WarSclerotic

Bitter Jerusalem slams US for ‘lack of determination’ in face of Iran’s nuclear drive | The Times of Israel.

After Dempsey says he doesn’t want to be ‘complicit’ in Israeli attack, analysts highlight that US army chief used a term with criminal connotations

Martin Dempsey, left, and Benny Gantz saluting during a visit by the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff to Israel in January. (photo credit: Gideon Markowicz/Flash90)

Israel responded bitterly on Friday to comments by the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, who said on Thursday that he did not want “to be complicit” if Israel were to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Dempsey’s comments were “strange” and characterized the failure of the United States to take a determined position against Iran’s nuclear drive, a source in Jerusalem was quoted as saying.

The comments “show once again that the US is not demonstrating determination against Iran’s nuclear program,” the source said, according to Israel’s Channel 2 news.

“It is strange that next to the oaths and blood libels of [Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei, the production in Iran [a reference to this week’s Non-Aligned Movement summit], and the [latest] IAEA report — which states that Iran is speeding up uranium enrichment under its nose — the American chief of staff decides to talk about [an Israeli strike] rather than giving a determined message to the Iranians,” the source said.

Speaking to journalists in London, Dempsey on Thursday made by far the clearest public comments from a senior American official distancing the US from any Israeli strike on Iran. He said an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which is reportedly being seriously contemplated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would “clearly delay but probably not destroy Iran’s nuclear program.” Then he added: “I don’t want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it.”

The “international coalition” applying pressure on Iran, warned Dempsey, “could be undone if [Iran] was attacked prematurely”. Sanctions against Iran were having an effect, and they should be given a reasonable chance to succeed, he added.

Israeli commentators made much Friday of Dempsey’s use of the word “complicit.” The US army chief could have said he did not want to be Israel’s “partner” or its “ally” in an attack on Iran, noted analyst Oren Nahari on Channel 1 state TV, but instead Dempsey employed a term with criminal connotations.

On the same channel, analyst Ari Shavit said that the events of the past week — including the publication of the IAEA report showing Iran expanding its nuclear enrichment program, and Iran’s hosting of the Non-Aligned Movement at which it declared it would continue its nuclear drive — showed that both diplomacy and sanctions have failed, and yet the US was doing nothing to ratchet up pressure on Iran.

Two weeks ago, Shavit noted, Israel’s President Shimon Peres publicly placed his faith in President Obama to thwart Iran’s drive to the bomb. America’s current policy, emblemized by Dempsey’s comments, said Shavit, “constitutes a resounding slap in the office for Peres and those other Israeli moderates who want to place their faith in the US.”

Given the US’s publicly stressed disinclination to act, “Israel is being pushed into a corner, in a way that is really dangerous,” said Shavit. “If all these moderate players, in the US and Europe, are so concerned about a dangerous Israeli action [against Iran], why haven’t they taken any meaningful action?” he asked.

Why, for instance, Shavit went on, did the US not condemn the Non-Aligned Movement gathering in Tehran. And why, asked Shavit, didn’t Obama “respond in his own voice to the IAEA report, which essentially said, ‘Mr Obama, you have failed’?”

Regional analyst Oded Granot said on the same program that Iran “does not think Obama will act” by force to stop its nuclear program.

On Channel 2, diplomatic reporter Udi Segal said comments like Dempsey’s might be bolstering the sense in the Israeli leadership that “maybe there’s no-one else who’s going to help us.”

US reiterates commitment to Israel’s security – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Responding to Mitt Romney’s criticism of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, White House says that the US’ military, intelligence cooperation with Israel has never been closer

Yitzhak Benhorin

Washington – The White House on Friday dismissed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney‘s criticism of President Barak Obama‘s foreign policy, claiming that the United States’ ties with Israel have never been closer.

“I can simply say that, under President Obama, cooperation with Israel between our military and intelligence communities has never been closer,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters.

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“Assistance provided to Israel by the United States has never been greater than it has been under President Obama.”

Carney’s remarks came in response to Romney’s speech at the Republican Convention, during which the latter accused Obama of throwing “allies like Israel under the bus.”

Carney admitted that he had not discussed Republican presidential hopeful’s remarks with Obama, but stressed that the charges were unfounded.

“We have an extremely close relationship with Israel, which is appropriate given our unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security,” he said.

Iranian issue

Addressing Iran‘s nuclear program, the press secretary emphasized the incumbent leader’s unwavering pledge to prevent

the Islamic Republic from obtaining atom weapons. Obama’s efforts, Carney said, organized “a consensus of approbation” within the international community meant to compel Iran to renounce its nuclear aspirations.

“And that effort has resulted in the most severe sanctions regime ever levied against – or leveled against a country in history, with greater international consensus on this issue than has ever existed,” he said.

“When President Obama took office, the world was divided on this issue, and Iran was united; the opposite is now true,” he added. “The Iranian regime is under intense economic as well as political pressure, thanks to the efforts of the international community, led by the United States.”

Carney reiterated the White House’s stance that the diplomatic measures aimed at curbing Iran’s atom program have yet to be exhausted, but noted that these attempts to reach a compromise do have an expiration date.

“It is the president’s belief that the best way to ensure that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon is to achieve that goal through a diplomatic solution and a choice by Iran to forgo its nuclear ambition,” he said.

“The opportunity to achieve that goal remains available, that window remains open. But it is absolutely the case that that window will not remain open indefinitely.”

Romney, who accepted the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday, claimed Obama abandoned Israel and other American allies even as he has relaxed sanctions on Castro’s Cuba.

“He (Obama) abandoned our friends in Poland by walking away from our missile defense commitments, but is eager to give Russia’s President Putin the flexibility he desires, after the election,” he said. “Under my administration, our friends will see more loyalty, and Mr. Putin will see a little less flexibility and more backbone.”

Review & Outlook: Why Israel Doesn’t Trust Obama – WSJ.com.

The U.S. is harder on its ally than on Iran’s nuclear program.

Barack Obama is fond of insisting that he “has Israel’s back.” Maybe he should mention that to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

In remarks to journalists in London quoted by the Guardian, General Martin Dempsey warned that any Israeli attack on Iran would “clearly delay but probably not destroy Iran’s nuclear programs.” He also said economic sanctions on Iran were having an effect and needed more time to work, but that the good they were doing “could be undone if [Iran] was attacked prematurely.”

And to underscore the firmness of his opposition to an Israeli strike, the Chairman added that “I don’t want to be complicit if they choose to do it.”

We don’t know what exactly Gen. Dempsey thinks American non-complicity might entail in the event of a strike. Should the Administration refuse to resupply Israel with jets and bombs, or condemn an Israeli strike at the U.N.? Nor do we know if the General was conducting freelance diplomacy or sending a signal from an Administration that feels the same way but doesn’t want to say so during a political season.

Whatever the case, the remarks were counterproductive and oddly timed, with this week’s report by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran’s nuclear programs haven’t been slowed in the least by U.S. or international sanctions. In fact, they are accelerating.

Iran has now installed 2,140 centrifuges at its underground Fordo facility near the city of Qom. Its stockpile of uranium enriched to 20%—or 87% of the enrichment needed to reach bomb-grade levels—has grown from effectively zero to some 200 kilograms in a year. Only 50 more kilograms of 20% uranium are needed to produce a bomb, and that’s saying nothing of Iran’s additional large stockpiles of reactor-grade uranium that can also be enriched to higher levels of purity.

Administration officials have also repeatedly told the media that they aren’t entirely sure if Iran really intends to build a bomb. We’ll grant that ultimate intentions are usually unknowable, especially in closed societies such as Iran’s.

Yet as the IAEA noted, “the Agency has become increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear related activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.” These activities, by the way, “continued after 2003,” according to the report. This puts paid for the umpteenth time the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that misleadingly claimed the contrary.

No wonder the Israelis are upset—at the U.S. Administration. It’s one thing to hear from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that he wants to wipe you off the map: At least it has the ring of honesty. It’s quite another to hear from President Obama that he has your back, even as his Administration tries to sell to the public a make-believe world in which Iran’s nuclear intentions are potentially peaceful, sanctions are working and diplomacy hasn’t failed after three and half years.

The irony for the Administration is that its head-in-the-sand performance is why many Israeli decision-makers believe they had better strike sooner than later. Not only is there waning confidence that Mr. Obama is prepared to take military action on his own, but there’s also a fear that a re-elected President Obama will take a much harsher line on an Israeli attack than he would before the first Tuesday in November.

If Gen. Dempsey or Administration officials really wanted to avert an Israeli strike, they would seek to reassure Jerusalem that the U.S. is under no illusions about the mullahs’ nuclear goals—or about their proximity to achieving them. They’re doing the opposite.

Since coming to office, Obama Administration policy toward Israel has alternated between animus and incompetence. We don’t know what motivated Gen. Dempsey’s outburst, but a President who really had Israel’s back would publicly contradict it.

Report Card – By Mark Hibbs | Foreign Policy.

A month ago, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told Iran that it was time for a sit-down.

It sought a meeting for two reasons. First, talks with Tehran to negotiate a so-called “structured approach” to wind down the IAEA’s investigation and determine whether Iran had been working on nuclear weapons — following evidence raised by Yukiya Amano, the agency’s director general, back in November — had ground to a halt in early June. Second, unless Iran made a significant goodwill gesture by the end of August, Amano would have to report to the agency’s Board of Governors that, for nine months, Iran had refused to cooperate — even as Israeli officials were signaling that they might attack Iran’s nuclear installations without warning and soon because diplomacy had failed.Now, Amano has done just that.Iran and the IAEA had a fruitless encounter in Vienna on August 24, and so six days later Amano filed his report to the IAEA governors. With war drums beating in Jerusalem, the report’s language is sober and muted. The IAEA doesn’t want to see a war in Iran.But the message of the report is clear: Iran continues to enrich uranium in violation of Security Council resolutions, and it continues to obstruct the IAEA investigation expressly mandated by those resolutions.

There are five salient points in the IAEA’s 14-page document:

Fordow Centrifuge Installation: Beginning late last year, Israeli officials have warned U.S. counterparts that an expansion of uranium enrichment activity at the underground Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant was their main concern in part because the plant’s product is uranium enriched to 20 percent — much closer to bomb-grade product than the 3.5 percent enriched material Iran produces elsewhere. In the teeth of Israeli threats, earlier this summer, Iranian media reports citing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asserted that about 1,000 new centrifuges had been set up at Fordow. The math behind the new IAEA document confirms that Iranian claim. Of the nearly 3,000 centrifuges Iran has told the IAEA it intends to set up at Fordow, about two-thirds are now installed. However, so far none of the new machines is enriching uranium. Iran continues to produce 20 percent-enriched uranium with about 700 centrifuges it installed previously. If intensified enrichment activity at Fordow is an Israeli red line, the IAEA report says it hasn’t been crossed.

Uranium Enrichment Continues Unabated: Charts at the back of the report show that in the three months since the IAEA’s last report, and indeed for several years, Iran has steadily added to its inventory of enriched uranium at all three of its declared centrifuge plants. Iran’s total stockpile of 20 percent-enriched uranium, including from the Fordow plant, is now nearly 200 kilograms, about 50 kilograms more than three months ago. Iran’s biggest enrichment plant, at Natanz, has now put out just under 7,000 kilograms of uranium enriched to 3.5 percent, compared to about 3,500 kilograms at the beginning of 2011 and 1,000 kilograms at the beginning of 2010. If cyber warfare and sabotage attacks launched by Iran’s adversaries over the last three years were meant to cripple Iran’s enrichment plant output, they did not succeed.

No Iranian Cooperation on Weapons Allegations: In a report to the board last November, Amano aired detailed evidence suggesting that, since the late 1980s, Iran had carried out nuclear weapons-related research and development activities. The new IAEA report spells out that Iran has persistently refused to comply with IAEA requests to address these allegations: “Despite the intensified dialogue between the Agency and Iran since January 2012, no concrete results have been achieved in resolving the outstanding issues. Given the nature and extent of credible information available… [i]n the absence of such engagement, the Agency will not be able to resolve concerns… which need to be clarified to exclude the existence of possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program.”The report also says that the IAEA has obtained new information which supports Amano’s earlier allegations. It’s anyone guess if and when Iran will answer the IAEA’s questions, but many observers believe Iran is holding its cooperation hostage to advances in its negotiations with the P5 states and Germany. So far, that track has made little progress.

Cover-up at Parchin: During a meeting in Tehran in May, Amano asked Iran to let the IAEA inspect a specific location at a military installation at Parchin, after a former scientist working in the Soviet nuclear weapons complex, Vyacheslav Danilenko, told the IAEA he had helped Iran set up apparatus there which the IAEA suspects may have been used to conduct high-explosive testing for a nuclear weapons program. Iran told Amano that, unless the IAEA would agree to a new “work plan” that would terminate the investigation step by step, it would refuse. Meanwhile, the IAEA has obtained aerial reconnaissance data — some publicly available, some not — suggesting that Iran has sanitized the Parchin site to hide or remove escaping debris or emissions from such an explosive test: “Iran has not responded to the Agency’s initial questions on Parchin and [Danilenko]; Iran has not provided the Agency with access to the location within the Parchin site to which the Agency requested access; and Iran has been conducting activities at the location that will significantly hamper the Agency’s ability to conduct effective verification.”

Uninterrupted Reactor Construction at Arak: In addition to Iran’s enrichment plants, Security Council resolutions have ordered Iran to suspend construction at Arak of a heavy-water reactor typically used to generate weapons-grade plutonium. The new IAEA report documents that Iran has continued to defy those resolutions. On August 1, IAEA inspectors went to the site and saw workers installing reactor piping inside the reactor building. Separately, lack of cooperation by Iran is inhibiting the IAEA from drawing up an effective plan to inspect the reactor once it begins operating next year.

With the exception of the perhaps not insignificant detail that Iran’s newly installed centrifuges at Fordow are idle, the IAEA report depicts an Iran that is defiant and determined not to bend to the will of the international community. That’s where Israel enters the picture. The IAEA’s eleventh-hour meeting with Iran this month testifies to Amano’s understanding that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear installations would be the ultimate vote of no confidence in the IAEA’s abilities. But Amano has little recourse. The IAEA’s relationship with Iran deteriorated after his November disclosures, and the organization’s mandate and mission gives Amano little negotiating leverage. The P5 and Germany have more, but there is no grand bargain on the horizon. The effects of an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear installations would be profound and devastating, but if an attack happens — as in 2003 in Iraq — the IAEA would have little choice but to watch.