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Israel Hayom | Netanyahu’s gift to Obama speaks volumes about Iranian threat.

Spengler » Did Iran Test a Nuclear Bomb in North Korea in 2010?.

The Sunday morning edition of Germany’s Die Welt reports that Western intelligence agencies detected two nuclear weapons tests in North Korea in 2010, and that one or both of them might have been conducted for Iran.  

Die Welt sets the reported nuclear tests in the context of new documentation showing that the Iranian regime began its drive for nuclear weapons as early as 1984, under the direct orders of the late Ayatollah Khomeini. The author is the respected German analyst Hans Rühle, whose evaluation of Israel’s capacity to cripple the Iranian nuclear program created a stir last month.

The Die Welt report reads like a line-by-line refutation of the reported U.S. intelligence evaluation that there is no “hard evidence” that Iran is building nuclear weapons. That is a noteworthy reversal: the Obama administration’s intelligence chiefs claim that Iran is not an imminent threat, while a former top German official warns of immediate danger to the Jewish state.  The fact is that there are some Germans who do not want to be responsible for a second Holocaust.

Rühle, who headed the German Defense Ministry’s policy planning staff during the peak of the Cold War in the 1980s, deplores the “credulousness of Western experts” who accept Iran’s protests that its nuclear program is peaceful.

Many Western experts still give credence to these representations. Despite numerous indications to the contrary, they give Iran the presumption of innocence, arguing that a nation’s intent to weaponize nuclear power is not proven until it has carried out a nuclear test. But what if Iran had already tested a nuclear weapon, and not on Iranian territory, but in a place where nuclear tests are conducted without regard for world opinion, and where nuclear expertise and technology have long been exported in exchange for hard currency payments–in North Korea?

Evidence of the 2010 nuclear tests in North Korea was published Feb. 3 in Nature magazine, citing the work of the Swedish nuclear physicist Lars-Erik de Geer. The Swedish scientist analyzed data showing the presence of radioisotopes that betrayed a uranium bomb explosion.  De Geer took the radioisotope data and compared them with the South Korean reports, as well as meteorological records. Nature reports, “After a year of work, he has concluded that North Korea carried out two small nuclear tests in April and May 2010 that caused explosions in the range of 50–200 tonnes of TNT equivalent. The types and ratios of isotopes detected, he says, suggest that North Korea was testing materials and techniques intended to boost the yield of its weapons.”

But why should North Korea keep the nuclear tests secret? asks Rühle. North Korea proudly advertised its previous nuclear tests. But the North Korean tests of 2006 and 2009 used bombs with a plutonium core. The 2010 tests, according to Lars-Erik de Geer’s calculation, employed enriched uranium. North Korea might have secretly enriched uranium on a sufficient scale to produce sufficient explosive material for two test bombs. But the more likely explanation is this, Rühle concludes:

The second explanation would be that North Korea conducted a nuclear test for a foreign entity, in this case, an Iranian explosive. That would be a sensation, although not quite a surprise, to be sure. Intelligence services have observed a close degree of cooperation between North Korean and Iranian experts over a period of years for the preparation of a nuclear test, although the previous assumptions centered on the prospect of an underground nuclear test in Iranian territory.

Rühle observes:

It became known a few days ago that the International Atomic Energy Agency has a document showing that it was the religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini himself who decided in 1984 to resume the nuclear weapons program suspended by the overthrow of the Shah. As his successor Ayatollah Khamenei declared, an Iranian nuclear weapon is viewed as the only way to protect the Islamic revolution and to prepare the way for the arrival of the Imam Mahdi. In Khamenei’s words, an Iranian nuclear arsenal is a deterrent in the hands of the holy warriors. With this sensational report from Tehran’s inner leadership circle it becomes clear that Khomeini’s often-cited fatwa that nuclear weapons are not compatible with Islam was a purely deceptive maneuver. Iran has been totally committed to becoming a nuclear power for decades.

Elements of Rühle’s story can be challenged by experts, to be sure. But the German analyst is making a point that has been lost in the fog of spin in Washington: It is outrageously wrong to proceed against an opponent like Iran in the presumption that intelligence agencies can accurately assess the precise degree of progress towards a nuclear device so that the U.S. government can fine-tune a response. Yet that is precisely what President Obama told Jeffrey Goldberg on March 2nd: “Our assessment, which is shared by the Israelis, is that Iran does not yet have a nuclear weapon and is not yet in a position to obtain a nuclear weapon without us having a pretty long lead time in which we will know that they are making that attempt.”

No intelligence professional could support that sweeping, and entirely indefensible, assertion from the president. American intelligence failures regarding nuclear weapons proliferation have been numerous and notorious. The CIA famously failed to give any advance warning of India’s first nuclear test, and was raked over the coals for this lapse at the time. Jeffrey Goldberg’s failure to challenge Obama’s statement turned the exchange into a public relations exercise rather than a news interview. A cub reporter for a college newspaper would have known enough to ask, “How can you be sure that we will detect an Iranian nuclear bomb before it’s ready? What’s our track record of detecting nuclear bombs elsewhere?”

When intelligence agencies use the term “evidence,” what they mean is incontrovertible proof. “Hard evidence” of Iranian nuclear intentions in intel-speak, as Rühle points out, means specifically that a nuclear test already has been conducted. When intelligence officials use this terminology, they are saying in plain English that their political masters are giving Iran the presumption of innocence, as Rühle wrote. The intelligence chiefs did not say that there was no “information” and no “reliable reports” that Iran is trying to get hold of nuclear weapons as fast as it possibly can, only that there is no “hard evidence.” By definition, one obtains this kind of “hard evidence” only when it is too late.

Update: Obama’s speech to AIPAC contained the bizarre assertion that “war talk” had pushed up the price of oil and therefore helped the government of Iran. By that logic, Obama shouldn’t mention a military option, and the United States should tell the world that use of  force is out of the question.

Netanyahu’s Iran speech strikes a chord – News – Mail & Guardian Online.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s uncompromising speech to a pro-Israel lobby in Washington has persuaded the public back home that war with Iran is increasingly possible.

Netanyahu evoked the horrors of the Holocaust, quoting a 1944 letter where the US rejected a request by Jewish leaders to bomb the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz. His message was clear: Israel cannot rely on others to defend its people.

“As prime minister of Israel, I will never let my people live in the shadow of annihilation,” he told the influential pro-Israel lobby AIPAC on Monday after meeting US President Barack Obama. “We have waited for diplomacy to work, we have waited for sanctions to work. We cannot afford to wait much longer.”

The words resonated in Israel, with analysts, commentators and former military officers seeing a distinct sharpening of tone towards Tehran, which itself has called for the destruction of the state of Israel.

“The pistol isn’t only loaded but the safety catch has been released,” Uzi Dayan, a former general and national security adviser, told Israel Radio.

Israel is adamant it will not let Iran build an atomic bomb and has been pushing Washington to pile pressure on Tehran to force it to abandon its nuclear programme. The Jewish state is believed to be the only nuclear power in the region.

Iran says its programme is for civilian purposes but few in the West believe this, with the European Union and US applying increasingly severe economic sanctions to force Tehran to halt its uranium enrichment drive and return to talks.

Just for show
Israeli experts, including Dayan, say sanctions will only work if there is a credible military threat behind them. This has led sceptics to believe that the accompanying rhetoric is just for show but the language has reached such a peak that Netanyahu will lose all credibility at home if it proves to be hot air. “Netanyahu sounds like a man whose mind is made up,” editorialist David Horovitz wrote on his TimesOfIsrael website.

The US president has appealed for sanctions to be given more time and although Washington agrees with Israel that it is unacceptable for Iran to get a nuclear weapon, the terminology used by Obama and Netanyahu this week was different.

While Obama talked of preventing Iran from “obtaining” a bomb, Netanyahu spoke about preventing it from “developing” one.

Officials say this means Israel wants to see Iran deprived of the various jigsaw pieces needed when manufacturing a bomb. Washington, by contrast, would only move if it saw Tehran actively trying to put the pieces together.

“We want Iran to be stripped of the capability, to drop the military nuclear programme altogether,” said one Israeli security official, who declined to be named.

The Israeli position flows from the so-called “Begin Doctrine”, enshrined by former prime minister Menachem Begin in 1981 after his air force destroyed an Iraqi reactor that Israel believed would produce plutonium for warheads.

The raid, he said at the time, was proof his country would “under no circumstances allow the enemy to develop weapons of mass-destruction against our people”.

Sceptical public
Monday’s speech represented Netanyahu’s clearest endorsement of this doctrine since taking office in 2009 but critics said he still had to convince a sceptical public of the need for war.

“Today’s Israel does not subscribe to this,” said Uri Dromi, a spokesperson for former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, adding that the war of words from both Israel and Iran reminded him of the build up to World War I, when Europe stumbled into mayhem.

“He is preparing us for war but I am not sure we are ready for it. It is not a smart game. It is a gamble,” he said.

An opinion poll published last week said just 19% of Israelis thought their nation should attack Iran, even if they did not first get the support of Washington.

Many Israelis fret the country is not prepared for conflict, with analysts predicting it could be hit with a barrage of missiles from Iran and its allies, such as Hizbollah in Lebanon.

Curiously, just hours after Netanyahu spoke, Israel’s Civil Defence Minister Matan Vilnai issued a message via SMS.

“Israel has the operational capability of intercepting missiles coming at it from any place on earth … Today every citizen knows the requirement to be prepared for any emergency situation in the best possible way.” — Reuters

Israeli state officials disappointed with Obama meeting – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Senior officials claim US views Iranian issue in the context of 2012 election year; assert it’s now certain Washington will not strike Islamic Republic

Attila Somflavi

Israeli state officials were disappointed Tuesday with the results of the Netanyahu-Obama meeting at the White House on Monday. “There were no surprises,” a senior state official said. “It was clear from recent months that there are differences between ourselves and the Americans. We have different perspectives when it comes to the question of time and red lines.”

It was claimed that the Americans view the Iranian issue in the context of the upcoming presidential elections. “It’s a bad message for the issue and a good message for the Iranians,” a state official said.

Related stories:

• Netanyahu: A nuclear Iran must be stopped 
  
• US officials: It appears Israel yet to decide on Iran attack
  
• Obama says US ‘won’t hesitate to use force on Iran’
  

“We want the Americans to change their rhetoric vis-à-vis the Iranians. The US says that when Khamenei decides to make a bomb that would be crossing a red line. How do we know for sure he’s made the decision? What happens after that? There will be a new discussion on whether this is credible or not.”

Netanyahu and Obama meet in White House (Photo: Amos Ben-Gershom, GPO)

Israeli concerns primarily stem from past differences with the US on the Iranian nuclear issue. For years Israel asserted that Tehran was working on a military nuclear program while Washington refused to accept the Israeli intelligence analysis. It took the Americans two years to become persuaded.

“The Iranians are charging at nuclear capabilities at full force and even the IAEA is falling in line with the Israeli intelligence evaluations,” a senior state official said. “That is why the US stance is problematic.”

Nevertheless, Israeli officials were pleased with the US assertion that Israel has the right to act. “They won’t tell us what to do. They have no interest in giving a red light or a green light because then they take responsibility for the situation. That is why we’re in the grey zone now.”

Israel’s political-security forums are slated to discuss the talks with the US and reach a new status evaluation on Israel’s position.

“As of yet, there is no decision to attack but we’ll see what tomorrow brings,” a senior official close to the talks with the Americans said. “Right now we are certain the Americans won’t do anything and we need to decide what to do.”

Referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with US President Barack Obama, he added: “The meeting was important because now everything is out in the open: The Americans want oil prices not to go up because it’s bad for their economy.”

The issue of oil rates also drew criticism from some state officials. “Oil prices? Come on. You have to consider the fate of the Western world and history. It’s better to pay more for oil this year than to pay the cost for a nuclear Iran.

“While not making a direct comparison, psychologically the current atmosphere in the West is the same as the one in 1939. Westerners who sought peace and coexistence had options but at the moment of truth they chose to sacrifice Czechoslovakia. We’ve been there. While being very careful with this analysis, we have the same psychological phenomenon.”

Meanwhile, former Yesha Council Secretary-General Naftali Bennett took part in a rare CNN debate opposite an Iranian journalist who claimed Tehran has no military ambitions for its nuclear program.

EU’s Ashton accepts Iranian offe… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

By Francois Lenoir / Reuters

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton wrote to Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator on Tuesday, accepting an offer to meet to discuss Tehran’s nuclear program.

Ashton represents six powers – the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany – in dealings with Iran, and her offer of talks came after weeks of consultations with them.

Iran proposed in February in a letter from Saeed Jalili that negotiations with global powers resume after more than a year of standstill, and said Tehran would have “new initiatives” to bring to the table.

“Today I have replied to Dr. Jalili’s letter of Feb. 14,” Ashton said in a statement. “I have offered to resume talks with Iran on the nuclear issue,” she said.

Ashton and her counterparts are concerned that Tehran’s nuclear work is aimed at producing weapons, and they want Iran to hold back on the program. Tehran says it is trying to develop nuclear power to meet rising electricity demand.

The time and venue for the talks will now have to be agreed, Ashton said.

Earlier Tuesday, Russia urged global powers to hold new talks with Iran on its nuclear program as soon as possible, saying Tehran had proved it was ready for serious negotiations.

“I would like to underscore Russia’s interest in the Iranian side and the ‘group of six’ reaching agreement on a date and site for the resumption of the negotiations process as quickly as possible,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.

Iran offered last month to restart the talks but has also continued to pursue activities that have stoked fears it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, leaving Western powers wary of starting negotiations.

Report: Syria forces bomb bridge used by refugees fleeing to Lebanon – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Bashar Assad’s forces cut off key escape route for wounded Syrians from the central city of Homs, AFP reports.

By Haaretz and Reuters

Syria government forces on Tuesday bombed a bridge used by refugees to flee to Lebanon from the central province of Homs, AFP reported.

The bombing of the bridge by Assad forces effectively blocked a key escape route used to evacuate wounded Syrians from the embattled city of Homs.

	Syria security forces shell the Baba Amro district of Homs.
	Photo by: AFP

“Regime forces on Tuesday bombarded a bridge near Qusayr, in Homs province, which is used by refugees and the wounded fleeing to Lebanon,” Rami Abdel Rahman, of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP.

United Nations and local officials said that some 2,000 Syrians, mainly women and children, had crossed into Lebanon recently.

Meanwhile, residents of Baba Amr who fled to Lebanon said the smell of decomposed bodies, sewage and destruction filled the air in the Syrian city of Homs as troops seeking to crush a revolt against President Bashar Assad bombarded it into submission.

With aid workers still blocked from reaching the former rebel stronghold and most foreign journalists banned from Syria, witness accounts from residents who fled across the border portrayed a grim picture of conditions in Homs.

“The smell of death was everywhere. We could smell the bodies buried under the rubble all the time,” said Ahmad, who fled to Lebanon last week.

“Bodies are in the streets, many are decomposed but we could not bury them,” he said, speaking at a relative’s house in Lebanon, looking tired with dark circles around his eyes.

“We saw so much death that at the end the sight of a dismembered body of a relative or a friend stopped moving us.”

esidents knew the end was near when, after a month of shelling, the Syrian army blew up a 3-km (2-mile) tunnel they had used to smuggle in essentials keeping them alive.

After that fighters of the Free Syrian Army, citing lack of ammunition and many casualties, urged people to leave.

Men fled to Lebanon, women and children to villages in Homs province. But some did not make it. Activists said last week at least 62 people were killed when they tried to leave Baba Amr.

Those who left said heavy bombardment had razed most of the neighborhood. Many buildings and houses were flattened, water pipes were blown up and sewage and litter filled the streets.

“I stopped feeling anything when I see people I know dead… Many people started feeling like that – the atrocities we saw were beyond our imagination,” said another former resident, speaking from a secret location as his presence was illegal.

Syrian state television reported residents were returning to Baba Amr, airing footage on Tuesday of dozens of men, women and children walking through grubby streets, passing pock-marked and semi-destroyed buildings.

Cleansing

Syria says it is fighting armed militants funded and armed from abroad while residents say the crackdown is aimed at crushing pro-democracy protesters and those opposed to Assad.

A convoy sent by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Syrian Red Crescent to provide aid and evacuate the wounded was still awaiting approval to enter Baba Amr. Activists said the army may have stalled the convoy to remove traces of destruction and take bodies from the streets.

A man who fled a day after the army went in said soldiers raided houses, arresting men who remained in the district and executed some of them. Activists say at least 60 men were executed since Friday.

“They are cleansing the neighborhood, they are robbing houses, arresting people then executing some. Baba Amr is besieged from all sides. It is a disaster,” said Omar, speaking by phone from inside Homs the day he fled Baba Amr.

“They said they have a list of 1,500 men and they want them all… They are shooting everything that is moving, even animals. There are bodies in the streets, some are swollen and carry signs of torture,” he said with a trembling voice.

An activists who was speaking to Reuters from Homs province said on Tuesday that there were at least nine rape cases reported to the activists and that the army continued killing young men in the district.

For a month of continuous shelling, residents felt abandoned by a world which left them without food or water and at the mercy of an unexpectedly severe military onslaught.

“We were surprised to see how long it lasted. We were not ready for all of that. We thought: ‘Now Baba Amr will break the back of the regime,’ and we thought: ‘OK, let them come,'” said another resident called Omar who fled to Lebanon last week.

“After the third day of shelling we felt we were alone, the world has abandoned us, and that even if (Assad) uses his planes against us nobody will move,” he said with a faint broken smile.

Many of those in Lebanon have lost contact with their families. They said in one month they buried a thousand people but many were left under the rubble and the death toll was impossible to ascertain.

“In every house there is a martyr if not more. It is impossible to know the exact number of those killed, we have to go back to Baba Amr and gather in a square to count each other in order to know how many are missing,” said Omar.

Despite their losses, the men said they would return to take back their neighborhood and bring down Assad.

“This is just one round. The war is not over. We are going back and we will not stop then. The army will leave Baba Amr whether they like it or not,” Ahmad said.

West of Eden-Israel News – Haaretz Israeli News source..

In his self-styled Churchillian mode, the prime minister tells the world: time is running out.

This was pure, unadulterated, one hundred percent proof Benjamin Netanyahu: solidly in his element, before his kind of crowd, delivering the Churchillian speech he was meant for, in the role that fate has thrust upon him.

This was not Munich, because President Obama, even for Netanyahu, is no longer Neville Chamberlain. And it wasn’t the War Speech, because the guns are still silent. So this was “The Lights are Going Out” speech, broadcast from London to the United States on October 16, 1938, in which Churchill exhorted America to “banish from all our lives the fear which already darkens the sunlight to hundreds of millions of men.”

	Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waves after addressing the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, Monday, March 5, 2012.
	Photo by: AP

Thus, there were no Palestinians, no peace process, no 1967 borders and no settlements to freeze in Netanyahu’s succinct and rousing speech at the AIPAC Annual Conference last night. There were no weights on his feet, no obstacles in his way, no lip service for the prime minister to pay to a naïve president who believes that Israeli concessions will make the slightest difference.

For once, at long last, there was only nuclear-crazed Iran, of which he has been warning, a juxtaposed Holocaust, to which he has been comparing, an admiring Jewish audience, to which he has been preaching, and a bottom line that couldn’t be clearer: “We’ve waited for diplomacy to work. We’ve waited for sanctions to work. None of us can afford to wait much longer.”

So this was Netanyahu’s response to President Obama’s request to give him more time: not much longer. Israel won’t attack now, but it won’t adhere to Obama’s timetable either. Israel will give the international community a few more months to achieve the kind of dramatic breakthrough that Netanyahu made crystal clear he does not believe in. Then “the Jewish state will not allow those seeking our destruction to possess the means to achieve that goal”, no ifs or buts about it.

So if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, as the prime minister said yesterday in another context – is it really a duck? Has Netanyahu crossed the Rubicon? Has he now resigned himself to war, as he surely sounded last night, or is he still raising the stakes and ratcheting up the pressure on Obama to act forcefully and swiftly in order to prevent the conflagration that Netanyahu is threatening to unleash?

One needs to know the exact details of the exchange between Obama and Netanyahu at the White House yesterday, especially in their one on one meeting, in order to know the answers to these questions, though this, of course, did not prevent the analysts and commentators from debating that very subject last night. For his part, Netanyahu disturbingly displayed his ever-growing antipathy to such “commentators” who don’t toe the party line and happen to disagree with his views by comparing them, in some convoluted way, to War Department officials who refused to bomb Auschwitz in 1944. In Netanyahu’s new war mode, perhaps, there is no more room for dissent or criticism, a position no doubt shared by many of the listeners in his audience and by most of his colleagues back home.

Netanyahu will find no such fault, obviously, with Republican presidential hopefuls Romney, Santorum and Gingrich who will address the conference today by videolink, no doubt to quarrel with Obama, signifying the unprecedented and potentially harmful position that both Israel, in general, and the standoff, with Iran, in particular, have taken in this election campaign. The White House will certainly be seeking and probably finding signs of what they will interpret as “collusion” between Netanyahu and his close Republican friends, further complicating the already complex relationship between the two leaders which overshadows, not for better but for worse, the dangerous predicament that both countries seem headed for.

Are Obama and Netanyahu playing “good cop, bad cop”, as some would suggest, or are their public differences a true reflection of their ongoing adversarial relationship? And even if Netanyahu is just posturing, is he not entrapping himself in his own words, allowing his rhetorical flourishes to establish facts on the ground that may ultimately cause unintended consequences? The answer to these questions will become apparent in the next few months which, if anything, now seem certain to make Obama’s forecast that they will be “difficult” seem like the understatement of the year.

Report: Iran to grant UN watchdog access to suspected nuclear site – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

IAEA report last year said Iran built large containment chamber at Parchin military complex to conduct explosives tests that are ‘strong indicators’ of efforts to develop an atom bomb.

By Reuters

Iran said it will give the UN nuclear watchdog access to its Parchin military complex, ISNA news agency reported on Tuesday, a site where the agency believes Tehran pursued high explosives research relevant to nuclear weapons.

An International Atomic Energy Agency report last year said that Iran had built a large containment chamber at Parchin, southeast of Tehran, to conduct explosives tests that are “strong indicators” of efforts to develop an atom bomb.

	The base in Parchin where Iran conducted nuclear tests
	Photo by: Google Earth, GeoEye

The IAEA requested access to Parchin during high-level talks in Tehran in February, but the Iranian side did not grant it.

“…Parchin is a military site and accessing it is a time-consuming process, therefore visits cannot be allowed frequently … We will allow the IAEA to visit it one more time,” Iran’s diplomatic mission in Vienna said in a statement, according to ISNA.

It did not give a date for such a visit. Iranian diplomats and IAEA officials were not immediately available for comment.

Western suspicions about activities at Parchin date back to at least 2004, when a prominent nuclear expert assessed that satellite images showed it might be a site for research and experiments applicable to nuclear weapons.

IAEA inspectors did in fact visit Parchin in 2005 but did not see the place where the UN watchdog now believes the explosives chamber was built.

The IAEA named Parchin in a detailed report in November that lent independent weight to Western fears that Iran is working to develop an atomic bomb, an allegation Iranian officials deny.

Agency chief Yukiya Amano said on Monday Iran has tripled its monthly production of higher-grade enriched uranium and the UN nuclear watchdog had “serious concerns” about possible military dimensions to Tehran’s atomic activities.

Russia: Iran has proved it is re… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

By REUTERS

MOSCOW – Russia urged global powers on Tuesday to hold new talks with Iran on its nuclear program as soon as possible, saying Tehran had proved it was ready for serious negotiations.

The remarks suggest Russia is more eager than Western nations to agree to an Iranian offer to resume nuclear negotiations with the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China which have been frozen for over a year.

“I would like to underscore Russia’s interest in the Iranian side and the ‘group of six’ reaching agreement on a date and site for the resumption of the negotiations process as quickly as possible,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said.

Iran offered last month to restart the talks but has also continued to pursue activities that have stoked fears it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, leaving Western powers wary of starting negotiations.

A Russian Foreign Ministry official, however, said Iran had shown by its words and its actions that it was ready for a serious discussion and that the break in talks should not be allowed to drag on much longer.

Israeli PM Netanyahu Meets U.S. President Obama – YouTube.

(Have any doubts about Israel bowing to US policy on Iran?  Watch… – JW)