WarSclerotic

Obama’s Confusing Policy On Iran’s Nukes.

One of the most frightening possibilities that world has faced in the last 25 years is that of Iran obtaining Nuclear Weapons. Iran is already the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism and one can only imagine what could happen if Iran’s Mullah’s allowed al-Qaeda, Hamas, Boko Harum or Islamic Jihad to get their hands on a nuclear device or radioactive material.

Iran has repeatedly threatened to wipe Israel off the map and they have shown equal hostility their Arabic Muslim cousins in countries like Saudi Arabia. The belligerence and religious fanaticism that is the mainstay of Iranian political dialogue should make any freedom loving nation cringe at the idea of Iran going nuclear.

Yet, the Iranians are still defiant about their nuclear program and they have repeatedly prevented the IAEA from inspecting the various secret installations hidden in remote bases through out Iran. Despite crippling international sanctions and non-stop pressure from the Group Of Six Western Powers, Iran has continued to hurtle down the path towards obtaining a bomb.

Israel is alarmed to say the least. Jews remember all too well what happened the last time a lunatic said he would exterminate the Jewish people. Six million Jews along with over 35 million other human beings died at the hands of Adolph Hitler and his friends. Israel’s policy is clear. If a nation makes threats to wipe Israel off the map and exterminate the Jews, Israel will do everything in its power to prevent that from happening. Netanyahu has made it clear that every option, including attacking Iran, is on the table and he has stated over and over that Israel simply will not allow Iran to build a nuclear bomb.

That brings us to the unsettling question of the policies of Obama, who many feel is the most anti-Israel President in American history. The jury may still be out on whether or not this is the case, but he is certainly sending very confusing signals about American intentions towards Iran.

Obama is up for re-election and he is using every political trick in the book to try to sell himself as worthy of a second term. He is going out of his way to separate his supporters into racial and ethnic groups in order to tailor his message to appeal to their specific issues. He launched African Americans for Obama in February, 2012 and he has made several appearances and speeches at Mexican American gatherings, where he told Latinos, ‘We’re going to punish our enemies.” Sadly, Obama was referring to  Republicans as the enemy.

Obama is also courting rich Liberal, Jewish donors for financial support. In the last few weeks, he put in highly visible appearances in front of powerful Jewish Groups like AIPAC and he hosted several big ticket, private fund raisers for important Jewish donors.

When speaking to Jewish groups, Obama makes every effort to sound tough on Iran. He told AIPAC that “He has Israel’s back and then went on to say, “No Israeli government can tolerate a nuclear weapon in the hands of a regime that denies the Holocaust, threatens to wipe Israel off the map, and sponsors terrorist groups committed to Israel’s destruction. He topped off this tough talk by saying that he affirms “Israel’s sovereign right to make its own decisions.”

While this all makes for great campaign rhetoric, Obama then went on to propose yet another round of talks with Iran. Not only has the date for the talks not been set but first, negotiations will have to take place to decide on the location of the talks. Iran took Obama and the Western Powers for a ride 14 months ago. After stalling for months, Iran showed up at the last round of talks with no serious intention of negotiating and then walked out. Going down the same path again will just give Iran another 6 months to a year to forge ahead with their nuclear program. Meanwhile, Obama makes pretty speeches full of false bravado with lines like “Iran’s leaders should have no doubt about the resolve of the United States” and “I don’t Bluff.”  Then 48 hours later, he explains to a press conference that his comments were just a “historical reference” to supporting traditional American allies.

Even more alarming than the clever rhetoric is what Obama officials having been saying behind the scenes. One well placed Obama administration official told the Washington Post ““We’re trying to make the decision to attack as hard as possible for Israel.” Then Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, when asked by a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee if sanctions would have any effect on stopping Iran’s Nuclear Program, replied, “No. None whatsoever.”

After all these confusing messages from the Obama Administration, Israeli leaders must be about ready to rip their hair out in frustration, As noted reporter and author, Charles Krauthammer, said this week in his column, “The world’s greatest exporter of terror (according to the State Department), the systematic killer of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, the self-declared enemy that invented “Death to America Day” is approaching nuclear capability – and the focus of US policy is to prevent a democratic ally threatened with annihilation from pre-empting the threat?”

American voters and the citizens of Israel deserve better from Mr. Obama and his Administration. It would be unconscionable if Obama is really playing politics with the Iranian nuclear issue. While the threat is vague and far away for America, Israel is within easy reach of Iran. A country that is the size of New Jersey simply could not survive a nuclear attack.

When it comes to Iran, Obama needs to advocate a serious, effective policy to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb. This policy must have a realistic time limit and serious consequences should Iran remain defiant. The 5 million Israeli Jews, the 1.5 million Israeli Arabs and the countries that border Israel, all deserve a sincere effort by Obama to derail Iran’s nuclear ambitions once and for all. The entire planet will be a much safer place is Iran does not join the Nuclear club. Obama needs to stop the campaign rhetoric and get serious about Iran before the Middle East goes up in a nuclear fireball.

Netanyahu’s ‘catastrophe law’ prevents an Iran strike – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

The politician understands that in order to prevent a future catastrophe, he must generate a small crisis immediately.

By Nehemia Shtrasler

To survive in our political jungle, we must stick to a number of fundamental rules or laws. One of the more obvious ones is the “catastrophe law,” which states that a politician will never act to prevent a future catastrophe, even if he is certain it is impending.

The reason he won’t prevent it is not because he is evil or indifferent, but because the public would not appreciate it. The politician understands that in order to prevent a future catastrophe, he must generate a small crisis immediately. But the moment he creates the small crisis, the entire public will blame him for the unpleasant consequences. He will be declared a failure and one who panics easily, and will pay a heavy political price. Nobody will give him credit for preventing a catastrophe because no catastrophe took place.

Before examining the Iranian situation vis-a-vis the catastrophe law, here are two examples to prove it, one economic and the other military. The economic example pertains to the banking crisis of 1983. Yaakov Gadish, the treasury budgets commissioner, realized back in 1981 that the banks’ share manipulation needed to be stopped. Gadish told then Finance Minister Yoram Aridor that the share manipulation must be stopped because that huge balloon would blow up one day and bring the whole economy down with it.

Aridor said fine, but first get the bankers’ agreement to an orderly cessation of the manipulation. Gadish spoke to the bankers, but not all of them consented. He returned to Aridor and insisted that the treasury halt the manipulation unilaterally. But Aridor wasn’t too keen. Being all too familiar with the catastrophe law, he knew that if he stopped the manipulation by himself, the bankers and public would accuse him of killing the goose that laid the golden eggs and made us all rich (on paper ). Nobody would credit him with preventing a catastrophe, which indeed came two years later in October 1983.

The military example regards the Yom Kippur War. Imagine if Golda Meir had come to her senses and ordered a preemptive strike on the Egyptian and Syrian armies in October 1973. Most of the public (and the whole world ) would have condemned her for warmongering. They would have claimed the other side was only conducting a drill and she, gripped by hysteria, had caused an unnecessary war in which dozens of soldiers had died. Who would have understood, let alone accepted, that by so doing, Golda would have prevented the Yom Kippur War and its 2,569 IDF fatalities?

Now for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Iran. If Netanyahu strikes Iran, he will break the catastrophe law, because he will be creating a small crisis to prevent a future catastrophe. The missiles expected to fall on Tel Aviv are nothing compared to the danger of Iran’s nuclear missiles. And all this is even before the significant change expected to occur in Israel’s strategic situation with regard to Syria and Hezbollah in the north and Islamic Jihad in the south, at the moment Iran turns into a nuclear power.

Some argue against attacking Iran, because it is impossible to know if the strike will destroy Iran’s nuclear capability, especially since it is not certain whether Iran will attack Israel when it has nuclear weapons. They err in understanding their leaders’ responsibilities. The leaders’ entire role should be to assess the risks involved in dire future scenarios in an uncertain world. If they find that a future catastrophe which will cause enormous damage is possible, it is their duty to act now – even if the probability is low. Sometimes a leader must initiate a small war in order to prevent a big catastrophe in the future. That is precisely what his duty is.

The easiest thing is to frighten the public by discussing all the risks involved in an attack on Iran, without mentioning the consequences of not carrying out such an attack. For example, was then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert right to attack (according to foreign sources ) a nuclear facility in Syria in 2007? He too took a huge risk.

All this does not mean Israel should attack Iran now. In any case, the chances of that happening are slim, simply because Netanyahu knows the catastrophe law all too well.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report March 13, 2012, 4:35 AM (GMT+02:00)

Palestinian Grad lands on Beersheba outskirts

A high-ranking Egyptian official reported before dawn Tuesday, March 13, that Israel and the Palestinian organizations in Gaza, including Jihad Islami and the Popular Resistance Committees, had agreed to a ceasefire which went into effect at one o’clock a.m. Neither Israel nor Jihad Islami released statements of a truce. And shortly after 0400 missile warnings sounded in Ashkelon.
The initial Egyptian statement remains to be clarified. It interprets the Israeli position as having accepted Jihad’s condition for halting its missile barrage and agreed to halt targeted killings of high-profile terrorists.
All Israeli defense officials affirmed in backdoor negotiations with Egyptian intelligence officials, debkafile’s sources report, was its standard position: If the Palestinians halt cross-border attacks from the Gaza Strip and Egyptian Sinai, there will be no need for targeted killings. And if the Palestinians stop shooting missiles from the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Air Force will have no reason to strike terrorist targets.
An Egyptian delegation has reportedly arrived in Gaza to discuss with the strip’s Hamas rulers terms for restoring fuel supplies, shortages of which have forced them to severely ration power to the population. Cairo has kept Gaza short in order to squeeze Hamas into pulling the military facilities and units it deployed in northern Sinai back into the Gaza Strip.
Egyptian officials deny their delegates offered to resupply Gaza as part of the still-shadowy ceasefire deal. It is possible, say our sources, that Cairo used it as leverage to make Hamas to force the pro-Iranian Jihad Islami to stop firing missiles and slow – if not abandon –  its four-day offensive on Israel’s towns and villages.
debkafile: For the Cairo-Hamas truce maneuver to work, all the parties involved must give ground: Israel must tacitly leave Jihad with the unspoken prerogative for deciding when Israel has violated the “deal” and responding with a fresh missile offensive; Jihad undertake to halt its terrorist operations against Israel from Sinai – albeit shrugging off responsibility if its networks go into action to duplicate former attacks on Israel. Because Egypt must give up for now its most pressing demand to recover control of northern and central Sinai from the Hamas and Jihad Islami forces which have overrun parts of the peninsula.
It is therefore hard to see how this loose patchwork of deals – if they are indeed finalized – can hold up for long.

debkafile reported earlier Monday, March 12:
The combined Egyptian-Israeli-Hamas effort to negotiate an early ceasefire in the current round of Palestinian-Israeli violence struck several major obstacles Monday, March 12:  debkafile’s intelligence sources report a Cairo demand for any truce deal to embody a Palestinian Hamas and Jihad Islami commitment to withdraw their forces from Sinai and stop using the peninsula for terrorist operations against Israel. Egypt’s military rulers are resolved to use this opportunity to chase the terrorists out and restore their control over Sinai.
However, Palestinian leaders, including Hamas, are playing innocent, claiming to the Egyptian mediator Intelligence chief Gen. Murad Muwafi that they have no armed presence in Sinai and would never impair Egyptian sovereignty.

Four days into the Gaza violence, this impasse has brought the mediation effort to a close.
debkafile’s military sources report that acceding to Cairo’s demand would oblige the Palestinian terrorist organizations to dismantle the logistic, operational and military infrastructure they have built in Sinai.  Hamas has even transferred all its weapons manufacturing, including missiles, from the Gaza Strip where it was vulnerable to Israeli attack to safe locations in northern Sinai, along with its training facilities.
This tactic has worked: Most of Hamas’ military facilities were out of reach of Israeli Air Force bombings in the current round of violence because none remained in the Gaza Strip, except for a forward position.
The Egyptian ultimatum would require Hamas to pull its military machine and weapons production back into the Gaza Strip and Jihad Islami to evacuate its terrorist networks which carried out a cross-border attack last August killing 8 Israelis and were preparing a follow-up.
Another obstacle on the road to a ceasefire is Egypt’s refusal to hold direct, or even indirect, talks with Jihad Islami, Tehran’s Palestinian surrogate. Gen. Muwafi addressed his mediation effort to Hamas, a fairly useless exercise since it is the Jihad Islami which has been shooting the missiles.
The breakdown of negotiations, such as they were, has led Israel to escalate its military pressure on Gaza and intensify its air strikes, in the hope of forcing Jihad Islami to stop the missile assaults on its cities.

But for now, its leaders show no sign of being beaten into accepting a truce and are unlikely to do so, so long as Tehran wants the violence to go on.
The Gaza confrontation is therefore evolving into a military clash between Israel and Iran.
Hamas, finding it increasingly difficult to stay on the sidelines, called on all Palestinian organizations Monday to unite and close ranks against “Zionist aggression.”  Hamas lined up with the Jihad sine qua non that a truce be conditional on an Israeli guarantee to discontinue targeted killings of wanted terror chiefs.

For now, the Hamas is still trying to pressure Egypt and Israel into coming to terms on a ceasefire. Failure would inevitably bring Gaza’s ruling faction into the battle against Israel.
Unless these circumstances undergo a radical shift, the million Israelis confined to shelters have no reason to look forward to relief from the missile attacks on their homes and schools – quite the opposite: The conflict looks like escalating.