WarSclerotic

Gen. Hayden: Iran Deal ‘Worst of All Possible Outcomes’.

U.S.-Iran thaw starts to reshape Mideast power balance – Al Arabiya News.

Reuters, Dubai
Sunday, 24 November 2013

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (R) shakes hands with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at the United Nations Palais in Geneva, Nov. 24, 2013. (Reuters)

Sunday’s agreement opens the way for a thaw in U.S.-Iranian confrontation that has lasted almost as long as the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, alarming Israel and Gulf Arab rulers who fear a new regional hegemony deeply hostile to their interests.

The deal to curb but not scrap Iranian uranium enrichment, which the West has long believed was meant to develop a bomb, has implications far beyond weapons proliferation in a war-scarred region critical to world oil supplies.

For some Gulf Arab states, which see Tehran as a regional troublemaker, and for Israel, which regards Iran as a mortal threat, the Geneva agreement means they have failed to dissuade Washington from a course they suspect will end in tears, such is their distrust of the Islamic Republic.

Iran will grow richer and stronger through the easing and eventual lifting of sanctions that have shackled its economy, emboldening its Islamist rulers to step up support to Shi’ite Muslim allies in Arab countries, critics of the deal say.

In contrast, supporters of the accord say a rapprochement between two powers so long at odds could help stabilize a region in turmoil and reduce sectarian strains that have set Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims bloodily against each other.

Mistrust has been mutual, as it was in the post-World War Two impasse between the West and the Soviet Union.

The United States and Iran have had no official ties since 1980 after Iranian students occupied the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 52 diplomats hostage in protest against Washington’s admission of the former Shah after he was toppled by the Islamic revolution.

“Historic mistake”

With the historic Arab power centers of Egypt, Syria and Iraq all weakened by uprisings and sectarian strife, a new start with Tehran has emerged as an enticing potential win for a U.S. administration in search of a foreign policy success.

Rami Khoury of the American University of Beirut described the interim deal restricting Iran’s nuclear work as a “very good thing” that could eventually lead to rapprochement between Tehran’s clerical rulers and U.S.-allied Gulf Arab states.

“If the negotiations continue on and keep working, and the sanctions are slowly removed, it will revive Iran’s economy, and eventually its liberal movement and I think we will slowly see social and political progress in the country,” Khoury said.

“In the short run it encourages cooperation between the United States and Iran to try and deal with Syria and stop the violence there. Right now there is a common threat developing, the (Sunni militants) who will bomb the Iranians, bomb the U.S., as we’ve seen, so they’re everybody’s enemy right now.”

Experts say Gulf Arab countries will try to piece together a diplomatic and security strategy with like-minded countries to reduce their vulnerability to a resurgent Iran now eagerly contemplating a future free of crippling sanctions.

For his part, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the interim deal was a historic mistake because “the most dangerous regime in the world took a significant step towards obtaining the world’s most dangerous weapon.”

Possible action

He reaffirmed a long-standing Israeli threat of possible military action against Iran, although a member of his security cabinet acknowledged the interim accord limited that option.

At the heart of Gulf Arab concerns is a belief that the moderate Iranian officials who negotiated the nuclear deal are not the hard men in charge of what they see as Shi’ite meddling in Sunni Arab countries. Those forces remain dominant in the Revolutionary Guards and intelligence services.

Gulf Arabs cite as a prime example Iranian support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, member of a sect that is an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, who has waged a 2-1/2-year-old war against mostly Sunni rebels backed in part by Gulf Arabs.

A senior Gulf Arab official close to Saudi government thinking told Reuters the kingdom’s attitude continued to be characterized largely by “suspicion”, based on Iranian involvement in Syria, Yemen and Bahrain.

“Mischief”

“The atomic arsenal is not their only arsenal – it is the mischief arsenal they have that worries us,” he said.

“We have had a lot of accords and promises from them in the past. Now, we hope to see a corrective process with this deal.”

The disclosure that senior U.S. officials held secret bilateral talks with Iranian counterparts in recent months to prepare for the nuclear agreement may exacerbate Gulf Arab rulers’ fears that Washington is willing to go behind their backs to do a deal with Iran.

Many Gulf Arabs suspect that the commercial imperatives that have driven decades of U.S. engagement with them are similar to those driving U.S. outreach to Tehran – business.

“The U.S. has its interests – Iran is a lucrative market. Iranians need a lot of infrastructure for rebuilding that could generate billions of dollars for U.S. and U.K. oil companies,” said Abdullatif al-Mulhim, a retired Saudi navy commodore and now a newspaper commentator.

In addition, some Gulf Arabs fret that a United States increasingly self reliant in energy thanks to domestic shale gas might be less committed to guarding the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow artery through which 40 percent of global sea-borne oil exports pass.

Sami al-Faraj, a security adviser to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), said Gulf Arab governments would now work diplomatically and on the security level to ensure they were adequately protected against any resurgent Iranian ambitions.

Gulf Arabs felt slighted by the deal, he suggested.

“Iran is sitting at the high table. We are left with the leftovers.”

“More weapons”

He added: “We will acquire more weapons…We are going to check if our shopping list is adequate to respond to this.”

“We are going to rally other nations that are hurt by this action into a unified diplomatic campaign,” Fajr said.

Warming U.S.-Iranian relations could help Assad in Syria.

Some analysts speculate that Washington’s need to protect what could become one of its few diplomatic achievements in the region will mean that it will do whatever it needs to keep the Iranian thaw on track.

“Now, the U.S. is even less likely to put serious pressure on Iran over their support of the Assad regime during the negotiations,” said Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Doha think-tank.

“And, obviously, with everyone’s attention on Iran, Assad has cover to do pretty much whatever he wants.”
Emile Hokayem of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, played down the idea that Israel and Gulf Arab states would make common cause in any systematic way against Iran.

“It’s a convergence of interest, it’s not an alliance,” he said. “Each of them could reinforce messages on Capitol Hill, but don’t be too carried away by the possibility of direct cooperation.”

When the US let Iran off the hook | The Times of Israel.

A comprehensive deal would require Iran to come clean about its nuclear weapons program and start dismantling it. The interim deal staves off that moment of reckoning. With the wall of sanctions now cracked, that moment will never come

By David Horovitz November 25, 2013, 1:57 pm

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif smiles and laughs as he speaks to the media at the International Conference Centre of Geneva, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2013, after the interim deal was concluded. (photo credit: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, Pool)

No, the provisions of the interim deal signed in Geneva with Iran early Sunday are not themselves disastrous. If the US and other world powers had been negotiating a contract with a dependable and credible interlocutor, the deal might make a certain amount of sense. The problem is that Iran is not a dependable or credible interlocutor. It is, rather, a cunning and deceptive adversary, and the US has let it off the hook.

In so far as they go, the terms of the deal make a certain amount of sense. Iran’s march to the bomb, in theory, is being temporarily constrained. It can no longer enrich uranium to 20% and must neutralize its existing stockpiles of 20% enriched uranium. It cannot increase its stockpiles of 3.5% enriched uranium. It can no longer advance work on its Arak heavy water facility, under a clause that was much improved from the amateurish formulation put to the Iranians in the original Geneva offer two weeks ago, which would have enabled them to continue construction there. Its acknowledged nuclear facilities will be subjected to far more intrusive and effective inspection. And the sanctions relief, formally at least, is relatively limited and theoretically reversible if the Iranians break their promises.

The problem is that Iran has never acknowledged that it is in fact marching to the bomb. And these interim arrangements, concluded at a moment when the regime felt itself to be under unprecedented economic pressure, a moment of maximal leverage, scandalously failed to require Iran to admit to those two decades-plus of lying and deception.

Instead, the United States, the free world’s only hope of thwarting Iran, appears to have convinced itself that this admission of duplicity, this Iranian confession that it has been developing nuclear weapons, can be extracted over the coming six months as negotiations move ahead on a permanent accord. Unfortunately, disastrously, that’s just not going to happen.

As stated by the White House on Sunday, the “comprehensive solution” to be negotiated by late May “envisions concrete steps to give the international community confidence that Iran’s nuclear activities will be exclusively peaceful.” By definition, then, such a comprehensive deal will require the exposure of those elements of the Iranian program — such as the Parchin military complex, where the IAEA believes Iran has carried out extensive nuclear weapons-related activities — that the regime has insistently shielded from international view.

Sorry, folks, but the Iranians will not be spending the next six months dutifully preparing to take the IAEA on a tour of all the facilities they have been lying about — dutifully detailing the bomb-making activities they carried out here, the explosives-testing they undertook there — en route to the dutiful dismantling of their entire military nuclear enterprise

A “comprehensive solution” would require Iran to come clean. It would disprove the regime’s insistent contention that it has always acted in good faith and has been the innocent victim of American and Zionist plots. It would show the regime to have lied to its own people. It would expose the duplicity of its leaders’ claims never to have sought the bomb.

The Iranian regime has always done everything in its power to avoid that moment of reckoning. And the US has now let if off the hook.

Sorry, folks, but the Iranians will not be spending the next six months dutifully preparing to take the IAEA on a tour of all the facilities they have been lying about — dutifully detailing the bomb-making activities they carried out here, the explosives-testing they undertook there — en route to the dutiful dismantling of their entire military nuclear enterprise. They won’t be shamefacedly throwing open the doors to Parchin. They won’t be providing the full story of what they’ve been up to at Fordo — the underground enrichment facility that, for Emily Landau, an expert on nuclear proliferation at Tel Aviv University’s INSS think tank, constitutes clear evidence of Iran’s military program. (There is no plausible civilian explanation for Iran having constructed a secret, underground facility that can hold only 3,000 centrifuges, Landau, who spoke to me at length for this article, points out. Fordo’s “only plausible purpose,” she says, is to take low-enriched uranium to weapons-grade level, for the production of one to two nuclear bombs per year.)

Dr. Emily Landau (photo credit: YouTube screenshot)

Instead, the Iranians can be utterly relied upon to spend the next six months, and a whole lot longer, arguing over the terms of the interim deal, pushing their own interpretations of what’s been agreed, while seeking every means to further ease the economic pressure they’re under. As Landau notes, the seeds of years of potential disagreement have already been sown in that there doesn’t even appear to be an agreed text of the interim deal; Iran and the White House have released different versions, with significant differences.

That avuncular, English-speaking Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will be assuring the world that Iran is fully keeping its side of the bargain, that Iran has shown its good faith, that Iran has demonstrated its mature responsibility, that Iran is being unfairly picked upon, that Iran represents no danger to anybody. And that it’s long past time to stop punishing Iran’s suffering populace with savage, unjustified economic sanctions, imposed on the basis of falsehoods and manipulation by the Israelis and their American and European patsies.

Until Sunday, the international community was telling Iran: You want sanctions relief? Then tell us the truth about your nuclear weapons program and start dismantling it. As of Sunday, the international community is telling Iran: We’re giving you limited sanctions relief, and we want you to start telling us the truth about your nuclear weapons program further on down the road.

It’s not going to work. The US has let Iran off the hook.

In theory, the cause is not yet entirely lost. The $7 billion worth of promised financial relief could turn out to be all the sanctions relief that Tehran gets. The painstakingly constructed wall of economic pressure, so effectively heightened these past two years under the Americans’ direction, could yet hold. And if that pressure were maintained, and the regime felt its very survival was at stake a few months from now, it could yet cave and come clean.

But none of that’s going to occur, as the United States must have known. Surrounded by Iran-backing Russia, amoral China and the impotent Europeans, facing an Iran playing very smart cards from a very weak hand, the United States didn’t merely blink in Geneva. It closed its eyes.

The wall of sanctions is cracked now, and the crack will widen. Self-interested nations and hard-nosed businesspeople will see to that. The pressure is lifting. There’ll be no comprehensive deal six months from now — no deal, that is, that exposes and dismantles Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The Iranians are sighing with relief.

An unnamed senior Israeli official, presumably not a million miles from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was quoted on Channel 2 news Sunday night as saying that, in Geneva, “Obama established Iran as a nuclear threshold state.” Indeed so.

Does that mean the Iranians will now speed to the bomb? And if they did, would they use the bomb against Israel? No, and no. They’re unlikely to overtly flout the understandings they’ve reached with the world powers in the near future. Rather, as they argue over terms and battle relentlessly to destroy the sanctions regime, they’ll seek to entrench the current situation in which the military aspects of their program remain off-limits to the world’s prying eyes.

And as its economy revives, nuclear-threshold state Iran will gradually assert itself as a regional heavyweight, with the leverage and clout to pursue its rapacious territorial and ideological goals, most emphatically including the ongoing effort to weaken and isolate and demonize and threaten Israel. And Israel will find its capacity to respond necessarily limited.

Landau has not entirely given up hope. She notes that a comprehensive deal would need to cover all aspects of the Iranian program, include “highly intrusive verification mechanisms, expose all past weaponization activities and ensure rollback from all military aspirations.” For that to be achieved, she stresses, the international community will have to hold firm on sanctions pressure as Iran complains and obfuscates and argues and exploits divisions in the P5+1 and uses every other trick in the book in the coming months. “You’ll need all possible leverage to get a full deal,” she says. “And without a full deal, you’ve lost.”

Trouble is, the Americans signaled the easing of that crucial leverage in Geneva on Sunday. The US, that is, let Iran off the hook.

Canada vows to keep its Iran sanctions after deal – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Canadian FM skeptical of Geneva agreement with Iran, decided to keep ‘tough’ sanctions in place, because ‘Iran has not earned the right to have the benefit of the doubt,’ FM Baird said

AFP

Canada vowed Sunday to keep its sanctions regime against Iran after a preliminary deal on the Islamic republic’s nuclear program, calling for a more conclusive accord.

Iran agreed to curb its nuclear program for the next six months in exchange for limited sanctions relief, in a preliminary accord meant to lay the foundations for a comprehensive agreement, but Canada’s foreign minister says he’s “deeply skeptical.”

But Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird insisted that Ottawa would keep its “tough” sanctions “in full force” until negotiators clinch a permanent agreement, because “Iran has not earned the right to have the benefit of the doubt.”

Kerry, Lavrov after deal reached with Iran (Photo: AFP)

“Effective sanctions have brought the regime to present a more moderate front and open the door to negotiations,” he said in a statement.

“Today’s deal cannot be abused or undermined by deception. The Iranian people deserve the freedom and prosperity that they have been denied for too long by the regime’s nuclear ambitions.”

Under the deal, Tehran will limit uranium enrichment – the area that raises most suspicions over Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons drive – to low levels that can only be used for civilian energy purposes. UN atomic inspectors will also have additional access, including site inspections.

In exchange, the Islamic republic will receive some $7 billion in sanctions relief and the powers promised to impose no new embargo measures for six months if Tehran sticks to the accord.

But the raft of international sanctions that have badly hobbled the Iranian economy remain untouched.

Photo: AFP

 “A nuclear Iran is not just a threat to Canada and its allies, but it would also seriously damage the integrity of decades of work on nuclear non-proliferation. It would provoke other neighboring states to develop their own nuclear deterrent in an already volatile region,” Baird said.

“We will evaluate today’s deal not just on the merits of its words, but more importantly on its verifiable implementation and unfettered access of all Iranian nuclear facilities.”

Threat to global peace

In July 2012 Canada suspended diplomatic relations with Iran and expelled Iranian diplomats from the country.

According to a CBC report from the time, Ottawa closed its embassy in Iran and has given all remaining Iranian diplomats in Canada five days to leave the country. “Canada has closed its embassy in Iran, effective immediately, and declared personae non gratae all remaining Iranian diplomats in Canada,” Baird said in a statement.

“Canada’s position on the regime in Iran is well known. Canada views the Government of Iran as the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today.”

Baird’s statement cited Iran’s failure to comply with UN resolutions on its nuclear program and its threats against Israel as the reason for the move, as well as Tehran’s support of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s brutal crackdown in the pro-democratic movement in his country.

IAF, US Air Force hold largest joint-military exercise in Israel’s history – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Israel, Greece, Italy, US are holding massive aerial training exercise in Israel with almost 100 aircraft. IDF stress: Exercise has nothing to do with Iran

Yoav Zitun

Some 50 fighter jets belonging to Israel, Greece, the US and Italy took off Sunday morning from the Ovda air base, signaling the beginning of the largest military air exercise in Israel’s history.

The Blue Flag exercise is being hosted by Israel will continue until Thursday and will include more than 60 jet fighters among them the Tornado, AMX and F-15. The IAF is also sharing its jets, both as part of the allies’ forces and as the mock-enemy they will target.

The IDF stresses that the exercise’s goal is to examine the group’s general aerial capabilities, not focusing on any specific operational situation; the comments are intended to stress that the exercise is not related to any future possible attack plan on Iran.

IAF pilot preparing for drill (Photo: Yair Sagi)

The exercise has been in the works for over a year, and in anticipation the IAF conducted two training flights a day during the last six months. According to an IDF source, each one of the participating countries is paying for the costs of its respective share in the exercise.

Representatives from over 20 nations – including a slew of military attachés and representatives from the Cypriot and Bulgarian air forces – are viewing the exercise. However, the Turkish and Polish representatives did not partake.

IAF plane before the mission (Photo: Yair Sagi)

The Polish delegation was forced to back out of the training mission because of budgetary reasons, despite the fact that Polish pilots have been training with their Israel counterparts for some months.

The exersize includes training missions to identify anti-aircraft missiles – ranging from RPGs to advanced systems – as well as surface-to-air ones. The exercise will also include mock dogfights.

US, Italy, Greece, and Israeli pilots before the drill (Photo: Yair Sagi)

 For the first time, the training will include the use of a new information system which sends live data from the plane to ground forces. “In the past, foreign nations were uncomfortable in sharing this level information gather after flights, but this time it is happening,” a military official involved in the exercise reported.

“The IAF has been practicing operations with foreign militaries for more than three decades, but only recently have be begun training together on a daily basis. This includes daily flights to Greece. The IAF has become attractive to foreign armies because of its massive operational experience,” he said.

Diplomats as well as journalists from Israel and the participating nations were invited to watch the exercise.

US Ambassador in Israel Dan Shapiro, who took a few hours off from Israel’s scathing reactions to the Geneva agreement with Iran spoke and said “We live in a tough world and dangerous world. Israel lives in a dangerous neighborhood…It need the best trained forces … and it needs allies.”

Islamic Operative in White House Scores Another Victory for Muslim Brotherhood. | Jerusalem Post – Blogs.

They did it again. While we watched President Obama dodge the Syrian red line with Putin taking the lead, while we held our collective breaths as Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and France’s President Hollande stalled negotiations over the Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the Islamists were at it again.

This time they cunningly swooped in and placed their wildest dreams into the massive immigration reform bill recently passed by the United States Senate.

Most Americans believe the bill is about amnesty, or a way to grant general pardon for political offenses such as disobedience to immigration laws. For example, most think it will give millions of Hispanic illegal aliens living in the U.S. amnesty. The bill goes far beyond obedience to law. Even pro-immigration Christian evangelicals say the bill is not amnesty. Then what is it?

The sweeping immigration reform bill, called the “Amnesty Bill” has Islamic inferences buried deep inside that should give Americans the shudders, and indeed, the entire world, especially United States allies. The bill reportedly includes a fast track to citizenship for immigrants from Muslim countries. U.S. President Obama hailed the passage of the bill as a critical step towards fixing America’s broken immigration system. While the “Gang of Eight” senators crafted the bill, an outsider, who just happens to be a Muslim Brotherhood associate, provided “treasured input,” according to a close associate of the Obama administration.

Fast tracking Muslims is not new to President Obama. Going back to 2010, Obama issued an executive order to fast-track immigrants from Islamic countries. In short, a person from a Muslim country could become a U.S. citizen in as little as ten weeks, with no I.D. and no declaration of fealty to the U.S. Constitution. The recent Senate immigration reform bill further expands the previously strict qualifications for immigration from Afghanistan and allows more family members to join admitted asylum seekers. In addition, the numbers allowed to arrive from Saudi Arabia is many times that of Afghanistan. If amendments were to be added to the immigration reform bill, more Muslim countries, such as Chechnya, could be added. Refugees from the Middle East could raise Muslim immigration numbers even higher. Could Muslims over take Hispanics?

Speaking of refugees, according to Amnesty International, Jordan is forcibly returning thousands of refugees back to Syria. Why?  Because Jordan is experiencing economic and other pressures as a result of accepting so many refugees.  Amnesty argues that Jordan’s pressures do not justify such violations of international law. Enter the United States as rescuer. Word is out that Obama intends to grant political asylum to large numbers of Syrian refugees (mostly Muslim). This global picture from Syria, to Russia, to Iran, to Israel to the United States is akin to a chess match, but with far-reaching implications and ramifications.

Who inside the Obama Administration helped to craft the shocking increases in Muslim immigration that is buried deep inside the text of the Senate bill? The input came from Mohammed Magdi, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Magdi is one of six Muslim policy advisors of the Obama administration with direct ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.

We used to believe that 2 + 2 = 4. In other words, we appealed to common sense. Does it make sense for the U.S. to admit large numbers of refugees and immigrants from Muslim countries, most of which would be practicing Sharia Law? It appears they could become U.S. citizens almost overnight. What a “checkmate” that would be for Islamists!

While the Middle East chess game continues and boils over with political intrigue and potential dangers to otherwise stable governments, the Muslim Brotherhood appears to be on the march with tentacles of influence reaching far beyond the Middle East. Taking countries from the inside out is their distinct goal. Egypt seems to have seen the light. What will it take to nudge the rest of the world into the dawn of truth, particularly United States citizens?

When immigration reform isn’t about reform; when amnesty isn’t about amnesty; when the rule of law is not the rule of law, it must be about something else. Could it be that the Muslim Brotherhood brothers already embedded inside the U.S. government are envisioning and planning their worldwide caliphate ruled by Sharia Law to be centered inside the United States of America? Amnesty, America and the Brotherhood. What would (will) America and the world look like with the Islamic flag flying over the White House?

Netanyahu said to have warned Obama over Iran nuclear deal | JPost | Israel News.

11/25/2013 13:21

In an interview with the Knesset Channel, Likud MK Hanegbi said Netanyahu warned the president against repeating North Korea, Pakistan precedents.

A lawmaker from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud faction told an Israeli television station on Monday that the premier rebuked US President Barack Obama over the interim agreement agreed upon by the Western powers and Iran on Sunday.

“The prime minister made it clear to the most powerful man on earth that if he intends to stay the most powerful man on earth, it’s important to make a change in American policy because the practical result of his current policy is liable to lead him to the same failure that the Americans absorbed in North Korea and Pakistan, and Iran could be next in line,” Likud Beytenu MK Tzachi Hanegbi told the Knesset Channel.

Obama called Netanyahu on Sunday from Air Force One to discuss the interim agreement struck between world powers and Iran over its controversial nuclear program.

In the call, Obama told Netanyahu that the P5+1 — the US, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and Germany — would use the next several months to forge a “lasting, peaceful and comprehensive” solution to the slow-motion nuclear crisis causing consternation throughout the Middle East.

“The president told the Prime Minister that he wants the United States and Israel to begin consultations immediately regarding our efforts to negotiate a comprehensive solution,” the White House said in a readout of the call.

“The President underscored that the United States will remain firm in our commitment to Israel, which has good reason to be skeptical about Iran’s intentions.”

While the White House said both leaders expressed their mutual desire to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, it did not acknowledge any disagreement voiced in the phone call.

Netanyahu on Sunday called the deal, hailed by the US, a “historic mistake” that would make the region more dangerous tomorrow than it was before.

After a hard series of negotiations, Iran agreed late Saturday night to pause much of its nuclear program, including construction on its heavy-water plutonium reactor in Arak and the installation of advanced centrifuges made to efficiently enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels. Iran also agreed to allow unfettered access to its nuclear sites and to dilute stockpiles of uranium already thoroughly enriched.

In exchange, the Islamic will attain relief from financial sanctions from the international community valued at up to $7 billion.

Michael Wilner contributed to this report.

Israel Hayom | Two nuclear options.

Richard Baehr

It was a week for nuclear options for the Obama administration. In Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama lobbied Democratic senators to support the so-called “nuclear option,” to kill the ability of the minority party in the Senate (the Republicans) to filibuster and block appointments made by the president for certain high-level administration jobs and lifetime federal court appointments.

Of course, the president and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had argued against exactly such a nuclear option by the Republicans when they were both senators in the minority eight years earlier, and wanted to preserve their ability to block appointments by then President George W. Bush.

Obama has been at war with Republicans since he took office. His rhetoric attacking the opposition party has been one of the constants of his five years in office. He has never sought their counsel for any important legislation, whether the stimulus package or the healthcare reform bill (“Obamacare”) or the new banking and financial regulations (Dodd-Frank). Obama wanted to defeat Republicans, not negotiate with them.

And then there is the other nuclear option in Geneva this week, when the Obama administration, as represented by Secretary of State John Kerry, chose to sign a very bad deal with Iran, to ensure that there was a deal that almost certainly puts the Islamic republic on a path to a nuclear weapon. The deal also commits the United States to a course that will make it much more difficult for Israel to stop Iran’s nuclear effort in the six-month period of the “interim agreement,” and also makes it much harder for opponents of the deal in the U.S. Congress to step up sanctions and force a better deal.

It is obvious that the Obama administration never had any real interest in using any of the tools at its disposal to slow Iran down in its effort to join the nuclear weapons club. In 2009, the administration took a pass when millions of Iranians took to the streets to protest the stolen elections in that country. The Obama team argued that taking sides, as it did in Egypt and other countries (which facilitated regime change in those countries) would have destroyed the diplomatic outreach then underway, a fruitless effort of course, but one it did not want to harm (or more likely admit had failed). Maintaining the mullahs’ hold on Iran, or getting the mullahs to become better behaved (as all good nations should), has always seemed to be a bigger interest of this administration than assuring that Iran does not get the bomb. So much for regime change as an option.

There has always been the afterthought, added to all discussions about U.S. policy to prevent Iran from going nuclear, that “all options remained on the table. No one has seriously believed this. At a time when the U.S. is in full flight retreat around the world — withdrawing from Iraq, pulling almost all forces out of Afghanistan, ignoring our own red lines in Syria and allowing the wholesale slaughter of innocents to continue year after year, and failing to protect our State Department personnel in Libya, the likelihood that the U.S. would use whatever is left of its degraded and underfinanced military power to strike Iran, was an empty threat. It is a 100 percent certainty now that no such action will be forthcoming whatever Iran’s behavior during the remainder of the president’s term.

Then there is the new deal (or sellout). What has the West gained with this interim agreement? Not much, it turns out. In the five years of the Obama administration, Iran has increased its centrifuges by almost 1,000 percent, and may now have enough nuclear material for several bombs. Various estimates of the time for Iran to “break out ” to weapons grade capability at this point are a month to a few months.

The deal signed in Geneva deals only with facilities and sites that are known to the U.S. and Western nations, and not those that Iran has hidden from view, much as the current sites were once hidden from view. The Iranians can take the stocks of 20% enriched uranium and turn it into an oxide or degrade it to the 5% level, and that will add a week to a few weeks to the time it will take them to make such material weapons grade when they choose the date for the breakout. Centrifuges that we do not know about may continue to enrich to the 20% level (or higher) as the president and his dupes, like New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, talk about a strategic restructuring in the Middle East and a new Iran on the world stage.

Skeptics of the deal do not trust Iran or accept the transparency it is selling with new inspections regimes. For anyone who has watched the behavior of the Iranians since the Khomeini revolution in 1979, trusting Iran to live by the terms of the deal is a laughable notion at this point. It takes a Kerry, an Obama, or a Catherine Ashton to believe it. And they believe it, because they want to believe it. As Eli Lake has argued, the P5+1 has now accepted the right of Iran to enrich uranium, and to continue to do so during the six months of the interim agreement, despite its violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its defiance of a series of U.N. resolutions prohibiting them from doing so. Iran says it has the right to do so and we will no longer challenge them, but will rely instead on lawyerly like wording finesses to claim we have not changed the rules of the game.

Then there are sanctions. The truth of the matter is that the Obama administration has attempted to block each and every attempt by Congress to pass new sanctions, and then lobbied hard with its Democratic allies to water down new sanctions and allow for presidential waivers to override sanctions that are passed (exactly what the administration will choose to do after signing the current agreement, and allowing somewhere between $10 billion and $20 billion, now blocked from the regime, to begin to flow to the Iranian economy). Most importantly, the momentum of sanctions has been broken. Nations and companies will begin to set up new deals in anticipation of a further sanctions relaxation ahead. And what promises will the Kerry/Ashton team get in exchange for the next set of sanctions relief?

Iran will not send any of its enriched uranium out of the country. It will not destroy any centrifuges, and in fact will continue to build more, though supposedly none of them will be brought online during the six-month period (at least at the sites we know about). If the next set of negotiations falters, Iran will have the nuclear fuel it needs for a bomb or bombs in the country, tens of thousands of centrifuges to continue and expand the program, and a heavy-water reactor in Arak not far from completion for plutonium production. John Bolton has pointed out that there is nothing whatever in the agreement that limits Iran’s ability to work on all parts of a weaponization program other than enrichment — centrifuge manufacturing and testing; weaponization research and fabrication; and ballistic missile development.

One country, however, most certainly has drawn the short end of the stick from this pathetically unbalanced deal. That country, of course, is Israel. The Obama administration made it very clear a little over a year ago that Israel should not even think about conducting a military operation against Iran before the presidential election in November 2012. Such a military action might have drawn the U.S. into the conflict, disrupted the narrative of Obama the peacemaker (and bin Laden killer), and endangered the president’s re-election campaign. There are many important events on the world stage, but in the president’s mind, the fate of the world depended above all on his having four more years to work his magic at home and abroad.

Now, with a six-month interim deal signed, the pressure on Israel not to act will come not only from Obama but all of the signatories to the deal. Israel is truly on its own now with regard to stopping the Iranians from changing the power equation in the region and becoming a truly existential threat to Israel. The Israeli unhappiness extends of course to Iran’s Sunni enemies — Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, and probably Egypt and Turkey as well. Nuclear proliferation in the region is now a near certainty — whether from new development of nuclear programs or purchased nuclear programs (think Pakistan).

If Israel chooses to act, and does so with a quiet assist from some of its Arab neighbors who share its concerns, the Obama administration is almost certain to sit it out rather than join in the effort, and U.S. pressure on the Palestinian track, in retaliation for Israel’s “bad behavior,” will greatly increase.

Israel has always had lots of friends on Capitol Hill. The next few weeks will reveal how deep these friendships are. The friends are always out there in force for easy votes, like foreign aid, or to cheer Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he speaks to a joint session of Congress. Most members from both parties in both the House and Senate have been strongly supportive of sanctions directed at Iran, though several Democrats acceded to administration pressure to slow walk sanctions bills in the past few years. What are the chances that a fierce partisan like Reid will choose to align himself with Republicans and pass new tough sanctions now that this deal has been signed, putting him in opposition to the president of his own party and to Kerry, a former Senate ally?

One possibility is that Reid will allow the new sanctions to pass, and then have the bill vetoed by Obama. If that happens, an educated guess is that in either the House or the Senate (more likely the Senate), the necessary two-thirds vote to override a presidential veto will fall a few votes short. Reid and Nancy Pelosi will have their Democrats on record on the first vote, and in some cases on the override vote, in order to preserve good relations with the pro-Israel community. But Obama will win and the new sanctions will be killed.

There are now a series of reports from journalists in several countries, according to which, even before the supposedly new moderate Iranian leadership of Hassan Rouhani was elected, Obama sent State Department officials to hold secret negotiations with Iran. This set up the current round of talks that proceeded so quickly to fruition. Israel, of course, was not informed.

America seems to have chosen a new ally in the region and the two nations, the U.S. and Iran, now seem to be on the same page on the issues that matter. The president has also made it pretty clear which country no longer really matters as his rush to a deal with Iran has greatly increased the risks for Israel, America’s traditional ally. The president was negotiating behind Israel’s back. It was never a back that he “had.”

Israel Hayom | You don’t negotiate with evil.

Dror Eydar

Israel Hayom | The fight is not over.

Dan Margalit

A colleague who specializes in modern history remarked to me on Sunday that the deal signed with Iran is not comparable to the disgrace signed in Munich in 1938. In this historian’s eyes, the appropriate comparison is the West’s silence in the face of Hitler’s invasion of the Rhineland in 1936. Back then, the enlightened world could have stopped the Nazi regime and perhaps even toppled it, but the Obamas and the Kerrys of the 1930s wanted, above all, calm and quiet, which of course clouded their vision.

What followed was predictable, and in November 1937, Hitler gathered his senior officers and told them of his plans to start a war that would expand the borders of the Third Reich. “Now, I am at the ideal age,” he told his awe-struck generals, and eventually, he realized his ambitions and inflicted a horrible disaster upon humanity.

These two events are the historical parallel to what happened in Geneva on Sunday.

This claim begs analysis. It’s true that expert researchers like Dr. Emily Landau from the Institute for National Security Studies say the deal is not as terrible as Israeli leaders are making it out to be. What is it then? In the allotted six months of the agreement, the Iranians will do everything in their power to sabotage it; they are not satisfied with the $7 billion released to them from frozen accounts in Western banks in return for slowing down their nuclear project.

It is completely clear that there will not be any progress toward a permanent deal which is designed to completely dismantle Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear bomb.

Theoretically, U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry say, if there is no progress then we can roll up the rug and reinstate crushing economic sanctions. But this is only theoretical.

In the next six months, big Western businesses will pounce on the Persian market, signing trade contracts; stocking up on supplies and equipment will kick into high gear so that if the West decides to return to past economic sanctions, these business deals will already be underway and it will be impossible to prevent their completion. Any economist who is familiar with the struggling Western economies knows that the cartels and tycoons will not let their governments renew sanctions on Iran.

If there is no revolution in Western leadership, and if politicians can’t see the horizon past their own terms in office, the ayatollahs will build a nuclear bomb. There are several signs pointing toward this outcome: The Iranians are determined, persistent and cunning, and they will not give up their strategic goal: establishing a Persian empire in the Middle East.

The American government is weaker than the enlightened, democratic world wishes to believe. Israel failed to meet the Americans halfway in negotiations with the Palestinians, and did nothing to ease American or European anxiety on the peace process; Israel’s poker chips, which once allowed it to threaten credible military action, have visibly scattered across the table with statements from former Mossad director Meir Dagan, former Shin Bet security agency director Yuval Diskin, former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and even President Shimon Peres, with his objection to the government’s policies.

Alas, despair is poor counsel. We must fight the Iranian nuclear project with the tools that remain in Israel’s hands.