WarSclerotic

Charles Krauthammer – The fruits of weakness.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, center, with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, left, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. (Vahid Salemi/associated Press)

By Charles Krauthammer

Friday, May 21, 2010

It will, however, make meaningful sanctions more difficult. America’s proposed Security Council resolution is already laughably weak — no blacklisting of Iran’s central bank, no sanctions against Iran’s oil and gas industry, no nonconsensual inspections on the high seas. Yet Turkey and Brazil — both current members of the Security Council — are so opposed to sanctions that they will not even discuss the resolution. And China will now have a new excuse to weaken it further.

But the deeper meaning of the uranium-export stunt is the brazenness with which Brazil and Turkey gave cover to the mullahs’ nuclear ambitions and deliberately undermined U.S. efforts to curb Iran’s program.

The real news is that already notorious photo: the president of Brazil, our largest ally in Latin America, and the prime minister of Turkey, for more than half a century the Muslim anchor of NATO, raising hands together with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the most virulently anti-American leader in the world.

That picture — a defiant, triumphant take-that-Uncle-Sam — is a crushing verdict on the Obama foreign policy. It demonstrates how rising powers, traditional American allies, having watched this administration in action, have decided that there’s no cost in lining up with America’s enemies and no profit in lining up with a U.S. president given to apologies and appeasement.

They’ve watched President Obama’s humiliating attempts to appease Iran, as every rejected overture is met with abjectly renewed U.S. negotiating offers. American acquiescence reached such a point that the president was late, hesitant and flaccid in expressing even rhetorical support for democracy demonstrators who were being brutally suppressed and whose call for regime change offered the potential for the most significant U.S. strategic advance in the region in 30 years.

They’ve watched America acquiesce to Russia’s re-exerting sway over Eastern Europe, over Ukraine (pressured by Russia last month into extending for 25 years its lease of the Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol) and over Georgia (Russia’s de facto annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia is no longer an issue under the Obama “reset” policy).

They’ve watched our appeasement of Syria, Iran’s agent in the Arab Levant — sending our ambassador back to Syria even as it tightens its grip on Lebanon, supplies Hezbollah with Scuds and intensifies its role as the pivot of the Iran-Hezbollah-Hamas alliance. The price for this ostentatious flouting of the United States and its interests? Ever more eager U.S. “engagement.”

They’ve observed the administration’s gratuitous slap at Britain over the Falklands, its contemptuous treatment of Israel, its undercutting of the Czech Republic and Poland, and its indifference to Lebanon and Georgia. And in Latin America, they see not just U.S. passivity as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez organizes his anti-American “Bolivarian” coalition while deepening military and commercial ties with Iran and Russia. They saw active U.S. support in Honduras for a pro-Chávez would-be dictator seeking unconstitutional powers in defiance of the democratic institutions of that country.

This is not just an America in decline. This is an America in retreat — accepting, ratifying and declaring its decline, and inviting rising powers to fill the vacuum.

Nor is this retreat by inadvertence. This is retreat by design and, indeed, on principle. It’s the perfect fulfillment of Obama’s adopted Third World narrative of American misdeeds, disrespect and domination from which he has come to redeem us and the world. Hence his foundational declaration at the U.N. General Assembly last September that “No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation” (guess who’s been the dominant nation for the last two decades?) and his dismissal of any “world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another.” (NATO? The West?)

Given Obama’s policies and principles, Turkey and Brazil are acting rationally. Why not give cover to Ahmadinejad and his nuclear ambitions? As the United States retreats in the face of Iran, China, Russia and Venezuela, why not hedge your bets? There’s nothing to fear from Obama, and everything to gain by ingratiating yourself with America’s rising adversaries. After all, they actually believe in helping one’s friends and punishing one’s enemies.

A Quisling Turkey – Forbes.com.

Claudia Rosett, 05.21.10, 12:26 PM EDT

Time to pull Ankara’s license as a regional broker.

In the ensuing flurry of diplomatic jujitsu, the U.S. on Tuesday presented a new draft sanctions resolution to the U.N. Security Council. With Turkey and Brazil both currently among the 10 rotating members of the Council, and other members such as China, Russia and Lebanon throwing their clinkers into the works, the dustups at Turtle Bay are already under way.

Whatever comes out of the U.N., it is at least clear that it’s time to rethink Turkey’s credentials as a broker. That’s sad to say, because Turkey is a country with tremendous achievements, worthy of respect. Lacking the oil resources that enrich and bedevil much of the Middle East, Turkey’s 74 million people worked hard to turn their country into one of the world’s top 20 most productive economies. For decades Turkey with its secular, Muslim-majority state, was a firm ally of the West, a member since 1952 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and a friend to the democratic state of Israel.

Since the Islamic AKP rose to power with a sweeping victory in Turkey’s 2002 elections, its leaders have been trading on Turkey’s credentials to greatly enhance their influence on the world stage. Top Turkish officials have made hundreds of diplomatic forays, globe-trotting to a staggering extent, opening new diplomatic missions in Africa and offering Turkey’s services as a mediator of conflicts in the Middle East.

What’s come of all this? Rather than boosting the standards of world politics, Turkey’s leaders have been lending their country’s good name to a lot of bad things. Since 2005 an Egyptian-born Turk, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, has been secretary-general of the Jeddah-based Organisation of the Islamic Conference. Also in 2005, Turkey together with Spain launched a U.N.-hosted initiative called the Alliance of Civilizations, which was grandfathered out of a previous U.N. oddity called the Dialogue of Civilizations–for which the progenitor was Iran. In 2008 Turkey turned up as go-between for “peace talks” between Syria and Israel, which went bust. These days Turkey has open frictions with Israel and embraces the Iranian-backed Palestinian terrorists of Hamas as “brothers.”

Israel war games | Iran nuclear bomb.

NABLUS, West Bank — During the Palestinian intifada, I sat on a dusty hilltop overlooking this most violent of West Bank towns with a dozen of the top Israeli officers in the area. The brigade commanders told their regional chiefs that all the police work and house-to-house fighting of the intifada had made their troops ill-prepared for a real war. “If we had to fight in Lebanon, my men wouldn’t know what they were doing,” shouted one.

In 2006, that prediction was proven largely true, as Israeli forces were matched on the ground by Hezbollah’s militia. The air- and missile-warfare that went on over their heads was devastating to Lebanese and Israeli civilians, but Israel’s military planners were shocked by the difficulties faced by their ground troops.

For Israel, the threat these days is clear. Nablus is quiet, its gunmen subdued by Palestinian police who are trained with American help and the economy bolstered by American aid. Next week, Israeli soldiers will run through a series of exercises to practice for a potential conflict with Hezbollah on the country’s northern border.

The main unknown in those exercises: How long does Israel have before the threat of nuclear attack will come into play?

Israeli government officials and security chiefs are reluctant to talk about how Israel might respond if Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons. They prefer to emphasize the destabilization of the international balance of power should such a situation arise. “We should focus on prevention,” Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor told international journalists last week. “Prophylactics, rather than dealing with unwanted results.”

So the disdain in Jerusalem was absolute for the Turkish-Brazilian deal announced earlier this week under which Iran would ship some of its uranium to Turkey. To use Meridor’s biological analogy, that was about as much use as a prophylactic with a big hole in it. The Iranians were playing for time, Israeli officials said, and the United States was right to override the deal and go for strong sanctions.

Trouble is, most Israeli officials don’t expect those sanctions to work any more. Israel is starting to come to terms with a burgeoning Middle Eastern nuclear arms race. It will start the race with a lead — it has had nuclear weapons for four decades. But with Iran coming up on the rails and Saudi Arabia and Egypt, unwilling to be potentially threatened by Tehran, soon joining the competition, the dangers to the Jewish state are considerable.

It’s de rigueur for international strategists to say that Israel isn’t the country that should be most worried by Iranian nuclear ambitions. Instead, they posit the Gulf states, Shia Iran’s Sunni Muslim rivals, as the most at-risk.

There’s something to that. Yet Iran’s biggest success in exporting Islamic Revolution has been through Hezbollah in Lebanon. It also now has a direct line to Gaza with Hamas, which it helps to bankroll. Both would be easy places from which to use nuclear capability to influence regional — or even world — events.

Israel’s response to the Iranian move toward nukes is complicated. Its actions are limited. A potential aerial attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be difficult without bunker-buster bombs or coordination with the U.S. and the Arab countries over which Israeli jets would have to fly.

Diplomatically, Israel has little faith that sanctions can do anything more than delay an Iranian bomb. Why? Because it has experience of its own in negotiating about an issue so long that its negotiating partner in the end accepts a sliver of what it had originally asked for — and even then the negotiations can start again without reference to previous deals.

That’s a familiar tactic in Jerusalem, which has frequently confounded Western negotiators. Just as Iran has infuriated Washington with the sanctions issue, agreeing to something when total breakdown seemed imminent and pulling back just before it was required to act.

In public Israeli officials are forced to push for stiff sanctions. But rather than believing Iran’s nuclear program will be ended, they view the sanctions as a way of buying time for Israel to prepare its troops exercises like those next week and to ready more advanced missile defenses.

Congress this week voted for President Barack Obama’s plan to give $205 million to Israel to fund its short-range missile defense system. That’s vital to Israel now, given Hamas’ rockets in Gaza, which have Tel Aviv in range, and Hezbollah’s ability to hit any place in Israel with some of its 42,000 missile arsenal. But it will only be more important once the equation has a nuclear component

Middle East Views | Iran has confounded the White House.

Abdul Rahman al-Rashed

President Barack Obama has received another slap in the face from Iran, the country that he has outstretched his hand [in friendship] to numerous times; and this time the slap in the face is both painful and humiliating. The Tehran government resorted to another trick at the last second, hosting the Brazilian president and citing Turkey as a false witness [in order to] say that they have reached an agreement on exchanging enriched uranium. By doing so, Ahmadinejad has confounded all of Obama’s plans, who had postponed taking punitive steps [against Iran] several times in the hopes of convincing Ahmadinejad to give up his nuclear weapons program. Of course it would be a miracle if it turns out that Iran is being sincere [with regards to this deal], however all signs indicate that this is nothing more than a rabbit from Iran’s hat.

On the contrary, the delay is caused by Obama and his refusal to use the threat of force in a genuine manner, and this has made everybody – not just Tehran – believe that nothing will stop the Iranian project, whether this is its nuclear weapons project or its conventional weapons project. Iran stole a proposal put forward by Saudi Arabia and Russia last year with regards to uranium enrichment abroad, this project would enable Iran to gain the nuclear fuel that it needs and put an end to the international treats against it. However Tehran rejected this idea out of hand and said that it would be impossible for them to accept uranium enrichment outside of Iranian territory. Then just a few days prior to international sanctions being approved against them, Iran announced that it is prepared to send a portion of its uranium to Brazil via Turkey! However this agreement does not include a guarantor to ensure that this deal takes place, and therefore it is clear that their goal is to embarrass Obama internationally.

Unless the U.S. administration understands the nature of the Iranian regime in the region then it will continue to find itself under siege, in the same manner as the US administration of former President Jimmy Carter, who left the White House in disgrace in 1980 after making a series of concessions to the leaders of the Iranian revolution. Ahmadinejad’s government has split apart the international community; China has given way with regards to sanctions while Russia has been silenced. As for France, it agreed to release a prisoner in exchange for the return of the French hostage [held by Iran], however the French government had previously said that it would be impossible to deport criminals convicted in France [to Iran] in return for a wrongly imprisoned hostage, however in the end the French government agreed to this.

As long as Iran, its allies, and the rest of the undecided countries know that no effective sanctions will be imposed against the actions and violations of Tehran, things will only continue to get worse.

If Obama’s government does not want to undertake military adventures, are they in a position that allows them to suffer further loss of reputation in the international arena?

The U.S. administration has been following a policy that has no connection with kind words, the promise of mediation, or the promise of talks, for the past 16 months. The Iranian trick came at a clever time, and it has confounded the Americans, who tried to encircle them by exploiting their rejection [of the deal]. The US has stressed its commitment to pursuing international sanctions against Iran; however it will be far more difficult to implement these sanctions today than it would have been last week.

Iran is the only country in the world that has occupied Obama since the first day he took office until now, and it continues to be a thorn in his side. Obama has given Ahmadinejad – despite the ongoing internal revolution that is taking place in Tehran against him – concessions beyond his wildest dreams, all of which has resulted in more uranium enrichment, more incitement of violence, and more threats.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Tags: Israeli exercise Russian S-300 US-Russia

Russian S-300 missile-air defense system

Israel’s security suffered a major setback on the eve of its homeland war-safety exercise (starting Sunday, May 23) from three Obama administration concessions that were granted to buy Moscow’s backing for UN Security Council sanctions against Iran. One was the deletion of an embargo on sophisticated weaponry, including the suspended sale of Russian S-300 systems sought by Tehran for shooting down any US or Israel warplanes attacking its nuclear sites.
As Israel prepared to drill millions of the country’s civilians to prepare for synchronized assault by hundreds of rockets and missiles from Iran, Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, Washington awarded Moscow, i.e. Tehran, three additional gains.
US officials indicated they did not rule out a new round of nuclear negotiations with Tehran – even after the Brazilian-Turkish-mediated enriched uranium deal signed with Iran last Monday, May 17.

And on Friday, May 21, the administration scrapped sanctions against the Russian state arms export agency and three other Russian entities that were penalized in the past for transferring sensitive technology or weapons to Iran. Also lifted were sanctions against a fourth Russian entity for illicit arms sales to Syria, including technology for developing the very missiles against which Israel’s five-day exercise is preparing the public next week.

Our Washington sources report that the Obama administration bought Russia’s backing for a weak UN sanctions resolution by giving way on penalties detrimental to Iran’s economy or impeding its nuclear program. America thus opened the door for Russia to start training Iranian S-300 missile crews – without Israeli raising its voice in protest in either capital.
(On May 19, debkafile disclosed for the first time that these crews were already in training at Russian military bases.) To read this article, click here.
Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of the Knesset foreign affairs and security committee, reaffirmed in a TV Channel One interview Friday night that a nuclear-armed Iran would imperil Israel’s very existence. He, like many other Israelis in official positions, strongly gainsays assertions to the contrary by defense minister Ehud Barak.
Saturday, after the new US concessions came to light, administration officials tried to allay criticism in Congress by claiming that Moscow had improved its performance on Iran and would stand by its understanding with Washington not to proceed with the S-300 sale.
However, the training of Iranian operating crews looks more like bringing the sale forward than holding it back.
debkafile‘s Iranian sources point out that in five short days – since accepting the Brazilian-Turkish uranium swap deal – Tehran has substantially enhanced its international and strategic position in four critical areas:
1. Tough UN sanctions are off the table, leaving individual governments the freedom to proceed, or not, with unilateral penalties against Iran’s nuclear violations.
2.  The heavily-diluted UN draft omits any mention of energy bans, such the refined oil products, a provision formerly advocated by Washington as the most effective means of forcing Iran to abandon its drive for a nuclear weapon.
3.  Not only has the notion of a sea blockade gone by the board, but heavy restrictions are clamped down on searches of vessels suspected of carrying contraband military or nuclear cargoes, for which permission must now be requested by the nation flagged. This allows Iran and Syria to safely import nuclear materials and missiles by sea without fear of interception.
Even before the haggling begins, therefore, the new “sanctions” draft before the UN Security Council scarcely answers to its description.
4.  The Obama administration’s inclination to treat the new uranium exchange deal brokered by Brazil and Turkey as the Six-Power Group’s springboard for bringing Tehran back to the negotiating table offers Iran the gift of more time and space to achieve its ultimate objective of a nuclear weapon.
Military sources point out to debkafile, that Washington’s uneven and inconsistent approach to Iran and Syria make naught of the protestations made by President Obama and other US officials of their unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security. The unhindered delivery of S-300 missiles to Iran, like the latest Russian arms deal with Syria, substantially offsets Israel’s capacity to deter its enemies. Not only are its air force pilots placed in harm’s way; so too is the country’s entire population.

U.S. Makes Concessions to Russia – NYTimes.com.

WASHINGTON — As it sought support for international sanctions on Iran, the Obama administration gave Moscow two concessions: lifting American sanctions against the Russian military complex and agreeing not to ban the sale of Russian anti-aircraft batteries to Tehran.

The administration dropped sanctions on Friday against the Russian state arms export agency and three other Russian entities previously found to have transferred sensitive technology or weapons to Iran. The move came just three days after the United States and Russia agreed on a package of United Nations sanctions against Iran.

Russian and American officials also said Friday that while the United Nations resolution would ban many weapons sales to Iran, it would not prohibit Moscow from completing the sale of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Tehran, a contract that Russia has suspended but not canceled. The sophisticated defensive system could help Iran shoot down American or Israeli warplanes should either try to bomb its nuclear facilities.

Russia has invented a series of reasons to delay delivery of the systems, under strong American pressure. A senior American official said Friday that other provisions of the sanctions, urging countries to exercise caution in what they deliver to Iran, would give Washington the ability to continue to urge Russia never to deliver the systems. Iran, in frustration, announced recently that it was developing a similar system that would be domestically manufactured, but outside experts said that would take years.

The concessions are the latest moves in President Obama’s effort to establish a fresh partnership with Russia after years of mutual suspicion. Last month Mr. Obama signed a new arms control treaty with Russia, and this month he revived a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement that had been shelved after Russia’s war with Georgia. Mr. Obama’s decision last year to restructure a European missile defense system was also seen by critics as a gesture to Moscow, although the president denied that.

The latest moves generated a fresh barrage of criticism from lawmakers and national security experts who said the administration was giving away too much and getting too little in return. Just this week, a bipartisan team in the House opened a legislative campaign to block the administration’s decision to bring back the civilian nuclear agreement.

Administration officials said the moves were reasonable gestures of confidence as ties improved. The decision to lift sanctions against the Russian companies was not a direct trade-off for support at the United Nations, they said, but a reflection of the increasing trust that allowed both developments. And they added that Russia had earned that trust in part by putting the S-300 sale on hold.

“What we’ve seen is a shift in Russian attitudes toward military support for Iran, and emblematic of that is the restraint with respect to delivering S-300s,” said Philip J. Crowley, the State Department spokesman. “This was not a quid pro quo, but the fact that Russia has improved its performance with respect to Iran has given us the confidence to take these steps.”

Another senior official, who is involved in the discussions but not authorized to be identified, said the administration would have liked to have banned the S-300 sale but believed it had an understanding with Russia not to proceed with it. As for the sanctions lifted on the Russian companies, he said that some of them had lapsed anyway and that they were not much to give up compared with the importance of the United Nations resolution.

“We got a major instrument to help advance what we’re trying to do vis-à-vis Iran,” the official said. “Compared to what we gave up, I think we’re in a pretty good place, and we’re certainly better off than where we were in January 2009.”

But there was bipartisan criticism of the moves. David J. Kramer, who oversaw Russia policy in President George W. Bush’s State Department, said the concessions were “premature and unwarranted” without a firm commitment not to transfer the S-300s. “A Russia transfer of those missiles would be much more significant in a negative way than a Russian vote for a watered-down resolution,” he said. “Let’s not forget that Russia supported three previous resolutions and didn’t get ‘rewarded’ for those votes.”

John R. Bolton, who was acting ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Bush, said Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, got the upper hand on the Obama team. “He sensed desperation in the Obama administration on this Iran resolution, and probably extracted all that the traffic would bear,” he said. “The only remaining question is what else he got that we don’t yet know about.”

Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and co-chairman of the Nuclear Security Caucus, said that the overall trend in Russian-American relations was good but that he was not sure Moscow agreed to enough teeth in the United Nations resolution to justify the concessions.

“It’s clear Russia is extracting a huge price for its cooperation at the U.N. Security Council on the Iran sanctions,” he said in an interview. On the S-300s, he said, “It’s hard to understand why they would insist on that if they weren’t intending to deliver.”

Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, introduced a measure to reject the civilian nuclear cooperation deal on Thursday. “I believe Russia is continuing to assist Iran’s nuclear program,” he said, citing the civilian nuclear plant at Bushehr built by Russia and set to open this year. “Russia has sold Iran advanced conventional weapons and air defense systems.”

But administration officials said there was no evidence of current arms or technology transfers involving the companies freed of sanctions on Friday. Rosoboronexport, the state arms export corporation, was sanctioned in 2008 for arms sales to Iran, while the Dmitry Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology, the Moscow Aviation Institute and the Tula Instrument Design Bureau were all originally sanctioned in 1999.

Earlier this year the administration lifted sanctions on two other Russian entities, Glavkosmos and the Baltic State Technical University, both sanctioned in 1998 for helping Iran’s missile and weapons programs.

S. Korea, N. Korea, Israel and Iran.

By CAROLINE B. GLICK
21/05/2010 18:12

S. Korea cannot expect the US to rein in N. Korean aggression, any more than Israel can rely on the US regarding Iran.

On Thursday, the South Korean government did something important. It told the truth about North Korean aggression. On March 26, a North Korean submarine attacked a South Korean naval corvette with a torpedo. Forty-six South Korean sailors were killed in the unprovoked attack. And on May 20, the South Koreans ended all ambiguity about the nature of the attack and placed the blame where it belongs.

In its write-up of South Korea’s statement, the Los Angeles Times assessed that South Korea’s acknowledgment of North Korea’s murderous aggression will return the region to the days of the Cold War. The paper quoted Prof. Kim Keun-sik from Kyungnam University outside Seoul claiming that in the period to come, North Korea and China will face off against South Korea and the US.

Sadly for South Korea, while China can be depended upon to block the passage of effective sanctions against North Korea in the UN Security Council and to take any other necessary action to protect the North Korean regime, South Korea cannot expect the US to take action to rein in North Korean aggression. For while the South Korean government acknowledged reality on Thursday morning, the US under President Barack Obama remains in reality-denial mode.

It is true that on Thursday, Obama released a statement saying that the “act of aggression is one more instance of North Korea’s unacceptable behavior and defiance of international law.” And it is true that the international media is pointing to the White House announcement as an indication that the US will stand with South Korea.

But the Obama administration’s relations with China on the one hand, and its emasculation of the US Navy on the other, demonstrate that the US will not defend South Korea against North Korean aggression. The administration’s actions in the days leading up to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak announcement make this clear.
Lee reportedly told Obama on Tuesday that his government’s investigation of the attack proved beyond a shred of doubt that North Korea had attacked the ship. On Wednesday, the State Department announced that next week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be making a weeklong visit to Asia.

Clinton’s trip includes one day in Japan, one day in South Korea and five days in China. Clinton’s trip to China will center on advancing the US’s aim of ensuring that China continues to finance the US’s national debt. Given the US’s priorities, it is impossible to imagine the White House taking any forthright action against Pyongyang.

IN A related matter, the Obama administration spent the better part of the week congratulating itself for convincing China and Russia to back another sanctions resolution against North Korea’s ally Iran. In what the administration is presenting as a great diplomatic victory, Beijing and Moscow agreed to back a sanctions resolution against Iran in the UN Security Council for its refusal to end its illicit uranium enrichment.

Unfortunately, Obama’s great achievement will have no impact on Iran. Even if they are passed, the sanctions outlined in the draft resolution include little in the way of binding provisions. If they are passed, they will have a negligible impact on Iran’s economy and no impact on its nuclear weapons program.

Moreover, Brazil and Turkey’s deal to enrich uranium for Iran wrecks any chance that the US will gain its sought-for unanimity in the Security Council against Iran. Even if the sanctions resolution passes, it will be Pyrrhic victory for the US that will have destroyed its credibility as a negotiator with its allies and its enemies alike.

Beyond all that, on Thursday we learned that as a payoff for China’s support for its toothless sanctions resolution, the Obama administration has made a deal that enables nuclear proliferation. According to The Washington Post, in exchange for China’s support for the resolution, the Obama administration has turned a blind eye to Beijing’s continued nuclear proliferation activities with Pakistan.

Pakistan has been a major source of nuclear and ballistic missile technologies to Iran and North Korea. Yet the administration has reportedly opted not to oppose China’s decision to build two more nuclear reactors in Pakistan.

In its frenetic bid to court China, whose dollars it needs to finance its massive increase in federal spending, the Obama administration has downplayed not only China’s nuclear proliferation but North Korea’s nuclear proliferation as well. Last week, North Korea announced that it conducted a successful fusion experiment. That is, it announced that it is developing a hydrogen bomb. Rather than condemn the move, the administration dismissed the danger, claiming that North Korea was lying.

And just as it makes light of the threat emanating from North Korea, so the US has continued to downplay the threat Iran’s nuclear program poses to US and global security. Due to the US’s failure to end Iran’s uranium enrichment, according to the most optimistic Western assessments, Iran will have enough enriched uranium to produce atomic bombs at will in a matter of months.

If the Turkish-Brazilian uranium enrichment deal with Iran goes through, the timeline will be cut by half. Given the new deal’s similarity to the offer Obama made the Iranians last year, the administration will have great difficulty discrediting it or even providing a coherent explanation for its opposition to the deal.

AS FOREIGN Minister Avigdor Lieberman noted in his trip to Japan earlier in the month, North Korea does not only threaten its immediate neighbors. Through its proliferation activities, and particularly through its close ties to Iran and its Syrian, Hizbullah and Hamas clients, North Korea constitutes a threat to the Middle East and indeed to global security as a whole. It is important for the US’s spurned allies in Tokyo, Seoul and beyond to join forces with Israel to contend with the threats we share – threats that the Obama administration’s diplomatic bungling has only exacerbated.
But while it is true that North Korea’s proliferation activities threaten global security, it is also true that there is a qualitative difference between the regimes in Pyongyang and Teheran. The regime in Pyongyang is evil, but it is mainly motivated by its desire to survive. In contrast, Iran’s regime is openly revolutionary. Its stated aim is to destroy the global order, annihilate Israel and the US and usher in a Shi’ite messianic era in which Iran will rule the world in the name of Islam.

Depressingly, just as the Iranian threat is greater than the North Korean threat, so the Obama administration’s denial of the nature of the Iranian threat is greater than its denial of the North Korean threat. Quite simply, the Obama administration refuses to believe the ideology that informs the actions of Iran’s rulers is what they say it is.
In its latest demonstration of its deep denial of the nature of the threat it faces, this week John Brennan, Obama’s chief adviser for counterterrorism and homeland security, said that the US must court what he referred to as “moderate elements,” in Hizbullah.
Brennan argued that since in addition to its Iranian-commanded and -supplied military organization and its Iranian-commanded and -trained international terror network, Hizbullah also has members in the Lebanese government and parliament, it is a group that the Obama administration can do business with.

To the extent that Brennan’s statement echoes the Obama administration’s analysis of Hizbullah, it is simply terrifying.

Hizbullah was established by Iran in 1981. It has a dual mission of serving as the advance guard of Iran’s global Islamic revolution and of spreading the Iranian revolution to Lebanon. Hizbullah’s participation in Lebanese politics is consonant with this mission. It does not in any way indicate a moderation of the organization. Had Brennan looked, he would not have found a single statement by Hizbullah parliamentarians or government ministers that in any way contradicts Hizbullah’s Iranian-dictated missions.

But then, Brennan’s asinine position on Hizbullah is part and parcel of his overall denial of the threat radical Islam poses to the US and to the rest of the world. In a speech at New York University last August, Brennan gave a stirring defense of Islam as a religion of peace. He eschewed any connection between the likes of al-Qaida and the Iranian mullahs and Islam, and claimed that jihad is a great and good thing.

In his words, “Using the legitimate term jihad, which means to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal [to describe the cause for which Islamic terrorists fight], risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve.”

What Brennan’s statements show is that Obama, who picked Brennan to serve as his chief counterterrorism adviser, is ideologically committed to the notion that Iran and its fellow jihadists are not an inherent threat to the US and its allies. That is, Obama is ideologically committed to the notion that there is no reason to take any action against Iran that could actually prevent the likes of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Nasrallah from developing and deploying nuclear weapons.

SINCE OBAMA took office nearly a year and a half ago, Israel has agreed to Obama’s demand that it allow him to take the lead in international efforts to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Israel stood back as he wasted a year trying to woo Ahmadinejad, often at Israel’s own expense as he linked Iran’s nuclear weapons program to the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Israel has stood back since then as he pushed forward UN sanctions.

And now, a year and a half later, Obama’s sanctions gambit is revealed as a dangerous joke. Iran is months away from the bomb. Hizbullah has an arsenal of guided missiles capable of hitting Tel Aviv and beyond. Iran’s diplomatic stature has soared to unprecedented heights as it runs diplomatic circles around Obama and his advisers. And Brennan wants to make a deal with Hizbullah.

South Korea’s acknowledgment of North Korea’s aggression places it on a collision course with the Obama administration, which prefers to court Beijing for dollars rather than deal effectively with Pyongyang’s aggression. Israel has been on a collision course with Washington for a year and a half now, as it insists in the face of US opposition that Iran’s nuclear program is the greatest threat to global security today.

Sadly, the US’s ridiculous sanctions resolution and its general diplomatic incompetence make clear that it is time for Israel to risk escalating its crisis with Obama still further. It is time for Israel to take the lead in the international campaign to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Israel impatient with international effort to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambition.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

JERUSALEM — Israel, which initially tolerated President Obama’s effort to thwart Iranian nuclear ambitions through sanctions, has grown increasingly impatient in recent weeks with the approach and concerned that whatever is agreed to now at the U.N. Security Council will only allow Iran more time to advance its program.

A fourth round of potential sanctions unveiled by the Obama administration on Tuesday did little to allay Israel’s fears that the world doesn’t seem able to stop Iran from continuing to enrich uranium or develop what Israel believes is a covert nuclear weapons program.

Israeli officials and commentators say that nothing short of sanctions on Iran’s energy sector will work. And with no sign of that in the offing, the prospect of Israeli military action — which Israeli officials have always said remains an option if sanctions fail — looms larger.

“We are frustrated with the fact that Iran does not feel the pressure of the world, does not care about the demands of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the U.N., because we feel that time is running out,” Tzahi Hanegbi, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said in an interview.

An Israeli security official recently complained of a muddled discourse on sanctions that has made the ultimate objective unclear: whether the Obama administration is trying to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb or only to roll back its growing capabilities. Israeli officials have been seeking clarity from their American counterparts on what the U.S. plan is for preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear device if sanctions fail.

In the years that the United States has tried to build an effective sanctions regime, Iran has acquired a stockpile of at least two tons of low-enriched uranium, which is enough for at least one bomb. Israel believes that Iran has also been developing a method for weaponizing highly enriched uranium. Iran says its program is for peaceful purposes.

An analysis in Haaretz on Friday by the newspaper’s intelligence correspondent, Yossi Melman, titled “Strike — or Sit Tight,” illustrated the mood by week’s end.

Moshe Yaalon, Israel’s deputy prime minister, said this month that Israel has the capabilities to attack Iran and described the possibility of a preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Israel has acted unilaterally in the past to set back nuclear programs. In 1981, it obliterated an Iraqi nuclear reactor, and in 2007, it struck a suspected Syrian nuclear site.

Israeli frustrations with the inability of the United States to build international consensus for a tougher approach toward Iran began to mount last fall when a separate U.S.-led effort to persuade Iran to ship out its low-enriched uranium faltered.

With U.N. sanctions going nowhere, Israel prodded and failed to persuade the Obama administration to impose sanctions on Iran’s petroleum sector, even after the House and Senate passed legislation enabling it to do so. In April, Iran’s announcement that it had produced faster centrifuges further rattled Israel.

Israel issued no official response this week to the Security Council sanctions package circulated by the United States. It also refrained from publicly commenting on a new Turkish-Brazilian deal to send part of Iran’s low-enriched uranium stockpile to Turkey as a trust-building measure, possibly within one month. In return, Iran would receive highly enriched uranium fuel rods for use in a medical reactor.

Why Israel won’t let its locks be shorn – The Globe and Mail.