WarSclerotic

Kerry to tell Congress new Iran sanctions would be a mistake | The Times of Israel.

State Department spokesperson says vote for or against sanctions right now is really a ‘vote for or against diplomacy’

By AP and Rebecca Shimoni Stoil November 13, 2013, 1:40 am

US Secretary of State John Kerry during a meeting at at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem on November 6. (photo credit: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

WASHINGTON — US Secretary of State John Kerry will call on Congress to not approve any new sanctions on Iran while negotiations continue with Tehran about its nuclear program, which the US and its allies worry could eventually produce nuclear weapons.

Kerry plans to make his case while briefing members of the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday during a closed session. The committee is seen as likely to take up a new sanctions bill that would impose limitations on business with Iran.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Tuesday that he will make clear that putting any new sanctions in place “would be a mistake.”

She said that Kerry, as a senator, voted in favor of Iranian sanctions several times, but that a vote for or against sanctions right now is really a “vote for or against diplomacy.”

“We are still determining if there’s a diplomatic path forward. What we are asking for right now is a pause, a temporary pause, in sanctions,” she said. “This is about ensuring that our legislative strategy and our negotiating strategy are running hand in hand.”

Discussions between Iran and world powers failed to reach an agreement last week in Geneva, but another round of diplomacy is planned for next week.

Differing reports of a deal that fell through during last week’s round of P5+1 talks with Iran in Geneva have engendered increasing criticism of the Obama administration’s stance during the talks. Kerry will likely have to defend the administration’s negotiations during the session.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) warned Sunday, as details of the talks filtered out of Geneva, against a situation in which “we seem to want the deal almost more than the Iranians. And you can’t want the deal more than the Iranians, especially when the Iranians are on the ropes.”

Menendez suggested that any deal should include a cessation of enrichment and an increase in the transparency of Iran’s nuclear program. He also congratulated the French negotiators for taking a tough tone toward the Arak heavy water plant — noting that “its only purpose in a country with such large oil reserves is to make nuclear fuel for nuclear weapons.”

Menendez, who has been a key supporter of previous Iran sanctions initiatives, announced during the interview on ABC’s “This Week” that the time had come for movement on Senate legislation to increase sanctions against Iran.

“I think that the possibility of moving ahead with new sanctions, including wording it in such a way that if there is a deal that is acceptable that those sanctions could cease upon such a deal, is possible,” Menendez said. “I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Senate to move forward on a package that ultimately would send a very clear message where we intend to be if the Iranians don’t strike a deal and stop their nuclear weapons program,” he added.

The Obama administration had asked, before the recent round of talks began, that the Senate delay action on sanctions to allow negotiations to take their course.

In recent years, Congress has been fertile ground for tough sanctions against Tehran, with the latest such bill clearing the House of Representatives by a vote of 400 to 20. Even in cases in which the administration has demonstrated reluctance, members of both parties in Congress have enthusiastically voted in an increasingly stringent sanctions regime.

But in the wake of last week’s negotiations, there is now a three-way split in terms of priorities. In addition to the pro-sanctions and anti-sanctions camps, Sen. Robert Corker (R-TN), the ranking member on Menendez’s committee has a third direction — not to focus on pushing for harsher sanctions, but on preventing the administration from giving away too much.

Asked over the weekend about sanctions, Corker was uncharacteristically noncommittal. “I don’t know,” he began, noting that “new sanctions would not kick in for several months” and emphasizing that “the administration has dialed back the rheostat since Rouhani’s election on the existing sanctions that we have. They have a lot of ability to waive and turn down and conduct these operations in lesser or stronger ways.”

Rather than offer a strong voice for the new sanctions, Corker is instead pushing an idea that he hinted at last week — legislation that would block the president from using any of those waivers that he mentioned unless Iran meets a number of key conditions — all of which are more stringent than the reported terms of the agreement proposed in Geneva.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report

JG, Caesarea: Thomas Friedman, “What About US?”: Is Thomas Friedman an Anti-Semite?.

Do you remember how Thomas Friedman, in a New York Times op-ed entitled “Newt, Mitt, Bibi and Vladimir” (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/opinion/friedman-newt-mitt-bibi-and-vladimir.html?_r=1&hp), declared that he loves “both Israelis and Palestinians,” but then went to great lengths to malign Israel? Claiming at the time that he is “deeply worried about where Israel is going today,” Friedman said of Netanyahu’s speech before the US Congress:

“I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”

The Israel lobby is paying off Congress? This was tantamount to the bogus anti-Semitic allegations found in “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which informed its readers that the Jews pulled the strings of the world’s governments. Catering to Obama, who was antagonized by the warm reception received by Netanyahu, Friedman couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge that this ovation stemmed from the fact that Israel is among Americans’ most favored countries (see: http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/9084/popularity_of_israel_in_america_at_all_time_high), and that Israel consistently votes with the US in the UN more than all other countries (see: http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/162416.pdf).

Yes, prior to the advent of the Obama administration, Israel was considered an American “ally” (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/11/new-york-times-editorial-iran-nuclear.html).

Today, in a Times op-ed entitled “What About US?” (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/13/opinion/friedman-what-about-us.html?_r=0), Friedman is again pandering to Obama and directing more vituperation Israel’s way for undermining John Kerry’s attempts to reach an accord with Iran. Of course, he tries to avoid reference only to Israeli opposition to such a deal by also noting Saudi Arabia and UAE opposition (“We, America, are not just hired lawyers negotiating a deal for Israel and the Sunni Gulf Arabs”), but it’s crystal clear whom Friedman is primarily holding accountable. Friedman writes:

“It goes without saying that the only near-term deal with Iran worth partially lifting sanctions for would be a deal that freezes all the key components of Iran’s nuclear weapons development program, and the only deal worth lifting all sanctions for is one that verifiably restricts Iran’s ability to breakout and build a nuclear bomb.

. . . .

America’s interests today lie in an airtight interim nuclear deal with Iran that also opens the way for addressing a whole set of other issues between Washington and Tehran.”

“A deal that freezes all the key components of Iran’s nuclear weapons development program”? But Kerry was willing to sign off on a deal that did not address continued construction of Iran’s Arak IR-40 Heavy Water Reactor, designed to produce sufficient plutonium for two atomic bombs each year. Even France could not brook this obscenity.

“An airtight interim nuclear deal with Iran”? Obama and Kerry just signed off on a Russian sponsored “airtight” deal with mass murderer Bashar al-Assad (Kerry’s “dear friend”) for the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles, but were recently informed by American intelligence services that Assad is hiding no small part of this stockpile (see: http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2013/11/05/first-on-cnn-us-intelligence-suggests-syria-may-hide-some-chemical-weapons/).

Trust Obama that any agreement with Iran will provide “airtight” assurances that Iran will not continue to pursue development of its nuclear weapons development program? Bear in mind that any such deal is being negotiated with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who recently bragged how he had lulled the West into complacency while radically expanding Iran’s nuclear weapons development program (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjbrqPK-BBg). Of course, Rouhani would never dare deceive Obama, who is such a nice guy . . .

Over the course of his opinion piece, Friedman refers twice to the need for “détente” with Iran, but does not once remind us of how the Islamic Republic of Iran hangs homosexuals, stones to death women accused of adultery, tortures political dissidents, and oppresses Baha’is (see Elliott Abrams’s opinion piece in The Washington Post today: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-oppression-of-bahais-continues-in-iran/2013/11/12/4b5dcf34-4b0f-11e3-be6b-d3d28122e6d4_story.html?hpid=z3), Kurds, Christians (see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/11/06/pastor-saeed-abedini-faces-grave-new-danger/) and Sunnis. Rouhani is going to change all that? Sorry, but as reported by Bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-23/spate-of-iran-executions-after-rouhani-election-alarms-un.html), “Iran’s government executed at least 82 people in the weeks after Hassan Rouhani was elected as president in June, according to a United Nations investigator.”

What does Friedman’s op-ed bring to mind? Back in 1940, The America First Committee (AFC) was established to oppose American entry into World War II, but ultimately was disbanded after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. However, before this movement unravelled, AFC spokesman Charles Lindbergh addressed a rally in Des Moines, Iowa on September 11, 1941, and declared:

“It is not difficult to understand why Jewish people desire the overthrow of Nazi Germany. The persecution they suffered in Germany would be sufficient to make bitter enemies of any race. No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution the Jewish race suffered in Germany. But no person of honesty and vision can look on their pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy, both for us and for them.

Instead of agitating for war the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way, for they will be among the first to feel its consequences. Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastation. A few farsighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not. Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government.”

Does “What about US?” remind you of the arguments made by the America First Committee. It should. And Lindbergh’s claim that the Jews controlled “our government”? Almost identical to Friedman’s assertion, “That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”

Friedman concludes:

“All this is why the deal the Obama team is trying to forge now that begins to defuse Iran’s nuclear capabilities, and tests whether more is possible, is fundamentally in the U.S. interest.”

Ah, yes, the Obama Team, which brought us the Obamacare website, is now seeking to defuse Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Good luck to them! Meanwhile, even France couldn’t accept the one-sided concessions agreed to by the US, thus scuttling the signing ceremony in Geneva which Kerry had so hoped to attend.

Is Friedman an anti-Semite, or he is “merely” seeking to abet the Obama administration, which is facing mounting criticism from Congress for its willingness to strike this “Peace in our time” agreement with Tehran? (I think this is called intellectual prostitution.)

You decide.

New York and Cairo: The revolt against Neo- Liberalism – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page.

Bill de Blasio has been elected mayor of New York, overwhelming his Republican Party opponent who has strong Wall Street pedigree, by campaigning that New York had become a “Tale of Two Cities.” On the one hand it is a Wall Street millionaire’s playground, and on the other hand the poor and even the struggling middle class are being driven out of New York’s most culturally defining of the five boroughs – Manhattan – by soaring rents.

This is a state of which the mayor’s office over the past two decades, held during that period by two Republicans, has been focused on developing Manhattan at the expense of the other four boroughs. A city in which the income gap between the “one percent” and “the rest” grows wider year by year, as is the case for the entire country, for much of Europe and for Egypt during the last decade of Mubarak’s rule.

Egypt’s income gap would have continued to grow if any sort of prosperity had returned (which it hadn’t) during the Mursi/Muslim Brotherhood era of governance. Their economic program meant still more privatization which has seen workers fired, often entire factories closed down and the site transformed instead into middle and upper class housing. There is plenty of housing, about 40 percent lies vacant as investors hold onto it either for the purpose of speculation or to house their children and eventual grandchildren. All this while more than half of the Egyptian population are ill housed and the lack of affordable housing prevents hundreds of thousands of young couples from marrying.

The housing situation

There was a concept of affordable housing during the Mubarak reign, and no indication that it stopped under Mursi, which was to sell off government land at very cheap prices to private developers in the desert just outside of Cairo. In this area, without any government planning, there were no provisions for mass transit or local employment (i.e no factories or other business developments).

Egypt’s income gap would have continued to grow if any sort of prosperity had returned (which it hadn’t) during the Mursi/Muslim Brotherhood era of governance

Abdallah Schleifer

Working class Egyptians knew that if there were no employment options they would have to commute to their jobs in the city and without mass transit and not owning cars even that would not be viable. So, the apartment houses, which appear to be built quite adequately, are slowly filling up with middle class families with cars for both commuting to work and for shopping at otherwise unreachable shopping centers.

It is possible this was understood and calculated from the beginning and that the program of Affordable Housing was just a scam to sell off government property dirt-cheap to favored developers. These desert cities in Kahara Gadida (New Cairo) are not all fake affordable properties – some are gated communities consisting of single dwelling villas intended for the upper middle class from the beginning, and I suspect the here too land was sold off cheap.

As for de Blasio, he had already come from behind to win the Democratic primary pledging to raise City taxes on the rich and provide free pre-kindergarten schooling – a critical need for poor families in which both parents must work to survive, or for the many single mother families, single by divorce, or effectively single when husbands are in prison. America has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Linked to that is the widespread use, by the New York police, of stop-and-search-without-cause activities which tends to focus on Black and Latino Americans (80 per cent of those stopped). Possession of a couple of joints of marijuana or hashish sends an otherwise law-abiding citizen to prison.

If the Cairo police undertook such operations on the scale of the New York police department, probably one third of the law abiding and productive male population of Cairo would end up in jail.

Promises

De Blasio promised to cut back on stop-and-search as well, and it did not cost him the votes of the white working class and lower middle class voters , nervous about street crime in which Blacks figured well out of proportion to their numbers, and who recall high crime rates for real crime (theft, muggings, armed robbery were far higher before the use of stop-and-search-without-cause). But he still carried white working class districts because of his championing of more fundamental issues – putting the municipality back into the hands of those who believe government should be concerned with helping the 99 percent, not the one percent.

De Blasio’s victory is also a challenge to the national Democratic Party’s leadership, which has been unwilling to take on Wall Street for at least the past three decades, going along with the de-regulation of all commerce and lower taxes for the rich while cutting benefits for the poor, and that includes the Obama administration. The Republicans are embroiled in what has become an undisguised class war against the poor and struggling people – cutting funding for food stamps, opposition even to Obama’s diluted from of Affordable Medical Care.

The Democratic party has been proudly identified with caring about social justice and programs providing safety nets for the poor and the middle class at the time of Roosevelt’s New Deal (l932-1945) and Truman’s Fair Deal (1948-1952). So, unlike the Republicans, it has to disguise its subservience to Wall Street. Instead, it has championed Life-Style Liberalism which favors issues like legalizing same-sex marriage or the integration of women in Army combat units (and then wonders about rising rates of rape in the armed services, or without rape being involved at all, in the rising rate of pregnancies among women serving in combat units).

De Blasio doesn’t concern himself with such issues, and although he is a lapsed Catholic, he does not demonstrate the sort of hostility to religious belief that characterizes Life-Style Liberalism.

On the contrary, de Blasio’s emphasis on social justice appears to have undercut another curse in the recent history of the Democratic Party – identity politics- so he ended up securing more support from Black voters in the Democratic primary than either of his two opponents – one a Black politician and the other Christine Quinn, the supposed favorite; head of the City Council whose claim to fame as a Democrat was her alliance with the pro-Wall Street millionaire Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg. She is also famous for holding hands and kissing in public – as a proud ,assertive lesbian – her “wife.” Great stuff for Life-Style Liberals.

Many people call de Blasio a “progressive.” I never liked that term, even when I was a radical socialist back in the1960s. I believed then, and still believe now, that you seek social justice for its own sake, not because it means progressing on some road to Utopia. So I prefer de Blasio as “harbinger,” to quote The Guardian, of a new American populist left.

In Cairo, the prime minister of Egypt’s transitional government, Hazem al-Beblawi, has announced he will use the billions of dollars advanced by Arab Gulf allies (Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait) not to reduce the budget, nor will he further cut subsidies for bread and other basics – conditions for an IMF loan which al-Beblawi says Egypt is no longer interested in. Beblawi, and presumably Deputy Prime Minister General al-Sisi reject the IMF’s Neo-Liberal road to austerity despite economic recession: a cure that is tearing Greece apart, destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs in a country where the subservient Greek government is selling off or closing down basic public sector services.

That, in a stealth manner, was what Mohammad Mursi’s government was doing during its one year in office – it was a Neo-Liberal program supposedly in the name of Islam. More privatization, no public works projects and hostility to independent trade unions. Mursi’s failure to move the economy, generate jobs and stop the slide in public services is really what motivated most of the many millions who turned out for the June 30 demonstrations, it was not about secular liberalism.

On the contrary, Beblawi’s government has come up with a four and a half billion dollar stimulus spending program that raises the minimum wage for public sector employees (still the largest sector of employment in Egypt) and will undertake labor-intensive public works to get Egyptians working again. At the beginning of 2014, the government promises to launch an even bigger stimulus program. It also promises to clean up and re-finance public sector hospitals, public education and other public services all of which have been neglected in Egypt since the death of Gamal Abdul Nasser.

___________________________________

Abdallah Schleifer is Professor Emeritus of Journalism at the American University in Cairo, where he founded and served as first director of the Kamal Adham Center for Television Journalism. He also founded and served as Senior Editor of the journal Transnational Broadcasting Studies, now known as Arab Media & Society. Before joining the AUC faculty Schleifer served for nine years as NBC News Cairo bureau chief and Middle East producer- reporter; as Middle East corrrespondent for Jeune Afrique based in Beirut and as a special correspndent for the New York Times based in Amman. After retiring from teaching at AUC Schleifer served for little more than a year as Al Arabiya’s Washington D.C. bureau chief. He is associated with the Middle East Institute in Washington D.C. as an Adjunct Scholar. He was executive producer of the award winning documentary “Control Room” and the 100 episode Reality- TV documentary “Sleepless in Gaza…and Jerusalem.”

Obama, Cameron discuss next round of Iran nuclear talks – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page.

( Senator Mark Kirk:  “The American people should not be forced to choose between military action and a bad deal that accepts a nuclear Iran.”  – JW )

Wednesday, 13 November 2013

Staff writer, Al Arabiya News

U.S. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron spoke on Tuesday about their expectations for the next round of negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, the White House said.

“On Iran, the president and prime minister reiterated their support for the P5+1’s unified proposal and discussed their expectations for the next round of talks,” the White House said, according to Reuters news agency.

The call came after a warning that America could be boxed into a “march to war” if it chooses to tighten sanctions on Iran and derail a diplomatic push to limit Tehran’s nuclear program, the White House said on Tuesday.

In the statement, which was directed at U.S. lawmakers, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters: “The American people do not want a march to war.”

The warning marked a significant toughening of Obama’s stance towards Congress as he prepares to resume high-stakes nuclear diplomacy with Iran later this month, according to Agence France-Presse.

Carney said Americans “justifiably and understandably prefer a peaceful solution that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and this agreement, if it’s achieved, has the potential to do that.”

“The alternative is military action,” Carney said.

“It is important to understand that if pursuing a resolution diplomatically is disallowed or ruled out, what options then do we and our allies have to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon?”

Talks between Iran and six world powers, the P5+1, in Geneva last week failed to reach an interim deal to halt its program. Still, Obama has vowed he will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.

Secretary of State John Kerry heads to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to make the case for continued diplomacy.

Republican Senator Mark Kirk, however, argued that sanctions remained the best way to avoid war and ensure Iran did not get nuclear weapons.

“The American people should not be forced to choose between military action and a bad deal that accepts a nuclear Iran,” he said, according to AFP.

(With AFP and Reuters)

Mapping Israel’s Enemies – YouTube.

–

Oct. 20, 2013

Eric Stakelbeck examines the threat posed by even a “demilitarized” West Bank to Israel’s population centers.

–

IAF Syria Strike ‘Hit Russian S-125 Missiles’ – Middle East – News – Israel National News.

Satellite photos show advanced missile launchers of a type that could be upgraded to S-300 system.

IAF F-16

Israel news photo: Flash 90

The reported IAF strike in the Latakia region of Syria on October 31 targeted an advanced Russian-made missile system that could be upgraded to the much-vaunted S-300 system, reports IsraelDefense, citing researcher Ronen Solomon.

Satellite photos of the site, on Syria’s northern Mediterranean coastline, prove that the alleged IAF strike targeted S-125s that were in the process of being upgraded from a less sophisticated system. The photos were taken a few hours before the site was hit, by a firm providing satellite services to the US defense system.

IsraelDefense says that the reason the site was comprehensively photographed at that time could be that Israel gave the US advance warning that it was about to bomb it.

Solomon said that the batteries were apparently being upgraded from M2 or K2 generation systems. These changes make the system mobile and improve various abilities, making it effective in intercepting crusie missiles, certain ballistic missiles and US-made F-16 fighters.

In the past, notes IsraelDefense, when the Russians suuplied other countries with S-300 systems, they did so by upgrading existing S-75 or S-125 systems. Therefore, it is possible that the intent was to turn the missiles in Latakia into S-300 systems.

Report: Kerry Supported Gaza Flotilla Members – News from America – News – Israel National News.

Maariv: in 2009, then-Senator Kerry gave letter of support to radicals who later took part in Marmara flotilla.

By Arutz Sheva staff

John Kerry

AFP photo

John Kerry provided a signed letter of support to an extremely radical group of leftists and anti-Israel activists who were organizing a march on Gaza in 2009, revealed Maariv’s Ben-Dror Yemini. Members of the group eventually wound up on the 2010 Gaza flotilla that included the Mavi Marmara, on whose deck a bloody confrontation between Turkish terrorists and the IDF ended with 9 dead terrorists.

Yemini says that the Gaza Freedom March organizers included Ali Abunima and Omar Barghouti, leaders of the Israel boycott campaign, musician Roger Waters, and members of Code Pink, which he describes as a radical feminist anti-Israeli group. One of the Code Pink activists was Jody Evans, who had worked as a fundraiser in Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

As they prepared to begin their journey to Gaza, members of the radical group tried to get support from leading US officials. One official who agreed to do this was then-Senator Kerry, who served as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee at the time.

In the letter he provided, Kerry expresses his “strong support” for the “humanitarian” delegation and asks that “every courtesy” be given them. Yemini adds that Abunima and Evans showed the letter to Egyptian officials, who decided to prevent them from going on to Gaza anyway. Evans and fellow Code Pink activists eventually boarded the Free Gaza Flotilla.

Kerry should have known better, opines Yemini, after members of Code Pink met with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2008. He asks, “How is it that a senior senator gave legitimacy to a group that was characterized by support for Hamas, support for Ahmadinejad, and deep hostility toward Israel and the US?”

Kerry to brief dubious Senate on Iran talks | The Times of Israel.

Wednesday’s meeting crucial for US decision on further sanctions; ADL’s Foxman changes stance, now wants more economic pressure

By Rebecca Shimoni Stoil November 12, 2013, 7:52 am

US Secretary of State John Kerry attends a press conference at the end of Iranian nuclear talks in Geneva, early Sunday, November 10, 2013 (photo credit: AP/Jason Reed, Pool)

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to brief the Senate Banking Committee about the latest round of nuclear negotiations with Iran on Wednesday, but senators are divided as to the next course of action toward Tehran. Key Democrats have indicated that they are ready to move forward on additional sanctions legislation, and at least one important Republican would rather devote his legislative energies toward preventing the US from giving up too much in the next round of talks.

Differing reports of a deal that fell through during last week’s round of P5+1 talks with Iran in Geneva have engendered increasing criticism of the Obama administration’s stance during the talks. Kerry will likely have to defend the administration’s negotiations during the closed-door session of the Banking Committee, which is the committee likely to take up a new sanctions bill.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) warned Sunday, as details of the talks filtered out of Geneva, against a situation in which “we seem to want the deal almost more than the Iranians. And you can’t want the deal more than the Iranians, especially when the Iranians are on the ropes.”

Menendez suggested that any deal should include a cessation of enrichment and an increase in the transparency of Iran’s nuclear program. He also congratulated the French negotiators for taking a tough tone toward the Arak heavy water plant — noting that “its only purpose in a country with such large oil reserves is to make nuclear fuel for nuclear weapons.”

Menendez, who has been a key supporter of previous Iran sanctions initiatives, announced during the interview on ABC’s “This Week” that the time had come for movement on Senate legislation to increase sanctions against Iran.

“I think that the possibility of moving ahead with new sanctions, including wording it in such a way that if there is a deal that is acceptable that those sanctions could cease upon such a deal, is possible,” Menendez said. “I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Senate to move forward on a package that ultimately would send a very clear message where we intend to be if the Iranians don’t strike a deal and stop their nuclear weapons program,” he added.

The Obama administration had asked, before the recent round of talks began, that the Senate delay action on sanctions to allow negotiations to take their course.

The State Department would not comment Monday on its opinion on the anticipated move by the Senate to take up additional sanctions legislation.

In recent years, Congress has been fertile ground for tough sanctions against Tehran, with the latest such bill clearing the House of Representatives by a vote of 400 to 20. Even in cases in which the administration has demonstrated reluctance, members of both parties in Congress have enthusiastically voted in an increasingly stringent sanctions regime.

But in the wake of last week’s negotiations, there is now a three-way split in terms of priorities. In addition to the pro-sanctions and anti-sanctions camps, Sen. Robert Corker (R-TN), the ranking member on Menendez’s committee has a third direction — not to focus on pushing for harsher sanctions, but on preventing the administration from giving away too much.

Asked over the weekend about sanctions, Corker was uncharacteristically noncommittal. “I don’t know,” he began, noting that “new sanctions would not kick in for several months” and emphasizing that “the administration has dialed back the rheostat since Rouhani’s election on the existing sanctions that we have. They have a lot of ability to waive and turn down and conduct these operations in lesser or stronger ways.”

Rather than offer a strong voice for the new sanctions, Corker is instead pushing an idea that he hinted at last week — legislation that would block the president from using any of those waivers that he mentioned unless Iran meets a number of key conditions — all of which are more stringent than the reported terms of the agreement proposed in Geneva.

The reported break-down of talks coupled with the leaks of terms slammed by Israel — and the Republican Party — as too generous makes it harder than ever for Senate moderates to continue to maintain the administration’s tenuous delay on the legislation. Fence-sitting senators have said that they will wait until Kerry’s briefing Wednesday — but that following that, they will decide whether to advance sanctions legislation.

The administration’s plea to hold off on sanctions legislation suffered a key defection Monday when Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman publicly changed his stance from supporting the request to calling for the Senate to advance legislation to increase sanctions against Tehran.

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, speaking at the ADL Centennial Summit in Washington, April 29, 2013. (photo credit: David Karp/via JTA)

“I was among the few Jewish leaders to give the Obama Administration the benefit of the doubt in pursuing the diplomatic route and agreed to refrain from urging the Senate to impose additional sanctions for a short period of time to enable the US to pursue diplomacy,” noted the ADL leader in a statement from Jerusalem.

“I wanted to give the Obama administration a chance to demonstrate that they could make real progress on this issue,” he explained. Foxman said that he was “deeply troubled” by the reported terms of a tentative agreement almost reached in Geneva.

“I am now convinced that this agreement will not only prematurely roll back the sanctions regime, but that it would legitimize Iran as a threshold nuclear state,” he warned, adding that “we no longer have the luxury or the option to refrain from enacting additional sanctions against Iran. The time has come for Congress, especially the Senate, not only to reconfirm and strengthen the existing sanctions, but also to begin to impose additional sanctions against Iran.”

NYT: For Israel, Iran strike is ‘only acceptable outcome’ – Israel News, Ynetnews.

( Unrelenting attacks on Israel, courtesy of the NY Times.  Ooops!  Sorry, I meant White House public relations… – JW )

New York Times continues to criticize Israeli policies; Thomas Friedman says Israel, Gulf countries want to keep Iran isolated and weak but that US has other interests

Ynet

Some of America’s allies, including Israel, consider an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities as “the only acceptable outcome,” the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman says. In an op-ed discussing US interests in negotiations with Tehran, Friedman writes that Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates ” don’t trust this Iranian regime — and not without reason.”

He argues that while pressure from American allies in the form of sanctions on Iran brought it to the negotiating table, that pressure was “never meant to be an end itself.”

“We, America, are not just hired lawyers negotiating a deal for Israel and the Sunni Gulf Arabs, which they alone get the final say on. We, America, have our own interests in not only seeing Iran’s nuclear weapons capability curtailed, but in ending the 34-year-old Iran-US cold war, which has harmed our interests and those of our Israeli and Arab friends,” Friedman writes.

The publicist states that “there is nothing that threatens the future of the Middle East today more than the sectarian rift between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. This rift is being used by President Bashar Assad of Syria, Hezbollah and some Arab leaders to distract their people from fundamental questions of economic growth, unemployment, corruption and political legitimacy.”

Friedman then claims that “The Iran-US cold war has prevented us from acting productively on all these interests.”

He quotes Nader Mousavizadeh, a former top aide to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as saying “There are those in the Middle East who prefer ‘a tribal war without end.’ They can have it. But it can’t be our war. It’s not who we are — at home or abroad.”

This is the second New York Times op-ed in two days that comes out against Israeli policies.

In an editorial published Tuesday, the paper claimed that “inconclusive negotiations” between Iran and world powers “have given an opening to the Israeli prime minister to generate more hysterical opposition.”

The liberal-leaning paper stated that “It would be nice if Iran could be persuaded to completely dismantle its nuclear program, as Mr. Netanyahu has demanded, but that is unlikely to ever happen.

The editorial expressed disappointment that the failure of negotiations allowed Congress, Israel and Saudi Arabia “an opportunity to sabotage a deal.”

Zero Hour: Israel Must Choose Between Attack and Enslavement | Jewish & Israel News Algemeiner.com.

The Arak IR-40 heavy water reactor in Iran. Photo: Nanking2012/Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

 

 

 

 

–

Israelis across the political spectrum are in a state of shock over a proposed deal to lift sanctions on Iran in exchange for promises to partially suspend its nuclear program.

Acting from a position of self-imposed weakness, the world’s democracies have effectively undermined the aim of several United Nations resolutions banning any uranium enrichment. The agreement that’s currently being ironed out will allow Iran to continue to enrich, but at a lower grade.

Since 1979′s Iranian Revolution, world powers have doggedly worked at crafting and implementing a crippling sanctions regime meant to weaken the rule of Iran’s mullahs.

The sanctions have never been tougher than how they are now, with Iran becoming increasingly isolated and its leadership increasingly destabilized.

Yet just as this maximum leverage on Iran is beginning to bear fruit, sanctions are about to be eased without requiring Iran’s thuggish theocracy to dismantle even one centrifuge.

In response to this very bad deal, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a stinging rebuke to Washington, stating over the weekend that “Israel utterly rejects it and what I am saying is shared by many in the region, whether or not they express that publicly.”

So serious is the rift between Israel and the United States that, in an unprecedented move, Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke out right away against the deal and its principal backer, the United States.

Barack Obama, the perpetual crisis manager, quickly phoned Netanyahu in an attempt to tamp down growing unease over the emerging Iran deal.

The bitter lesson that Israel’s devout proponents of diplomatic engagement with Tehran are beginning to learn is that one sovereign nation can not realistically outsource its security to allies or supranational organizations.

Simply put, Israel’s zero hour with regards to Iran has never been, nor will it ever be, synchronized with that of the United States.

As such, Israel must now decide between launching a preemptive attack to eliminate the nuclear threat posed by Iran, or live under the constant threat of nuclear blackmail.

Until recently, opponents of such an attack relied heavily on an array of doomsday prophesies: the reaction of Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas; international anger directed at Israel over higher oil prices; an escalation of hostilities across the Persian Gulf.

As dire as these worse case scenarios sound, they are non-lethal and short-term.

In contrast, the cost of continued restraint could be far greater than that of a preemptive strike: a nuclearized Iran would enslave Israel both politically and militarily.

Left unimpaired, Iranian nuclear assets and materials could be shared with certain Iranian surrogates or other similar groups, including Hezbollah and other Jihadi organizations.

Regarding the legality of such an attack, if there is an imminent threat against another state, then a preemptive strike is technically lawful under the UN Charter.

Israel, like any other nation, is under no legal obligation to sit back passively and quietly await annihilation at the hands of a country that remains determined to destroy it.

Should Israel strike at Iran, the world will undoubtedly howl. Let it: this too shall pass. Guided by the rightness of its cause, Israel will be acting for the advancement of shared regional and global interests, which happen to dovetail with its own.