WarSclerotic

US races headlong for final nuclear deal with Iran – irrespective of program’s military dimension.

Iran domestic tensions boil as West battles its nuclear program |.

Internal political and economic turmoil is blurring Iran’s stance ahead of talks for comprehensive deal.

By Zvi Bar’el | Apr. 8, 2014 | 4:00 AM

Israel Hayom | Ensuring an Iranian bomb.

Ruthie Blum

New Iranian Ambassador to U.N. Denied Entry to America | United with Israel.

The United States senate unanimously voted to bar the new Iranian ambassador to the United Nations – a man with terrorist ties – from entering the country.

Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations Hamid Aboutalebi, who was directly involved in the hostage-taking incident in 1979, when 52 Americans were held for 444 days by supporters of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, will be barred from entering the United States, according to a newly approved U.S. senate bill.

Iran’s Rouhani government, which was viewed by many as more “moderate” than the previous administration, recently appointed Aboutalebi to the post. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had warned that Rouhani was a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

“It is unconscionable that in the name of international diplomatic protocol, the United States would be forced to host a foreign national who showed a brutal disregard of the status of diplomats when they were stationed in his country,” declared Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), the bill’s lead sponsor. “This person is an acknowledged terrorist.”

Iranian Ambassador Helped Siege of U.S. Embassy

The bill, supported by Republicans and Democrats alike, designates that anyone who had been involved in terrorism or espionage or who is deemed a potential security threat would be denied entry to the U.S. The new Iranian ambassador, who had participated in the siege of the U.S. embassy during the hostage-taking crisis, claims he was merely acting as a translator and negotiator.

According to the Washington Post, “several aides confirm that Cruz talked over the weekend with Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY), the chamber’s third-ranking Democrat, who also has been pushing aggressively for sanctions against Iran and for the Obama administration to block granting a visa to the new envoy.”

“As host nation of the United Nations headquarters,” the Post explains, “the US generally admits the chosen representatives of U.N. members, with limited exceptions.”

“We’re taking a close look at the case now, and we’ve raised our serious concerns about this possible nomination with the government of Iran. I’m not going to get into specifically how we’ve done that, but we have done that,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said at a press briefing last week.

American President Barack Obama had called Aboutalebi’s nomination “deeply troubling,” while Cruz, discussing the issue more recently at the Senate, labelled Rouhani’s choice a “deliberate and unambiguous insult to the U.S.”

Choice of Iranian Ambassador a ‘Slap in the Face’

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called it “a slap in the face to the Americans that were abducted and their families. It reveals a disdain for the diplomatic process and we should push back in kind.”

Fox News reports that although the U.S. had objected to Iran’s anticipated selection of Aboutalebi, “the Obama administration stopped short last week of saying it would refuse him a visa to enter the U.S. The State Department said it had raised the issue with Tehran.”

“It may be a case of strange bedfellows, but I’m glad Sen. Cruz and I were able to work out a bill that would prevent this terrorist from stepping foot on American soil,” Schumer stated. “We ought to close the door on him and others like him before he even comes to the U.S., and that’s exactly what this bill will do.”

Ya’alon: Iran sanctions violated ‘more than a few times’ | JPost | Israel News.

( Ya’alon: The next PM of Israel… – JW )

By YAAKOV LAPPIN

04/07/2014 22:23

Defense minister says Israel must continue to prepare for Iran threat based on approach of “if I am not for myself, who will be for me?”; On peace process, minister says PA is partner willing to receive but not to give.

Since Iran and the international community reached an interim deal over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program in November 2013, there have been “quite a few violations” of economic sanctions on Tehran, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Monday, during a meeting with reporters at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv.

Ya’alon said Israel is “closely following” the US-led diplomatic process with Tehran, adding that the results of the talks will have consequences for Israeli security. He hinted that Israel was continuing to prepare for the possibility that it may have to eventually act alone if the talks proved fruitless, and Iran carried on making advances in the nuclear program.

“We have to prepare, based on the ‘if I am not for myself, who will be for me?’ approach,” Ya’alon said. “The Iranians are not as isolated as they were. From their perspective, the situation has improved [since the interim agreement],” he added.

Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, continue to support the Assad regime in Syria in the civil war against rebels, a conflict that has seen 150,000 casualties so far, Ya’alon noted. Hezbollah has lost hundreds of fighters and suffered thousands of casualties in Syria, he added. The Syrian opposition is “struggling to present an alternative” due to infighting among multiple factions.

The defense minister said the rebels had launched new offenses in several areas recently, including Damascus, Aleppo, Dara, and the northern Syrian coast, near the Turkish border. Despite Syrian army efforts to push them back, the rebels control most of the Syrian Golan near the Israeli border, with the exception of Al-Khader and Quneitra – two areas that recently served as staging grounds for terrorist attacks against Israel, Ya’alon continued.

“This activity [the attacks] serves the interests of the Assad regime and Hezbollah, and was carried out by ’emissaries.’ We place the responsibility on the regime. It could have prevented the attacks,” Ya’alon added.

In neighboring Lebanon, Sunni-Shi’ite fighting has spilled over from Syria, reaching Beirut, Tripoli, and the Bek’a Valley, and is claiming dozens of casualties every month, Ya’alon said. The fighting has taken the form of car bombs, exchanges of fire, and rockets.

Despite accusing Israel of being a recent air strike on a convoy of advanced weapons in eastern Lebanon, and carrying out a bombing in the Hard Dov sector that injured four paratroopers last month, Hezbollah does not want to initiate an escalated conflict with Israel, Ya’alon said.

Turning his sights to the West Bank, the defense minister said unorganized mass rioting rises and falls due to a host of developments, including the status of talks between the PA and Israel, and the economic situation in the West Bank, The violence is ultimately rooted in incitement by official Palestinian Authority media, Ya’alon said.

“We are in the midst of a crisis [with the PA],” Ya’alon said. “The PA is a partner that is prepared to receive, but not to give. it is unwilling to talk about recognition of a Jewish state, or about ending its demand of a right of return, or an end to the conflict,” he added.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas continues to manufacture rockets and dig attack tunnels, but it is not initiating terror attacks against Israel. Palestinian Islamic Jihad, meanwhile, is “acting as an Iranian arm in our back yard. It is growing more powerful with the help of Iranian funding and training,” Ya’alon said. Smaller terror groups, dissatisfied by the reduction in violence between Gaza and Israel, are challenging Hamas due to the regime’s attempts to enforce a truce, he added.

Russia’s Ace in the Hole: a Super-Missile It Can Sell to Iran, Daily Beast, Eli Lake, April 8, 2014

(Food for thought perhaps suggesting that, in the unlikely event that the Obama Administration intends to provide Israel super-bunker buster bombs and aircraft with which to deliver them, it had best do it soon. — DM)

It’s Washington’s nightmare scenario: an aggressive Moscow deciding it’s time to arm Tehran with sophisticated weapons. And it may be closer to reality than you think.

Tensions between Russia and the West are hitting a new peak. And in this face-off, Moscow has an extraordinary piece of leverage: a super-sophisticated, bomber-killing missile that it once threatened to sell to Iran.

Last week, Reuters first reported Russia was preparing an oil-for-goods deal with Iran worth up to $20 billion. An unnamed Iranian official told the news service that the barter would include Russian weapons. And that was before further signs of Russia’s shadow invasion of Ukraine emerged Monday, when crowds spontaneously appeared in three major eastern cities to welcome the troops amassed over the border. The Daily Beast reported that associates of Viktor Yanukovych, the deposed and Kremlin-friendly Ukrainian president, weremeeting with pro-Russian activists. One keen-eyed photographer captured a man wearing a Russian Airborne forces tee-shirt at one of the protests.

The trade between Moscow and Tehran would alleviate the economic pressure on Iran that the White House has said helped bring the Islamic Republic to the bargaining table. It may even sink the talks President Obama is hoping will persuade Iran to defang its nuclear program.

If those talks fail, then Russia has the leverage to equip Iran with the missile that could defend its centrifuges and reactors from allied air strikes, the S-300.

“I could see as part of this deal [between Tehran and Moscow] that they would agree to transfer advanced missiles to Iran,” said Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the hawkish Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and an expert in the Iran sanctions. “If [Russian president Vladimir] Putin became angry enough over the West’s financial punishment of Russia, he could put in play the S-300 deal.”

The S-300 has long been Moscow’s top-of-the-line air defense system. The current model is comparable to U.S. Patriot missile batteries. The S-300 deploys sophisticated radars, launch vehicles and missiles to shoot aircraft and even ballistic missiles out of the sky. Russia has also threatened to sell the system to Syria, whose hapless air force was hacked by Israel in 2007, rendering its anti-aircraft defenses useless when Israel bombed the al-Kibar nuclear facility.

In the second term of the George W. Bush, Russia came close to selling and training Iran’s military on how to use the sophisticated S-300 system. But then in 2010, the Russians pulled back from the sale during negotiations over U.N. Security Council resolution 1929, the resolution the Obama administration used to persuade banks and finance ministries all over the world to isolate most of Iran’s economy.

Moscow ended up supporting that resolution and cancelling the sale—which was considered a triumph of the Obama administration’s foreign policy at the time. But Russia also negotiated an important loophole. While the resolution bans almost every possible arms sale imaginable, it still technically allows U.N. member states to sell Iran air defense weaponry such as the S-300 system.

“There was no prohibition of the S-300 in the resolution,” said Michael McFaul, who left his post earlier this year as the U.S. ambassador to Russia and played a role in 2010 as a senior White House staff member in negotiating the Iran resolution. McFaul said Russia’s president at the time, Dimitry Medvedev, at first privately and then publicly said the spirit of the resolution would prohibit the sale of the S-300. “But he was not obligated to do that by the resolution itself,” McFaul said.

McFaul declined to comment on whether he suspected Russia would actually provide Iran with the air defense system. Dubowitz, however, says he is concerned Moscow could renege on its promise not to sell Iran the S-300.

One Obama administration official told The Daily Beast the United States has seen no evidence to date that Russia would renege on its promise not to sell Iran the S-300 system.

But signals from Moscow and Tehran have already drawn concern from Congress. On Monday, the two senators who drafted the crippling sanctions legislation Obama has implemented against Iran urged the White House to re-impose some of the sanctions it temporarily lifted this fall when the nuclear talks with Iran began.

In the letter, Sen. Mark Kirk, a Republican, and Sen. Robert Menendez, a Democrat, wrote that they were alarmed the barter agreement reported by Reuters “may provide for the transfer to Iran of items of significant value to Iran’s military and its nuclear program.”

From the IDF and WarSclerotic…
–

▶ Happy Pesach ! פסח שמח – YouTube.

Sending a bunker-buster message to Iran.

( US general writing for Wall Street Journal:  “Give Israel MOP, and several B-52 bombers.”  –  Wow….!  – JW )

The Wall Street Journal

Tuesday, 08 April 2014 06:45By David Deptula and Michael Makovsky

Prussian leader Frederick the Great once lamented, “The ways of negotiation have failed up to the present, and negotiations without arms make as little impression as notes without instruments.” The same could be said about nuclear negotiations with Iran. The Obama administration has cut a deeply flawed interim deal, forgone new sanctions, and effectively taken the military option off the table. It’s time to increase the pressure on Tehran by boosting Israel’s military capacity to cripple Iran’s nuclear program.

It’s hard to imagine negotiations succeeding. The interim deal has undercut the leverage of the U.S. and its partners. It has triggered a rise in Iran’s oil-export revenue, while its nuclear-breakout timing remains unchanged due to increased centrifuge efficiency, as permitted in the deal. Tehran continues to deny inspectors access to key nuclear facilities. Recent tensions with Russia will only create new opportunities for Iran to exploit the U.S. in negotiations.

President Obama has already taken one potential source of leverage off the table by promising to veto legislation that threatens tighter economic sanctions on Iran. This leaves military pressure as the only option. But after the Obama administration’s unenforced “red lines” in Syria and Ukraine, Iran is understandably dismissive of the threat of U.S. military action. That leaves Israel.

The U.S. has previously recognized the importance of Israeli military pressure against Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, some of which is fortified and buried underground. In 2012, President Obama signed the United States-Israel Enhanced Security Cooperation Act, which called for the delivery of aerial refueling tankers and bunker-buster munitions to Israel.

Israel has 2,000- and 5,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, some of which were delivered by the Obama administration. Iranian planners, however, might hope that these will prove insufficient to do major damage. The U.S. should remove such doubt by providing Israel with the capability to reach and destroy Iran’s most deeply buried nuclear sites. The U.S. could do this by providing an appropriate number of GBU-57 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs, known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator or MOP, and several B-52 bombers.

The Pentagon has developed the MOP bomb specifically for destroying hardened targets. It can penetrate as deeply as 200 feet underground before detonating, more than enough capability to do significant damage to Iran’s nuclear program. There are no legal or policy limitations on selling MOPs to Israel, and with an operational stockpile at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, the U.S. has enough in its arsenal to share.

Israel, however, also lacks the aircraft to carry the MOP. Which means the U.S. would need to provide planes capable of carrying such a heavy payload. Only two can do so: the B-52 and the stealth B-2.

The U.S. has only 20 B-2s and would not share such a core component of nuclear deterrence. Nor is the Pentagon willing to part with active B-52s. Of the 744 built since 1955, all but roughly 80 have been decommissioned, sent to the “boneyard” at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, and, in compliance with arms-control-treaty obligations, mostly rendered inoperable. With plans for a new long-range bomber delayed by defense-spending cuts and sequestration, current plans call for keeping the active duty B-52s in service for at least another 20 years.

But there are more than a dozen of the relatively “newest” B-52H bombers—built in the early 1960s—in storage. Some of these should be delivered to Israel. There’s no legal or policy impediments to their transfer; they would just have to be refurbished and retrofitted to carry the MOP.

By transferring to Israel MOPs and B-52Hs the administration would send a signal that its ally, which already has the will, now has the ability to prevent a nuclear Iran. Once they are delivered—ideally as the current six-month interim deal is set to expire in July—Iran will be put on notice that its nuclear program will come to an end, one way or another.

Mr. Obama pledged in 2012, “We will do what it takes to preserve Israel’s qualitative military edge—because Israel must always have the ability to defend itself, by itself, against any threat.” Transferring to Israel MOPs and B-52s would help preserve that pledge as well as put, as Frederick the Great suggested, arms behind the current negotiations and bolster chances for reaching an acceptable final nuclear deal with Iran.

Lt. Gen. Deptula, the retired former chief of Air Force intelligence and air-campaign planner for Operations Desert Storm and Enduring Freedom, is senior adviser to the Gemunder Center at the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa). Dr. Makovsky is CEO of Jinsa and a former Pentagon official in the George W. Bush administration.

Abbas Bets on Kerry’s Desperation, Commentary Magazine, Seth Mandel, April 7, 2014

Abbas is playing Kerry. He assumes that Kerry is sufficiently desperate for negotiations that he’ll lean on Netanyahu to give Abbas whatever he wants. In all likelihood, the Israeli Cabinet (except for Tzipi Livni) will get tired of this game, which suits Abbas just fine, since he doesn’t seem to want an actual peace deal but rather a disaster he can blame on the Israelis. The question is whether Kerry–or any representative of the Obama administration–can ever get tired of scapegoating Netanyahu.

The Palestinians have had a fairly willing enabler in John Kerry so far, but if today’s New York Times report is right, they may have finally overplayed their hand. According to the Times, both sides have asked Martin Indyk to extend the talks, which were on the verge of disintegration after the Palestinians walked away. But the Palestinians are now saying they can be lured back to the table … for a price.

Apparently the Palestinians will resume negotiations on the principle that the negotiations never actually ended as long as the Israelis are made to act as though the talks crumbled and the resumption is actually a new round starting from scratch. Here’s the logic, such as it is:

Mr. Netanyahu said on Sunday that Israel would take its own “unilateral steps” in response to the Palestinians’ move last week to join 15 international treaties and conventions and reiterated that a Palestinian state could be created “only through direct negotiations, not through empty statements and not by unilateral moves.”

The Palestinians said they took the contentious step only because Israel reneged on a promise to release a group of long-serving prisoners by the end of March, breaking its own commitment as part of the negotiations.

So that’s step one: the pretext. The Palestinians say they took their unilateral steps because Israel didn’t release all the murderers it was supposed to. Those unilateral steps consisted of pushing applications to join various international conventions. According to this logic, if Israel releases the rest of those terrorists, the talks should resume. Except:

Muhammad Shtayyeh, a senior Palestinian official who resigned as a negotiator in the midst of the current talks, said on Monday that Mr. Abbas’s application to join the international entities was “irreversible” and represented a “paradigm shift” in which Palestinians would pursue other options in parallel with bilateral negotiations. But he, too, suggested that there could yet be a way out of the crisis.

“We are keeping the door open for any serious talks,” he said at a briefing in Ramallah. “We have time between today and the 29th of April. If the Israeli side is serious, we are ready for that.”

So there’s no going back. But there is a way to salvage the talks, according to the Palestinians. More concessions from Israel, with no concurrent Palestinian concessions, will bring them back to the table:

Mr. Shtayyeh rejected Israel’s demand that the applications to the entities be withdrawn and said Palestinians want to separate the issues of the release of the promised fourth batch of prisoners from that of extending the timetable for the talks. He said extending negotiations would require either a freeze on construction in West Bank settlements or the Israeli presentation of a map outlining the future borders of the promised two states.

So the two sides are to treat the negotiations as if they are beginning anew, not continuing the previous round of talks? Not exactly:

“The release of prisoners is part of an agreement, and no compromise can be accepted,” Yasser Abed Rabbo, a close aide to Mr. Abbas and an officer of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, said Sunday on the Voice of Palestine radio station.

Even if you are sympathetic to the Palestinian side in this argument, this is plainly transparent. If the Palestinians believe Israel must release the rest of the terrorists for talks to continue, then that should theoretically be the only requirement for Abbas to pretend to negotiate again. It would be appropriate for Abbas to then take back the unilateral action he claims he took in response to Israel’s action (or perceived inaction, as it were), since even he associates the two.

He doesn’t want to do that. He wants to exact a price for this delay. If you’re still with him so far, he gets the original prisoner release in order to return to negotiations plus a penalty of sorts against Israel for the delay by applying to join the international agencies and conventions. That should be it, right? Nope–Abbas wants another precondition, such as a settlement freeze, as though the process were starting from the beginning orIsrael wouldn’t release the rest of the terrorists, when in fact he acts as though both were true.

What’s the argument in favor of a round of concessions as preconditions in addition to releasing the terrorists? Abbas is playing Kerry. He assumes that Kerry is sufficiently desperate for negotiations that he’ll lean on Netanyahu to give Abbas whatever he wants. In all likelihood, the Israeli Cabinet (except for Tzipi Livni) will get tired of this game, which suits Abbas just fine, since he doesn’t seem to want an actual peace deal but rather a disaster he can blame on the Israelis. The question is whether Kerry–or any representative of the Obama administration–can ever get tired of scapegoating Netanyahu.

Erekat: Hamas Not, and Never Was, a Terror Group, Israel National News, April 7, 2014

(It all depends on the meaning of “is” “terrorist group.” On the theory that Fatah is not a terrorist group, Hamas must not be one either. As the “peace process” between Fatah and Hamas continues, that between Israel and the Palestinians continues to disintegrate. — DM)

Saeb Erekat

The Palestinian Authority, controlled by the Fatah terror group, is once again trying its hand at “unification” with its sister terror group, Hamas. As asign of Fatah’s “goodwill,” Saeb Erekat, the PA’s top negotiator and a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, called on Hamas toimplement all previous agreements with Fatah in order to “fight together against Israel.”

Erekat made the comments Saturday at a conference titled “The Strategy of Resistance.” Erekat said that “we demand that Hamas, more than ever before, implement the Cairo and Doha agreements. The political movements have an obligation to resolve their differences at the ballot box, and not through bullets.”

Hamas and Fatah have been at odds since 2007, when Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, booting out Fatah, which retreated to Palestinian Authority-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria. Centered in Ramallah, Fatah has sought to regain control of Gaza – and is willing to reconcile with Hamas, if that is what it takes.

“I hereby declare, in the make [Sic] of President Mahmoud Abbas and the directorate of Fatah, that Hamas is a Palestinian movement, and is not and never was a terror group,” Erekat added.