Douglas Murray – Israel & Nuclear Iran – YouTube.
A Brit I was unfamiliar with, he puts the UK and the EU in their proper place regarding Israel, Iran and the middle east in general.
An amazing speaker and DEAD ON.
Enjoy….
JW
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Archive for October 12, 2013
Douglas Murray – Israel & Nuclear Iran
October 12, 2013Roosevelt’s America disappears from our world – Alarabiya
October 12, 2013Roosevelt’s America disappears from our world – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page.
I meticulously contemplated an interactive map of the world that was presented to us by a Japanese researcher. Red and blue lights were blinking on the map, designating the roaming of U.S. navy ships and vessels all over the world, during the past year. The map analysis indicates that these ships and vessels spend few days in certain areas and then disappear, but they are never absent for a whole year from the Arabian Gulf, unlike any other region in the world.
The Japanese researcher explains it as being due to the full commitment of the United States to protect the oil supply lines of the global economy. Therefore, our strategic ally is committed to our security and is actually present through 15 military bases and 7 naval bases in our Gulf and around it, endorsed by fleets that are almost always present in our seas. There is no need then to worry about the new window of dialogue between our ally and our rival Iran, a window that we fear to see turning into peace; talks and then a meeting and then an alliance.
Not exactly. Let us listen again to the Japanese researcher that I met last week during a closed meeting about the security of the Gulf and the role of Japan (if there is any). He said: “In Japan, we rely by 90 percent on Gulf oil, while the United States relies on it by 18 percent, a percentage that is expected to decline in the coming years, but the U.S. is here for us and for China, Korea, India and the world economy.”
Protecting our security?
Since the U.S. does not strive to get involved in chronic or sectarian conflicts such as the war in Syria, according to Obama, it is ready to negotiate with Iran if the latter made real concessions regarding its nuclear program and its threats against Israel, and left “chronic sectarian conflicts” for us to solve.
Jamal Khashoggi
This means that the U.S. presence in the region is not related to “our security” such as the Iranian interference in Bahrain, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Perhaps the blunt interpretation of the Japanese researcher explains why the U.S. changed its policy after that short call between the American and Iranian presidents, like for instance the U.S. faint-hearted stance regarding Syria, which was in line with the Russian position. They limited their stances to the chemical weapons’ disarmament of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which was said to upset Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, who instantly left New York without delivering the kingdom’s speech at the annual U.N. session in September.
This month will always be remembered in Arab modern history as a historic turning point, during which the Arab region witnessed historic moments, as important as Sykes-Picot, the Balfour Declaration, the Yalta Conference, the “U.S.S. Quincy meeting” between King Abdulaziz and President Roosevelt, and the American landings in Beirut in 1958, up until the most recent list of events that have formed the new Middle East. Suddenly in September 2013, the British Parliament rejected the military intervention in the Middle East for the first time, followed by the reconsideration by the U.S. President of his decision to intervene in Syria by transferring his call to the Congress for a vote. He then asked the congress to disregard the vote, after he had reached an agreement with the Russians, which turned the wheel of events in Syria from saving the people to disarming of the regime’s chemical weapons that will take a full year, and abandoning the idea of any military intervention in order to search for a political solution.
On the map of the Japanese researcher, the analysis of the U.S. ships and vessels’ positions around the world shows that the United States cannot afford to enter two wars at the same time. Moreover, the number of U.S. Navy ships today is way less than its presence during World War II. So it is not just a matter of dissimilarity between a Republican president and another Democrat, or a president driven by his instinct and another who profoundly think about the consequences of every action and prefer to negotiate about the war. The U.S. policies have drastically changed. What caught my attention was President Obama’s indication that the Middle East is constantly witnessing “sectarian conflicts”; was he saying to his people that it is better to stay away from the problems of this old world, who refuses to get out of the past?
This does not mean that the United States has become a dove of peace, as it is still militarily active but according to its own priorities. Over the past year, it succeeded in cooperating with several countries’ navy forces, including India, Iran and Oman and helped them reduce piracy from 40 operations per year to only 3; its war on piracy is not linked to moral values but it is driven by business interests. The U.S. has recently taken a decision to freeze most aids and grants to Egypt (while waiting for the latter to get back on democratic path and restore civilian rule), but has excluded what would help in the war on terrorism and the military campaign in Sinai, indicating that the “war on terrorism” is a priority that is not even affected by military coups. This is what the U.S. will maintain in its ties with the rest of the countries in the region.
‘Great Satan’
According to this logic, it is possible for the states to reach a consensus with Iran; what was the cause of the conflict between the 2 countries anyway? There was a historic disagreement, which was needed by the Iranian revolution in the past; Iran needed an enemy so Khomeini brought up the “Great Satan” and promoted it as a nightmare threatening the revolution, in order to create hatred in the hearts of his followers and unite them against an enemy. This did not prevent both countries from cooperating during the war on Iraq or the U.S. war in Afghanistan and Iraq, where Iran fully cooperated with the United States, and thus the secrets of that era began to get clearer. The real disagreement that has brought harsh sanctions on Iran was its nuclear program and its threats against Israel.
Since the U.S. does not strive to get involved in chronic or sectarian conflicts such as the war in Syria, according to Obama, it is ready to negotiate with Iran if the latter made real concessions regarding its nuclear program and its threats against Israel, and left “chronic sectarian conflicts” for us to solve. I believe it is time for it because Iran will only need its nuclear arsenal to protect itself from an Israeli or American attack. Iran must have understood the American “withdrawal” moments as we did, which would encourage it to be more flexibility. Iran needs to escape the sanctions, which are now threatening its stability because the Iranian people want a better life, especially that Iran has now highly qualified economy and industry sectors, but the narrow-mindedness is postponing its development and competitiveness. Iran has surveyed the changes that took place in Turkey during the last decade, and it believes that it is ready for such changes, but it requires a real openness to the world around it, particularly with the United States.
We are witnessing historical moments and the beginning of enormous change, that will not necessarily be good or bad, but it will need a better strategy and readiness, and will definitely require prioritizing the future – not the past.
This article was first published in al-Hayat on Oct. 12, 2013.
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Jamal Khashoggi is a Saudi journalist, columnist, author, and general manager of the upcoming Al Arab News Channel. He previously served as a media aide to Prince Turki al Faisal while he was Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States. Khashoggi has written for various daily and weekly Arab newspapers, including Asharq al-Awsat, al-Majalla and al-Hayat, and was editor-in-chief of the Saudi-based al-Watan. He was a foreign correspondent in Afghanistan, Algeria, Kuwait, Sudan, and other Middle Eastern countries. He is also a political commentator for Saudi-based and international news channels. Twitter: @JKhashoggi
Netanyahu Takes a Lonely Stance Denouncing Iran – NYTimes.com
October 12, 2013Netanyahu Takes a Lonely Stance Denouncing Iran – NYTimes.com.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the United Nations General Assembly in October.
By JODI RUDOREN
Published: October 11, 2013
JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, the son of a historian, often complains to his inner circle that “people have a historical memory that goes back to breakfast.”
Mr. Netanyahu has been urging the West to be firm with Iran in nuclear talks, fearing “a bad deal.”
But when Mr. Netanyahu has recently tried to focus the world on the Iranian nuclear program, using ancient texts, Holocaust history and a 2011 book by Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, he has sometimes come off sounding shrill. As six major world powers convene next week to negotiate on the nuclear issue with Iran’s new leadership, the Israeli leader risks seeming frozen in the past amid a shifting geopolitical landscape.
Increasingly alone abroad and at home, where he has lost several trusted aides and cabinet colleagues, Mr. Netanyahu has stubbornly argued that if people would just study the facts, they would surely side with him.
“You use history to understand the present and chart the future — history is a map,” Mr. Netanyahu explained in an interview on Thursday night. “You know what a map is? A map is a crystallization of the main things you need to know to get from one place to another.”
With a series of major speeches — three more are scheduled next week — and an energetic media blitz, Mr. Netanyahu, 63, has embarked on the public-diplomacy campaign of his career, trying to prevent what he worries will be “a bad deal” with Iran. Insisting on a complete halt to uranium enrichment and no easing of the economic sanctions he helped galvanize the world to impose on Iran, Mr. Netanyahu appears out of step with a growing Western consensus toward reaching a diplomatic deal that would require compromise.
But such isolation is hardly new to a man with few personal friends and little faith in allies, who shuns guests for Sabbath meals, who never misses a chance to declare Israel’s intention to defend itself, by itself.
“Netanyahu is most comfortable predicting disaster, scaring people into doing something,” said Mitchell Barak, a Jerusalem political consultant who worked for him in the early 1990s and has watched him closely since. “The problem is now he’s lost momentum. His message is clear, his message is the same, the situation is the same, but everyone else’s perspective has changed. It’s like you’re the only one in a dark room with a flashlight.”
Since the start of his third term as prime minister this spring, Mr. Netanyahu has been careful not to confront the White House, despite clear differences on Iran, as well as Syria, Egypt and the Palestinian peace process. It is a sharp contrast to when he lectured President Obama two years ago in front of reporters in the Oval Office. The two leaders have developed a détente, and they spent three hours — one more than scheduled — together on the eve of the American government shutdown in what aides from both camps described as a friendly and frank exchange. Amid the chaos roiling the Middle East, American and Israeli officials say the alliance is in many ways closer than ever.
“There’s a deep mutual understanding that we are what there is, there aren’t any other relationships like this, they’re all strained,” said one Israeli official who sat in on the session. “That doesn’t mean it’s going to be Bill and Yitzhak,” he added, referring to President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995. “It doesn’t have to be Bill and Yitzhak. They get one another.”
Several people who have met with Mr. Netanyahu in recent days described him as determined and focused, the atmosphere in his office one of urgency, not panic. Since his address to the United Nations, he has hardly stopped selling his message: nine broadcast interviews in New York last week instead of the usual two or three (including radio, a first abroad since 2009, added at his request), and on Thursday, a television trifecta and rare trio of newspaper audiences targeting Britain, Germany and France.
Israeli political analysts say Mr. Netanyahu, who was educated at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is action-averse but diplomatically deft, in his element behind a lectern or in front of a camera. His United Nations speech went through 50 drafts, and 45 minutes before go-time he replaced three pages near the top with a single punchy paragraph ending: “Hope charts the future. Vigilance protects it.”
Behind his desk in his office here, above a shelf filled with the encyclopedia his father edited, sit two framed photographs of men Mr. Netanyahu admires for having been able to see “danger in time” and find ways to avert it: Winston Churchill, complete with hat, pinstripes and cigar, and a long-bearded Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism.
“They were alone a lot more than I am,” Mr. Netanyahu said.
Over the past year, Mr. Netanyahu and his wife, Sara — a psychologist whom many Israelis criticize for everything from her purported temper to her child-rearing methods — have withstood mini-scandals regarding their spending on vanilla and pistachio ice cream (about $2,800 a year), makeup and hairstyling ($18,000 in 2012) and the installation of a bed for a flight to Margaret Thatcher’s funeral ($140,000). The prime minister’s stance on Iran, his signature issue, though, is popular with the public.
“Even though most Israelis dislike him, they see him as the best advocate — he knows how to deliver the goods when we are talking about talking,” said Ben Caspit, an Israeli columnist and an author of a biography of Mr. Netanyahu. “He’s a professional whistle-blower. He’s a professional prophet. But all the time pessimistic, threatening.”
If he seems a solo act on the world stage, Mr. Netanyahu is also increasingly a one-man show in Israel, doubling as his own foreign minister. Gone from his cabinet are several colleagues with security credentials whom he considered peers. His closest adviser, Ron Dermer, has left Israel to become its ambassador in Washington; he has lost his longtime cabinet secretary; and the veteran national security adviser departs soon.
But while Mr. Netanyahu faces increasing opposition within his own Likud Party, there are no real rivals for the top job, and the raging internal debate over an Israeli military strike on Iran has all but disappeared.
A cigar smoker — lately, the Cuban Partagás No. 2 — Mr. Netanyahu has lost 10 pounds since a hernia operation in August. On the trip to New York, he read Niall Ferguson’s “Civilization.” After a marathon day on Wednesday, he unwound with an episode of Showtime’s Renaissance-era drama, “The Borgias.”
Friday night dinners are reserved for Sara and their two sons, Yair and Avner; after lunch on Saturdays, Mr. Netanyahu and Avner, 19, a Bible quiz champion, study the weekly Torah portion for about 45 minutes.
History also gets personal for Mr. Netanyahu, whose brother Yonatan was killed in Israel’s 1976 raid on the Entebbe airport in Uganda to free hostages. At the United Nations last week, he told of his grandfather Nathan vowing to help establish the Jewish state after being beaten by an anti-Semitic mob in late-19th-century Europe.
His office wall is dominated by a map, Iran looming large at the center. Iran has been Mr. Netanyahu’s priority — many say obsession — since 1996, when he warned of the nuclear threat in a speech to Congress shortly after becoming prime minister for the first time. During the next three years he revamped Israel’s intelligence agenda to focus on Tehran. As leader of Israel’s opposition from 2006 to 2009, he made it a personal mission to persuade American state pension funds to divest of Iranian holdings. And since returning to Israel’s premiership in 2009, he has led the charge for sanctions against Iran, in part by threatening a unilateral military strike.
Critics and admirers alike say it is a Messianic crusade. Mr. Netanyahu is not religious, but he does see himself as a leader of destiny.
“We’re here for a purpose — I’m here for a purpose,” he said Thursday night. “Which is to defend the future of the Jewish people, which means to defend the Jewish state. Defending it from a nuclear Iran.
“I’m not going to let that happen,” he added. “It’s not going to happen.”
Amid his warnings on Iran nuclear program, Netanyahu says he’s less isolated than Churchill, Herzl
October 12, 2013LAST UPDATED: 10/12/2013 12:15
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu arrives at the weekly cabinet meeting, September 17, 2013. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
In the midst of what many see as warming diplomatic ties between Iran and the West, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu continues to warn the world on the dangers of a nuclear Iran and told the New York Times in an interview published on Friday that he would not let the Islamic Republic have nuclear weapons.
During the interview Netanyahu reportedly pointed to two photos above his desk in his Jerusalem office, one of the British WWII leader Sir Winston Churchill and the founding father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl and said: “They were alone a lot more than I am.”
Prior to the meeting set for next week between the six world powers and Iran on its nuclear program the Times interviewer described Netanyahu as sometimes coming off “sounding shrill”, being “increasingly alone abroad and at home,” and being at risk of “seeming frozen in the past amid a shifting geopolitical landscape.”
“Netanyahu is most comfortable predicting disaster, scaring people into doing something,” the Times quoted Mitchell Barak, a political consultant who worked with Netanyahu in the 1990s.
“The problem is now he’s lost momentum. His message is clear, his message is the same, the situation is the same, but everyone else’s perspective has changed,” Barak added.
The Times interviewer wrote that “such isolation is hardly new to a man with few personal friends and little faith in allies.”
After his US media blitz Netanyahu flooded the European media over the past few days with interviews trying to sway public opinion against easing sanctions on Iran in return for what Jerusalem views as cosmetic concessions.
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