WarSclerotic

Obama: Iran knows US ready to hit its nuclear program | The Times of Israel.

Still, US president says, Syrian chemical weapons deal offers a window for diplomatic solution with Tehran

“I think what the Iranians understand is that the nuclear issue is a far larger issue for us than the chemical weapons issue, that the threat… against Israel that a nuclear Iran poses is much closer to our core interests,” Obama said in an interview with ABC. “My suspicion is that the Iranians recognize they shouldn’t draw a lesson that we haven’t struck [the Bashar Assad regime] to think we won’t strike Iran.”

Conversely, Obama added, the Russian-brokered agreement that would see Syria hand over its sizable chemical weapons stockpile was an indication to Tehran that “there is the potential of resolving these issues diplomatically.”

The decision to disarm Syria of its chemical weapons ended weeks of speculation regarding the option of a military strike against Assad’s forces in the wake of a deadly chemical attack on Syrian citizens in August that appeared to transgress a “red line” set down by Obama last year.

In the wake of that decision, the US president came under fire from critics who said opting for a diplomatic solution conveyed a message of American weakness in the region and signaled to Iran that, despite Washington’s statements to the contrary, it could pursue its controversial nuclear program with impunity.

On Sunday Obama said that he had exchanged letters with Iran’s new president, Hasan Rouhani, but that the two had not spoken directly. The US president said he believed Rouhani understood the potential for a diplomatic solution to his country’s disputed nuclear program, but would not “suddenly make it easy.”

“If you have both a credible threat of force, combined with a rigorous diplomatic effort,” Obama said, “… you can strike a deal.”

Obama’s statements were echoed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday after a meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Jerusalem.

“The world needs to ensure that radical regimes don’t have weapons of mass destruction because as we’ve learned once again in Syria, if rogue regimes have weapons of mass destruction, they will use them,” Netanyahu said. “The determination the international community shows regarding Syria will have a direct impact on the Syrian regime’s patron, Iran. Iran must understand the consequences of its continual defiance of the international community, by its pursuit toward nuclear weapons… if diplomacy has any chance to work, it must be coupled with a credible military threat.”

This week, British and Iranian foreign ministers are scheduled to meet in the United Nations building in New York in a step toward reestablishing relations between the two countries that were suspended two years ago.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will hold a private meeting during the UN General Assembly meeting at the end of the month, in a sign of slightly thawing ties between the two countries.

“They will be meeting but we have no further details at this stage,” a Foreign Office spokeswoman told the AFP news agency.

According to the report, Britain first requested a meeting after the election of Rouhani in June, and Tehran agreed.

Relations between the two countries have been on the rocks since the British Embassy in Tehran was stormed in 2011. London maintained that the attack was officially sanctioned.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zari. (screen capture: YouTube/CFR)

Britain is interested in reestablishing ties with Tehran, Prime Minister David Cameron suggested last week, telling members of Parliament about the diplomatic gestures being made to Iran.

“We have effectively reached out to the Iranian government after the recent elections,” Cameron said. “And I have written to President Rouhani, so we are prepared to start trying to have a relationship with them.”

Earlier Sunday, a Twitter account purportedly belonging to Rouhani tweeted that the president would meet with Hague in New York. That information could not be verified.

On November 29, 2011, a mob ransacked the British Embassy in Tehran, injuring several people. The following day Hague announced the closure of the embassy and gave the Iranian ambassador in London, together with his staff, 48 hours to leave the country.

The 68th General Assembly meeting of the United Nations is scheduled to be held between September 24 and October 4.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Egypt seizes anti-aircraft missiles in Sinai | The Times of Israel.

Army spokesman says over 300 arrested since start of military operations in July

By Gavriel Fiske September 15, 2013, 6:05 pm

Egyptian army soldiers seen in a watchtower on the border with Egypt in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, on July 8, 2013. (photo credit: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

Egyptian military forces have captured a cache of anti-aircraft missiles in the Sinai Peninsula, as well as a collection of Egyptian army uniforms that were used by members of the Hamas terror group, an army spokesman said Sunday.

Since the advent of a large-scale military operation in Sinai after the July ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi, the army has captured 309 people involved in violence and has destroyed more than 154 smuggling tunnels between Gaza and Egypt, army spokesman Ahmed Ali said Sunday, according to Al-Arabiya.

The national security of Egypt is “under threat because of the situation in Sinai,” the spokesman said, adding that the army would “continue operations in Sinai until terrorism is defeated.”

The interim government has a development plan for the peninsula that will restore security for Sinai, Ali said.

On Saturday, the military said it had uncovered a plot to blow up an army base on the Egyptian side of the border, via a detonating wire leading back through a tunnel to Gaza.

Since September 7, the army has been stepping up its assault on Islamist elements in Sinai, killing at least 29. On Friday, helicopter gunships targeted a number of villages in northern Sinai.

On Wednesday, a pair of suicide bombers rammed explosives-laden cars into military targets at the Gaza border, killing at least nine soldiers and wounding 17.

Obama may meet Rouhani at UN this month | The Times of Israel.

Two presidents have exchanged letters; Oman said to be brokering contacts between Washington and Tehran

Iranian President Hasan Rouhani waves from a campaign bus in the western city of Sanandaj, Iran, earlier this year. (photo credit: AP/Vahid Salemi)

In a dramatic warming of ties, US President Barack Obama may meet at the UN later this month with the newly elected Iranian president Hasan Rouhani.

The possibility of a meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly was reported Sunday night by Israel’s Channel 10 news, and by various international news sources including Britain’s Guardian newspaper. It would mark the first face-to-face talks between Iranian and American presidents since Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979. There was no official confirmation of the reports.

Britain has confirmed that its foreign secretary, William Hague, will meet at the UN next week with his new Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif. Britain severed ties with Iran in 2011.

In an ABC TV interview Sunday, Obama said that he had exchanged letters with Rouhani, but that the two had not spoken directly. The US president said he believed Rouhani understood the potential for a diplomatic solution to his country’s disputed nuclear program, but would not “suddenly make it easy.”

“If you have both a credible threat of force, combined with a rigorous diplomatic effort,” Obama said, “… you can strike a deal.”

Israel’s Channel 2 news reported Sunday night that Oman has recently been brokering indirect contacts between the US and Iran, and that the US might be prepared to consider an easing of some medical and other sanctions on Iran to help facilitate progress toward a diplomatic resolution over Iran’s rogue nuclear program.

In his comments Sunday, Obama warned Tehran that the new initiative to avert a Western strike in Syria should not be interpreted as a lack of willingness in Washington to pursue a military solution, if necessary, to the ongoing Iranian nuclear standoff.

“I think what the Iranians understand is that the nuclear issue is a far larger issue for us than the chemical weapons issue, that the threat… against Israel that a nuclear Iran poses is much closer to our core interests,” Obama said. “My suspicion is that the Iranians recognize they shouldn’t draw a lesson that we haven’t struck [the Bashar Assad regime] to think we won’t strike Iran.”

Conversely, Obama added, the Russian-brokered agreement that would see Syria hand over its sizable chemical weapons stockpile was an indication to Tehran that “there is the potential of resolving these issues diplomatically.”

Zarif was quoted Sunday as saying that Iran sought “confidence-building measures” from the US to help resolve the nuclear dispute, and that the US needed to recognize that Iran now has advanced nuclear technology and knowhow.

Since taking office in early August, Rouhani has signaled a desire for warmed relations with the West, while also insisting that Iran intended to keep moving ahead with its nuclear program. In a speech to clerics last week, Rouhani said Iran “will not give up one iota” of its nuclear program.

The Channel 2 TV report said Israel broadly welcomed the US argument that, as with Syria, diplomacy backed by a credible military threat might enable progress toward the negotiated resolution of the Iranian nuclear crisis. But at the same time, it said, there was concern in Jerusalem that because Obama had first threatened and then backed away from the use of force against Syria, the Iranians do not regard the US as having a credible military option where they are concerned.

The key question, amid these new contacts between the US and Iran, the report added, was how close to the bomb the Obama administration might allow the Iranians to get. Israel’s position has been that Tehran’s stockpiles of enriched uranium must be removed, and its capacity to progress toward nuclear weapons prevented.

“The world needs to ensure that radical regimes don’t have weapons of mass destruction because as we’ve learned once again in Syria, if rogue regimes have weapons of mass destruction, they will use them,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday after a meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Jerusalem. ”The determination the international community shows regarding Syria will have a direct impact on the Syrian regime’s patron, Iran. Iran must understand the consequences of its continual defiance of the international community, by its pursuit toward nuclear weapons… If diplomacy has any chance to work, it must be coupled with a credible military threat.”

The 68th General Assembly meeting of the United Nations runs from September 24 to October 4.

Next stop Tehran – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Op-ed: Once Syria’s non-conventional weapons are destroyed, Obama will move on to Iran

Orly Azoulay

Yitzhak Rabin used to say that politics is not exactly an association for mutual affection. Obama and Putin have not had enough opportunities to hate each other, but none of them is overly fond of the other.

Obama condemns the way Putin violates human rights in Russia, and takes every opportunity to blast the dark methods he uses to deal with his political rivals. Putin, a leader who knows how to preserve his power by casting fear, likes to mock Obama over his appeasement and arrogance.

There isn’t even one line connecting between Obama, whose policy was designed between Harvard and Chicago, and Putin, who grew tough in the KGB cellars. The former is a liberal with a worldview based on human liberty; the latter is a conservative who believes in the crude language of power.

But a meeting of interests was created around the Syrian issue, bridging the abyss of contempt and animosity: Putin wanted to prevent an American military attack on his protégé, while Obama wanted to disarm the Syrian president of chemical weapons.

The agreement reached in Geneva freed Obama from the need to attack Syria, a strike he didn’t want to begin with despite ordering his army to prepare for it. “America is not the world’s policeman,” the US president said while explaining why he was giving diplomacy a chance.

Obama did not want to launch a strike in Syria without the Congress’ support, and he knew he would not get it; after a decade of wars, the majority of the American public is tired of them. Obama also knew that a military offensive, as successful as it might be, would not be able to destroy all of Assad‘s chemical weapons.

But the reliable threat of war was turned by the US president into a significant accessory in his diplomatic toolbox. Now he is about to reap the fruits. If Syria obeys world powers and its chemical weapons are destroyed, it will serve as further proof of the perception presented by Obama throughout his presidency: Political wisdom is better than a bomb, even a smart and laser-guided one.

The agreement was signed in Geneva, but the ink reaches Iran as well. Once Syria’s non-conventional weapons are destroyed, Obama will start making his way to the next stop: Tehran. Even the ayatollahs are seeing the sights and hearing the new sounds of the power of diplomacy.

If the agreement signed Saturday is executed, it will be determined that Obama proved there are moments in foreign policy in which it is better to load the gun, point it between the enemy’s eyes – and restrain oneself. Assad quivered first, and in this sophisticated diplomacy Obama plans to do the same to Rohani.

Iran says willing to build trust with US on nuclear issue – Israel News, Ynetnews.

FM Zarif tells Lebanese network he hopes WMD disarmament plan has lifted threat of military strike on Syria, urges Washington to present ‘genuine desire for peace and stop using language of threats’

Roi Kais

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Sunday in an interview with Lebanese channel Al-Mayadeen, “We are suffering from lack of mutual trust with the US,” but stressed that the Islamic Republic was willing to “build trust with the United States” on the issue of the Iranian nuclear program, which was “established for peaceful purposes.”

Zarif told the television channel, which is affiliated with Hezbollah, that Iran wants the US to “present a genuine desire for peace and stop using the language of threats.”

Addressing the threats of a military strike on Syria, the senior Iranian official said the “call to war is a severe crime that does not serve our friends in the region or the United States.” As for the American-Russian plan to disarm President Bashar Assad’s regime of its chemical weapons, Zarif said “we’ve passed the critical stage and we hope that the chances of a military operation against Syria have dissipated.”

During the interview, the Iranian FM said he had accepted British Foreign Secretary William Hague request to meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, which will open in New York at the end of the month.

Newly-elected Iranian President Hassan Rohani is expected to address the Assembly on September 24.

President Barack Obama disclosed in a television interview broadcast on Sunday that he had exchanged letters with Rohani and said diplomacy on Syria, backed up by a military threat, is a potential model for negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

‘Lack of mutual trust with US.’ Rohani (left) and Zarif (Photo: AFP)

In an interview on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” Obama did not reveal details of the letter exchange, but made clear that US concerns about Iran’s nuclear ambitions are a “far larger issue for us” than Syria’s chemical weapons.

Obama said Iran should avoid thinking that the United States would not launch a military strike in response to Tehran’s nuclear program just because it has not attacked Syria.

“They shouldn’t draw a lesson that we haven’t struck, to think we won’t strike Iran,” Obama said. “On the other hand, what they should draw from this lesson is that there is the potential of resolving these issues diplomatically.”

Tehran denies seeking nuclear weapons but the United States and Israel are working under the assumption that Iran is well along toward developing an atomic weapons program.

Obama’s interview with ABC

Regarded as a relative moderate, Rohani has made conciliatory statements toward Washington since coming to office last month. However, Obama said he doubted Rohani would “suddenly make it easy” to negotiate with the Iranians.

“My view is that if you have both a credible threat of force, combined with a rigorous diplomatic effort, that, in fact you can strike a deal,” he said.

White House spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said the United States hopes the Iranian government will engage substantively in order to reach a diplomatic solution to the nuclear issue.

“We remain ready to engage with the Rohani government on the basis of mutual respect to achieve a peaceful resolution to the nuclear issue,” she said.

A few days ago the Los Angeles Times reported that the Obama administration and the new leadership in Iran are communicating about Syria and are moving behind the scenes toward direct talks that both governments hope can ease the escalating confrontation over Tehran’s nuclear program.

President Obama reportedly reached out to Iran’s relatively moderate president through an exchange of letters in recent weeks, the newspaper said.

According to the London-based pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat, Obama told Iran he is eager to “turn a new page” in his government’s relations with Iran and even said the US would ease the sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

The report said Obama communicated his message to the Tehran regime through an emissary, the ruler of Oman, Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed the US-Russia deal on Sunday and stressed his belief that it would have deep repercussions on Iran, Syria’s close ally.

“The world needs to ensure that radical regimes don’t have weapons of mass destruction because as we have learned in Syria if rogue regimes have weapons of mass destruction they will use them,” Netanyahu said during a joint press conference with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Jerusalem.

“The determination the international community shows regarding Syria will have a direct impact on the Syrian regime’s patron Iran. Iran must understand the consequences of its continued defiance of the international community by its pursuit toward nuclear weapons,” he added.

He said the deal proved that “if diplomacy has any chance to work, it must be coupled with a credible military threat.”

Kerry said the agreement, if successful, “will have set a marker for the standard of behavior with respect to Iran and with respect North Korea and any rogue state, (or) group that tries to reach for these kind of weapons.”

Israel and the Syria deal | JPost | Israel News.

It is too early to assess the implications for the Jewish state of an increasingly assertive Russia and a more hesitant US, particularly with regard to Iran.

Is the Russian-led agreement with the United States to do away with Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons good for the Jews?

Taken at face value, the deal appears to serve a major Israeli interest. Under the terms of the six-clause accord, Russia and the US will ensure that the tons of chemical weapons, meticulously gathered and stored by the late Syrian president Hafez Assad, will be located, dismantled and destroyed over the next eight months.

This would eliminate the threat of a Syrian chemical weapons attack on Israel. Hundreds of thousands of gas masks distributed here in recent weeks may not have been made superfluous. But the likelihood seems to have been reduced that citizens will have to break open those gas mask boxes.

Also, while Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu saw a US strike on Syria as important from an Israeli perspective in so far as it strengthened America’s deterrence vis-à-vis Iran, Israel had no interest in an escalation of the conflict in Syria.

Maintaining the status quo of a localized civil war, with all the unfortunate bloodshed this entails, lowers the chances that a desperate Bashar Assad, the current president of Syria, will make the irrational move of lashing out at Israel. Destroying the chemical stockpiles also means terrorists aligned with al-Qaida or Hezbollah will be unable to get their hands on them and use them against Israel.

In short, the Russian deal appears to have removed from the stage the loose cannon of chemical weaponry, assuming of course that Bashar Assad adheres to his part of the deal, which is far from certain.

Russia’s rising dominance in the region might not be seen as an entirely negative development from an Israeli point of view either. If Moscow was successful in placing pressure on Damascus – with the threat of a US strike lurking in the background – perhaps similar pressure could be brought to bear against Tehran to desist from its nuclear weapons program.

In Iran as in Syria, Putin’s Russia has an interest in solving the conflict on its own terms and thus prove yet again its dominance in the Middle East. While Moscow might have an interest in seeing Iran in conflict with the West, the Russians do not want an Islamic Republic with nuclear weapons near their southern border threatening Russian interests in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Admittedly, Russia does not enjoy the same level of influence in Iran that it does in Syria. But it appears that Moscow’s ability to influence Tehran exceeds Washington’s.

Still, the decline of US influence in the Middle East is worrying. The US is, after all, Israel’s biggest and strongest ally and the Jewish state is heavily dependent on America, particularly regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

The threat to US interests posed by Iran’s obtaining nuclear weapon capability is incomparably more pressing than the situation in Syria, where America has no clear interest in military intervention, aside from Barack Obama’s obligation to stand behind his promises. Few conclusions can be drawn from American inaction on Syria. Still, America’s hesitancy inevitably emboldens the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis.

And rightly or wrongly, Israeli leaders – including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu – seem to interpret America’s vacillating on Syria as proof that Israel will be forced into the unpleasant option of acting alone against Iran. If Obama is unable or unwilling to enforce the red lines he imposed with regard to Syria’s use of chemical weapons, argue senior officials in Jerusalem, it is difficult to envision the US taking on the even more daunting task of a military confrontation with Iran.

As Netanyahu noted on Sunday at a Yom Kippur War memorial, “Israel will have to be ready to defend itself, by itself, against all threats… That capacity is more important today than ever… and Israel is stronger today than ever.”

The Russian-negotiated deal to destroy Assad’s chemical weapons, if implemented, would be a boon to Israeli interests. It is too early, however, to assess the implications for the Jewish state of an increasingly assertive Russia and a more hesitant US, particularly with regard to Iran