the formulation sought by arms control advocates to declare that the “sole role” of nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack.

There are five declared nuclear states — the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China. Three states with nuclear weapons have refused to sign — India, Pakistan and Israel — and North Korea renounced the treaty in 2003. Iran remains a signatory, but the United Nations Security Council has repeatedly found it in violation of its obligations, because it has hidden nuclear plants and refused to answer questions about evidence it was working on a warhead.

In shifting the nuclear deterrent toward combating proliferation and the sale or transfer of nuclear material to terrorists or nonnuclear states, Mr. Obama seized on language developed in the last years of the Bush administration. It had warned North Korea that it would be held “fully accountable” for any transfer of weapons or technology. But the next year, North Korea was caught aiding Syria in building a nuclear reactor but suffered no specific consequence.

Mr. Obama was asked whether the American failure to make North Korea pay a heavy price for the aid to Syria undercut Washington’s credibility.

“I don’t think countries around the world are interested in testing our credibility when it comes to these issues,” he said. He said such activity would leave a country vulnerable to a nuclear strike, and added, “We take that very seriously because we think that set of threats present the most serious security challenge to the United States.”

He indicated that he hoped to use this week’s treaty signing with Russia as a stepping stone toward more ambitious reductions in nuclear arsenals down the road, but suggested that would have to extend beyond the old paradigm of Russian-American relations.

“We are going to pursue opportunities for further reductions in our nuclear posture, working in tandem with Russia but also working in tandem with NATO as a whole,” he said.

An obvious such issue would be the estimated 200 tactical nuclear weapons the United States still has stationed in Western Europe. Russia has called for their removal, and there is growing interest among European nations in such a move as well. But Mr. Obama said he wanted to consult with NATO allies before making such a commitment.

The summit meeting that opens next week in Washington will bring together nearly four dozen world leaders, the largest such gathering by an American president since the founding of the United Nations 65 years ago. Mr. Obama said he hoped to use the session to lay down tangible commitments by individual countries toward his goal of securing the world’s nuclear material so it does not fall into the hands of terrorists or dangerous states.

“Our expectation is not that there’s just some vague, gauzy statement about us not wanting to see loose nuclear materials,” he said. “We anticipate a communiqué that spells out very clearly, here’s how we’re going to achieve locking down all the nuclear materials over the next four years.”

Indiana Gazette > B Opinions.

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 administration’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.

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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.

Obama: A nuclear Iran inevitable.

US President said “current course would provide them with nuclear capabilities.

It is inevitable that Iran will produce nuclear weapons, as things stand, US President Barack Obama said on Monday, in an interview with The New York Times. Seeming to indicate his administration was now resigned to a future including a nuclear-armed Iran.

President Obama stated he was now convinced that “the current course they’re on would provide them with nuclear weapons capabilities,” though he gave no timeline.

He dodged when asked whether he shared Israel’s view that a “nuclear capable” Iran was as dangerous as one that actually possessed weapons.

“I’m not going to parse that right now,” he said. But he cited the example of North Korea, whose nuclear capabilities were unclear until it conducted a test in 2006, which it followed with a second shortly after Mr. Obama took office.

President Obama was speaking about revamping American nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons, with exceptions directed at “outliers like Iran and North Korea” that have violated or renounced the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

On March 28th former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton warned of the White House moving towards acceptance of a nuclearly capable Iran. “I very much worry the Obama administration is willing to accept a nuclear Iran, that’s why there’s this extraordinary pressure on Israel not to attack in Iran,” Bolton told Army Radio.

On Saturday night a Israel urged international action on Iran. In response to an announcement by Iran’s nuclear chief of plans to build new atomic facilities in the country, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s newest warning regarding Israel’s demise, a senior government official called for “determined and effective international action.”

“Ahmadinejad’s continuous outbursts of extremist rhetoric only prove to the entire international community the seriousness of the threat posed by the Iranian regime’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, and heightens the need for determined and effective international action,” the official said.

Ahmadinejad, referring on Saturday to escalating tensions in the Gaza Strip, said IDF action would “cost” Israel “too much.”

“I say to the Zionists and their supporters that they have already committed enough crimes,” he told an Iranian crowd. “A new adventure in Gaza will not save you, but hasten your demise.”

Faced with the prospect of new sanctions because
of Iran’s nuclear defiance, Ahmadinejad said that such penalties would only strengthen his country’s technological advancement and help it to become more self-sufficient.

“Don’t imagine that you can stop Iran’s progress,” Ahmadinejad said in remarks broadcast live on state television. “The more you reveal your animosity, the more it will increase our people’s motivation to double efforts for construction and progress of Iran.”

The Iranian president claimed US pressure on Iran had backfired and made Washington more isolated in the eyes of the world.

China, which has veto power in the UN Security Council and whose support would be key, has not confirmed US reports that it has dropped its opposition to new sanctions. Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, is in China in the hopes of winning assurances from Beijing that it will oppose such measures.

Iran’s economy has suffered over the past year, and parliament approved a cut in subsidies that keep fuel prices low, a further blow to Iranians already experiencing high unemployment and inflation.

The UN Security Council could consider new punishments on Iran, including increasing financial squeezes on the extensive holdings of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. The US has also said it could seek to penalize companies that sell fuel to the oil-rich Islamic Republic, which imports about 40 percent of the fuel it needs because its refineries cannot keep pace.

Ahmadinejad added that the US has failed to isolate Iran. He said the fact that Obama’s recent visit to Afghanistan was not announced beforehand for security reasons was evidence of America’s own isolation.

“First, let’s see who is isolated. We think those who can’t show up publicly among the people and directly address them are isolated – those who fear nations. Gentlemen go to a country where they have 60,000 troops without any prior announcement. Who is isolated?” Ahmadinejad said.

The Iranian president noted that his own recent trip to Afghanistan was announced in advance and said he was warmly received.

“You are isolated yourself, but you are a hotheaded and don’t understand it,” he said.

Interview on Iran-US relations.

By Behdad Bordbar

I have a rare chance to interview with professor .Dr. Trita Parsi is the author of Treacherous Alliance – The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States, He is professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins.

In 2002, Parsi founded the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) “to enablea Iranian Americans to condemn the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and that he has since run it as a grass-roots group aimed at strengthening their voice.” Through the organization, he supports engagement between the US and Iran in belief that it “would enhance our [US] national security by helping to stabilize the Middle East and bolster the moderates in Iran.

Q: It seems that the situation in Iran has reached the point of no return. The demonstrators in the streets have calling for weeks for the downfall of the Islamic Republic, hence the removal of supreme leader from power. But opposition leaders, so far, remained uncertain, while the debate over the future of democratic movement is going on. What is your opinion about future of Green movement?

A: I believe that the Iranian people’s aspiration for democracy, human rights and proper representation is unbeatable. The struggle for democracy in Iran is more than a century old. It has faced many obstacles; its progress has not always been unidirectional. But the forces for authoritarianism and repression don’t have time on their side. Whether the movement will be victorious in the short run, or in the medium term, is difficult to predict. But I think it is undeniable that the aspirations are not going away, and hence, whether it is manifested through the Green movement or through some other form, the demands for democracy will remain till they are met.

Q: The Iranian leadership’s handling of the dispute over the tenth presidential election, which resulted in violent crackdown of protests, had a significant effect on future of Islamic regime. You have broad connections with intellectuals, politicians and journalists. How do you sum up political analyses or Iran’s current situation in Washington?

A: The policy in Washington is entering a new phase, the pressure track. Though the President Obama says that the door for diplomacy is still open, not many resources are put into it. And frankly, it is not clear whether diplomacy under these circumstances – where Iran seems incapable of making big decisions – is valuable. At the same time though, the pressure track is unlikely to produce any results. And the fear is that just as sanctions are seen as a political necessity today due to the perception of diplomacy failing, there is a risk that military action will be seen as a necessity in 12 or so months from today, when the sanctions path has been deemed a failure.

Q: As we know president Obama came to office with hope of ‘a new beginning’ of engagement with political leaders in Tehran. He said his administration was committed “to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community. This offer was rejected by Tehran. Supreme leader of Iran warned negotiating with the United States would be “naive and perverted” and that Iranian politicians should not be “deceived” into starting such talks. Last week Iran arrested leader of Jundullah, Militant Islamist organisation and blamed United States for support of terrorism, while there are strong rumours that his arrest only became possible through the help of Americans.  Do you think the strategy of negotiations with current administration has come to its dead end?

A: The picture is quite a bit more complicated than your question reveals. From the US perspective, hope for this round of diplomacy has been depleted. Yet, there isn’t any real confidence that pressure will lead to a solution. But starting a new round of diplomacy while the Iranian regime seems incapable of making decisions, and while nuclear-first negotiations risk hurting the movement fro democracy, may be unwise.

Either way, any new potential diplomacy, the mistakes of the past must be corrected. Diplomacy must give equal weight to the human rights situation in Iran and should not be cantered or exclusively about the nuclear issue.

Q: The new head of IAEA informed the international community that Iran is not co-operating with the UN nuclear watchdog’s investigation into the country’s nuclear programme .United States and its allies are going to impose new sanctions on Iran. Is the international community in your view taking the right approaches?

A: There is little confidence that sanctions will work, even among its proponents. The question has to a large extent become about imposing either broad based, indiscriminate sanctions, or targeted sanctions. Indiscriminate sanctions have in the past only hurt the Iranian economy and at times even strengthened the regime and the IRGC. Targeted sanctions that hit the people in the regime responsible for the human rights abuses and the nuclear program seems wiser, though there are question marks about their efficiency as well. At the end of the day, no one singly measure can be successful. It’s about crafting a policy that combines various measures and utilizes all their strengths.

Q: Mr. Ahmadinejad is well known for his rhetoric’s against Israel; Iranians have consensus that Iran is not a security threat against Jewish state. Israeli lobby is strongly trying to convince public opinions that Iran is working to develop a nuclear–armed bomb/missile. In the other hand Israeli leadership repeatedly said they put all the options on the table .How serious are threat of direct conflagration between Iran and Israel?

A: The risk of a war initiated by an Israeli attack on Iran is increasing. In the past, Israeli rhetoric about bombing Iran was mostly aimed at putting pressure on the US and the EU to be tough with Iran. At this point though, particularly with the deterioration of US-Israeli relations, we are entering an era of greater uncertainty.

We also have to keep in mind, as several Israeli officials have told me, that Israel is very concerned about a Green victory in Iran. The Israelis fear that if the Greens win, Iran will become a country that continues to develop nuclear energy, but with a nicer face and with much international sympathy for its emerging democracy. As a result, for the Israelis – who focus on Iran’s capabilities more than on its regime – they will face greater difficulty isolating Iran, pushing to sanction it or to build a consensus around bombing it. Add that to the fact that any attack on Iran likely would enable the regime to go after the Green movement with even greater brutality, and you have a very explosive mix.

Obama Seems Unserious About a Nuclear Iran – WSJ.com.

Obama is acting as if he believes a nuclear Tehran is inevitable.

‘Our aim is not incremental sanctions, but sanctions that will bite.” Thus did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seek to reassure the crowd at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee two weeks ago about the Obama Administration’s resolve on Iran. Three days later, this newspaper reported on its front page that “the U.S. has backed away from pursuing a number of tough measures against Iran” in order to win Russian and Chinese support for one more U.N. sanctions resolution.

This fits the pattern we have seen across the 14 months of the Obama Presidency. Mrs. Clinton called a nuclear-armed Iran “unacceptable” no fewer than four times in a single paragraph in her AIPAC speech. But why should the Iranians believe her? President Obama set a number of deadlines last year for a negotiated settlement of Iran’s nuclear file, all of which Tehran ignored, and then Mr. Obama ignored them too.

In his latest Persian New Year message to Iran, Mr. Obama made the deadline-waiver permanent, saying “our offer of comprehensive diplomatic contacts and dialogue stands.” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had a quick rejoinder. “They say they have extended a hand to Iran,” the Iranian President said Saturday, “but the Iranian government and nation declined to welcome that.”

The Iranians have good reason to think they have little to lose from continued defiance. Tehran’s nuclear negotiator emerged from two days of talks in Beijing on Friday saying, “We agreed, sanctions as a tool have already lost their effectiveness.” He has a point.

The Chinese have indicated that the most they are prepared to support are narrow sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program of the type Tehran has already sneered at. As the Journal’s Peter Fritsch and David Crawford reported this weekend, the Iranians continue to acquire key nuclear components from unsuspecting Western companies via intermediaries, including some Chinese firms.

Yet the Administration still rolls the sanctions rock up the U.N. hill, in a fantastic belief that Russian and Chinese support is vital even if the price is sanctions that are toothless. French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged Mr. Obama a year ago to move ahead with sanctions even without the Russians and Chinese, but Mr. Obama insisted he needed both. A year later, everyone except apparently Mr. Obama can see who was right.

The Administration also argued upon taking office that by making good-faith offers to Iran last year, the U.S. would gain the diplomatic capital needed to steel the world for a tougher approach. Yet a year later the U.S. finds itself begging for U.N. Security Council votes even from such nonpermanent members as Brazil and Turkey, both of which have noticeably improved their ties with Iran in recent months.

The U.S. can at this point do more unilaterally by imposing and enforcing sanctions on companies that do business in Iran’s energy industry. But so far the Administration has shown considerably less enthusiasm for these measures than has even a Democratic Congress.

As for the potential threat of military strikes to assist diplomacy, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has made his doubts about their efficacy very public. The President’s two-week public attempt to humiliate Benjamin Netanyahu has also considerably lessened the perceived likelihood of an Israeli strike on Iran, thereby further diminishing whatever momentum remains for strong sanctions.

All of these actions suggest to us that Mr. Obama has concluded that a nuclear Iran is inevitable, even if he can’t or won’t admit it publicly. Last year Mrs. Clinton floated the idea of expanding the U.S. nuclear umbrella to the entire Middle East if Iran does get the bomb. She quickly backtracked, but many viewed that as an Obama-ian slip.

Most of the U.S. and European foreign policy establishment has already concluded that Iran will succeed, and the current issue of Foreign Affairs makes the public case for what to do “After Iran Gets the Bomb.” Authors James Lindsay and Ray Takeyh argue that a nuclear Iran is containable, and that it is better than the alternative of a pre-emptive U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

However, even they acknowledge that a nuclear Iran “would be seen as a major diplomatic defeat for the United States,” in which “friends would respond by distancing themselves from Washington [and] foes would challenge U.S. policies more aggressively.” And that’s the optimistic scenario.

Meanwhile, the CIA has recently reported that Iran more than tripled its stockpile of low-enriched uranium in 2009; that it has “[moved] toward self-sufficiency in the production of ballistic missiles”; and that it “continues to develop a range of capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons.” A senior Western official recently told us he is confident the Iranians either have or are building secret nuclear facilities beyond the one near Qom that was disclosed last year.

President George W. Bush will share responsibility for a nuclear Iran given his own failure to act more firmly against the Islamic Republic or to allow Israel to do so, thereby failing to make good on his pledge not to allow the world’s most dangerous regimes to get the world’s most dangerous weapons. But it is now Mr. Obama’s watch, and for a year he has behaved like a President who would rather live with a nuclear Iran than do what it takes to stop it.

Ahmadinejad of Iran taunts Israel as vulnerable.

While inaugurating the Mideast’s biggest iron palletizing factory, Iran’s President Ahmadinejad warned Israel not to renew combat in Gaza.  He taunted Israel as being vulnerable now, and everybody knows it.  He buttressed his claim by citing Israel’s last, two, mini-wars in Lebanon and Gaza.  He accused them of looking for an excuse to attack Gaza, in order to recoup its deterrence.  He said another war would add to Israel’s load of sin  (IMRA, 4/3  http://www.imra.org.il/  ).

It is not a sin for Israel to fight back after thousands of rockets had been launched against it.  The sin is to have launched those rockets in the first place.  That sin Ahmadinejad does not address.  The whole world disregarded it, until Israel fought back.  So much for the distorted morals of the world, whose distorted notions on international law are cited against Israel, too.

Israel’s sin is in its defeatist governments fighting half-heartedly in Lebanon and Gaza, so that although it got the better of its adversaries, it did not destroy their military forces.  Militarily defeated, but not destroyed, the Muslim side claims victory.  War is one of those things that if worth doing at all, is worth doing well.

Constant withdrawal gives Israel’s enemies the notion that it lacks the fortitude to make any military victory sweeping.

If Iran is warning Israel not to defend itself from rockets fired by its Hamas proxy now, imagine the warnings against self-defense from attacks all over by its proxies once Iran possesses nuclear weapons!

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