WarSclerotic

Israel Hayom | Poll: Israelis don’t believe Iran will stop nuclear program.

Obama advised Netanyahu of Iran talks in September – Israel News, Ynetnews.

New AP report reveals long road to Geneva agreement, including number of high-level clandestine meetings by US, Iranian officials. Report claims Netanyahu knew talks, negotiations were being held before Obama-Rohani phone call

Associated Press

On a warm day in Washington this fall, President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu huddled in the White House, each flanked by a handful of top advisers, including Vice President Joe Biden.

Just three days earlier, Obama had held an historic phone call with Iran’s new President Hassan Rohani, the leader of a country Israel sees as a threat to its very existence.

In the confines of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on Sept. 30, just after the high Jewish holidays, Obama revealed to Netanyahu that his administration had been engaged in secret, high-level diplomatic talks with the mortal enemy of the Jewish state.

Netanyahu’s immediate public reaction betrayed no surprise, but a day later he launched a full-frontal attack on Iran, delivering a blistering speech at the UN General Assembly in which he said the Islamic republic was bent on Israel’s destruction and accused Rohani of being a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

The White House meeting had been scheduled for about an hour, but continued on for 30 more minutes, leaving American and Israeli journalists crowded onto the portico outside the Oval Office to speculate about the discussions underway inside. Yet In statements after the meeting, both leaders tried to display unity rather than airing their differences on Iran in public.

Neither mentioned Rohani by name. Obama vowed to keep all options, including military action, on the table in order to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And Netanyahu said he welcomed Obama’s assurances that Iran’s “conciliatory words” must be matched by its actions.

As they finished speaking, Obama turned to Netanyahu and said: “Are you hungry? I am. Let’s go eat.” The two leaders, along with Biden, then retreated to Obama’s private dining room for a working lunch.

Media reports now suggest that Israel’s intelligence services were already aware of Obama’s clandestine outreach to Iran, which had begun some seven months earlier, but senior US officials have told The Associated Press that this was the first time America’s closest Mideast ally had been formally notified that it was underway.

In fact, at that point, and at Obama’s personal direction, senior US officials had met three times with Iranian officials in a high-stakes bid to address concerns about the country’s nuclear program and explore possibilities for improved ties. Israel, Netanyahu has said, fundamentally disagrees with the administration’s tactics.

On Sunday, just hours after Netanyahu denounced as a “historic mistake” an agreement forged between world powers and Iran to come clean about its nuclear program, Obama called the Israeli leader to reassure him of his vow not to allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. Netanyahu again expressed his unease and was unconvinced. He urged the West to reconsider.

The two sides agreed to stay in close touch about their ultimate goal: To rid Iran of the threat of nuclear weapons.

No apologies

Before Rohani’s election, while former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in power, a tense US-Iran relationship seemed unavoidable.

But Obama was determined to test that. In March, a small hand-picked group of officials led by Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Jake Sullivan, Biden’s top foreign policy adviser, boarded a military plane for Oman to meet Iranian counterparts.

Their travel plans were not on any public itineraries. No reception greeted them as they landed.

It was at this first high-level gathering at a secure location in the Omani capital of Muscat, famous for its souk filled with frankincense and myrrh, that the Obama administration began laying the groundwork for this weekend’s historic nuclear pact between world powers and Iran, The Associated Press has learned.

The AP has learned that at least five secret meetings have occurred between top Obama administration and Iranian officials since March.

Burns and Sullivan led each US delegation. At the most recent face-to-face talks, they were joined by chief US nuclear negotiator Wendy Sherman.

It was at the final get-together that the two sides ultimately agreed on the contours of the pact signed before dawn Sunday by the so-called P5+1 group of nations and Iran, three senior administration officials told the AP. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to be quoted by name talking about the sensitive diplomacy.

With low expectations, mid-level American officials began in 2011 meeting their Iranian counterparts in Muscat, one of the Arab world’s most tranquil if overlooked metropolises.

The process was guided by Sultan Qaboos, Oman’s diminutive but wily monarch, who has cultivated decades of good relations with the United States and his region’s two rivals: Sunni-controlled Saudi Arabia and Shia-dominated Iran.

Qaboos had endeared himself to the Obama administration after three American hikers were arrested in 2009 for straying across Iraq’s border into Iran. As a mediator he was able to secure their freedom over the next two years, prompting US officials to wonder whether the diplomatic opportunity was worth further exploring.

Expectations were kept low for the initial US-Iranian discussions. The officials skirted the big issues and focused primarily on the logistics for setting up higher-level talks. For the US, the big question was whether Iran’s leaders would be willing to secretly negotiate matters of substance with a country they call the “Great Satan.”

The private talks were also a gamble for the United States, which cut off diplomatic ties with Iran in 1979 after the Islamic Revolution and the taking of 52 American hostages held for 444 days after rebels stormed the US Embassy in Tehran. To this day the State Department considers Iran the biggest state supporter of terrorism in the world.

French foreign minister doubts Israel will strike Iran | JPost | Israel News.

By JPOST.COM STAFF

11/25/2013 11:55

Laurent Fabius gave radio interview saying such a move would gain little understanding; Israeli official: Jerusalem will continue efforts to ensure that Tehran does not produce nuclear weapons.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told a radio station on Monday that he did not believe Israel would launch a preemptive military assault on Iran’s nuclear installations, Israel Radio reported.

Fabius said that the European Union would likely begin lifting some of the sanctions against Iran beginning next month following the interim accord that was agreed upon between the P5+1 powers and the Islamic Republic.

Bracing for continued battle over the Iranian nuclear issue, a senior Israeli official said Sunday that Israel will continue to act in the “diplomatic arena” and “in other areas” to ensure that Iran does not get nuclear weapons.

“The ball is still in play,” the official said, as Israel digested the significance of the agreement signed in Geneva in the early morning hours that legitimizes Iran’s enrichment of uranium, but freezes the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program for six months in exchange for sanctions relief estimated at $7 billion.

“We have no intention of sitting on the sidelines.”

The official said Jerusalem would continue to make its case to “relevant people, we are not giving up.”

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke by phone Sunday evening with US President Barack Obama, the White House announced.

Their differences of opinion on this issue were on full display, with Obama applauding the agreement, saying that diplomacy “opened up a new path toward a world that is more secure,” and Netanyahu slamming it, asserting that the accord rendered the world a “much more dangerous place.”

“What was agreed last night in Geneva is not a historic agreement, it is a historic mistake,” Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting. “Today the world has become a much more dangerous place, because the most dangerous regime in the world has taken a significant step toward attaining the most dangerous weapon in the world.”

For the first time, he said, the leading powers of the world agreed to uranium enrichment in Iran, while removing sanctions that it has taken years to build up in exchange for “cosmetic Iranian concessions that are possible to do away with in a matter of weeks.”

Netanyahu said the consequences of this deal threaten many countries including Israel. He reiterated what he has said in the past, that Israel is not obligated by the agreement.

“Iran is committed to Israel’s destruction, and Israel has the right and the obligation to defend itself by itself against any threat,” he said.

“I want to make clear as the prime minister of Israel, Israel will not allow Iran to develop a military nuclear capability.”

Herb Keinon and Reuters contributed to this report.

Total, unmitigated defeat – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Op-ed: Obama abandoned US allies’ security concerns by believing appeasing Iran is only way to avoid war

Shoula Romano Horing

President Obama had to choose between dishonor and war, and he chose dishonor. Now we will have war. He has dishonored US allies in the Middle East, including Israel and the Persian Gulf states, by abandoning their security concerns regarding a nuclear Iran by believing that appeasing Iran is the only way to avoid war.

These words are those of Churchill after the Munich Agreement was signed, when Britain and France believed that handing Czechoslovakia to Hitler was the only way to save the world from another war. It is regarded as the shameful culmination of the Allies refusal to confront Nazi aggression and gave Hitler what he wanted in exchange for his verbal promise of “peace in our time” as Chamberlain called it.

After the Munich Agreement, Churchill gave a speech in the House of Commons on the future consequences to Europe and the world of the agreement which he called “total and unmitigated defeat.” Following the Geneva agreement, these warnings ring as true now as they did then.

We cannot consider the abandonment of US allies only in the light of what happened the last few weeks. This agreement in Geneva is the culmination of the uninterrupted retreat of US power under Obama for the last five years in the Middle East. For five years, the president has been betraying Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE but accommodating enemies and tyrants like Syria’s Assad, Iran’s Khamenei, and Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.

There has been five years of eager searching for any perceived moderate leader in Iran and the naïve belief that he has found the one in the smiling new Iranian President Rohani despite the fact that past evidence proves that Rohani has been a liar and a cheat in previous negotiations with the west about suspending uranium enrichment.

Let us be clear. The agreement is a total US defeat and Iranian victory. It is the first step of the new US policy of containment of Iran’s nuclear program. Despite the desperate propaganda by Obama, in reality the US and the West gave the Iranians the implied right to enrich its uranium when it agreed to let Iran continue enriching its uranium to 3.5%.

The Iranians will be able to maintain their nuclear program and continue to enrich uranium while the Americans and their allies loosen their economic suffocation of Iran and allow them to have access to at least $10 billion of assets which can be used to continue financing terrorist activities in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Iraq as well as to sustain their tyrannical regime. Moreover, once the sanctions are loosened, and the Europeans and China resume making money from Iran, it is unrealistic to believe they will be reinstated.

US will not be trusted again

Obama, Kerry and other White House official’s panicky statements during the last two weeks that threatening to impose additional sanctions on Iran will be a “march to war” reassured the Iranians that Obama was desperate for any deal. US officials’ defamatory attacks against legitimate Israeli concerns about a potential bad deal by calling them “war mongers” and keeping many of the details of the negotiations from them, as well as US reluctance to attack Syria, has told the Israelis that there is no longer any credible US military option against Iran.

Israel is not Czechoslovakia. Israel was abandoned by its ally but it is not broken and will never be silent. Israel is a nuclear power and can attack Iran on its own like it did against the Iraqi and Syrian nuclear reactors. The only obstacle is that Obama has tied Israeli hands for the next six months of negotiations. By then Iran will be a month away from building a bomb.

Knowing that Obama will never attack Iran militarily and will do his best to delay Israel from attacking Iran in time will have disastrous consequences to the Middle East. Many countries in the Middle East like Qatar and Iraq will make the best terms they can with the triumphant Iran in the hope of protection from annihilation. Many others like Egypt and Turkey will gravitate to the Russians and the Chinese for military cooperation and nuclear reactors. Others like Saudi Arabia, and UAE, will turn to the Pakistanis for a nuclear bomb.

The nuclear arms race has just begun. Rather than peace in our time Obama and his allies have given us a potential nuclear war in our time. The Middle East is not Europe and Iran is not the ex-Soviet Union. It is a suicidal Shiite state alongside suicidal Sunni states in the powder keg called the Middle East which is not susceptible to the cold war discipline of deterrence.

Meanwhile, Iranian influence and stature will grow while US influence and stature as a reliable ally will diminish. Eventually under this president, the US will retreat leaving a mess behind and even after Obama the US will not be trusted again.

Obama and the other nations in Geneva do not understand the dangers of accepting Iranian status as a threshold nuclear state. Having a nuclear Iran is not only disastrous to Israel, but also to the US and the world. Just imagine what would have happened if Hitler had acquired a nuclear weapon before Germany was defeated militarily. Iran, just as Hitler at the time, has a design not only to kill Jews, but also to rule the world by controlling the oil rich Gulf nations which control 50% of the world‘s oil supply.

The promise of “containing” a nuclear Iran by convincing them not to use the nuclear weapon will not work since the threat of nuclear attack will be enough for Iran to dictate oil prices, as well as the oil supply to the US and Europe. Then, the only option available to the US and the world will be to fight Iran, perhaps resulting in a nuclear war which could destroy the oil supply and many countries in the process.

Analysis: Iran deal is riskier than meets the eye | JPost | Israel News.

11/25/2013 06:41

Nuclear accord struck in Geneva takes high, unnecessary risks; rests on shaky foundations that could possibly lead to collapse of sanctions regime; Iran can be expected to spend next 6 month trying to divide int’l powers.

At first glance, the deal struck by Iran and the international community in Geneva is merely a first step toward a final arrangement, which, in theory, can force Iran to move back from the nuclear brink.

The Geneva deal appears to carry some welcome amendments, such as a cessation of Iranian work at the Arak heavy water reactor, the introduction of daily IAEA inspections at Iranian nuclear sites, and the neutralization of Iran’s stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium.

But upon closer inspection, the deal, though better than the first draft floated this month, takes high and unnecessary risks, and rests on shaky foundations that might just end up collapsing, bringing international sanctions down with them.

The White House has provided assurances that the few sanctions eased in this deal can be restored, and vowed to keep the pressure on Iran, presenting the arrangement as a risk-free, six-month test of Iran’s true intentions.

But if the next round of diplomacy hits an impasse, it is far from certain that the international community or the US will rush to recognize the failure, or respond by adding more sanctions against Iran.

The biting sanctions that pushed Iranians to vote for President Hassan Rouhani, and which convinced Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to negotiate more seriously, rest on an international coalition, itself made up of a wide range of countries that have diverging strategic, political and economic interests.

Iran can be expected to spend the next six months trying to divide this shaky coalition, and, aided by the lifting of some sanctions, will seek to whet the appetite of firms from around the world, to lure them back to do valuable business with it in the future.

Today it remains unclear how the White House would respond if the second stage of diplomacy with Iran fails. The US’s military deterrence is deflated, and the Obama administration’s credibility is too badly damaged in the region to cause either Riyadh or Jerusalem to trust the White House’s assurances.

A lack of firm international resolve in responding to failed talks would spell the beginning of the end of the sanctions regime, and leave Iran with its nuclear program intact.

The sanctions might crumble, but Iran would be left with all of its centrifuges in place, and an international recognition of its “right” to produce low-enriched uranium, which it obtained through Sunday’s Geneva deal.

In Jerusalem, there is one fundamental formula that trumps all others when it comes to Iran. If faced with two choices, either accepting an Iran with the bomb, or bombing Iran, Israel will always choose the latter.

A nuclear Iran, together with Iran’s trans-national terrorism and proxy networks, and the regional arms race that will surely follow, will be many times more dangerous to Israel’s well-being than an attack on Iranian nuclear sites.

ABC- John Kerry incoherently defends Iran appeasement deal – YouTube.

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This week with George Stephanopolis.  Nov. 25, 2013

Abject Surrender by the United States | The Weekly Standard.

“So in truth, an Israeli military strike is the only way to avoid Tehran’s otherwise inevitable march to nuclear weapons, and the proliferation that will surely follow. Making the case for Israel’s exercise of its legitimate right of self-defense has therefore never been more politically important”

What does Israel do now?

8:50 AM, Nov 24, 2013 • By JOHN BOLTON

Negotiations for an “interim” arrangement over Iran’s nuclear weapons program finally succeeded this past weekend, as Security Council foreign ministers (plus Germany) flew to Geneva to meet their Iranian counterpart.  After raising expectations of a deal by first convening on November 8-10, it would have been beyond humiliating to gather again without result.  So agreement was struck despite solemn incantations earlier that “no deal is better than a bad deal.”

This interim agreement is badly skewed from America’s perspective.  Iran retains its full capacity to enrich uranium, thus abandoning a decade of Western insistence and Security Council resolutions that Iran stop all uranium-enrichment activities. Allowing Iran to continue enriching, and despite modest (indeed, utterly inadequate) measures to prevent it from increasing its enriched-uranium stockpiles and its overall nuclear infrastructure, lays the predicate for Iran fully enjoying its “right” to enrichment in any “final” agreement.  Indeed, the interim agreement itself acknowledges that a “comprehensive solution” will “involve a mutually defined enrichment program.”  This is not, as the Obama administration leaked before the deal became public, a “compromise” on Iran’s claimed “right” to enrichment. This is abject surrender by the United States.

In exchange for superficial concessions, Iran achieved three critical breakthroughs. First, it bought time to continue all aspects of its nuclear-weapons program the agreement does not cover (centrifuge manufacturing and testing; weaponization research and fabrication; and its entire ballistic missile program). Indeed, given that the interim agreement contemplates periodic renewals, Iran may have gained all of the time it needs to achieve weaponization not of simply a handful of nuclear weapons, but of dozens or more.

Second, Iran has gained legitimacy. This central banker of international terrorism and flagrant nuclear proliferator is once again part of the international club.  Much as the Syria chemical-weapons agreement buttressed Bashar al-Assad, the mullahs have escaped the political deep freezer.

Third, Iran has broken the psychological momentum and effect of the international economic sanctions. While estimates differ on Iran’s precise gain, it is considerable ($7 billion is the lowest estimate), and presages much more.  Tehran correctly assessed that a mere six-months’ easing of sanctions will make it extraordinarily hard for the West to reverse direction, even faced with systematic violations of Iran’s nuclear pledges.  Major oil-importing countries (China, India, South Korea, and others) were already chafing under U.S. sanctions, sensing President Obama had no stomach either to impose sanctions on them, or pay the domestic political price of granting further waivers.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s earlier warning that this was “the deal of the century” for Iran has unfortunately been vindicated. Given such an inadequate deal, what motivated Obama to agree?  The inescapable conclusion is that, the mantra notwithstanding, the White House actually did prefer a bad deal to the diplomatic process grinding to a halt. This deal was a “hail Mary” to buy time. Why?

Buying time for its own sake makes sense in some negotiating contexts, but the sub silentio objective here was to jerry-rig yet another argument to wield against Israel and its fateful decision whether or not to strike Iran. Obama, fearing that strike more than an Iranian nuclear weapon, clearly needed greater international pressure on Jerusalem. And Jerusalem fully understands that Israel was the real target of the Geneva negotiations. How, therefore, should Israel react?

Most importantly, the deal leaves the basic strategic realities unchanged. Iran’s nuclear program was, from its inception, a weapons program, and it remains one today. Even modest constraints, easily and rapidly reversible, do not change that fundamental political and operational reality.  And while some already-known aspects of Iran’s nuclear program are returned to enhanced scrutiny, the undeclared and likely unknown military work will continue to expand, thus recalling the drunk looking for his lost car keys under the street lamp because of the better lighting.

Moreover, the international climate of opinion against a strike will only harden during the next six months. Capitalizing on the deal, Iran’s best strategy is to accelerate the apparent pace of rapprochement with the all-too-eager West. The further and faster Iran can move, still making only superficial, easily reversible concessions in exchange for dismantling the sanctions regime, the greater the international pressure against Israel using military force. Iran will not suddenly, Ahmadinejad-style, openly defy Washington or Jerusalem and trumpet cheating and violations. Instead, Tehran will go to extraordinary lengths to conceal its activities, working for example in new or unknown facilities and with North Korea, or shaving its compliance around the edges.   The more time that passes, the harder it will be for Israel to deliver a blow that substantially retards the Iranian program.

Undoubtedly, an Israeli strike during the interim deal would be greeted with outrage from all the expected circles.  But that same outrage, or more, would also come further down the road.  In short, measured against the expected reaction even in friendly capitals, there is never a “good” time for an Israeli strike, only bad and worse times.  Accordingly, the Geneva deal does not change Israel’s strategic calculus even slightly, unless the Netanyahu government itself falls prey to the psychological warfare successfully waged so far by the ayatollahs. That we will know only as the days unfold.

Israel still must make the extremely difficult judgment whether it will stand by as Iran maneuvers effortlessly around a feckless and weak White House, bolstering its economic situation while still making progress on the nuclear front, perhaps less progress on some aspects of its nuclear work than before the deal, but more on others.

And what can critics of the Geneva deal, in Washington and other Western capitals, do? They can try to advance the sanctions legislation pending in the Senate over administration objections, for the political symbolism if nothing else. Unfortunately, they’re unlikely to succeed over the administration’s near-certain opposition. Tehran judges correctly that they have Obama obediently moving in their direction, with the European Union straining at the bit for still-more relaxation of the sanctions regimes.

Instead, those opposing Obama’s “Munich moment” in Geneva (to borrow a Kerry phrase from the Syrian crisis), should focus on the larger and more permanent strategic problem: A terrorist, nuclear Iran still threatens American interests and allies, and almost certainly means widespread nuclear proliferation across the Middle East. A nuclear Iran would also be essentially invulnerable, providing a refuge that al Qaeda leaders hiding in Afghan and Pakistani caves could only dream of.

So in truth, an Israeli military strike is the only way to avoid Tehran’s otherwise inevitable march to nuclear weapons, and the proliferation that will surely follow. Making the case for Israel’s exercise of its legitimate right of self-defense has therefore never been more politically important. Whether they are celebrating in Tehran or in Jerusalem a year from now may well depend on how the opponents of the deal in Washington conduct themselves.

John Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 2005-06.

Officals: Israelis in secret trip to inspect Saudi bases. Could be used as staging ground for strikes against Iran « Klein Online.

Posted on November 24, 2013 at 12:10 PM EST

By Aaron Klein

TEL AVIV — Israeli personnel in recent days were in Saudi Arabia to inspect bases that could be used as a staging ground to launch attacks against Iran, according to informed Egyptian intelligence officials.

The officials said Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and other Arab and Persian Gulf countries have been discussing the next steps toward possible strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites.

The officials said the U.S. passed strong messages to Israel and the Saudis that the Americans control radar capabilities over the skies near Iran and that no strike should be launched without permission from the Obama administration.

It was unclear whether the purported visit to Saudi Arabia by Israeli military and intelligence officials signals any real preparation for a strike or if the trip was meant to keep pressure on the West amid Israeli fears about the current deal with Tehran.

The trip came prior to the announcement today of the deal with Western powers that aims to halt key parts of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

At a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed what he called a “bad” and “dangerous” deal, while affirming that Israel will not allow Iran to go nuclear.

“”Israel is not obligated by this agreement,” Netanyahu said.  “I want to make clear we will not allow Iran to obtain military nuclear capability.”

“Today the world became a much more dangerous place because the most dangerous regime in the world made a significant step in obtaining the most dangerous weapons in the world,” he said.

The deal reportedly halts the installation of new centrifuges, but allows Iran to keep current centrifuges used to enrich uranium.

The agreement caps the amount and type of enriched uranium Iran can produce and opens many nuclear sites up to daily inspections.  However, Israel is warning that even the low-grade uranium allowed in the agreement can be used to eventually assemble a nuclear weapons capability.

As part of the deal, Iran agreed to halt work on key components of its Arak heavy-water reactor that could be used to produce plutonium, but the country doesn’t have to dismantle the reactor.

In response, Iran gets sanctions relief, including the freeing of $7 billion or more in frozen assets.

Hours after deal was signed, President Hassan Rouhani said the agreement recognizes Tehran’s “rights” to maintain an atomic program.

▶ Israel’s answer to Obama’s APPEASEMENT deal… – YouTube.

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Listen to what Netanyahu is saying…

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The Iran deal makes clear it pays to enrich.

By Jennifer Rubin, Updated: November 24 at 8:29 am

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