WarSclerotic

Newt Gingrich Criticizes U.S. Apology To Afghan Authorities For Burned Qurans On Military Base.

Republican presidential candidate, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appears on stage during a debate sponsored by CNN and the Republican Party of Arizona at the Mesa Arts Center February 22, 2012 in Mesa, Ariz. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

SPOKANE, Wash. — GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Thursday a U.S. apology to Afghan authorities for burned Qurans on a military base was “astonishing” and undeserved.

Gingrich lashed out at President Barack Obama for the formal apology after copies of the Muslim holy book were found burned in a garbage pit on a U.S. air field earlier in the week

Obama’s apology was announced Thursday morning. A few hours later, news organizations reported that an Afghan soldier had killed two U.S. troops and wounded others in retaliation for the Quran burning.

Campaigning in Washington state, Gingrich said Afghan President Hamid Karzi owes the U.S. an apology for the shootings.

“There seems to be nothing that radical Islamists can do to get Barack Obama’s attention in a negative way and he is consistently apologizing to people who do not deserve the apology of the president of the United States period,” Gingrich said.

“And, candidly, if Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, doesn’t feel like apologizing then we should say good bye and good luck, we don’t need to be here risking our lives and wasting our money on somebody who doesn’t care.”

Even before Gingrich’s comments, White House spokesman Jay Carney sought to counter any criticism of the president’s apology.

“It is wholly appropriate, given the sensitivities to this issue, the understandable sensitivities,” Carney told reporters traveling to Miami with the president on Air Force One. “His primary concern as commander in chief is the safety of the American men and women in Afghanistan, of our military and civilian personnel there. And it was absolutely the right thing to do.”

Later Thursday, Gingrich continued his criticism of Obama’s foreign policy during a rally in the town of Coeur d’Alene in northern Idaho, a stop in one of the 10 states that votes on March 6. He was spending Friday in Washington state, which holds caucuses a week from Saturday.

“This president has gone so far at appeasing radical Islamists that he is failing in his duty as commander in chief,” Gingrich said.

Iran calls for further nuclear t… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

Youcef Nadarkhani, Iranian Pastor, May Face Execution For ‘Apostasy From Islam’ (REPORT).

Huffington Post

Youcef Nadarkhani, an Iranian pastor who in 2010 was found guilty of apostasy and sentenced to death for refusing to recant Christianity, may have received a final execution order, according to the American Center for Law and Justice and Fox News.

Neither Human Rights Watch nor Amnesty International could verify the information for The Huffington Post, but the White House on Thursday afternoon issued a statement condemning the reports and calling on Iran to release Pastor Nadarkhani.

“This action is yet another shocking breach of Iran’s international obligations, its own constitution, and stated religious values,” the White House statement read. “The United States stands in solidarity with Pastor Nadarkhani, his family, and all those who seek to practice their religion without fear of persecution — a fundamental and universal human right.”

While unable to verify the reports, Faraz Sanei, the Iran researcher at Human Rights Watch, spoke with The Huffington Post in a telephone interview about the uncertain circumstances surrounding Nadarkhani.

“A death sentence that has been sent for implementation by the judiciary would suggest the person is at imminent risk of execution,” Sanei said. “If it has been sent to the implementation department, that is very troubling.”

Sanei added that if the implementation has indeed been sent, Nadarkhani is “one step closer” to being executed.

Islam is the official religion in Iran, and according to the CIA, 98 percent of the country’s population is Muslim.

According to Amnesty International, Pastor Naderkhani, 34, became a Christian when he was a teenager and has said he never practiced Islam despite being born to Muslim parents. He has been a pastor for at least 10 years, according to the Christian Post.

In September, the Iranian Supreme Court upheld Naderkhani’s 2010 conviction of apostasy after he reportedly refused to recant his Christian faith.

Formerly secret telexes offer window into Iran’s nuclear deceit – The Washington Post.

By Joby Warrick, Published: February 22 | Updated: Thursday, February 23, 3:59 PM

The reason for the unusual purchase — 220 pounds of highly caustic fluorine gas — was never explained, but someone at Iran’s Sharif University was clearly anxious to collect. For months, the mysterious buyer bombarded a British supply company with telexes, demanding to know when his 45 canisters would arrive.

“We have not received your reply,” complained one telex, sent from the Tehran school’s purchasing department and written partly in broken English. “We are awaiting for hearing from you as soon as possible.”

But the telex, sent in 1992 and made public here for the first time, was not what it seemed. The real purchaser was not a university but a secretive research institute working for Iran’s military. The fluorine gas, investigators later concluded, was to be blended with uranium in a nuclear program that would remain hidden for 10 more years.

The document is part a trove of 1,600 formerly secret telexes obtained by nuclear researchers seeking to unearth the early history of Iran’s clandestine pursuit of nuclear technology. While nearly two decades old, the records offer an unusually detailed glimpse into Iran’s alleged efforts to defy sanctions to obtain sensitive technology — tactics that intelligence officials say continue even now.

Experts who studied the documents say they were struck by patterns of behavior that began early in the program and involved some of the same individuals who run the country’s nuclear efforts today, under the oversight of the same supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who came to power in 1989. The telexes and other records show Iranians using subterfuge and deception to obtain the parts they needed, and afterward issuing vigorous denials to U.N. nuclear officials, even when confronted with evidence.

“They stick with absolutist lines, and it makes it harder to trust them,” said David Albright, a former U.N. nuclear inspector who obtained the documents and provided a sampling of several dozen copies to The Washington Post.

Iran’s history of concealment and deceit has become more relevant now because of concerns that it is nearing a critical phase in its ability to develop an atomic bomb. Although the government has consistently denied ever seeking nuclear weapons, inspectors have struggled to understand why the Iranians have sought to hide their activities if their nuclear program is, as they contend, solely for peaceful energy production.

A team of technical experts from the the International Atomic Energy Agency traveled to Iran this week to pressure Iranian officials to come clean about past nuclear activities, including alleged research on building nuclear warheads. But the trip ended in failure, with IAEA officials being barred from a key military testing facility.

Iran has repeatedly dismissed suspicious documents about past nuclear work as forgeries. State-backed news media have compared the allegations about an arms program to the unfounded suspicions that Iraq had obtained nuclear weapons before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

The documents obtained by the nuclear researchers are similar to telexes seen by inspectors, according to Olli Heinonen, who served as the IAEA’s nuclear safeguards chief until 2005. Heinonen said inspection attempts have faced not only evasive answers but also increased levels of official obstruction.

“Deceit and deception have been a regrettable part of the process,” he said.

The telexes, which cover a period from the late 1980s through the early 1990s, come from a time when Iran was first beginning in earnest to assemble and test components for a uranium enrichment plant. By then, Iranian leaders were already committed to expanding the ambitious nuclear program begun under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and accelerated near the end of the country’s disastrous, eight-year war with Iraq.

Iranian officials obtained blueprints for gas centrifuges — the machines used to make enriched uranium — from Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan and then set about secretly acquiring the equipment they needed from Western companies.

Intelligence agencies routinely intercepted the orders and analyzed them for clues to Iran’s true intentions. Hundreds of the documents were quietly shared among governments as well as with IAEA officials who had access to Iranian facilities and could directly confront Iranian leaders about the purchases. Albright, the nuclear expert, said a Western source provided a large trove of the telexes to his organization, the Institute for Science and International Security, which collects and analyzes data about nuclear weapons programs.

An analysis of the telexes by ISIS highlights the hidden role played by Iran’s Physics Research Center, or PHRC, a now-defunct institute that served as a scientific arm of Iran’s military. U.S. intelligence officials believe the PHRC drove Iran’s secret nuclear research program during its first decade, after which its responsibilities were divided among other institutions. In 2004, when U.N. inspectors asked to visit the PHRC’s former headquarters, Iranian officials razed the building and even scraped away the topsoil around the front lawn.

The telexes confirm what IAEA officials believe was a lavish, global shopping spree that continued throughout the 1990s and beyond. Besides the fluorine gas, Iranian officials ordered mass spectrometers, crucial for analyzing the enrichment level of uranium hexafluoride gas, as well as highly specialized types of motors, pumps, valves and transducers used in manufacturing gas centrifuges.

“The fact that so many items are of the type used in centrifuges, and organized under one specific heading, stands out in the data,” ISIS said in a report analyzing the documents.

Privately, Iranian leaders have responded to evidence of duplicity and deceit by blaming the West, saying the United States and its allies unfairly sought to block Iran from its rightful pursuit of nuclear technology, said George Perkovich, a nuclear expert who has met with senior Iranian officials responsible for the country’s nuclear policy.

“The only way they could get what they need is to keep things secret and use duplicity,” said Perkovich, director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Iranian view, he said, is “if we didn’t use these tricks, we wouldn’t get the technology we needed, and to which we have a right.”

Many of the telexes were ostensibly orders from Sharif University of Technology, a prestigious school in the Iranian capital. Yet, the fax number and post office box on the return address belonged to the PHRC, ISIS said in its analysis. An Iranian scientist who headed the military research center, Abbas Shahmoradi-Zavareh, also kept an office at Sharif University. The president of Sharif University at the time was Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s current foreign minister and the one-time head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.

One series of telexes that apparently raised eyebrows at spy agencies involved an attempt by Iran to obtain tens of thousands of highly specialized magnets used in gas centrifuges. Fearing perhaps that some of its efforts would be thwarted, Iranian officials sent requests to multiple companies at once, asking for as many as 30,000 magnets made from unusual alloys and cut to precise dimensions.

“Snd us a few samples for testing,” one order, written in the typical abbreviated English used by telex operators, began. “We are looking forward to yr early rply.”

It is clear from the telex exchanges that many of the orders were filled, though in some cases the Iranians were turned down when European company managers became suspicious that the purchase was intended for a nuclear program.

Some of the recipients of telexes forwarded the requests to their governments; others who sold goods to Iran would later contend that they were unaware of Iran’s true plans for the materials. Many items sought by Iran were considered “dual-use” — having both military and peaceful applications — and were not banned at the time.

One official for a German manufacturer of mass spectrometers warned the Iranians in a telex to be careful, saying he could get in trouble if government regulators suspected the parts had a nuclear purpose.

“The purchaser can appear only to be a civilian institution, not military or government,” he cautioned.

The request for fluorine gas was also turned aside, at least temporarily. In February 1992, the British firm that had so frustrated the Iranians with its slow response finally wrote to say that the fluorine canisters would not be shipped. The British government’s export office had denied an export license for the gas, a company official explained.

“As you will appreciate, this decision was outside our control,” the telex read. “We look forward to being of assistance on the future supply of other materials.”

© The Washington Post Company

IDF strikes terror cell in Gaza, thwarts attac… JPost – Defense.

Palestinians say 2 wounded in strike; 2 rockets fired from Gaza land in Eshkol, Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Councils.

By IDF spokesperson

Daniel Wagner: Electoral Politics Influence Possible Israeli Attack on Iran.

It is surely the case that when President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu meet at the White House on March 5th, the timing of a potential Israeli attack on Iran will be on the agenda. Another topic of discussion — whether purposeful or inadvertent — is likely to be how such an attack would influence, or be influenced by, the upcoming Israeli and U.S. elections.

In December, Mr. Netanyahu announced early primary elections, which some political observers saw as political opportunism, but others saw as a the ability for the Prime Minister to consolidate his power and reaffirm his political stance in advance of an expected call for an early general election late in 2012 — presumably, near the time of the U.S. presidential election in November. If so, the two country’s electoral cycles would be on a parallel track, which may be a precursor to determining the timing of an Israeli and/or U.S. attack on Iran. The question is, would it occur before or after the elections?

Nothing tends to rally voters around the flag — and incumbent politicians — like a war. Israel’s leadership is certainly mindful of Israeli public opinion, which is evenly split about the wisdom of attacking Iran and fears of a more localized conflict with Hamas and Hezbollah should an attack occur. Even given the disparity of opinion, there are reasons for the Israeli leadership to wish to carry out an attack prior to elections, since as many Israelis support an attack as oppose it, and Mr. Netanyahu enjoys a comparatively strong political position.

But there is another important reason in favor of an attack prior to Israeli elections. The conclusions of the Winograd Commission — an Israeli government-appointed body charged with identifying what went wrong during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 2006 — showed that Israel cannot survive unless all the people of the region believe that Israel has the leadership, military capabilities, and social robustness to allow it to deter those of its neighbors who wish to harm her. The Commission said that Israel should seek peace with its neighbors and make necessary compromises to ensure its survival, but this must be done from a position of social, political and military strength. Apart from the potential existential threat posed by an Iranian nuclear strike on Israel, on the basis of the Commission’s conclusions, Israel has little choice but to attack Iran in order to demonstrate it is strong in the face of extreme adversity.

Although the U.S. populace is war weary, after nearly a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the results of the recent Pew Research Center poll on the views of the American electorate on this subject are revealing. According to the Pew survey from February 12, 2012, 58% of the 1,500 people surveyed said it is more important to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons — even if it means the need to take military action against Iran — with the support of 50% of Independent voters, 55% of Democrats, and 74% of Republicans. 64% of Americans do not think economic sanctions will be effective against Iran. Half those polled believe the U.S. should stay neutral if Israel were to bomb Iran, with 39% saying the U.S. should support Israel.

Our guess is that if Israel were to bomb Iran, in the end, the majority of the Israeli population would support such a decision, and the U.S. population would end up supporting a U.S. decision to support Israel. A 2006 Pew study notes that throughout history, in Middle Eastern conflicts, the U.S. population has steadfastly supported Israel. And a 2010 Gallup poll of more than 1,000 adults found support for Israel versus the Palestinians among the U.S. populace was at 63% — the highest it had been since 1991, when Israel was bombarded by Scud missiles from Iraq.

The Israeli population knows what needs to be done in order to secure Israel’s security in the long-term, and Mr. Netanyahu knows that in the face of extreme adversity, Israelis rally around their leaders, but may demand answers later. Similarly, Mr. Obama knows that there has never been a question about whether the American people will in the end support military operations that ensure the survival of Israel. Electoral politics may indeed influence the course of events between Israel, Iran and the U.S. in the coming months, but in the end, Israelis and Americans will do what they have always done — support Israel in the face of adversity.

*Daniel Wagner is CEO of Country Risk Solutions – a cross-border risk management firm based in Connecticut (USA) – Director of Global Strategy with the PRS Group, and author of the new book Managing Country Risk. Alexios Giannoulis is a research analyst with CRS.

Possible Iran attack tests Israel-U.S. relations as elections approach | News | National Post.

By Jeffrey Heller and Matt Spetalnick

JERUSALEM/WASHINGTON — Ever since their first awkward encounter — a hastily arranged meeting in a custodian’s office at a Washington airport in 2007 — Iran has been one of the few issues on which Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu have been able to find some common ground.

Nearly five years ago, neither man was yet in power but both hoped to be, and though they were very different politicians they grabbed the opportunity to size each other up when their paths crossed.

The Israeli right-winger came across, at first, as strident in his views, while the newly declared Democratic presidential candidate seemed wary. But when Netanyahu insisted on the urgent need to do more to isolate Iran economically and Obama said “tell me more,” the mood suddenly brightened, according to one account of the meeting.

It was part of what Netanyahu, who first served as prime minister from 1996 to 1999, has described as a 15-year personal effort to “broaden as much as possible the international front against Iran,” a foe that has called for Israel’s destruction.

Obama, then a first-term senator, would go on to introduce an Iran divestment bill in Congress on the way to winning the White House in the 2008 election.

Now, with Obama and Netanyahu due to meet in Washington on March 5, the Iranian nuclear standoff will again top the agenda. But this time, a trust deficit between the two leaders could make it harder to decide what action to take against the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program.

The Obama administration, increasingly concerned about the lack of any assurance from Israel that it would consult Washington before launching strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, has scrambled in recent weeks to convince Israeli leaders to give sanctions and diplomacy more time to work, U.S. officials say.

Israel has been listening — but after a series of high-level U.S. visits there is no sign it has been swayed.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who along with Netanyahu met U.S. National Security Adviser Tom Donilon last week, complained privately afterward that Washington is lobbying for a delay in any Israeli attack on Iran while time is running out for such a strike to be effective, Israeli political sources said.

Barak has spoken publicly of an Iranian “zone of immunity” to aerial attack, a reference to the start of additional uranium enrichment at a remote site believed to be buried beneath 80 metres (265 feet) of rock and soil near the city of Qom.

Donilon’s visit to Israel coincided with a cautionary note from General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, who told CNN it would be “premature to exclusively decide that the time for a military option was upon us.”

The United States, Dempsey said, has counseled Israel “that it’s not prudent at this point to decide to attack Iran.” He said sanctions were beginning to have an effect and it is still unclear whether Tehran would choose to make a nuclear weapon.

Obama and top aides have said they do not believe Israel has made a decision to attack Iran even as they caution about devastating consequences in the Middle East — and potentially around the globe — if it does so.

U.S. intelligence sources say they would expect little or no advance notice from Israel, except possibly as a courtesy call when any bombing mission is at the point of no return. But one line of thinking within the Obama administration is that this might be best for the United States since any sign of complicity would inflame the Muslim world.

“When it comes to something that the Israeli government considers essential to Israel’s security, they will take whatever action they deem necessary, even if there is a level of disagreement with other countries, including the United States,” said Michael Herzog, a former chief of staff to Barak and now an international fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East policy.

Obama and his national security team have yet to determine how the United States would respond if Israel does attack Iran, one U.S. official said. But the growing chorus of warnings from Washington – Israel’s biggest source of military assistance – serves as a stark message of the potential fallout in relations between the two longtime allies.

The debate over the possibility of an Israeli strike has exposed an important difference of opinion over Iran, which says it is enriching uranium for peaceful purposes.

“We are of the opinion that the Iranian regime is a rational actor,” Dempsey said in the CNN interview. “And it’s for that reason, I think, that we think the current path we’re on is the most prudent path at this point.”

Netanyahu has made clear he believes that kind of thinking is wrong-headed.

“Since the dawn of the nuclear age, we have not had a fanatic regime that might put its zealotry above its self-interest,” he told The Atlantic in 2009. “People say that they’ll behave like any other nuclear power. Can you take the risk? Can you assume that?”

ELECTION OPPORTUNITY

An Israeli strike ahead of the November 6 U.S. elections would put Obama in a serious political bind.

Already defending himself against Republican accusations that he has been too tough on Israel and not tough enough on Iran, he would be reluctant, at least initially, to come down hard on Netanyahu for fear of undercutting support among Jewish voters and other pro-Israel constituencies as he seeks re-election.

It’s that perceived window of opportunity for Israel to strike at a time when incumbent candidate Obama might be shy about challenging Netanyahu that has helped to fuel speculation of an Israeli attack soon.

But for Netanyahu to go ahead with an attack in defiance of Washington, he would risk not only damaging his country’s most crucial alliance but also face the near-certain prospect of Iranian retaliation with no immediate U.S. military help — or even a commitment to provide any.

More likely, Obama and Netanyahu will try to keep their differences behind closed doors and present a united front against Iran in next month’s talks.

Any further public rift between the two leaders, who will meet a day before the Super Tuesday voting contests in which 10 states hold presidential primaries or caucuses, would likely be seized upon by Republican candidates looking for ammunition against Obama.

And, for the second straight year, Netanyahu will be able to emerge from any White House chill into the warm embrace of the powerful pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), whose annual convention he will address in Washington.

But Israel, in weighing military action, faces the risk of a backlash from Congress and the American public if oil prices spike during a still-fragile economic recovery or if the United States is hit by revenge attacks on its interests around the world.

“It’s the law of unintended consequences,” said an outside expert who advises the White House on national security. “This could lead to the first real reassessment in a generation of how America and Americans feel about Israel.”

One American Jewish leader who knows both leaders played down the prospects of any dramatic shift in U.S.-Israeli relations.

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told Reuters that strong bipartisan understanding for what he called Israel’s “responsibility to its citizens” meant that “nothing” would happen to ties between the two countries.

Last May, Netanyahu received 29 standing ovations when he addressed a joint meeting of Congress at the invitation of its Republican leadership. In the run-up to the November U.S. election, a senior legislator of his Likud party has been active in cultivating relations with top Republicans.

BLUFF?

Though U.S. officials have no reason to believe Israel is bluffing, some both inside and outside the administration suspect that Netanyahu is overstating the immediate danger of an Iranian nuclear “break-out.”

Netanyahu, they say, may be seeking to pressure the United States and its European partners to move further on new oil-related sanctions, put enough of a scare into China and Russia to get them to ease resistance to tighter enforcement and extract a firmer U.S. commitment to military action if Tehran takes concrete steps toward bomb-making.

But even if his top generals and intelligence chiefs advise that it is time to act, questions remain whether Netanyahu, who lacks the extensive military resume of most of his predecessors, will be ready to do so, especially if it means going it alone without the United States.

An Israeli security source said that unlike Netanyahu’s predecessor Ehud Olmert, who conducted wars in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon and ordered the bombing of a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor during his 2006-2009 tenure, Israel’s current leader finds it hard to decide on risky operational matters.

For his part, Obama will be hesitant at this point to go further than his mantra that “all options are on the table” in dealing with Iran, and is likely to make clear to Netanyahu that without international legitimacy unilateral military action could backfire on Israel and lead to diplomatic isolation.

Moreover, the consensus in the U.S. defense community is that Israel, acting alone militarily, would only be able to slow Iran’s nuclear progress by months or possibly a couple of years.

That assessment is echoed by Israeli security officials, though they argue that their armed forces’ capabilities may have been underestimated — even by the friendly, informed Americans.

They note that Israel destroyed Iraq’s atomic reactor in 1981 knowing that this would only postpone Saddam Hussein’s quest for a bomb. Kept in the dark about the tactically audacious sortie, Washington responded angrily, at first. But it later thanked Israel for removing a potential Iraqi threat.

“The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) has been preparing its capabilities for years,” chief of staff Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz said, without elaborating, in February 18 comments to Israeli reporters, when asked about the prospects for an imminent war on Iran.

Israel lacks heavy long-range air force bombers, but its advanced F-15 and F-16 warplanes could hit sites in western Iran and further inland with air-to-air refueling and by using stealth technology to overfly hostile Arab nations.

It could also launch ballistic Jericho missiles with conventional warheads at Iran, according to a 2009 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Commandos might be deployed to spot targets and possibly launch covert attacks. Drones could assist in surveillance and possibly drop bombs of their own. Barak has said he believes the home front would suffer “maybe not even 500 dead” if Iran or its allies in Lebanon and Gaza retaliate with missile barrages.

Complicating matters is a basic lack of trust between the Obama administration and Netanyahu’s government, born in part out of the president’s earlier failed efforts to jumpstart Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking by pressuring Israel to freeze Jewish settlement expansion.

The last time Obama and Netanyahu met at the White House, in May, the Israeli leader bluntly took the president to task in remarks to reporters in the Oval Office, lecturing him on Jewish history and flatly rejecting his proposal that Israel’s 1967 borders be the basis for negotiations on creating a Palestinian state. Obama was furious and relations hit rock bottom.

Little more than a year before, Israel had announced a major new settlement expansion in East Jerusalem — a move that embarrassed Vice President Joe Biden during a visit — and Obama ordered Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to call Netanyahu and dress him down.

Not long afterwards, Obama walked out of tense talks with Netanyahu at the White House and left the Israeli prime minister cooling his heels while he had dinner with his family — treatment widely interpreted as a snub by Israeli media.

Frosty relations between the two leaders have thawed somewhat over the past year as Obama has taken a tougher line on Iran sanctions while refraining from any new Middle East peace drives. Obama also scored points with Israelis for opposing a Palestinian bid for UN statehood recognition last September.

“Open lines and security channels have brought the relationship to a particularly good point and at the same time there hasn’t been tension of late on other issues,” a senior administration official said.

But some Obama aides remain suspicious of Netanyahu’s motives. They are convinced that he would prefer to see a Republican take control of the White House in 2013 for fear that Obama’s re-election would give him a freer hand to push anew for Israeli concessions to the Palestinians during a second term.

And any look at the Iranian equation cannot ignore the Holocaust factor — the alarm-ringing “never again” theme Netanyahu invokes in speech after speech about the existential threat that Israel, widely believed to be the Middle East’s only nuclear power, would face if Iran got the bomb.

Those who claim to know Netanyahu well say he means what he says; it is his job to ensure the Jewish state’s survival. He has made clear that in addition to the Iranian threat, he sees Israel at risk from the deep uncertainty sown by the Arab spring uprisings, especially with the toppling of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who was seen by Israel as a guardian of its peace treaty with Egypt.

An address to Israel’s parliament in January on the annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day could easily be tweaked into the kind of statement the government might issue as Israeli planes head home from their Iranian bombing missions.

“We cannot bury our heads in the sand. The Iranian regime openly calls for the destruction of the State of Israel; it is planning the destruction of Israel; and it is working to destroy Israel,” he said.

“In the end, with regards to threats to our very existence, we cannot abandon our future to the hands of others. With regard to our fate, our duty is to rely on ourselves alone.”

© Thomson Reuters 2012

PM Won’t Get a Cup of Coffee at the White House – Global Agenda – News – Israel National News.

John Bolton

http://cubachi.com

Former United States ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, appeared on Fox News on Thursday, explaining why he believes that the upcoming meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama is going to be a “very unpleasant” one.

He said it is “no accident” that the Unites States is sending senior officials to meet with Israeli leaders prior to the “crucial sit-down” between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu on March 5^th.

The visits of General Martin Dempsey, U.S. National Security Advisor Thomas Danilon, and Director of Intelligence Tom Clapper to the region, he said, are all unremitting attempts at dissuading Israel from attacking Iran.

It is more like “an invasion plan of the United States invading Israel, as opposed to dealing with the real problem, which is Iran,” Bolton claimed.

“The reason you see these top officials going to the region,” he continued, is that they are telling Prime Minister Netanyahu that he “better give President Obama the answer he wants to hear” during their upcoming meeting, which is that Israel will not attack Iran.

“Netanyahu is not going to say that,” he said. “This is going to be a very unpleasant meeting between the two leaders when it occurs.“

Netanyahu is scheduled to travel to Washington, D.C. to address The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) policy conference and, as Bolton said, he “can’t come to Washington without meeting with the President, so it may be one of those meetings where Netanyahu doesn’t get a sandwich and a cup of coffee at the White House, but they have to have it. “

Obama is also scheduled to address the pro-Israel lobby, as well.  When asked why he believes Obama is going to do so, Bolton replied that the President needs “to try to make the case that he is standing right there, shoulder to shoulder, with Israel to try to protect them against an Iranian nuclear threat, but the fact is that administration has just lost its compass when it comes to a policy. They are still are arguing that sanctions can be effective… I think that is completely inaccurate.”

Bolton continued to say that he believes it would be in Iran’s best interests to give off the impression that the sanctions are effective.

“Iran’s most valuable commodity is time,” he said. “All they need is just a little bit more time and then they can get nuclear weapons.”

Bolton was surprised that they rebuffed the UN inspectors so abruptly, but hopes that “world leaders, in some countries, at least, [will] say [that] diplomacy does not have a chance here… We’ve to confront the reality that if we don’t, or if someone doesn’t act, that Iran will get nuclear weapons and then there won’t be any point in sanctions or diplomacy.”

Are Israelis paranoid? You bet. – Frida Ghitis – MiamiHerald.com.

BY FRIDA GHITIS

fjghitis@gmail.com

Is Washington Casting Israel as the ‘Bad Cop’ to Pressure Iran? | World Opinion and Editorial Right Side News.

Senior officials from the Obama administration have begun descending on Israel once again to ensure that Jerusalem holds off on an attack on Iran. That, at least, is the message the White House is seeking to generate.  

“The national security advisor [Tom Donilon] and the American intelligence head [James Clapper] are coming for an urgent visit. They will ask [Israel] not to attack Iran right now,” a front-age caption said in this Sunday’s Yedioth Ahronothnewspaper.

Donilon arrived on Sunday, and began a series of meetings with Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Clapper is due to arrive later this week.

Indeed, the two visits, together with recent comments by other senior figures warning Israel not to strike Iran, suggest that a media campaign is underway to prevent any surprise Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

America’s close ally, Britain, issued its own warning to Israel against an attack in recent days as well.

But just who is really the target of all this pressure? The problem with the official picture – that of an anxious Obama Administration asking Israel to stand down – is that it’s public.

Why are such high-level, hugely important messages being relayed from Washington to Jerusalem via the public sphere, rather than being passed on through secret channels, as one would expect from allies communicating over an issue as fateful as how to stop the Islamic Republic’s military nuclear drive?

The answer appears to be that the real designated recipient of the warnings is Iran.

The U.S. government and European leaders have just accepted Iran’s proposals to reopen nuclear negotiations. Their role as the ‘good cop,’ the side willing to listen and resolve the confrontation peacefully, is devoid of value without a ‘bad cop’ looming in the background.

By publicly presenting Israel as a Rottweiler on a leash being held back by President Obama, the White House hopes to increase the very low chance that another round of negotiations with Tehran might actually lead somewhere.

So far, every past round of negotiations has proven to be another stall tactic by the Iranians, buying them time – and legitimacy – as the centrifuges continue to spin in Iran.

Not only are the centrifuges spinning, they are also being moved to an underground nuclear site near Kom, called Fordow, built deep into a mountain to protect it from airstrikes and missiles.

Officials in the Pentagon and State Department don’t really believe that the latest round of sanctions on Iran will work, according to a recent Guardian report. Nor do they believe that the European oil embargo will stop the centrifuges.

If the sanctions are an inadequate ‘bad cop’ to goad the Iranians into taking negotiations seriously, perhaps the threat of Israeli action will do the trick – this, at least, appears to be the thinking behind the public pressure.

The image of an Israeli Rottweiler straining at the leash is not exactly fair, though. Israel’s neighbors are imploding, and radical Islamist forces are sweeping to power around it. Israel is determined to ensure that a fanatical Shi’ite republic sworn to its destruction does not become armed with atomic bombs.

Iran has armed two jihadi terrorist enclaves on Israel’s borders with tens of thousands of rockets. Hamas in Gaza, and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, are both quietly in the midst of massive armament programs, and are procuring ever-increasing numbers of rockets and sophisticated weaponry such as guided missiles, from Iran.

If Iran went nuclear, it would also set off a Middle Eastern nuclear arms race.

That means unstable Sunni countries could be armed with doomsday weapons, which could then fall into the hands of fanatics, posing a threat to global security as a whole.

The resulting international security environment would become intolerably dangerous. Nuclear proliferation could make the leap to non-state actors.

Hence, the attempt to portray Israel as an aggressive player that needs restraining is misleading, and cynical. An equally convincing ‘bad cop’ alternative to negotiations could have been created by an international community, one that is united and able to pose a credible military option if all other means to stop the Iranians fail.

But that cannot exist if Western officials continue to present the possibility of military strikes as being unhinged Israeli machinations, instead of trying to build up a global commitment to halt Iran through any means necessary.

Yaakov Lappin, JINSA Visiting Fellow, is a journalist for the Jerusalem Post, where he covers police and national security affairs. For more information on the JINSA Visiting Fellows program, click here.