WarSclerotic

Netanyahu has tough task of rebuilding a credible Israeli military option against Iran.

Binyamin Netanyahu revives military option

After Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with President Barack Obama at the White House Monday, Sept. 30, Secretary of State John Kerry carried a message requesting moderation in the speech he was to deliver next day to the United Nations.

On the other hand, at least two European diplomats, German and French, made the opposite request: they asked for a hard-hitting Israeli peroration for setting boundaries – not so much for Iran’s nuclear program as for attempt to slow down President Obama’s dash for détente with Tehran.
It is feared in European capitals that the US is running too fast and too far in his bid for reconciliation with the Islamic Republic, to the detriment by association of their own standing I the Persian Gulf.

They are moreover miffed by the way Washington used Europe as a tool in the long nuclear negotiations between the Six World Powers with Iran and is now dumping them in favor of direct dealings with Iranian leaders.
Netanyahu decided not to accede to either request. Instead he laid out his credo: Iran must discontinue nuclear development and dismantle its program or face up to the risk of a lone Israeli military attack.

The look on the face of US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, sitting at the US delegation’s table in the UN hall, showed he had realized that the prime minister’s words were not just addressed to Tehran; they were an unforeseen broadside against the Obama administration’s Iranian strategy.
The dissonance between Jerusalem and Washington on Iran and its nuclear aspirations, played down after the Obama-Netanyahu meeting at the White House, emerged at full blast in the UN speech. The consequences are likely to be reflected in American media, as they were at the low point in relations in 2010, when administration officials day by day planted negative assessments of Israel’s military inadequacies for damaging Iran’s nuclear facilities.

After the UN speech, the Israeli Home Defense Minister Gilead Erdan tried to pour oil on troubled waters by commenting that the prime minister’s speech had strengthened Obama’s hand against Tehran. However, Netanyahu had a different object. It was to paint Washington’s new partner in détente in the blackest colors, even though he knows there is no chance of swaying the US President from his pursuit of Tehran and the sanctions, which he believes to be the only effective deterrent for giving the Iranians pause, will soon start unraveling.

Binyamin Netanyahu now faces the uphill job of repairing his own credibility. For five years has had declared again and again that Israel’s military option is on track in certain circumstances, but has never lived up to the threat. He has followed a path of almost total military passivity.

President Obama knows that Israel’s military capacity is up to a solo operation against Iran. Tehran, however, though conscious of the IDF’s high military, technological and cyber warfare capabilities, is convinced that Israel like the United States has lost the appetite for a military initiative.

Netanyahu must now revive Israel’s deterrence and convince Iran that his challenge at the UN had ended an era of military passivity and should be taken seriously.

In the coming weeks, therefore, the Iranians will react with steps to upset US-Israeli relations, possibly by raising military tensions in the region directly or through their proxies. Until now Tehran operated from outside Washington and its inner councils. Now, smart Iranian diplomats will be sitting down with the US president close to his ear for friendly discussions on ways to further their rapprochement.

U.S. Romance with Iran Terrifies Arab Allies « Commentary Magazine.

Evelyn Gordon | @evelyng1234 10.02.2013 – 9:20 AM

Israel Hayom | Netanyahu: If forced to, Israel will stand alone against Iran.

Diplomats laud Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the U.N. General Assembly, saying it brought honor to Israel  • Professor Alan Dershowitz calls it one of the best speeches ever heard at the U.N.

Israel Hayom | The speech the world needed to hear.

Boaz Bismuth

Israel Hayom | Israel’s need to spur the world to action.

Dror Eydar

Israel Hayom | A renewed military option.

Dan Margalit

Netanyahu Satisfied with US Trip – News from America – News – Israel National News.

PM Netanyahu at UN Assembly

פלאש 90

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is returning to Israel from his US trip with a feeling of satisfaction, that he has succeeded in delivering to the world – and especially to the US – the message he wanted to deliver.

Netanyahu faced a difficult challenge after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s appearances there a few days earlier. US media played Rouhani’s speech over and over again, and Rouhani himself was courted by all major television networks.

It appeared that the international community took Rouhani’s placating message at face value and had begun pinning hopes on his promises. Faced with these difficult opening circumstances, Netanyahu successfully burst Rouhani’s “peace balloon.”

Netanyahu reminded the UN member states: Rouhani stood at the helm of the Iranian Supreme Council for National Security between 1989 and 2005. During that time, Iranian agents murdered opposition leaders in a Berlin restaurant. They murdered 85 people in the Jewish community center at Buenos Aires. They killed 19 US soldiers when they blew up the Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia.

“Are we supposed to believe that Rouhani, Iran’s national security adviser at the time, knew nothing of these attacks? Of course he knew,” stated Netanyahu.

Netanyahu also got to hold a lengthy meeting with US President Barack Obama on this visit. Despite Obama’s preoccupation with domestic economic problems, Netanyahu felt that on the matter of Iran, Obama was attentive and that his words did not fall on deaf ears.

Obama is a man of compromise and mediation. Netanyahu is not. He sounded very decisive on the matter of Iran’s nuclear armament.

“Rouhani can keep on dribbling the ball until he realizes there is an end to everything,” a diplomatic source said. “Rouhani is trying to pull us down to the last millimeter. But he will understand, soon, that this will not pay off.”

Netanyahu did not need gimmicks in his speech. “The gimmick is that there is no gimmick,” explained Minister Gilad Erdan in an interview with Arutz Sheva.

There is no need to be alarmed by the New York Times‘ aggressive op-ed against Netanyahu or by criticism coming from Israeli journalists who have a difficult time facing Netanyahu’s success. In “the test of the result” – a phrase Netanyahu used, in Hebrew, when speaking to Obama – the prime minister got the job done.

Will the world internalize the message? Time will tell.

Yachimovich steps up attack on ‘isolationist’ Netanyahu | The Times of Israel.

( An hour later: “White House: Israel’s skepticism about Iran is ‘entirely justifiable’”   Pathetic… – JW )

Opposition head says Israel does not stand alone against Iran, Islamic Republic is no existential threat, and ‘we should not poke a finger’ in the eye of our best ally, the US

Labor Party leader, Shelly Yachimovich, at a press conference, May 5, 2013, appropriating Benjamin Netanyahu’s nuclear bomb to highlight the financial plight of Israel’s middle classes (photo credit: Flash90)

Israel’s opposition leader, Shelly Yachimovich, stepped up her criticism Wednesday of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his handling of the Iran crisis, accusing him of “poking a finger in the eye” of the United States, and isolating Israel.

Speaking on Israel Radio, the Labor Party chairwoman stressed that she shared the “consensus” that Israel “must do everything in our power to ensure” that Iran not attain nuclear weapons. But while Netanyahu, in a tough speech at the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday, said Israel would “stand alone” to thwart Iran if necessary, she said Israel was “not alone” in facing the Iranian threat. Many other Middle Eastern states feel even more threatened than Israel, she noted, and the United States was “a full partner” in the struggle.

Only a day before the UN speech, when Netanyahu was hosted by President Barack Obama at the White House, she pointed out, the president again committed the US to preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons — and the president stressed, to make sure there was no misunderstanding, that the “military option” was still on the table, Yachimovich noted.

Given that context, the prime minister’s UN address should have been “a speech of recruitment [of support], not of isolation.” Israel, she went on, needed to work “hand in hand” with the US, and “not by poking a finger in the eye” of its greatest ally.

She also disagreed with Netanyahu’s assertion that the Iranian nuclear drive constituted a mortal challenge to Israel and the Jewish people. “Iran is not an existential threat to the Jewish people or the Zionist enterprise,” she said. “We are not facing a holocaust.”

The opportunity to address the UN, the Labor leader said, “is not a punishment, it’s an opportunity,” and Netanyahu, she said, could and should also have used it broadcast some optimism and goodwill regarding the Palestinians. Instead, he had relegated the Palestinians issue to a mere “footnote.”

Yachimovich’s comments followed statements she made immediately after the speech on Tuesday, when she also said Iran did not pose an existential threat to Israel. “Iran is not dangerous to our very existence; there are many other threats and we know how to deal with them,” the Labor MK told the Walla news site then.

“The question is, what’s the best and most effective way” to thwart Iran, Yachimovich said. “Is it by way of the isolationism displayed by the prime minister in front of the world? I think not.”

“The correct way is to join hands with our main ally, the United States, which has committed itself to us time and again, and has even threatened [Iran] with a military option,” the Labor Party leader said. “It would have been better to go with Obama, and not to remain ‘a people that dwells alone,’” Yachimovich concluded.

Fellow Labor MK Isaac Herzog echoed Yachimovich’s statements, adding that the prime minister had not dealt well with recent Iranian overtures toward Washington.

“The prime minister did not address the evolving and ever-changing environment, but instead provided a solution [only] to a scenario of Iranian deception,” Herzog said. “He did not address the possibility, even if it it is slight, of an actual strategic change in Iran.”

Meretz head MK Zahava Gal-on also criticized Netanyahu’s speech, saying the prime minister should have taken advantage of the fact that sanctions against Iran have not yet been lifted and given diplomatic efforts a chance.

“Netanyahu has once again put himself in the position of the reproaching preacher,” she said. “Though the Iranian nuclear program was not initiated for peaceful purposes, Netanyahu should welcome the American and international effort to negotiate on nuclear disarmament while sanctions on Iran are still strong, and give them a chance,” she said.

Gal-On added that Netanyahu did not stress enough that Iran’s nuclear aspirations were a threat to world stability, and instead portrayed the matter as one that was of concern solely to Israel.

“The speech shows make that the prime minister’s worldview fails on two main counts: He thinks Iran is only Israel’s problem, and he thinks it is Israel’s only problem… The main problem is Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians. Netanyahu’s scant reference to the issue… serves as proof that he has not crossed the Rubicon toward two states for two peoples,” she said.

Meanwhile, parliamentarians in Netanyahu’s Likud party largely embraced the speech, and stressed that an unwavering stance against Iran was necessary despite Tehran’s so-called charm offensive at the UN last week.

Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon, speaking to Fox News after the speech, said Israel would not buy into Iran’s “sweet talk.”

“[Iran’s President Hasan Rouhani] is a master in buying time, and he is playing with the West. Now that he’s back in Iran, the real issue is what is he going to do with the reactors, the centrifuges,” Danon said.

Danon added that Israel ”will keep all options on the table. We will do whatever is necessary to defend ourselves.”

MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud) said he was reassured by Netanyahu’s commitment to stand up to Iran even in the face of international condemnation.

“I welcome and reinforce Netanyahu’s affirmation that Israel will act against the Iranian threat even if it has to do so alone,” Feiglin said. “The time for talk is over.”

Feiglin added that it was clear the US did not intend to strike Iran, and said Netanyahu would be judged in the future by the course of action he would take to eliminate the possibility of Iran achieving nuclear weapons capability.

Netanyahu must decide whether he will go down in history like Menachem Begin, who, he said, prevented an Iraqi nuclear weapon by bombing the Osiraq reactor in 1981, “or as the Israeli leader under whose watch the Iranian ayatollahs managed to lay their hands on nuclear weapons.”

Shas MK Eli Yishai also praised Netanyahu’s speech, saying that the prime minister’s statements were reflective of the opinion of Israeli society at large.

“The body was the body of the prime minister, but the voice was that of all of Israel,” he said.

Yishai added that he hoped Netanyahu’s words would serve as a wake-up call for the world and prompt the international community to take action against the Iranian regime.

New sanctions likely despite thaw in US-Iran ties | The Times of Israel.

US lawmakers still moving forward with restrictions aimed at ending all international Iranian oil sales by 2015

An oil refinery in Tehran. (photo credit: AP/file)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A war-weary Congress generally backs President Barack Obama’s outreach to Iran, but with tougher US economic measures against Tehran on the way, the president’s diplomatic task could get harder if he doesn’t make quick progress.

Obama’s phone call last week to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was a groundbreaking conversation. It was the first contact in more than 30 years between the leaders of the two countries and an about-face from when Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, included Iran in his “axis of evil” with North Korea and Iraq.

The sentiment in Washington’s political circles has changed, too.

Five years ago, Obama the presidential candidate was hit with criticism for suggesting talks with the Iranians without preconditions. Then during his re-election campaign, Obama was called weak on Iran.

Now, even leading Senate hawks, such as his 2008 opponent, John McCain of Arizona, and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have backed Obama’s careful engagement effort. They say it is worth testing Iran’s seriousness even if they’re skeptical about Rouhani’s new course of moderation and disdainful of Tehran’s human rights record and alleged support for terrorism.

The debate essentially has shifted away from whether it’s worth talking to Iran to debating the details of engaging Iran, which claims it is not seeking nuclear weapons.

While Obama’s gesture to Tehran hasn’t prompted major GOP criticism, it has fed into domestic arguments over health care and spending levels. Several Republicans in Congress have lambasted the president for appearing “more willing” to talk to Rouhani than with them.

While the current government shutdown may have muted congressional reaction to Obama’s phone call with Rouhani, lawmakers are moving forward on legislation for new sanctions, with plans to tee them up so the president can use enhanced sanctions as part of his negotiating leverage.

In July, the House approved tough new sanctions on Iran’s oil sector and other industries. The bill blacklists any business in Iran’s mining and construction sectors and commits the United States to the goal of ending all Iranian oil sales worldwide by 2015.

The House adopted the legislation by a 400-20 vote. It builds on US penalties that went into effect last year that have cut Iran’s petroleum exports in half and left its economy in tatters. China, India and several other Asian nations continue to buy billions of dollars of Iranian oil each month, providing Tehran with much of the money it spends on its weapons and nuclear programs.

No bill would likely be finalized before November. That gives the administration at least several weeks to see whether Iran under Rouhani changes course.

During the current shutdown, “people are continuing to move the process along and so when the government is back open for business I would expect the bill to come out of the Senate Banking Committee and get to the next stage of the legislative process,” said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based think tank that advocates for a tough line on Iran.

Debate on Capitol Hill about Syria also has changed the dynamic on US ties with Iran.

Lawmakers were reluctant to keep a US military option on the table in connection with the crisis in Syria after the August 21 chemical weapons attack outside Damascus, which, according to administration estimates, killed more than 1,400 people. It’s difficult to see how Congress would support a US military strike on Iran over its nuclear program, and that might strengthen Obama’s case for a diplomatic resolution to the standoff.

Senator Mark Kirk, R-Ill., a member of the Senate Banking Committee, is in favor of a tough new round of sanctions.

“We should judge Iranian leaders by their actions, not their words,” Kirk said Tuesday. “So long as Iran continues to pursue a nuclear weapons capability, build longer-range ballistic missiles, sponsor terrorism around the world and abuse human rights, the Senate should impose maximum economic pressure on Iran to give diplomacy a chance to succeed.”

On Monday, Senator Bob Menendez, D-N.J., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he welcomed diplomatic engagement with Iran, but said it “cannot be used to buy time, avoid sanctions and continue the march toward nuclear weapons capability.”

In the House, Representative Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said Obama’s engagement with Rouhani “holds the promise, albeit tenuous, distant and difficult, of a resolution of the Iranian nuclear question.” Writing off chances for success without trying would be “negligent,” he said.

Meanwhile, Republican Representative Ed Royce, R-Calif., the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, credited America’s “damaging sanctions” for getting Rouhani on the phone and said the US must increase economic pressure “until Iran stops its nuclear drive.”

Some Iran experts, such as Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council in Washington, believe that any new sanctions imposed at this time will destroy the prospects of diplomacy. Dubowitz believes, however, that the Obama administration would be OK with Congress passing new sanctions as long as it’s not too soon.

“If the sanctions are on the president’s desk by tomorrow morning, I think they would probably face quite a bit of resistance from the White House right now in terms of timing and atmospherics,” Dubowitz said. “But I think the White House appreciates that it’s very useful to have Congress move the sanctions bills through the process at the same time as the US is engaging Iran on the diplomatic side.”

Obama wants to give Rouhani a chance to prove that he’s willing to curtail some of his country’s uranium enrichment activity, which many believe is being used to give Iran nuclear weapons capability. At the very least, the administration wants to give Rouhani an opportunity to make concessions while Iran remains months away — if not longer — from achieving such capacity.

The timing of the diplomatic effort itself is key, too, Anthony Cordesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington wrote in a paper Tuesday.

“Those who oppose US and Iranian negotiations need to realize that this is almost certainly the last chance for a real solution before Iran moves to the point of no return both politically and in terms of nuclear capability,” Cordesman wrote.

Israel, meantime, is warning the US in its dealings with Rouhani. Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech at the United Nations on Tuesday that the new Iranian president was conducting a “charm offensive.” Iran and Israel see each other as arch enemies. Tehran does not recognize the Jewish state, and supports anti-Israeli militants like Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

No shticks or tricks: Speech to Obama and Putin – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Analysis: PM Netanyahu’s masterful UN address added credibility to Israel’s threat of solo strike on Iran

PM Netanyahu’s address to the UN General Assembly this year was pragmatic. It was devoid almost entirely of emotion, and did not include any shticks and tricks. The speech was directed at three main target audiences: Decision-makers in the international community – beginning with Obama’s government and the US Congress, then Berlin, London, Brussels, Moscow and Beijing. The other target audience was Israeli public opinion leaders, and the third – public opinion leaders among Jews in the Diaspora.

Netanyahu understood that the timing of his speech was awful, maybe as awful as could be. The American public is focusing solely on the budget crisis and the shutting down of government; most heads of state have left the UN and the various delegations are shopping on Fifth Avenue. It was disheartening to see the prime minister speak before a half-empty hall. Netanyahu realized this, so he wrote a speech that was meant for the ears of people who are in the know. It was a speech of an attorney or the CEO of a large corporation.

Netanyahu built his “case” layer by layer. He began by explaining that Israel has hopes but that past experience has taught its citizens to be cautious. Then he presented his proof that Hassan Rohani is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, saying that Iran was deceiving the West and that a nuclear Iran would be 50 times more dangerous than nuclear North Korea. The PM simply listed the measures he believes the international community – and mainly the West – should take.

Netanyahu repeated the four demands from Iran which he has mentioned a number of times over the past few weeks, but he added a new one: A stop to the activity of advanced IR-2 centrifuges at the enrichment facility in Natanz. Should the Iranians accept this demand, they would be left with only some 10,000 active centrifuges. Such a number would not allow them a quick breakthrough toward the production of fissile material used to make nuclear weapons.

Netanyahu’s new demand may be the most important one, because the infrastructure of centrifuges that Iran has built and installed allows it to become a country on the brink of developing a nuclear weapon in two months’ time. The PM, as mentioned, also listed the original four demands:

1) A complete halt to uranium enrichment, including to low purity levels.

2) The removal of enriched uranium that has already been produced from Iran to a foreign country.

3) The removal of the infrastructure for the enrichment of uranium, including the closure of the facility in Qom.

4) Stopping the construction of the heavy water reactor Arak. The facility’s used fuel rods can be used to produce plutonium, from which a nuclear bomb can also be made.

Netanyahu knows that at least one of these demands has already been rejected by the US. Secretary of State Kerry has said Iran should be allowed to enrich uranium to low purity levels – up to 5%. But Netanyahu is not deterred. He knows full well that a significant portion of the sanctions imposed on Iran were introduced through legislation in the US Congress and that repeating this demand in public will resonate among those American lawmakers who will not agree to lift the sanctions – even if Obama and Kerry wish to do so.

But Netanyahu did not stop there. He explained how the international community, meaning the five permanent members of the Security Council – should conduct itself during the negotiations with the Iranians. This is the PM’s recipe for effective negotiations:

1) In the first stage, keep the sanctions in place while negotiating, and if it turns out that Iran is continuing to enrich uranium and installing new centrifuges – the West must impose additional sanctions. Netanyahu’s goal: To make certain that the Iranians do not take advantage of the negotiation period to present the West with established facts. In this regard, Netanyahu coined a new phrase: “Distrust, dismantle and verify.”

2) The second point in Netanyahu’s recipe urges the West not to agree to any partial deal that would allow the Iranians to have the sanctions eased while achieving the status of a country on the brink of nuclear weapons capability.

3) Lift the sanctions only after Iran’s nuclear program is completely dismantled. “Don’t let up the pressure. Keep it up… When it comes to Iran, the greater the pressure, the greater the chance,” Netanyahu said, Then he put Israel’s main card on the table: The threat of a solo Israeli strike in the event that the West is unable to dismantle Iran’s military nuclear program.

Netanyahu knows this threat of a go-it-alone Israeli attack will be taken more seriously because it came a day after his conversation with Obama at the White House. During the meeting it was stated clearly that Israel and the US are coordinated on Iran and that Israel has a right to defend itself, on its own.

The fact that the threat was reiterated just a day after the meeting, coupled with Obama’s statement that the military option was still on the table as far as the US is concerned, served as a stern warning to Tehran.

However, Netanyahu did speak of “nuclear weapons” in Iran’s hands, not only of the ability to obtain such weapons. This may be an indication that he has moved his red line to match it to Obama’s.

In order to give the threat of an Israel strike more credibility, Netanyahu told a story about how his grandfather was the victim of an attack by anti-Semites in Eastern Europe and spoke of his pledge that this would not happen to Israel.

This threat was certainly heard, not only in Europe, which is trying to recover from the financial crisis and fears an increase in oil prices, but also in China and Russia. Netanyahu made it clear that if Iran’s nuclear program is not halted, Israel will not be the only country in danger. A nuclear Iran will mainly threaten the Arab Gulf states, which supply energy to eastern Asia and Europe.

Netanyahu also addressed the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks as a gesture to the connection Obama made between the nuclear issue and peace negotiations. The PM’s message was that Israel wants to have good relations with the rest of the Mideast’s countries, not because it fears Iranian nukes, but because it wants peace and security for its citizens. Then he took a jab at Abbas and said the Palestinians still refuse to recognize the Jewish state or accept Israel’s security-related demands.

Seeing that Netanyahu also had to please his constituency and political base at home, he quoted a verse from Prophets which could be interpreted as an expression of support for the settlement enterprise.

The PM’s speech at the UN was masterful, and Netanyahu proved once again that he is an expert in public diplomacy and knows how to make the most of a situation even when the timing and atmosphere are not ideal.

Since the speech was directed mainly at decision-makers, the real test of its effectiveness will be on October 15 in Geneva, when Iran will submit its proposal to the superpowers for an end to the nuclear crisis.