WarSclerotic

Karzai’s Taliban Threat: Afghan Leader TWICE Said He Might Join Insurgency.

(This is what the US is investing 100,000 troops to protect while allowing Iran to develop nuclear weapons unhindered.  The insanity of Obama’s Middle East policy just keeps getting crazier and more dangerous. – Joseph Wouk)

KABUL — Afghan President Hamid Karzai threatened over the weekend to quit the political process and join the Taliban if he continued to come under outside pressure to reform, several members of parliament said Monday.

Karzai made the unusual statement at a closed-door meeting Saturday with selected lawmakers – just days after kicking up a diplomatic controversy with remarks alleging foreigners were behind fraud in last year’s disputed elections.

Lawmakers dismissed the latest comment as hyperbole, but it will add to the impression the president – who relies on tens of thousands of U.S. and NATO forces to fight the insurgency and prop up his government – is growing increasingly erratic and unable to exert authority without attacking his foreign backers.

“He said that ‘if I come under foreign pressure, I might join the Taliban’,” said Farooq Marenai, who represents the eastern province of Nangarhar.

“He said rebelling would change to resistance,” Marenai said – apparently suggesting that the militant movement would then be redefined as one of resistance against a foreign occupation rather than a rebellion against an elected government.

Marenai said Karzai appeared nervous and repeatedly demanded to know why parliament last week had rejected legal reforms that would have strengthened the president’s authority over the country’s electoral institutions.

Two other lawmakers said Karzai twice raised the threat to join the insurgency.

The lawmakers, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of political repercussions, said Karzai also dismissed concerns over possible damage his comments had caused to relations with the United States. He told them he had already explained himself in a telephone conversation Saturday with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that came after the White House described his comments last week as troubling.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said reports Karzai threatened to abandon the political process and join the Taliban insurgency if he continued to receive pressure from Western backers to reform his government are troubling.

“On behalf of the American people, we’re frustrated with the remarks,” Gibbs told reporters.

The lawmakers said they felt Karzai was pandering to hard-line or pro-Taliban members of parliament and had no real intention of joining the insurgency.

Nor does the Afghan leader appear concerned that the U.S. might abandon him, having said numerous times that the U.S. would not leave Afghanistan because it perceives a presence here to be in its national interest.

Karzai spokesman Waheed Omar’s phone was turned off and another number for him rang unanswered Monday. Deputy spokesman Hamed Elmi’s phone rang unanswered.

The comments come against the background of continuing insurgent violence as the U.S. moves to boost troop levels in a push against Taliban strongholds in the south.

NATO forces said they killed 10 militants in a joint U.S.-Afghan raid on a compound in Nangarhar province’s Khogyani district near the Pakistani border early Monday, while gunmen seriously wounded an Afghan provincial councilwoman in a drive-by shooting in the country’s increasingly violent north.

NATO also confirmed that international troops were responsible for the deaths of five civilians, including three women, on Feb. 12 in Gardez, south of Kabul.

A NATO statement said a joint international-Afghan patrol fired on two men mistakenly believed to be insurgents. It said the three women were “accidentally killed as a result of the joint force firing at the men.”

International force officials will discuss the results of the investigation with family of those killed, apologize and provide compensation, he said.

The two men killed in the Gardez raid had been long-serving government loyalists and opponents of al-Qaida and the Taliban, one serving as provincial district attorney and the other as police chief in Paktia’s Zurmat district.

Their brother, who also lost his wife and a sister, said he learned of the investigation result from the Internet, but had yet to receive formal notice.

Mohammad Sabar said the family’s only demand was that the informant who passed on the faulty information about militant activity be tried and publicly executed.

“Please, please, please, our desire, our demand is that this spy be executed in front of the people to ensure that such bad things don’t happen again,” Sabar said.

In the latest of a series of targeted assassination attempts blamed on militants, Baghlan provincial council member Nida Khyani was struck by gunfire in the leg and abdomen in Pul-e Khumri, capital of the northern province, said Salim Rasouli, head of the provincial health department. Khyani’s bodyguard was also slightly injured.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the shooting, although suspicion immediately fell on Taliban fighters who often target people working with the Afghan government and their Western backers.

One month ago, a member of the Afghan national parliament escaped injury when her convoy was attacked by Taliban insurgents in eastern Afghanistan. Female government officials regularly report receiving threats to their safety. Some women leaders, including a prominent policewoman, have been assassinated.

The Taliban rigidly oppose education for girls and women’s participation in public affairs, citing their narrow interpretation of conservative Islam and tribal traditions. Militants, who are strongest in the south and east, carry out beatings and other punishments for perceived women’s crimes from immodesty to leaving home unaccompanied by a male relative.

Also Monday, the organizer of a national reconciliation conference – known as a jirga – scheduled for early May said it would not include insurgent groups such as the Taliban. There has also been indications it would include discussion of the withdrawal of 120,000 foreign troops in the country.

Ghulam Farooq Wardak, the minister of education who is organizing the conference, said it will focus on outlining ways to reach peace with the insurgents and the framework for possible discussions.

Out of the jirga will come the “powerful voice of the Afghan people,” Wardak said. “By fighting, you cannot restore security. The only way to bring peace is through negotiation.”

KABUL — Afghan President Hamid Karzai threatened over the weekend to quit the political process and join the Taliban if he continued to come under outside pressure to reform, several members of parliament said Monday.

Karzai made the unusual statement at a closed-door meeting Saturday with selected lawmakers – just days after kicking up a diplomatic controversy with remarks alleging foreigners were behind fraud in last year’s disputed elections.

Lawmakers dismissed the latest comment as hyperbole, but it will add to the impression the president – who relies on tens of thousands of U.S. and NATO forces to fight the insurgency and prop up his government – is growing increasingly erratic and unable to exert authority without attacking his foreign backers.

“He said that ‘if I come under foreign pressure, I might join the Taliban’,” said Farooq Marenai, who represents the eastern province of Nangarhar.

“He said rebelling would change to resistance,” Marenai said – apparently suggesting that the militant movement would then be redefined as one of resistance against a foreign occupation rather than a rebellion against an elected government.

Marenai said Karzai appeared nervous and repeatedly demanded to know why parliament last week had rejected legal reforms that would have strengthened the president’s authority over the country’s electoral institutions.

Two other lawmakers said Karzai twice raised the threat to join the insurgency.

The lawmakers, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of political repercussions, said Karzai also dismissed concerns over possible damage his comments had caused to relations with the United States. He told them he had already explained himself in a telephone conversation Saturday with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that came after the White House described his comments last week as troubling.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said reports Karzai threatened to abandon the political process and join the Taliban insurgency if he continued to receive pressure from Western backers to reform his government are troubling.

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“On behalf of the American people, we’re frustrated with the remarks,” Gibbs told reporters.

The lawmakers said they felt Karzai was pandering to hard-line or pro-Taliban members of parliament and had no real intention of joining the insurgency.

Nor does the Afghan leader appear concerned that the U.S. might abandon him, having said numerous times that the U.S. would not leave Afghanistan because it perceives a presence here to be in its national interest.

Karzai spokesman Waheed Omar’s phone was turned off and another number for him rang unanswered Monday. Deputy spokesman Hamed Elmi’s phone rang unanswered.

The comments come against the background of continuing insurgent violence as the U.S. moves to boost troop levels in a push against Taliban strongholds in the south.

NATO forces said they killed 10 militants in a joint U.S.-Afghan raid on a compound in Nangarhar province’s Khogyani district near the Pakistani border early Monday, while gunmen seriously wounded an Afghan provincial councilwoman in a drive-by shooting in the country’s increasingly violent north.

NATO also confirmed that international troops were responsible for the deaths of five civilians, including three women, on Feb. 12 in Gardez, south of Kabul.

A NATO statement said a joint international-Afghan patrol fired on two men mistakenly believed to be insurgents. It said the three women were “accidentally killed as a result of the joint force firing at the men.”

International force officials will discuss the results of the investigation with family of those killed, apologize and provide compensation, he said.

The two men killed in the Gardez raid had been long-serving government loyalists and opponents of al-Qaida and the Taliban, one serving as provincial district attorney and the other as police chief in Paktia’s Zurmat district.

Their brother, who also lost his wife and a sister, said he learned of the investigation result from the Internet, but had yet to receive formal notice.

Mohammad Sabar said the family’s only demand was that the informant who passed on the faulty information about militant activity be tried and publicly executed.

“Please, please, please, our desire, our demand is that this spy be executed in front of the people to ensure that such bad things don’t happen again,” Sabar said.

In the latest of a series of targeted assassination attempts blamed on militants, Baghlan provincial council member Nida Khyani was struck by gunfire in the leg and abdomen in Pul-e Khumri, capital of the northern province, said Salim Rasouli, head of the provincial health department. Khyani’s bodyguard was also slightly injured.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the shooting, although suspicion immediately fell on Taliban fighters who often target people working with the Afghan government and their Western backers.

One month ago, a member of the Afghan national parliament escaped injury when her convoy was attacked by Taliban insurgents in eastern Afghanistan. Female government officials regularly report receiving threats to their safety. Some women leaders, including a prominent policewoman, have been assassinated.

The Taliban rigidly oppose education for girls and women’s participation in public affairs, citing their narrow interpretation of conservative Islam and tribal traditions. Militants, who are strongest in the south and east, carry out beatings and other punishments for perceived women’s crimes from immodesty to leaving home unaccompanied by a male relative.

Also Monday, the organizer of a national reconciliation conference – known as a jirga – scheduled for early May said it would not include insurgent groups such as the Taliban. There has also been indications it would include discussion of the withdrawal of 120,000 foreign troops in the country.

Ghulam Farooq Wardak, the minister of education who is organizing the conference, said it will focus on outlining ways to reach peace with the insurgents and the framework for possible discussions.

Out of the jirga will come the “powerful voice of the Afghan people,” Wardak said. “By fighting, you cannot restore security. The only way to bring peace is through negotiation.”

Iran urges Russia to resist missile sale pressure – washingtonpost.com.

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran urged Russia on Tuesday not to bow to Western pressure over the sale of a Russian missile defense system to the Islamic Republic which could protect its nuclear facilities from air strikes.

PoliGazette » Daniel Pipes: When Israel Stood Up to the U.S..

As tensions between Israel and the U.S. “climb to unfamiliar heights,” Daniel Pipes looks back at “a prior round of tensions nearly thirty years ago, when Menachem Begin and Ronald Reagan were in charge. In contrast to Binyamin Netanyahu’s repeated apologies, Begin adopted a quite different approach.”

When the Reagan administration criticized Israel for actually acting in its own interests, Begin lashed out:

“Three times during the past six months, the U.S. Government has ‘punished’ Israel,” Begin began. He enumerated those three occasions: the destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactor, the bombing of the PLO headquarters in Beirut, and now the Golan Heights law. Throughout this exposition, according to Avner, Lewis interjected but without success: “Not punishing you, Mr. Prime Minister, merely suspending …,” “Excuse me, Mr. Prime Minister, it was not …,” “Mr. Prime Minister, I must correct you …,” and “This is not a punishment, Mr. Prime Minister, it’s merely a suspension until …”

Fully to vent his anger, Begin drew on a century of Zionism:

What kind of expression is this – “punishing Israel”? Are we a vassal state of yours? Are we a banana republic? Are we youths of fourteen who, if they don’t behave properly, are slapped across the fingers? Let me tell you who this government is composed of. It is composed of people whose lives were spent in resistance, in fighting and in suffering. You will not frighten us with “punishments.” He who threatens us will find us deaf to his threats. We are only prepared to listen to rational arguments. You have no right to “punish” Israel – and I protest at the very use of this term.

Pipes concludes:

(5) Politicians in other countries quite frequently attack the United States. Indeed, Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, did so last week. But his purpose – to convince his countrymen that he is not, in fact, a kept politician – differed fundamentally from Begin’s of asserting Israel’s dignity.

(6) It is difficult to imagine any other Israeli politician, Binyamin Netanyahu included, who would dare to pull off Begin’s verbal assault.

(7) Yet that might be just what Israel needs.

I fear Pipes is right. It’s time for Israel to stand up to Obama.

The relationship between both has turned sour; not because of anything Israel has done, but because of the new president’s apparent dislike for the Jewish nation-state. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has to stop apologizing and pretending that Obama doesn’t mean wrong. He does, for he’s no friend of Israel.

AFP: Iran missile will strike Tel Aviv if hit: Khamenei aide.

TEHRAN — An aide to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said that the Islamic republic will strike Tel Aviv with its missiles if it comes under attack, Fars news agency reported on Tuesday.

“If the enemy takes its chance and fires a missile towards Iran, the dust from an Iranian missile strike will rise in the heart of Tel Aviv even before the dust from the enemy attack settles” in Iran, said cleric Mojtaba Zolnoor, who is Khamenei’s representative in the elite Revolutionary Guards.

Fars reported that Zolnoor made the comments at a mosque late Monday, where he also said Iran’s foes were aware that Tehran “has become a ballistic power.”

Iran has regularly boasted of its missile capability, saying it has an arsenal which can strike regional arch-foe Israel.

Israel and US meanwhile have never ruled out a military strike against Iran to stop its galloping nuclear programme.

France24 – Israel distributes biochemical war protection kits.

AFP – Israel Tuesday began distributing millions of protection kits against biochemical warfare, Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai announced, stressing the campaign was not linked to any imminent threat.

“We have equipped ourselves with millions of protection kits against biological or chemical warfare, and a massive distribution programme for the population started today,” Vilnai told army radio.

“Every family in Israel can receive these kits at home and be instructed on how to use them by Israeli postal workers, at an average cost of 25 shekels (five dollars), or pick them up free of charge at post office counters.”

The distribution came as an aide to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, quoted by the Islamic republic’s Fars news agency on Tuesday, warned that his country would hit Tel Aviv with missiles if it came under attack.

“If the enemy takes its chance and fires a missile towards Iran, the dust from an Iranian missile strike will rise in the heart of Tel Aviv even before the dust from the enemy attack settles” in Iran, said cleric Mojtaba Zolnoor.

Iran has regularly boasted of its missile capability, saying it has an arsenal which can strike Israel, which along with Washington has not ruled out a military strike to halt Tehran’s controversial nuclear programme.

But Vilnai emphasized the distribution of the protection kits was “not linked to any precise current threat.”

The Israeli government decided on January 5 to distribute eight million new gas masks, one for each citizen, by 2013 and already distributed gas masks to 70,000 residents of Or Yehuda, near Tel Aviv in February.

Israel has long feared chemical or biological weapons may be used against it in a future conflict involving the Jewish state’s arch-foes, Iran or Syria.

The country came under sustained attack during its 2006 war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, when more than 4,000 Katyusha rockets were launched at north Israel in 34 days, sending hundreds of thousands of residents fleeing south.

Gas masks were distributed to Israel’s population during the 1991 Gulf War over Kuwait when now executed dictator Saddam Hussein’s Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles armed with conventional warheads at Israel.

Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms – NYTimes.com.

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

President Obama on Monday discussing his new nuclear strategy, which would limit the conditions for using such weapons.

WASHINGTON — President Obama said Monday that he was revamping American nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons.

But the president said in an interview that he was carving out an exception for “outliers like Iran and North Korea” that have violated or renounced the main treaty to halt nuclear proliferation.

Discussing his approach to nuclear security the day before formally releasing his new strategy, Mr. Obama described his policy as part of a broader effort to edge the world toward making nuclear weapons obsolete, and to create incentives for countries to give up any nuclear ambitions. To set an example, the new strategy renounces the development of any new nuclear weapons, overruling the initial position of his own defense secretary.

Mr. Obama’s strategy is a sharp shift from those of his predecessors and seeks to revamp the nation’s nuclear posture for a new age in which rogue states and terrorist organizations are greater threats than traditional powers like Russia and China.

It eliminates much of the ambiguity that has deliberately existed in American nuclear policy since the opening days of the cold war. For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.

Those threats, Mr. Obama argued, could be deterred with “a series of graded options,” a combination of old and new conventional weapons. “I’m going to preserve all the tools that are necessary in order to make sure that the American people are safe and secure,” he said in the interview in the Oval Office.

White House officials said the new strategy would include the option of reconsidering the use of nuclear retaliation against a biological attack, if the development of such weapons reached a level that made the United States vulnerable to a devastating strike.

Mr. Obama’s new strategy is bound to be controversial, both among conservatives who have warned against diluting the United States’ most potent deterrent and among liberals who were hoping for a blanket statement that the country would never be the first to use nuclear weapons.

Mr. Obama argued for a slower course, saying, “We are going to want to make sure that we can continue to move towards less emphasis on nuclear weapons,” and, he added, to “make sure that our conventional weapons capability is an effective deterrent in all but the most extreme circumstances.”

The release of the new strategy, known as the Nuclear Posture Review, opens an intensive nine days of nuclear diplomacy geared toward reducing weapons. Mr. Obama plans to fly to Prague to sign a new arms-control agreement with Russia on Thursday and then next week will host 47 world leaders in Washington for a summit meeting on nuclear security.

The most immediate test of the new strategy is likely to be in dealing with Iran, which has defied the international community by developing a nuclear program that it insists is peaceful but that the United States and its allies say is a precursor to weapons. Asked about the escalating confrontation with Iran, Mr. Obama said he was now convinced that “the current course they’re on would provide them with nuclear weapons capabilities,” though he gave no timeline.

He dodged when asked whether he shared Israel’s view that a “nuclear capable” Iran was as dangerous as one that actually possessed weapons.

“I’m not going to parse that right now,” he said, sitting in his office as children played on the South Lawn of the White House at a daylong Easter egg roll. But he cited the example of North Korea, whose nuclear capabilities were unclear until it conducted a test in 2006, which it followed with a second shortly after Mr. Obama took office.

“I think it’s safe to say that there was a time when North Korea was said to be simply a nuclear-capable state until it kicked out the I.A.E.A. and become a self-professed nuclear state,” he said, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency. “And so rather than splitting hairs on this, I think that the international community has a strong sense of what it means to pursue civilian nuclear energy for peaceful purposes versus a weaponizing capability.”

Mr. Obama said he wanted a new United Nations sanctions resolution against Iran “that has bite,” but he would not embrace the phrase “crippling sanctions” once used by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. And he acknowledged the limitations of United Nations action. “We’re not naïve that any single set of sanctions automatically is going to change Iranian behavior,” he said, adding “there’s no light switch in this process.”

In the year since Mr. Obama gave a speech in Prague declaring that he would shift the policy of the United States toward the elimination of nuclear weapons, his staff has been meeting — and arguing — over how to turn that commitment into a workable policy, without undermining the credibility of the country’s nuclear deterrent.

The strategy to be released on Tuesday is months late, partly because Mr. Obama had to adjudicate among advisers who feared he was not changing American policy significantly enough, and those who feared that anything too precipitous could embolden potential adversaries. One senior official said that the new strategy was the product of 150 meetings, including 30 convened by the White House National Security Council, and that even then Mr. Obama had to step in to order rewrites.

He ended up with a document that differed considerably from the one President George W. Bush published in early 2002, just three months after the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Bush, too, argued for a post-cold-war rethinking of nuclear deterrence, reducing American reliance on those weapons.

But Mr. Bush’s document also reserved the right to use nuclear weapons “to deter a wide range of threats,” including banned chemical and biological weapons and large-scale conventional attacks. Mr. Obama’s strategy abandons that option — except if the attack is by a nuclear state, or a nonsignatory or violator of the nonproliferation treaty.

The document to be released Tuesday after months of study led by the Defense Department will declare that “the fundamental role” of nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attacks on the United States, allies or partners, a narrower presumption than the past. But Mr. Obama rejected the formulation sought by arms control advocates to declare that the “sole role” of nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack.

There are five declared nuclear states — the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China. Three states with nuclear weapons have refused to sign — India, Pakistan and Israel — and North Korea renounced the treaty in 2003. Iran remains a signatory, but the United Nations Security Council has repeatedly found it in violation of its obligations, because it has hidden nuclear plants and refused to answer questions about evidence it was working on a warhead.

In shifting the nuclear deterrent toward combating proliferation and the sale or transfer of nuclear material to terrorists or nonnuclear states, Mr. Obama seized on language developed in the last years of the Bush administration. It had warned North Korea that it would be held “fully accountable” for any transfer of weapons or technology. But the next year, North Korea was caught aiding Syria in building a nuclear reactor but suffered no specific consequence.

Mr. Obama was asked whether the American failure to make North Korea pay a heavy price for the aid to Syria undercut Washington’s credibility.

“I don’t think countries around the world are interested in testing our credibility when it comes to these issues,” he said. He said such activity would leave a country vulnerable to a nuclear strike, and added, “We take that very seriously because we think that set of threats present the most serious security challenge to the United States.”

He indicated that he hoped to use this week’s treaty signing with Russia as a stepping stone toward more ambitious reductions in nuclear arsenals down the road, but suggested that would have to extend beyond the old paradigm of Russian-American relations.

“We are going to pursue opportunities for further reductions in our nuclear posture, working in tandem with Russia but also working in tandem with NATO as a whole,” he said.

An obvious such issue would be the estimated 200 tactical nuclear weapons the United States still has stationed in Western Europe. Russia has called for their removal, and there is growing interest among European nations in such a move as well. But Mr. Obama said he wanted to consult with NATO allies before making such a commitment.

The summit meeting that opens next week in Washington will bring together nearly four dozen world leaders, the largest such gathering by an American president since the founding of the United Nations 65 years ago. Mr. Obama said he hoped to use the session to lay down tangible commitments by individual countries toward his goal of securing the world’s nuclear material so it does not fall into the hands of terrorists or dangerous states.

“Our expectation is not that there’s just some vague, gauzy statement about us not wanting to see loose nuclear materials,” he said. “We anticipate a communiqué that spells out very clearly, here’s how we’re going to achieve locking down all the nuclear materials over the next four years.”

Indiana Gazette > B Opinions.

On all fronts, President Barack Obama’s policies in the Middle East are failing. So what is the president doing? Taking it out on America’s closest ally, Israel.

The administration’s top priority in the region should be to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. That’s clearly not happening.

Obama’s second-biggest priority – if not his first, given the president’s campaign pledges – is to get U.S. troops out of Iraq.

That plan was going along nicely until Iraq’s elections – a tribute to Bush administration policy, but claimed as a success by Obama officials – produced a political deadlock that may lead to violence and extend the U.S. troop presence.

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And, third, Obama wants to be the president who finally produces a two-state peace between Israel and the Palestinians. But that’s not happening, either, largely because of mistakes made by the administration itself.

(Afghanistan is in South Asia, not in the Mideast, but the administration’s courageous policy isn’t going very well there, either, with Afghan President Hamid Karzai entertaining Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, abetting rampant corruption and accusing the United States of trying to dominate his country.)

Obama gives every indication of believing the “Arab narrative” of what blocks Middle East peace – namely, Israeli (not Palestinian) intransigence.

His animus isn’t into Jimmy Carter territory yet – Carter likens Israel to apartheid South Africa – but Obama is given to outbursts of rage at Israeli “provocations,” but none to those committed on the Palestinian side.

Contrast the reaction of the administration to the March 11 dedication of a square in Ramallah, interim capital of the Palestinian Authority, honoring a terrorist with the Israeli announcement March 9 of construction of 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem.

The square in Ramallah now honors Dalal Mughrabi, leader of a Palestinian terror squad that killed 38 Israelis aboard a bus in 1978, 13 of them children.

When Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on March 22, she said that the dedication “insults families on both sides of the conflict who have lost loved ones.”

But she incorrectly blamed the action on “a Hamas-controlled municipality,” when it was not authorized by that terrorist group, but by Fatah, the party of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. She did not condemn him. By contrast, on Obama’s personal orders, the administration fired every verbal gun in its arsenal at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the Jerusalem announcement – even though it knew he was blindsided and embarrassed by right-wingers in his own government.

It was, as the administration said, “an insult” to visiting Vice President Joseph Biden, who “condemned” it. That was a reasonable reaction.

But then, on Obama’s orders, Clinton upbraided Netanyahu in a 45-minute phone call publicized by the administration, and her spokesman said that Netanyahu had drawn the entire U.S.-Israeli “bilateral relationship” into question.

When Netanyahu spoke to AIPAC, he made it clear that Israel would not stop building in its capital, Jerusalem, even though it has frozen settlement activity in the West Bank.

He then went to the White House – and was treated like a pariah, denied customary photographs with the president, let alone a press availability. Also, according to reports from the Israeli side, Netanyahu’s aides stayed past midnight in the White House and had to ask for food and water.

It’s conceivable that Obama’s approach is directed more at Netanyahu than Israel and that he hopes, as Bill Clinton did, to drive the Likud leader from office and have him replaced by a less hard-line prime minister.

But Obama’s whole approach neglects some facts. During Clinton’s final months in office in 2000, Israel agreed to a peace plan substantially turning the West Bank over to Palestinian rule. It was rejected by then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Right-wing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew Israeli forces from Gaza in 2004 – whereupon Hamas took over the territory and began firing rockets at Israeli towns.

Before he left office in 2008, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered Palestinians the most generous peace plan yet, and they refused to take it.

Now, they are refusing even face-to-face negotiations with Israel. Why? Because last March, Obama and Clinton demanded total cessation of Israeli settlement activity on former Palestinian territory – whereupon that became the Palestinians’ precondition for participation in peace talks, which have yet to resume.

Obama has been publicly pounding on Israel for concessions but never publicly leans on the Palestinians.

Meantime, the administration is leaning on Iran, but ineffectually. Clinton said at AIPAC that “the United States is determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons,” and if Iran persists, “our aim is not incremental sanctions, but sanctions that will bite.”

Obama said he anticipated that the U.N. Security Council would agree to sanctions within “weeks,” but the truth is that China and Russia are blocking them and, if finally persuaded to impose some, will see that they are weak.

Obama should be doing what Bill Clinton did to prevent Serbia from committing genocide in Muslim Kosovo: go outside the U.N., form a European “coalition of the willing” and cut off Iran’s gasoline.

Iran may have enough highly enriched uranium to test a simple Hiroshima-style bomb in 2011. It would be a huge embarrassment to Obama a year before he seeks re-election.

It would also be a dire threat to Israel, whose existence Iran has vowed to end. Israel will be sorely tempted to attack Iran to prevent its developing a bomb.

Obama surely doesn’t want that. It could create chaos in oil markets and the world economy, not to mention the Mideast.

But Obama’s persuasive power with Israel? It’s fading fast – and it’s his own fault.

Obama: A nuclear Iran inevitable.

US President said “current course would provide them with nuclear capabilities.

It is inevitable that Iran will produce nuclear weapons, as things stand, US President Barack Obama said on Monday, in an interview with The New York Times. Seeming to indicate his administration was now resigned to a future including a nuclear-armed Iran.

President Obama stated he was now convinced that “the current course they’re on would provide them with nuclear weapons capabilities,” though he gave no timeline.

He dodged when asked whether he shared Israel’s view that a “nuclear capable” Iran was as dangerous as one that actually possessed weapons.

“I’m not going to parse that right now,” he said. But he cited the example of North Korea, whose nuclear capabilities were unclear until it conducted a test in 2006, which it followed with a second shortly after Mr. Obama took office.

President Obama was speaking about revamping American nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons, with exceptions directed at “outliers like Iran and North Korea” that have violated or renounced the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

On March 28th former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton warned of the White House moving towards acceptance of a nuclearly capable Iran. “I very much worry the Obama administration is willing to accept a nuclear Iran, that’s why there’s this extraordinary pressure on Israel not to attack in Iran,” Bolton told Army Radio.

On Saturday night a Israel urged international action on Iran. In response to an announcement by Iran’s nuclear chief of plans to build new atomic facilities in the country, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s newest warning regarding Israel’s demise, a senior government official called for “determined and effective international action.”

“Ahmadinejad’s continuous outbursts of extremist rhetoric only prove to the entire international community the seriousness of the threat posed by the Iranian regime’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, and heightens the need for determined and effective international action,” the official said.

Ahmadinejad, referring on Saturday to escalating tensions in the Gaza Strip, said IDF action would “cost” Israel “too much.”

“I say to the Zionists and their supporters that they have already committed enough crimes,” he told an Iranian crowd. “A new adventure in Gaza will not save you, but hasten your demise.”

Faced with the prospect of new sanctions because
of Iran’s nuclear defiance, Ahmadinejad said that such penalties would only strengthen his country’s technological advancement and help it to become more self-sufficient.

“Don’t imagine that you can stop Iran’s progress,” Ahmadinejad said in remarks broadcast live on state television. “The more you reveal your animosity, the more it will increase our people’s motivation to double efforts for construction and progress of Iran.”

The Iranian president claimed US pressure on Iran had backfired and made Washington more isolated in the eyes of the world.

China, which has veto power in the UN Security Council and whose support would be key, has not confirmed US reports that it has dropped its opposition to new sanctions. Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, is in China in the hopes of winning assurances from Beijing that it will oppose such measures.

Iran’s economy has suffered over the past year, and parliament approved a cut in subsidies that keep fuel prices low, a further blow to Iranians already experiencing high unemployment and inflation.

The UN Security Council could consider new punishments on Iran, including increasing financial squeezes on the extensive holdings of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. The US has also said it could seek to penalize companies that sell fuel to the oil-rich Islamic Republic, which imports about 40 percent of the fuel it needs because its refineries cannot keep pace.

Ahmadinejad added that the US has failed to isolate Iran. He said the fact that Obama’s recent visit to Afghanistan was not announced beforehand for security reasons was evidence of America’s own isolation.

“First, let’s see who is isolated. We think those who can’t show up publicly among the people and directly address them are isolated – those who fear nations. Gentlemen go to a country where they have 60,000 troops without any prior announcement. Who is isolated?” Ahmadinejad said.

The Iranian president noted that his own recent trip to Afghanistan was announced in advance and said he was warmly received.

“You are isolated yourself, but you are a hotheaded and don’t understand it,” he said.

Interview on Iran-US relations.

By Behdad Bordbar

I have a rare chance to interview with professor .Dr. Trita Parsi is the author of Treacherous Alliance – The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States, He is professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins.

In 2002, Parsi founded the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) “to enablea Iranian Americans to condemn the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and that he has since run it as a grass-roots group aimed at strengthening their voice.” Through the organization, he supports engagement between the US and Iran in belief that it “would enhance our [US] national security by helping to stabilize the Middle East and bolster the moderates in Iran.

Q: It seems that the situation in Iran has reached the point of no return. The demonstrators in the streets have calling for weeks for the downfall of the Islamic Republic, hence the removal of supreme leader from power. But opposition leaders, so far, remained uncertain, while the debate over the future of democratic movement is going on. What is your opinion about future of Green movement?

A: I believe that the Iranian people’s aspiration for democracy, human rights and proper representation is unbeatable. The struggle for democracy in Iran is more than a century old. It has faced many obstacles; its progress has not always been unidirectional. But the forces for authoritarianism and repression don’t have time on their side. Whether the movement will be victorious in the short run, or in the medium term, is difficult to predict. But I think it is undeniable that the aspirations are not going away, and hence, whether it is manifested through the Green movement or through some other form, the demands for democracy will remain till they are met.

Q: The Iranian leadership’s handling of the dispute over the tenth presidential election, which resulted in violent crackdown of protests, had a significant effect on future of Islamic regime. You have broad connections with intellectuals, politicians and journalists. How do you sum up political analyses or Iran’s current situation in Washington?

A: The policy in Washington is entering a new phase, the pressure track. Though the President Obama says that the door for diplomacy is still open, not many resources are put into it. And frankly, it is not clear whether diplomacy under these circumstances – where Iran seems incapable of making big decisions – is valuable. At the same time though, the pressure track is unlikely to produce any results. And the fear is that just as sanctions are seen as a political necessity today due to the perception of diplomacy failing, there is a risk that military action will be seen as a necessity in 12 or so months from today, when the sanctions path has been deemed a failure.

Q: As we know president Obama came to office with hope of ‘a new beginning’ of engagement with political leaders in Tehran. He said his administration was committed “to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community. This offer was rejected by Tehran. Supreme leader of Iran warned negotiating with the United States would be “naive and perverted” and that Iranian politicians should not be “deceived” into starting such talks. Last week Iran arrested leader of Jundullah, Militant Islamist organisation and blamed United States for support of terrorism, while there are strong rumours that his arrest only became possible through the help of Americans.  Do you think the strategy of negotiations with current administration has come to its dead end?

A: The picture is quite a bit more complicated than your question reveals. From the US perspective, hope for this round of diplomacy has been depleted. Yet, there isn’t any real confidence that pressure will lead to a solution. But starting a new round of diplomacy while the Iranian regime seems incapable of making decisions, and while nuclear-first negotiations risk hurting the movement fro democracy, may be unwise.

Either way, any new potential diplomacy, the mistakes of the past must be corrected. Diplomacy must give equal weight to the human rights situation in Iran and should not be cantered or exclusively about the nuclear issue.

Q: The new head of IAEA informed the international community that Iran is not co-operating with the UN nuclear watchdog’s investigation into the country’s nuclear programme .United States and its allies are going to impose new sanctions on Iran. Is the international community in your view taking the right approaches?

A: There is little confidence that sanctions will work, even among its proponents. The question has to a large extent become about imposing either broad based, indiscriminate sanctions, or targeted sanctions. Indiscriminate sanctions have in the past only hurt the Iranian economy and at times even strengthened the regime and the IRGC. Targeted sanctions that hit the people in the regime responsible for the human rights abuses and the nuclear program seems wiser, though there are question marks about their efficiency as well. At the end of the day, no one singly measure can be successful. It’s about crafting a policy that combines various measures and utilizes all their strengths.

Q: Mr. Ahmadinejad is well known for his rhetoric’s against Israel; Iranians have consensus that Iran is not a security threat against Jewish state. Israeli lobby is strongly trying to convince public opinions that Iran is working to develop a nuclear–armed bomb/missile. In the other hand Israeli leadership repeatedly said they put all the options on the table .How serious are threat of direct conflagration between Iran and Israel?

A: The risk of a war initiated by an Israeli attack on Iran is increasing. In the past, Israeli rhetoric about bombing Iran was mostly aimed at putting pressure on the US and the EU to be tough with Iran. At this point though, particularly with the deterioration of US-Israeli relations, we are entering an era of greater uncertainty.

We also have to keep in mind, as several Israeli officials have told me, that Israel is very concerned about a Green victory in Iran. The Israelis fear that if the Greens win, Iran will become a country that continues to develop nuclear energy, but with a nicer face and with much international sympathy for its emerging democracy. As a result, for the Israelis – who focus on Iran’s capabilities more than on its regime – they will face greater difficulty isolating Iran, pushing to sanction it or to build a consensus around bombing it. Add that to the fact that any attack on Iran likely would enable the regime to go after the Green movement with even greater brutality, and you have a very explosive mix.

Obama Seems Unserious About a Nuclear Iran – WSJ.com.

Obama is acting as if he believes a nuclear Tehran is inevitable.

‘Our aim is not incremental sanctions, but sanctions that will bite.” Thus did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seek to reassure the crowd at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee two weeks ago about the Obama Administration’s resolve on Iran. Three days later, this newspaper reported on its front page that “the U.S. has backed away from pursuing a number of tough measures against Iran” in order to win Russian and Chinese support for one more U.N. sanctions resolution.

This fits the pattern we have seen across the 14 months of the Obama Presidency. Mrs. Clinton called a nuclear-armed Iran “unacceptable” no fewer than four times in a single paragraph in her AIPAC speech. But why should the Iranians believe her? President Obama set a number of deadlines last year for a negotiated settlement of Iran’s nuclear file, all of which Tehran ignored, and then Mr. Obama ignored them too.

In his latest Persian New Year message to Iran, Mr. Obama made the deadline-waiver permanent, saying “our offer of comprehensive diplomatic contacts and dialogue stands.” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had a quick rejoinder. “They say they have extended a hand to Iran,” the Iranian President said Saturday, “but the Iranian government and nation declined to welcome that.”

The Iranians have good reason to think they have little to lose from continued defiance. Tehran’s nuclear negotiator emerged from two days of talks in Beijing on Friday saying, “We agreed, sanctions as a tool have already lost their effectiveness.” He has a point.

The Chinese have indicated that the most they are prepared to support are narrow sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program of the type Tehran has already sneered at. As the Journal’s Peter Fritsch and David Crawford reported this weekend, the Iranians continue to acquire key nuclear components from unsuspecting Western companies via intermediaries, including some Chinese firms.

Yet the Administration still rolls the sanctions rock up the U.N. hill, in a fantastic belief that Russian and Chinese support is vital even if the price is sanctions that are toothless. French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged Mr. Obama a year ago to move ahead with sanctions even without the Russians and Chinese, but Mr. Obama insisted he needed both. A year later, everyone except apparently Mr. Obama can see who was right.

The Administration also argued upon taking office that by making good-faith offers to Iran last year, the U.S. would gain the diplomatic capital needed to steel the world for a tougher approach. Yet a year later the U.S. finds itself begging for U.N. Security Council votes even from such nonpermanent members as Brazil and Turkey, both of which have noticeably improved their ties with Iran in recent months.

The U.S. can at this point do more unilaterally by imposing and enforcing sanctions on companies that do business in Iran’s energy industry. But so far the Administration has shown considerably less enthusiasm for these measures than has even a Democratic Congress.

As for the potential threat of military strikes to assist diplomacy, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has made his doubts about their efficacy very public. The President’s two-week public attempt to humiliate Benjamin Netanyahu has also considerably lessened the perceived likelihood of an Israeli strike on Iran, thereby further diminishing whatever momentum remains for strong sanctions.

All of these actions suggest to us that Mr. Obama has concluded that a nuclear Iran is inevitable, even if he can’t or won’t admit it publicly. Last year Mrs. Clinton floated the idea of expanding the U.S. nuclear umbrella to the entire Middle East if Iran does get the bomb. She quickly backtracked, but many viewed that as an Obama-ian slip.

Most of the U.S. and European foreign policy establishment has already concluded that Iran will succeed, and the current issue of Foreign Affairs makes the public case for what to do “After Iran Gets the Bomb.” Authors James Lindsay and Ray Takeyh argue that a nuclear Iran is containable, and that it is better than the alternative of a pre-emptive U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

However, even they acknowledge that a nuclear Iran “would be seen as a major diplomatic defeat for the United States,” in which “friends would respond by distancing themselves from Washington [and] foes would challenge U.S. policies more aggressively.” And that’s the optimistic scenario.

Meanwhile, the CIA has recently reported that Iran more than tripled its stockpile of low-enriched uranium in 2009; that it has “[moved] toward self-sufficiency in the production of ballistic missiles”; and that it “continues to develop a range of capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons.” A senior Western official recently told us he is confident the Iranians either have or are building secret nuclear facilities beyond the one near Qom that was disclosed last year.

President George W. Bush will share responsibility for a nuclear Iran given his own failure to act more firmly against the Islamic Republic or to allow Israel to do so, thereby failing to make good on his pledge not to allow the world’s most dangerous regimes to get the world’s most dangerous weapons. But it is now Mr. Obama’s watch, and for a year he has behaved like a President who would rather live with a nuclear Iran than do what it takes to stop it.