WarSclerotic

The Barack and Bibi Smackdown.

When President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met this week in Washington, the main issue on their agenda was the Iranian nuclear threat. But the subtext of the debate over whether the United States will step up its own threats to use force to ensure that Iran abandons its nuclear ambitions or will stand in the way of an Israeli attack is the tense personal relationship between the two men.

The fact that Obama has little use for Netanyahu is not exactly a state secret. Though the president has boasted of his close personal relationships with other foreign leaders such as the Islamist prime minister of Turkey, Obama has complained publicly about his distaste for dealing with Netanyahu and engaged in annual fights with the Israeli over policy questions such as Jerusalem and subjected the Israeli to public dressing downs.

Indeed, Obama seemed to think at one point that he might bring down Netanyahu’s government but rather than sink him, these attacks merely strengthened the prime minister at home because Israelis regard Obama with great suspicion. These feelings are obviously reciprocated, as was proven when Netanyahu lost his patience in 2011 after being ambushed by Obama on the 1967 borders and publicly lectured the president about Israel’s security needs.

All this has rightly led to concerns among American supporters of Israel about Obama’s friendship for the Jewish state, something that could have a serious impact on the president’s chances for re-election. To this Obama and the Democrats have replied that this is all a misunderstanding. To the extent that they will admit that there is any division between the two nations, Democrats argue that it is merely a function of a personal spat between the two men.

However, attempts to rationalize this problem as the inevitable fallout from a personal spat are wrongheaded. Though a personal connection between the president and the prime minister might go a long toward smoothing over the problem, the difficulty goes a lot deeper.

Israel’s problem with the White House is not so much the fact that its current occupant doesn’t like Netanyahu as his lack of a strong affinity for the country itself. Obama’s instincts since his first day of office have led him to seek to create more distance between the U.S. and Israel and to instead conduct a failed effort toward outreach and engagement to the Muslim and Arab world. Obama pays lip service to Israel’s security needs and has denounced Iran’s nuclear ambitions loudly and often. But his reflexive backing for anti-Israel institutions such as UNESCO and open reluctance to enforce existing sanctions against Tehran or to declare “red lines” that if crossed would subject the Islamist regime to American retaliation gives the lie to the notion that he can be relied upon to back up those words with action.

Obama has rightly said that an Iranian nuclear weapon is just as much America’s problem as it Israel’s. Yet his desire to postpone any showdown on the issue while waiting for sanctions that he knows have little or no chance to succeed to resolve the impasse demonstrates that he regards the issue as more of a hindrance to his re-election campaign than a genuine threat that must be dealt with before the Iranians have gone too far to be stopped. The fact that his administration seems more worried about stopping Israel from acting in its own interests than in tangible measures that would ensure the collapse of the Iranian threat speak louder than his protestations of affection for Israel.

Though it makes for good copy, the focus on the Obama-Netanyahu relationship obscures the basic policy differences that have arisen between Israel and the United States during the past three years. Israel’s difficulty in trusting the administration to do the right thing on Iran stems from Obama’s stands on the issues not a lack of personal chemistry on the part of the president and the prime minister.

JNS columnist Jonathan S. Tobin is senior online editor of COMMETARY magazine and chief political blogger at http://www.commentarymagazine.com. He can be reached via e-mail at: jtobin@commentarymagazine.com. Follow him on Twitter here.

US Fear of Recession Protects Iran’s Nuclear Sites – Global Agenda – News – Israel National News.

$5 a gallon for gas in Washington last month

Reuters

A glance at financial markets shows the biggest obstacle to a green light from President Barack Obama to stop Iran’s nuclear project is fear of higher oil prices.

China and Russia have a vested interested in Iranian nuclear facilities, but except for them, as well as Syria and Lebanon, almost no one —  especially not the Gulf States, Israel and the United States — wants to see Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad armed with a nuclear warhead. Such a weapon would be aimed at carrying out his “dream” of  wiping Israel off the map and dominating the region with an Islamic empire.

A glance at financial markets indicates that the biggest obstacle to the Obama administration’s giving the green light to prevent Iran from getting “the bomb” is not fear of a military response but rather of an oil-driven recession.

“Israel cares much more about Iran having a bomb than the price of oil, while the West and East have an overwhelming interest in keeping the flow of oil going,” David Kelly, chief market strategist at J.P. Morgan Fund told CBS MarketWatch this week.

Military officers and analysts have batted the question of an attack on Iran around the ballpark, with estimates of Iran’s reaction ranging from terrorist attacks on American overseas bases and Israeli targets around the world  to a raging regional Middle East war.

However, the fragile American economy in an election is perhaps the most important factor in President Barack Obama’s decision “to attack or not to attack.”

“The root of his concerns takes us back to oil prices, which are rising because of both the sanctions and the threat of military conflict, Eyal Gabbai, until recently the director of the office of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, recently told The Wall Street Journal.

“I’m not sure that Americans are willing to pay the price of rising prices at the pump,” he said.

Israel, which has long experience in suffering Arab terrorist attacks since before the re-establishment of the Jewish state, sees Iranian nuclear capability as a clear and present threat.

The rising price of oil has sedated the Americans’ eagerness to disable Iran.

An Israeli or US-led attack on Iran’s nuclear sites would probably be met with Iran’s closing, at least temporarily, the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway for more than 20 percent of the world’s oil supply.

Crude oil would soar at least 50 percent if not 100 percent higher than now, oil experts predict. A parallel increase in gasoline would cost American consumers a bundle, and possibly cost President Obama reelection, all of which makes oil Iran’s best protection against an attack.

The price of crude oil now is around $106 a barrel, the highest since last April when “black gold” reached the $110 a barrel level before dripping back to the low $70s.

It did not take long for the higher price to filter down to local gas station. The price at the pump has soared by 50 cents a gallon since the beginning of the year, to approximately $4 a gallon in some places. The average price now is approximately $3.75 a gallon.

The older generation has sharp memories the 1970s, when oil jumped four-fold to $12 a barrel during the Yom Kippur War and then to $40 at the end of the decade, driving the United States into a recession.

Economists point out that the United States is more energy efficient and the economy more stable, although not roaring, than before, but there is a limit to how much it can withstand.

President Obama is enjoying his highest popularity in more than year as the unemployment rate drops, but public spending is bound to drop if gasoline prices soar much past $4 a gallon.

McCain: Trust Israel’s Judgment on Attacking Iran – Matt Vasilogambros and Alexandra Jaffe – NationalJournal.com.

by Matt Vasilogambros and Alexandra Jaffe

Updated: March 5, 2012 | 9:02 a.m.
March 5, 2012 | 7:56 a.m.

If Israel deems it necessary to attack Iranian nuclear facilities, Sen. John McCain said that the U.S. should trust the country’s judgment.

“We were surprised when Pakistan acquired nuclear weapons, we were surprised when North Korea acquired nuclear weapons,” McCain said on CBS’s This Morning. “So what the president is asking the prime minister of Israel to do is to rely on his judgment as to when the force may be necessary.”

McCain’s comments come one day after President Obama took a firm position on Iran’s nuclear proliferation in his speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. McCain attacked Obama on his commitment to Israel, saying the U.S. needs to back Israel in making sure Iran does not build or acquire a nuclear weapon.

“His speeches are excellent,” McCain said. “His policies are not so good.”

McCain, R-Ariz., repeated these sentiments on Fox and Friends, and said the president has “the worst relations with Israel of any recent president.”

McCain also addressed Russian elections, saying Vladimir Putin’s victory, with preliminary counts giving him 60 percent of the vote according to the BBC, was a “fraud.” He warned that Russian citizens would eventually take him down.

“Putin’s days are numbered,” he said on CNN’s Starting Point. “The Arab Spring has already come to Russia, and it will continue.”

Critics both in the U.S. and Russia contend that Putin rigged the Russian elections in his favor, as a rising tide of public frustration with his long-standing government has led to mass protests in the streets of Moscow, which McCain likened to the same protests that rocked the Arab world and brought down dictatorships in countries like Egypt and Libya. McCain cited “thousands and thousands of protesters, the blogs [and] the tweets” coming out of Russia as evidence that the Arab Spring was spreading.

“It’s a new world we’re living in now in the 21st century,” he said. “And there’s no doubt in my mind that the people of Russia are not going to stand forever for a corrupt government such as that of Vladimir Putin.”

President Obama is Israel’s worst frenemy.

Published : Monday, 05 Mar 2012, 9:11 AM EST

Woe is me. President Obama claims he is the best friend Israel ever had in the White House, yet doesn’t get any respect. This is no Rodney Dangerfield act. He is deadly serious.

“Every single commitment I have made to the state of Israel and its security, I have kept,” he told The Atlantic magazine. “Why is it that despite me never failing to support Israel on every single problem that they’ve had over the last three years, that there are still questions about that?”

The question deserves an honest answer, though the truth is not likely to cut through the fog of presidential self-pity. A man who compares himself to Lincoln, Gandhi, King, Mandela and FDR isn’t the sort to welcome disagreement.

And that is the heart of his problem. Obama is certain he knows what’s good for Israel. Given his record and the Iranian threat, it’s an impossible sell.

He came into office thinking Israel was the obstacle to Middle East peace; three years later, his policies are producing more signs of war than peace. The Palestinians won’t negotiate for their own state because the president foolishly urged them to make a ban on Israeli settlements a precondition.

He was wrong from the git-go, and still is. But facts don’t stand a chance. As a Democrat who speaks to Obama about the Mideast told me, he has a “stubborn worldview.”

How stubborn will be revealed today and tomorrow during crucial meetings with Israeli leaders. The Iranian march to nukes will top the agenda, but Obama’s view on Iran is typical of how he sees the region and his role in it.

Stripped of nuance, the gist is that Israel and America are oppressors and Muslims are oppressed. He remains obsessed with the idea that all will be well if only we prove to Muslims that we’re not bigots.

The latest example is his apology to Afghans after our soldiers mistakenly burned the Koran. Six soldiers have been murdered in subsequent riots, yet he insists those involved in the burning face military charges.

His approach to Iran is similarly misguided. Despite its thugocracy, he refuses to accept that his policy of engagement has failed. The White House even says it sees Iran as a “rational actor,” and Obama told The Atlantic that military action against Iran could work to its advantage.

“At a time when there is not a lot of sympathy for Iran and its only real ally [ Syria] is on the ropes, do we want a distraction in which suddenly Iran can portray itself as a victim?” he asked.

Huh?

This is Obama at his faculty-lounge worst. Trapped by his own prejudices and misreading of history and culture, he continues to suggest that Iran is open to persuasion if he can find the right words. It’s not. It’s an evil regime that tortures its people, kills American soldiers, sponsors terrorism and wants a nuclear bomb to use against Israel and to dominate Arab countries.

A friend who recently met with top Israeli officials says the bottom line they will explain to Obama is that there are two things no Israeli government can ever do. First, it cannot allow a mortal enemy to get a weapon of mass destruction or the ability to make one. Second, it cannot entrust its survival to a third party, including the United States.

The policy that flows from those principles is obvious. Israel will attack when it feels Iran is close to getting the bomb. And Israel is more likely to reach that conclusion sooner because it doesn’t trust Obama’s resolve or time line.

For his part, Obama will have to search someplace else for respect. Israel is too busy trying to survive.

Michael Goodwin is a Fox News contributor and New York Post columnist. To continue reading his column on other topics, click here. 

IAEA: Iran tripled higher-grade … JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

By REUTERS

Last updated: 03/05/2012 14:45

Amano voices “serious concern” to UN nuclear watchdog’s 35-nation governing board, reports on lack of progress over Syria’s “delicate” situation; Japan nears deal with US to cut Iranian oil imports.

By Reuters

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

Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, also told the IAEA’s 35-nation board of governors about the lack of progress in two rounds of talks between the Vienna-based UN agency and Tehran this year.

US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu were to meet shortly in Washington to discuss Iran, deeply at odds over the timing for possible last-resort military action against Iran’s nuclear program.

Even though Obama offered assurances of stiffened US resolve against Iran before the White House meeting, the two allies remained far apart over explicit nuclear “red lines” that Tehran should not be allowed to cross.

During meetings in the Iranian capital in January and February, Iranian officials stonewalled the IAEA’s requests for access to a military site seen as central to its investigation into the nature of the Islamic state’s nuclear activity.

“The agency continues to have serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme,” Amano told the closed-door meeting, according to a copy of his speech.

The IAEA “is unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities,” he added.

A report by the IAEA to member states last month said Iran was significantly stepping up uranium enrichment, a finding that sent oil prices higher on fears that tensions between Tehran and the West could boil over into military conflict.

Since the IAEA’s previous report in November, Amano said Iran has tripled monthly production of uranium refined to a fissile concentration of 20 percent – well above the level usually needed to run nuclear power plants.

Though indicated by the IAEA’s confidential report last month, it was the first time Amano spoke in public about this rapid increase in Iran’s enrichment activities, which has stoked Western and Israeli suspicions about Tehran’s nuclear agenda.

Despite intensive discussions with Iran, Amano said, there had been no agreement on a “structured approach” to resolve outstanding issues with its nuclear programme during the talks held in January and February.

Iran “did not address the agency’s concerns in a substantive manner,” Amano said.

Making clear, however, that he would keep trying to engage Iran on the issue, he added: “Regarding future steps, the agency will continue to address the Iran nuclear issue through dialogue and in a constructive spirit.”

Amano: Syria asked IAEA to understand ‘delicate situation’

Amano also said that Syria had asked the UN nuclear watchdog for understanding of the country’s “delicate situation” in response to requests for Syrian cooperation with an investigation into suspected illicit nuclear activity.

The Syrian comments cited by Amano were an apparent reference to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s campaign to stamp out a popular uprising, in which over 7,500 people have died by a UN count.

Amano made clear that no progress had been made in the UN agency’s almost four-year-old investigation regarding Syria. The IAEA has been seeking access to a desert site at Deir al-Zor that US intelligence reports say was a nascent, North Korean-designed reactor intended to produce plutonium for atomic weaponry before Israel bombed it to rubble in 2007.

The Vienna-based watchdog has also been seeking information about other sites that may have been linked to Deir al-Zor.

Amano said he had written a letter to Syria in November last year urging it to address the agency’s questions.

“I received a reply from Syria dated 20 February 2012, which asked for understanding of ‘the difficult circumstances and the delicate situation that Syria is passing through,'” Amano said, according to a copy of his speech to the closed-door meeting.

“The letter pledged that Syria would continue to cooperate with the Agency to resolve outstanding issues.”

Syria says Deir al-Zor was a non-nuclear military facility but the IAEA concluded in May 2011 that it was “very likely” to have been a reactor that should have been declared to inspectors.

In June last year, IAEA governors voted to report Syria to the UN Security Council, rebuking it for failing to cooperate with the agency’s efforts to get concrete information on Deir al-Zor and other sites. Russia and China opposed the referral, highlighting divisions among the major powers.

“The agency continues to seek full access to other locations which the agency believes are functionally related to the (Deir al-Zor) site,” Amano said. “I urge Syria to cooperate fully with the agency in connection with unresolved issues related to the Deir al-Zor site and other locations.”

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report March 5, 2012, 1:19 PM (GMT+02:00)

German and Japanese intelligence sources Monday, March 5, confirmed – and qualified – to debkafile reports in the German Der Spiegel and Welt am Sonntag that Western intelligence had known for 11 months that at least one of North Korea’s covert nuclear tests in 2010 was carried out on an Iranian radioactive bomb or nuclear warhead.
Those sources report five facts are known for sure:

1. North Korea carried out two covert underground nuclear explosions in mid-April and around May 11 of 2010 equivalent to 50- 200 tonnes of TNT.
2. Two highly lethal heavy hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium,  typical of a nuclear fission explosion and producing long-term contamination of the atmosphere, were detected and analyzed by  Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBOTO) monitoring stations in South Korea, Japan and Russia.

3. The presence of tritium in one of the tests led several intelligence agencies watching North Korea’s nuclear program and its longstanding links with Iran and Syria to examine the possibility that Pyongyang had tested the internal mechanism of a nuclear warhead on Iran’s behalf.  This strongly indicated to German and Japanese intelligence that Iran had already developed the nuclear warhead’s outer shell and attained its weaponization.
4.  Another possibility examined was that North Korea had tested an Iranian “dirty bomb” – i.e. a conventionally detonated device containing nuclear substances. Tritium would boost its range, force and lethality.

This was one of the conclusions of atmospheric scientist Larsk-Erik De Geer of the Swedish Defense Research Agency in Stockholm, who spent a year studying the data collected by various CTBOTO stations tracking the North Korean explosions.
On February 3, De Greer published some of his findings and conclusions in Nature Magazine. His paper will appear in the April/May issue of the Science and Global Security Journal.

5. The Japanese and German sources found confirmation of their suspicions that North Korea had abetted Iran’s nuclear aspirations in three events:

a)   Shortly after the April explosion, a large group of Iranian nuclear scientists and technicians arrived in Pyongyang. They apparently came to take part in setting up the second test in May.
b)  In late April, Tehran shipped to Pyongyang a large quantity of uranium enriched to 20+ percent – apparently for use in the May test.
c)  Straight after the May test, the Central Bank of Iran transferred $55 million to the account of the North Korean Atomic Energy Commission. The size of the sum suggests that it covered the fee to North Korea not just of one but the two tests – the first a pilot and the second, a full-stage test.

It is not by chance that this incriminating disclosure about Iran’s nuclear achievements sees the light Monday, just hours before US Barack Obama receives Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in the White house for an argument over an expeditious military action to stop Iran going all the way to a nuclear weapon.
The disclosure invalidates the main point the US President made in his speech Sunday to the pro-Israeli lobby AIPAC convention in Washington that there was still time for diplomatic pressure and sanctions to bring Iran’s leaders to a decision to halt their nuclear momentum before military action was called for, whether by the US or Israel.

It now appears that Western intelligence has known about the North Korean tests for Iran for eleven months. Therefore, it is too late for him to try and persuade the Israeli prime minister that there is still time to spare for cutting short a nuclear Iran.

It was announced in Washington Monday that no joint American-Israeli communiqué would be issued at the end of their talks, meaning they will have agreed to disagree: Obama, to stand by his opposition to military action against Iran; Netanyahu, to decide what Israel must do in the interests of its security.
There is no doubt he would have preferred an American initiative for – or partnership in – an operation for curtailing the Iranian nuclear threat. But that is not part of Obama’s policy.

Report: Iran held nuclear test in N. Korea – Israel News, Ynetnews.

(Note: I scooped Ynet on this by a full day – JW)

German press says Tehran, Pyongyang collaborated on possibly more than one nuclear test in early 2010

Ynet

Germany’s Die Welt newspaper reported Sunday that Iranheld at least one nuclear weapons test in North Korea in 2010.

The paper’s report is based on “Western intelligence agencies sources,” and says that the test, in fact, refutes US intelligence assessments suggesting there is no “hard evidence” that Iran is building nuclear weapons.

“The types and ratios of isotopes detected… suggest that North Korea was testing materials and techniques intended to boost the yield of its weapons,” the report said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has recently declared that its nuclear negotiations with Iran have failed.

The statement followed Tehran’s decision the bar IAEA inspectors from what is believed to be key military sitesin the Islamic Republic.

Iran vehemently claims that its nuclear program is meant to serve civil, peaceful purposes only.

The Die Welt noted that evidence of the 2010 nuclear tests in North Korea was published in early February in Nature Magazine.

According to the report, Swedish nuclear physicist Lars-Erik de Geer analyzed data “showing the presence of radioisotopes that betrayed a uraniumbomb explosion.”

“After a year of work, (de Geer) concluded that North Korea carried out two small nuclear tests in April and May 2010 that caused explosions in the range of 50–200 tons of TNT equivalent.

David Frum: Will Obama Agree to Strike Iran?.

Will Barack Obama strike Iran — or agree to an Israeli strike — to stop the Iranian nuclear program?

This week, the U.S. president offered his most detailed answer to date, via an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic Monthly. The piece is headlined: “As President of the United States, I Don’t Bluff.” He insists again that he has taken nothing off the table, and talks about his readiness to fight if he must. But the real news in the piece (or so it seems to me) occurs deeper in the body of the text.

Obama:

“Our argument [to Israel] is going to be that it is important for us to see if we can solve this thing permanently, as opposed to temporarily. And the only way, historically, that a country has ultimately decided not to get nuclear weapons without constant military intervention has been when they themselves take [nuclear weapons] off the table. That’s what happened in Libya, that’s what happened in South Africa. And we think that, without in any way being under an illusion about Iranian intentions, without in any way being naive about the nature of that regime, they are self-interested. They recognize that they are in a bad, bad place right now. It is possible for them to make a strategic calculation that, at minimum, pushes much further to the right whatever potential breakout capacity they may have, and that may turn out to be the best decision for Israel’s security.”

Let’s decode those words. The president is conveying five ideas here:

1. He believes that any military strike against Iran will be merely a temporary solution. He not only states that belief explicitly in the first quoted sentence, but he goes on to imply that a strike will open the way to “constant military intervention.” That strongly suggests that the answer to the question at the top of this column is “no.”
2. The president is claiming that the “only way” — not the cheapest way, nor the fastest way, but literally the “only” way — to reach a permanent solution is for Iran to abjure weapons “themselves.” Which again suggests that the answer to the question at the top of the column is “no.”
3. To persuade Iran to abjure weapons, the United States will have to make some kind of deal. “It is possible for them to make a strategic calculation that, at minimum, pushes much further to the right whatever potential breakout capacity they may have.”
4. The president believes persuasion of Iran to be feasible because the Iranian leaders are at bottom rational actors: “Without in any way being naive about the nature of that regime, they are self-interested.”
5. But even if the deal does occur, the best case scenario is not very good. Iran will be stopped just short of “breakout” — i.e., the actual ability to manufacture a weapon. Nor will Iran exactly be stopped. It will more be “paused” — its breakout capacity pushed “to the right,” i.e., into the future.

You may wonder: Doesn’t the mention of Libya give the game away? Eight years after Muammar Gaddafi struck a deal with the United States to end his nuclear program, Washington supported an insurrection against the Gaddafi regime. Aren’t the Iranians likely to draw the lesson: Deals with the Americans cannot be trusted, and so we will never voluntarily relinquish our bomb program?

From an Israeli point of view, too, the president’s words are not overwhelmingly reassuring. Those words make an especially poignant contrast to the op-ed in Thursday’s New York Times by one of the Israeli pilots involved with the country’s 1981 destruction of Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear facility:

“When we were briefed before the Osirak raid, we were told that a successful mission would delay the Iraqi nuclear program for only three to five years. But history told a different story.”After the Osirak attack and the destruction of the Syrian reactor in 2007, the Iraqi and Syrian nuclear programs were never fully resumed. This could be the outcome in Iran, too, if military action is followed by tough sanctions, stricter international inspections and an embargo on the sale of nuclear components to Tehran. Iran, like Iraq and Syria before it, will have to recognize that the precedent for military action has been set, and can be repeated.”

But that’s not the direction in which President Obama’s thought is trending. He’s trending in a very different direction: Toward negotiations, inducements and a very limited definition of success.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Bennett on Obama’s Speech: Need Action, not Words – Middle East – News – Israel National News.

Naftali Bennett, former Chief of Staff for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, was not too impressed by President Barack Obama’s speech to the AIPAC Policy Conference on Sunday.

Speaking to Fox News after the speech, Bennett said that Obama should act more and talk less.

“Obama’s words are very tough but his actions aren’t,” said Bennett. “As we speak right now, the current sanctions are too slow and too soft to actually stop Iran.

“Iran is racing towards acquiring a nuclear weapon,” Bennett added. “They’ve recently tripled the pace of their uranium enrichment program. They’ve got over 100 kilograms of highly-graded uranium. They’re in the process of transferring their facilities underground and the sanctions are going to play in only in June. Why are we waiting till June?”

Bennett said that what is needed now is not “crippling sanctions” against Iran, as Obama had said in his speech, but “paralyzing sanctions that will bring Iran’s economy to the brink of collapse. We’re nowhere near that right now.

“Essentially,” said Bennett, “President Obama is asking Israel to outsource its own security to his hands. In half a year from now, after the Iranians move their facilities underground, Israel will no longer we able to take them out and we’ll be in Obama’s hands.

“The one thing that could prevent the need of Israel to take out Iran is if President Obama, and indeed the West all together, will immediately apply paralyzing sanctions on Iran. Now. Not in June, right now,” he added.

He acknowledged that Obama’s speech showed progress in his stance on Iran but added that “it has to be coupled and followed by decisive actions of the United States of America.”

Obama’s speech / Speaking American between the lines – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

To anyone who knows Washington, the subtext of Obama’s address to AIPAC Sunday was clear – the U.S. president will not capitulate to Netanyahu.

By Amir Oren

Two Israeli businessmen – one a relative of Yitzhak Rabin’s, and the other a former aide to the murdered prime minister – once visited Bill Clinton’s office, at their own request, to try to interest him in some venture. The former U.S. president listened with demonstrative courtesy, went out with them to the lobby and loudly told his staff to please let him know how the two young men were progressing. He then put an arm around the shoulders of one, shook the hand of the other and escorted them to the door with great affection.

“Hurrah!” crowed the former aide as they walked to the elevator. “Clinton will help us!”

	U.S. President Barack Obama addressing AIPAC on Sunday.
	Photo by: Reuters

“You didn’t understand him,” sighed his partner, more experienced in the ways of America. “He told us, ‘Get out of my sight and don’t waste my time.'”

U.S. President Barack Obama, no great friend of Clinton’s, adopted a similar mode of address in his speech to the AIPAC conference on Sunday: He spoke American. To translate it into Hebrew would do it an injustice. No one who knows Washington and its ways could mistake the subtext of his words. A strong commitment to Israel? Assuredly. Capitulation to the dictates of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? Not a chance.

After a speech like that, his meeting with Netanyahu on Monday is almost superfluous: It already seems clear that Obama is determined not to grant him anything.

Obama sent a complex, multifaceted message. He is a loyal friend of Israel, as evidenced by both the record of his actions over the last three years and the testimony of an eminent witness, President Shimon Peres. He is absolutely and unequivocally opposed to Iran having nuclear weapons. But he is first and foremost the U.S. president, whose commitment to do everything possible to thwart Iran’s nuclear program has properly been given to the citizens of his own country – the ones who will pay the price of any war with their lives and their wallets – rather than to the impudent leader of a foreign country.

In the 1980s, Peres watched with growing frustration as the unity government he established together with Likud’s Yitzhak Shamir bumped into the sharp right-wing leanings of AIPAC activists, who preferred the Shamir half of the government and embraced U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s Republican administration. Peres, in an impulsive gesture, waived the appointment of his own candidate for UN ambassador, Elyakim Rubinstein, in favor of Likud’s candidate, Netanyahu. And that is how, with his own two hands, he created the public and media reputation of the man who would defeat him in the prime ministerial race a decade later.

Obama’s Democratic administration is not facing an Israeli unity government. But the unique status enjoyed by Peres, to whom Obama is ideologically akin, enables him to serve as a counterweight to Netanyahu.

Unlike the Israeli prime minister, who demonstratively surrounds himself with a screen of security guards provided by the Shin Bet security service, Obama looks like the supremely confident leader of a confident superpower. The cameras don’t show a single security guard in his vicinity, though America has had no lack of assassinated presidents, from Lincoln to Kennedy.

Obama made do with the cover provided by one single but noteworthy guard: Peres. The praise Peres showered on Obama was a preemptive strike at Netanyahu, lest he entertain the notion of accusing Obama of indifference to Israel’s fate. And Obama repaid the gesture by giving Peres the Presidential Medal of Freedom and 250 warm words. Netanyahu received only a mention of their meeting on Monday and perhaps two or three words more. And his wife, Sara, got nary a word.

This is a campaign year, as Obama noted, and he came to speak to his supporters, donors and voters. In the acronym AIPAC, which stands for American Israel Public Affairs Committee, “American” precedes “Israel.” The president is the commander in chief when it comes to the Iranian issue, but the head of his party when it comes to elections.

Therefore, he opened his speech by welcoming the delegates from his hometown of Chicago (where he will also host the NATO summit in another two months ), and especially his party chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Translation: Netanyahu is the ally of the Republicans – those who, in Obama’s words, “question my administration’s support for Israel” – and Netanyahu’s patron, American Jewish businessman Sheldon Adelson, seeks to anoint a Republican in my place. But I, too, understand a bit about politics.

But the game being played by Netanyahu, who openly hopes for Obama’s defeat, is dangerous for Israel. It blurs the boundaries between the grand statesmanship of national security considerations and the petty politics of meddling in someone else’s elections. That is what lies behind Obama’s clarification of the time frame for his policy: He believes that months still remain in which to exhaust the policy of pressuring the regime in Tehran, which is the only one that can decide to abandon the nuclear weapons option. In other words, right now it would be premature and rash to make good on his promise to use military force against Iran as a last resort – especially since its rulers may well insist on rebuilding the facilities destroyed in the operation.

The news in Obama’s speech was that it deliberately didn’t include any news. Everything he said last night has been said in the past, by him and by other senior administration officials. There’s no point in trying to bargain for just a bit more (“Give me something – at least free Jonathan Pollard, so I don’t go home empty-handed” ). In American, this was a message whose meaning is unmistakeable.