Israel must take Iran at its word

Yes, Israel must take Iran at its word and recognize that the nightmare of an Iranian regime able to back its rhetoric with substance will soon be its new reality. Under such circumstances, the Israelis would be foolish to respond to the threat with inaction.

Michael Rubin..
Commentary Magazine..
27 March '15..

As President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry rush to a nuclear deal that addresses few of the original issues that have sparked international concern with regard to Iran’s nuclear program, it may be useful to consider just why Israel has come to view a nuclear capable Islamic Republic of Iran as an existential threat. While there is much to criticize in the technicalities of the agreement, the consistency and frequency of Iranian threats against the Jewish state, as well as the prestige within Iran of those who have made such threats, are too often ignored.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was an unabashed racist and anti-Semite. He began his seminal essay on Islamic government—the exegesis that underlays the Islamic Revolution and Islamic Republic—by cursing the Jews. “From the very beginning, the historical movement of Islam has had to contend with the Jews, for it was they who first established anti-Islamic propaganda and engaged in various stratagems, and as you can see, this activity continues down to the present,” he declared.

Then, of course, there have been the repeated declarations about Israel’s destruction. Iranian authorities have declared the last Friday in Ramadan to be “Qods [Jerusalem] Day” and have reserved it for the most vitriolic sermons and threats. It was on Qods Day in 2001 that Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president and one of the most influential regime figures, declared, “If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.” Hassan Rouhani was, of course, Supreme National Security Council chairman at the time. He applauded. Has he changed? No. One of his first actions as president was to underscore the importance of the annual Qods Day rally.

Other Iranian figures appointed by the supreme leader have also threatened to eradicate Israel by means of nuclear weapons. Why Western diplomats believe the assurances they receive in English when the supreme leader’s inner circle says quite the opposite in Persian is something someone might want to ask America’s nuclear negotiators. Likewise, while Obama seems to embrace the pre-World War I notion of secret treaties, there is no reason why the supreme leader’s fatwa against nuclear weapons should remain secret unless, of course, the assurance which Obama so often cites simply does not exist. Certainly, if the backbone of newfound trust in Iran is such a fatwa, the White House could provide its text. That it chooses not to do so again amplifies concerns that Obama has become Khamenei’s useful idiot.

U.S. Security Guarantees, the Ukraine, Iran, and the Threat of a Nuclear Middle East

...without considering America’s Ukraine policy, it’s impossible to grasp quite how disastrous the emerging Iran deal really is. To understand why, consider the curious threat issued by an unnamed White House official last week, in the run-up to Netanyahu’s speech: “The dispute with Netanyahu prevents all possibility for discussing security guarantees for Israel as part of the emerging Iran deal.” That particular threat was empty, because Israel has never wanted security guarantees from this or any other administration; its policy has always been that it must be able to defend itself by itself. But if Washington was considering security guarantees for Israel, it’s surely considering them for its Arab allies, since they, unlike Israel, always have relied on America’s protection.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
04 March '15..

One very important word was missing from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress yesterday. Not that I blame him; inserting “Ukraine” into that particular speech would have been counterproductive. Yet without considering America’s Ukraine policy, it’s impossible to grasp quite how disastrous the emerging Iran deal really is.

To understand why, consider the curious threat issued by an unnamed White House official last week, in the run-up to Netanyahu’s speech: “The dispute with Netanyahu prevents all possibility for discussing security guarantees for Israel as part of the emerging Iran deal.” That particular threat was empty, because Israel has never wanted security guarantees from this or any other administration; its policy has always been that it must be able to defend itself by itself. But if Washington was considering security guarantees for Israel, it’s surely considering them for its Arab allies, since they, unlike Israel, always have relied on America’s protection. In fact, there have been recurrent rumors that it might offer Arab states a nuclear umbrella as part of the deal, so they wouldn’t feel the need to develop nuclear capabilities themselves–something they have long threatened to do if Iran’s nuclear program isn’t stopped.

And a year ago, such a promise might have worked. After all, America’s guarantees had proven trustworthy in the past; see, for instance, 1991, when U.S. troops liberated Kuwait from Iraq’s invasion.

But last year, Russia invaded Ukraine, exactly 20 years after the latter gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for a signed commitment by Washington, Moscow, and London to respect its “independence,” “sovereignty,” and “existing borders” and “refrain from the threat or use of force” against its “territorial integrity or political independence.” After swiftly annexing Crimea, Russia proceeded to foment rebellion in eastern Ukraine; the rebels now control sizable chunks of territory, thanks mainly to arms, money, and even “off-duty” troops from Russia.

And what have Ukraine’s other guarantors, America and Britain, done to uphold the commitment they signed in 1994? Absolute zilch. They refuse to even give Ukraine the arms it’s been begging for so it can try to fight back on its own.

Evidently PM Netanyahu's Speech Already Bearing Fruit

...It’s also a tough sell because of the administration’s own rhetoric. AFP quotes a State Department official today as follows: “You can’t read into the nuclear negotiation any kind of determination of where the US relationship with Iran may go in the future.” In fact, you absolutely can. The administration’s posture toward Iran, as evident in this conciliatory deal on the table, is that Tehran is a power with legitimate “rights” to enrich uranium and have a nuclear program in place, and that it’s a country that can be trusted with a sunset clause to boot. Netanyahu’s speech clearly and convincingly laid out the case against that view. And Kerry knows it.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
03 March '15..

Part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s role today was as a representative of his region of the world. It tells you just how concerned those who deal with Iran are about the pending nuke deal that the Israeli leader was voicing–genuinely and accurately, by the way–the nervousness of not just Israel but Saudi Arabia, among other Gulf allies of the U.S. And on that front, Netanyahu may have already succeeded.

Obviously the main point of the speech was Iran’s nuclear program. But Netanyahu also sought to convey the kind of regime Iran is and what it does with its military and financial might. “If Iran wants to be treated like a normal country, let it act like a normal country,” Netanyahu said. He recited a litany of examples of Iranian troublemaking, and pointed out that these are all recent–that this is the regime on a path to a nuclear bomb. Netanyahu said:

Iran’s goons in Gaza, its lackeys in Lebanon, its revolutionary guards on the Golan Heights are clutching Israel with three tentacles of terror. Backed by Iran, Assad is slaughtering Syrians. Back by Iran, Shiite militias are rampaging through Iraq. Back by Iran, Houthis are seizing control of Yemen, threatening the strategic straits at the mouth of the Red Sea. Along with the Straits of Hormuz, that would give Iran a second choke-point on the world’s oil supply.

Just last week, near Hormuz, Iran carried out a military exercise blowing up a mock U.S. aircraft carrier. That’s just last week, while they’re having nuclear talks with the United States. But unfortunately, for the last 36 years, Iran’s attacks against the United States have been anything but mock. And the targets have been all too real.

Iran took dozens of Americans hostage in Tehran, murdered hundreds of American soldiers, Marines, in Beirut, and was responsible for killing and maiming thousands of American service men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Beyond the Middle East, Iran attacks America and its allies through its global terror network. It blew up the Jewish community center and the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires. It helped Al Qaida bomb U.S. embassies in Africa. It even attempted to assassinate the Saudi ambassador, right here in Washington, D.C.

In the Middle East, Iran now dominates four Arab capitals, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sanaa. And if Iran’s aggression is left unchecked, more will surely follow.

Netanyahu wants the West’s negotiators to curb Iran’s terrorism and expansionism as part of the negotiations. And he’s not alone.

President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry cannot dispute the characterization of Iran in Netanyahu’s speech, and don’t try to do so. What he said is the uncontested truth. Obama sees Iran’s regional influence as either inevitable or ultimately desirable. Yet those in the region are well aware that Obama’s view of Iran is a fantasy; Tehran is the prime agent of destabilization throughout the Middle East.

The Negotiations Charade. A Protracted and Never-Ending Story

...The Western powers seem to have adopted an attitude of hyperbolic weakness, in which the fear of assertive action is more frightening than the worst acts taken by our enemies against us.... Under this self-imposed attitude of powerlessness, the Western nations can do nothing but negotiate endlessly and offer ever more concessions to the Iranians so as to keep them at the negotiating table and avoid being exposed to their own publics for what they really are: appeasers. This attitude of defenselessness to the will of the intransigent is even on display in America’s dealings with those whom the U.S. has nothing to fear from, in this case the Palestinians.

Tom Wilson..
Commentary Magazine..
03 February '14..

As champions of “soft power” America and her allies have adopted an attitude of unprecedented powerlessness that has left the West with no other way to deal with our enemies than through negotiations. Unwilling to back these negotiations up with even the threat of tough action–shrinking from so much as further sanctions against Iran–Western diplomats find themselves trapped in an endless cycle of appeasement and protracted, yet fruitless, negotiations and peace conferences.

In recent days both Secretary of State John Kerry and the EU’s foreign-affairs representative Baroness Ashton have made announcements proposing an extension to the various Middle East negotiations they are involved in overseeing. To no one’s surprise, Kerry is now saying that the time period for the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations will need to be extended beyond the original, and always improbable, nine-month period that the State Department had set. Far more disturbingly, Baroness Ashton has suggested an extension on the five-month-long negotiation period over Iran’s nuclear program–an unbelievable suggestion given that the round of negotiations in question hasn’t even begun yet.

Indeed, Baroness Ashton’s comments about the Iranian negotiations are by far the most concerning. A consensus seems to be forming among many intelligence experts who say that if Iran wished to produce nuclear weapons it could possibly achieve this within a month to six weeks. As it is, the next round of negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program, which are being overseen by Kerry and Ashton as part of the P5+1 grouping, are due to run for five months starting from February 18. During that period not only does Iran receive relief from some of the sanctions but it is also permitted to continue with enrichment of uranium and so far has not been obliged to dismantle any of its nuclear infrastructure.

Speaking at the security conference in Munich over the weekend, Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif had been pushing for precisely such an extension. This is hardly surprising given the benefits Iran derives from the current arrangements. For Ashton to be voicing such suggestions before negotiations are even underway seems recklessly irresponsible considering the gravity of the stakes involved. Yet, State Department spokespeople have also started hinting that the real time frame they have in mind may be more like six months to a year. In fact the phrase used by deputy State Department spokesperson Marie Harf was “six months, or a year or at any time.” Yes, any time. The message to the Iranians is clear. No need to get serious now, if you keep playing for time then really you can have all the time you need.

About This Trust Thing, Israelis Were Right

...Thus, the U.S. decision to embrace an interim nuclear deal that does nothing to dismantle Iran’s nuclear infrastructure (a position reaffirmed today by Iran’s foreign minister) and loosens sanctions in a way that has led many in Europe to believe that the restrictions will soon be eliminated altogether, has rightly alarmed Israelis.

“We did not agree to dismantle anything,”
 Mohammad Javad Zarif told CNN in an
interview on Wednesday, charging that the
 Obama administration had created a false
 impression in the language it used to
describe the six-month agreement.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
21 January '14..

Last March, President Obama visited Israel for the first time since taking office. There he gave several speeches that must be considered among the most pro-Zionist ever uttered by an American leader. He annoyed supporters of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by asking Israelis to pressure their government to take risks for peace — the same risks, as it happened — that his predecessors had already tried with disastrous results. But the genuinely supportive tone of his remarks persuaded some observers that despite a first term marred by almost continual fights with Jerusalem, the president might finally win over an Israeli public that had never warmed to him. But less than a year later after that long-delayed visit might as well never have taken place as far as the Israelis are concerned. A new Times of Israel poll published this week shows that an overwhelming majority do not trust Obama to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons and a clear majority view him unfavorably.

This frustrates the president’s defenders who cite the strong security cooperation that has continued on his watch, the generous aid to Israel that continues to flow, to the Jewish state, as well as the fact that he retained the support of more than two-thirds of American Jewish voters in his reelection campaign. Obama’s apologists also say he should be trusted to do the right thing on Iran and be given a chance to let diplomacy work to end the nuclear threat. They insist the administration’s push to force the Jewish state to make more concessions to the Palestinians is in Israel’s interests.

Israelis, however, aren’t impressed by any of these arguments. They distrust him more now than they did before his visit. That should prompt Americans who claim to be friends of Israel to ask themselves what it is the Israelis know that they don’t.

The reason for Obama’s low approval and trust ratings among Israelis is no mystery. He came into office in January 2009 determined to establish daylight between Israel and the United States and wasted no time in achieving that goal. The fights he picked with Netanyahu were largely intended to undermine the prime minister’s standing at home but only served to strengthen him among his countrymen. Netanyahu’s defiance of Obama’s demands was based on positions widely agreed upon by the majority of Israelis such as a refusal to divide Jerusalem. While most Israelis aren’t any more enamored of West Bank settlements than the president. But most view American insistence on pushing Israel back to its 1967 borders as madness because, unlike Obama, they vividly recall the events of 2005. In that year the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza produced a hale of rockets fired on their towns and cities along the border which they now see as a clear warning of what would recur if the tragic experiment were repeated.

Continuing Iran’s Long History of Nuclear Threats

...Perhaps negotiator Wendy Sherman and Secretary of State John Kerry should not be so grateful that Mohammad Javad Zarif, a man who as foreign minister has absolutely no power to affect Iranian behavior, has promised them that they can take Iran at its word.

Michael Rubin..
Commentary Magazine..
06 January '13..

Over at the Washington Free Beacon, Adam Kredo notes that yet another Iranian official has suggested that the Islamic Republic should utilize nuclear weapons in order to eradicate Israel:

A top Iranian lawmaker and cleric said that the country’s uranium enrichment program could allow it to build a nuclear weapon “in two weeks” in order to “put down Israel,” according to multiple reports in the Farsi language press. Iranian lawmaker and cleric Muhammad Nabavian said on Friday that Iran would be able to build a nuclear bomb in “two weeks” if it gets “access to 270 kilograms of 20 percent [enriched uranium], 10 tons of 5 percent, and 20 thousand centrifuges,” according to reports on Iran’s Radio Farda and in Fararu.

Nabavian’s statements may be shocking—seldom since President Hassan Rouhani took office and launched his diplomatic offensive have the views of those in Supreme Leader (and ultimate power) Ali Khamenei’s circle shown so clearly through—but they are not the first nor even the second nor third time that Iranian officials have let it be known that dropping an atomic bomb on Israel is not only possible but preferable:

A "Great Victory" for Iran

...Iranian leaders continue to deny their efforts to develop what the late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan called "the Islamic Bomb," but they develop it anyway. They also apparently know that Israel will not intervene militarily against them without a green light from the United States, and that the "agreement" in Geneva is a huge red light. They take the joint U.S.-Israel military exercise scheduled in May 2014 for what it is: a means to hold back the Israeli military for the next six months.

Guy Millière..
Gatestone Institute..
20 December '13..

On the day when the "interim agreements" were ratified in Geneva, November 24 2013, the Iranian Foreign Affairs Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, was photographed smiling. He had good reason to be pleased; not since the Munich Agreement in 1938 have Western leaders given so much for so little. As Bret Stephens wrote in the Wall Street Journal, Western leaders in Geneva behaved even more disgracefully than those who had come to Munich.

In Munich, only two Western politicians were present, Chamberlain and Daladier; the United States was not involved. In the photographs then, all the participants looked concerned.

After Munich, Winston Churchill delivered the famous phrase: "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war". After Geneva, Israel's Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, was the only leader expressing disagreement. He spoke of a "historic mistake". Diplomatically, he could not speak of dishonor, although dishonor was plainly evident. And he could he could use the word "betrayal."

In Munich, the big, unspoken item in the room was the persecution of the Jews in Europe. Although Chamberlain and Daladier knew everything about the proliferation of anti-Semitic acts and decisions since Adolf Hitler came to power, they may have thought they were in a weak position, and did not really care about the Jews. They practiced willful blindness. Hitler noticed -- and Kristallnacht soon followed less than six weeks later in Germany: a night in which over 91 Jews were murdered and 30,000 were arrested and sent to concentration camps, Jewish homes, businesses, hospitals, and schools were ransacked, and over 1,000 synagogues were burned.

In Geneva, the big, unspoken item in the room was Israel. Laurent Fabius , Guido Westerwelle, Catherine Ashton and John Kerry knew everything about the calls for destroying Israel uttered for decades ​​by Iranian leaders. They were in a position of strength, but evidently did not care about Israel. They practiced willful blindness. Mohammad Javad Zarif noticed. Ali Khamenei in Tehran also noticed. No Kristallnacht has been perpetrated against Israel -- yet.

It is impossible to hide the evidence: Israel is alone, abandoned by a country supposedly its ally.

Sanctions against Iran have been partially lifted; they will never be restored. Billions of dollars will now flow into Iranian government coffers.

Iranian leaders can continue to enrich uranium; build a weapons-grade plutonium reactor; support massacres in Syria; finance terrorist organizations such as Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, and threaten Israel, a fellow member state of the United Nations -- an act that is illegal under the UN Charter -- with impunity. The international recognition the Iranian leaders now enjoy will legitimize all their activities that make a mockery of human rights.

And there we have it: The rise and fall of the sanctions effort

...One day, the U.S. says sanctions will force Iran to relinquish its nuclear program. The next, it says delaying sanctions will make Iran more amenable to shutting down its program. Confusing, isn’t it?


David M. Weinberg..
A Citadel Defending Zion..
19 December '13..

The Obama administration’s attitude on sanctions against Iran has been and continues to be riddled with contradictions. One day it is opposed to sanctions; the next day it brags about them. One day it is easing up on sanctions; the next it claims to be tightening enforcement of them. One day it says that sanctions will make Iran give up its nuclear program; the next it says that holding off sanctions will make Iran more likely to give up its nuclear program.

Let’s review the administration’s tortured and convoluted path on sanctions:

1. In the beginning, the Obama administration had to be coerced by Congress into sanctioning Iran. It worked against successive congressional efforts to ramp up sanctions against Iran in the oil, banking, and shipping sectors. Congress dragged a kicking and screaming administration into eventual support for sanctions.

In fact, the administration only warmed to sanctions when it realized that upping sanctions against Iran was one way to buy time and prevent Israel from attacking Iran.

2. Then, behind everybody’s back, the administration secretly eased-up on enforcement of the hard-won sanctions, as it conducted months of under-the-radar talks with representatives of Ayatollah Khameini. This was even before Hassan Rouhani was elected as the new Iranian president.

3. More recently, Obama justified the goodies given to Iran in Geneva (reductions in several different types of sanctions) by arguing that ‘sanctions relief’ will create moderate Iranians. He says that the let-up in sanctions will create a ‘political constituency’ within Iran for nuclear concessions.

For most Mideast observers, in Israel and elsewhere, this is counterintuitive and nonsensical. Who can really believe that alleviating the sanctions pressure will make Iran more (rather than less) amenable to giving up its military nuclear effort?

This is especially so, given the fact that Iran is apparently getting much more sanction relief than the administration was first willing to admit to. The entire regime of sanctions could effectively melt away as the international business community realizes that Washington’s heart is no longer behind sanctions.

NYT Says Israel Lied About Iran Sanctions, But Experts and Insiders Say Otherwise

...It was clear from the start that a purportedly objective New York Times news story should not have labelled Steinitz as a distorter because he didn't fall perfectly in line with American talking points on the deal. Now it is even harder to fathom how the newspaper can justify leaving the slur uncorrected.

Gilead Ini..
CAMERA Snapshots..
16 December '13..

Yuval Steinitz's assessment of the financial benefits coming to Iran under the terms of a recent nuclear deal was attacked by the New York Times, but it is starting to look like one of the lower estimates around.

Several days before the deal was finalized, Steinitz, Israel's Minister of Strategic Affairs, stated that sanctions had cost Iran roughly 100 billion per year, and that the anticipated deal would "directly reduce between 15 to 20 billion dollars out of this amount." Indirect benefits as a result of new difficulties in enforcing sanctions could be even higher, he argued.

The New York Times, though, was unwilling to accept that Steinitz's estimate seemed to differ from the U.S. government line, which had put sanctions relief at about $10 billion over six months. A Times news story attacked Steinitz as having seemingly "distorted" the terms of the deal. (In fact, Steinitz's assessment was largely in line with the American assessment. He predicted up to $20 billion in sanctions relief over one year while the Americans referred to half that much over half the period of time.)

The newspaper has stood by its attack on Steinitz. Meanwhile, though, a diverse array of sources have been giving estimates that are even higher than those provided by the Israeli minister. The Foundation for Defense of Democracy's Mark Dubowitz argued that "the proposed sanctions relief could yield Iran $20 billion or more through the repatriation of frozen Iranian assets, gold transfers to Iran in exchange for its oil and natural gas sales, petrochemicals exports, and the lifting of sanctions on the Iranian auto sector." Nader Habibi, a professor of Middle East economics at Brandeis University, calculated $24.5 billion in sanctions relief. And the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, citing Israeli security sources, reported that "senior officials in the administration of President Barak Obama have conceded over the past few days in conversations with colleagues in Israel that the value of the economic sanctions relief to Iran could be much higher than originally thought in Washington." According to the report, the Americans acknowledge that sanctions relief would amount to "about 20 or 25 billion dollars."

Munich Reverberates but Israel is No Czechoslovakia

...Despite the current tensions, continued delicate but determined diplomacy and our common interest in resisting Islamic fundamentalism will sustain the relationship with the US. Hopefully, a more friendly future administration will also restore the trust between both countries. But today, as in the past, we must never subordinate our security to third parties and recognize that in the last resort, we can only rely on our strength and ability to defend ourselves.

Isi Leibler..
Candidly Speaking from Jerusalem..
11 December '13..

Now that we have absorbed the shock of Obama’s capitulation to the Iranians, it is time to face hard realities and plan for the future.

It is sobering to realize that despite the fact that American public support for Israel is at an all-time high, the Obama administration was deceitful, lied, and effectively betrayed Israel. It behaved likewise to its long-standing Arab allies and dashed the aspirations of those Iranians seeking release from the brutal dictatorship of the fanatical Ayatollah regime. Unless Ayatollah Khamenei miraculously reverses his relentless xenophobia, Obama’s legacy will be that of an American president who appeased the most barbaric Islamic fundamentalist regime in the world.

Make no mistake. The genocidal Islamic fundamentalists ruling Iran are contemporary Nazis reinforced with messianic beliefs. Like the Nazis, they aim to impose their demonic ideology on the entire world and proudly proclaim their goal to defeat the “Great Satan” (America) and wipe the “rabid dog of the region” (Israel), off the map.

Analogies to the 1938 Munich agreement when the major powers appeased Hitler are painfully apt. But as Wall Street Journal columnist Bret Stephens has correctly noted, Chamberlain appeased Hitler when the UK was weak and unprepared. Obama capitulated to the Iranians from a position of strength when sanctions were threatening to undermine their regime.

Obama also failed to absorb the lesson of trusting the duplicitous North Koreans and ironically even delegated the initial twelve months of clandestine advance negotiations with Iran to Wendy Sherman, the same State Department official who had negotiated the North Korean fiasco.

Obama’s approach was certainly not impulsive. It reflected the Third World philosophy he articulated immediately following his re-election. His stated goals then were to diminish US involvement around the globe, end the war against Islamic fundamentalism, and to “engage” with rogue states – specifically Iran. He has since implemented this strategy with actions which included initially humiliating Israel, failing to stand by long-term Arab allies, and supporting the Moslem Brotherhood conquest of Egypt.

In the Geneva forum both parties achieved their goals. Obama and his partners, willing to concede on virtually everything in their desperation to obtain an “agreement”, succeeded in doing so. The Iranians gained legitimization as a threshold nuclear state without conceding anything of substance and received a windfall of billions of dollars. As Iranian president Hasan Rouhani triumphantly proclaimed, “The right of Iran to enrich uranium was accepted by the world powers…the architecture of sanctions will begin to break down”. The repeated Obama threat about employing military action as a last resort has lost all credibility and the Iranians feel complacent that Israel is unable to act whilst they “negotiate” with the US.

When a peace deals means war

...In a recent article, Clifford D. May, one of the foremost advocates of the sanctions regime, quoted a line from the Geneva plan’s preamble: “Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek or develop any nuclear weapons.” May, president of a policy institute focusing on national security, went on to make his own point, but the quote stopped me cold. The mere existence of such a line would stop me from signing a document that contained it.

George Jonas..
National Post..
30 November '13..

Some say a bad peace is better than a good war. I’m not sure. Perhaps it would be if it lasted, but a bad peace is usually just a prelude to a bad war.

I think “a prelude to war” describes the “interim” Geneva agreement with Iran. The nuclear ayatollahs of Tehran will hardly abandon a stance that keeps benefiting them — that is, belligerence — and neither the Israelis nor the Saudis, let alone the Egyptian junta, have enough confidence in the Obama White House to rely on it for protection. This means preparations for war, plus a near-certain re-entry of Russia as a Middle East player, with incalculable consequences.

Notice that I’m not even contemplating the consequences of the resumption of Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons, a development this agreement all but ensures. Letting the ayatollahs play with explosive toys is criminally negligent of big powers, and suicidal of small powers in the region. Stopping the ayatollahs at the next “red line”, as Obama proposes, if they continue, is ludicrous, for it requires believing his administration would do the hard way what it didn’t do the easy way. Just continuing the current sanctions regime — in essence, doing nothing — would have cost the West little and it was clearly hurting the theocrats in a big way. Unfortunately, it wasn’t hurting them enough to desist, just enough to bring them to the conference table — and triumph.

Some thoughtful people take a different view. My friend and frequent neighbour on these pages, Conrad Black — no Obama fan, to put it mildly — writes elsewhere that he would give the president and his secretary of state a (barely) passing grade this time, “an electrifying improvement over the horrifying shambles of their responses to events in Syria and Egypt.” And if this sounds like damning with faint praise, an Israeli scholar and diplomat, Efraim Halevy, a career intelligence officer and head of Mossad between 1998-2002, has warned repeatedly about overreacting to Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. With a self-confidence reminiscent of Churchill (Halevy was born in Britain) he sees the theocrats digging their own grave. Tehran’s bomb creates an existential moment, all right, but for Iran rather than for Israel.

Are such commentators whistling in the graveyard? They’re not the type. As men of action as well as men of words, Halevy and Black may be concerned that the unholy fuss some circles make of Iran’s nuclear potential only emboldens Tehran’s rulers to think that they’re onto a good thing. When bullies buy into their own press and believe themselves to be invincible reincarnations of Igor the Undead, they may redouble their efforts live up to their billing.

True, taunting a bully is infantile. You don’t want him to feel inferior and think he has something to prove. But you sure as hell don’t want a bully to feel superior and think he has nothing to fear. Either way he may pull the trigger, and if he’s got his finger on a nuclear trigger, it’s going to be a big bang.

He Should Only Hope Israel Keeps Complaining

...If there is any real hope that this deal that tacitly recognizes Iran’s right to enrich uranium and leaves in place the infrastructure for making a bomb will actually succeed, it will stem from an Iranian belief that Israel’s rhetoric about using force are credible rather than empty threats. Having demonstrated that he has little interest in putting Tehran’s feet to the fire, there is nothing preventing Iran from reneging on even this weak deal other than the notion that if Obama is not proved right, Israel will strike.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
02 December '13..

In the wake of the Obama administration’s embrace of a nuclear deal with Iran, Washington’s message to Israel has been crystal clear: shut up. The Washington Post reported that President Obama told Prime Minister Netanyahu that he’d like him to tone down the strident criticism of an agreement that he has rightly characterized as a “historic mistake” that legitimizes Iran’s nuclear program and may well bring it closer to a bomb rather than preventing it from accomplishing that goal. But the messages from other sources have been a good deal less polite. Anonymous “senior administration officials” told Israeli reporters that the White House considers the Israeli government’s outrage at having its concerns ignored to be “weak” and dismissed the possibility that Congress would attempt to restrain the president’s rush toward a détente with Iran out of concern for the Jewish state’s safety. The administration’s cheering section in the press has been no less blunt about its disdain for Israel’s fear that a fundamental shift in U.S. foreign policy is being attempted.

Part of this stems from Obama’s hubris. He has always believed in the magic of his personality and appeal and from the start of his first term signaled that he wanted to improve relations with Iran while also demonstrating his belief that the U.S. and Israel had become too close under his predecessor. The impatience he is showing about Israel’s complaints is rooted in anger over the fact that Netanyahu apparently does not trust him, something he appears to consider an act of lèse-majesté. Whether or not the reports out of Kuwait today about the president hoping to visit Iran in 2014 are true, the White House considers Israeli doubts about the president’s vision of a new Middle East to be something of a personal slight.

But if Obama is genuinely interested in making his deal with Iran work rather than it being just one more example of how the ayatollahs have hoodwinked the West, he shouldn’t be discouraging Netanyahu from speaking up. If there is any real hope that this deal that tacitly recognizes Iran’s right to enrich uranium and leaves in place the infrastructure for making a bomb will actually succeed, it will stem from an Iranian belief that Israel’s rhetoric about using force are credible rather than empty threats. Having demonstrated that he has little interest in putting Tehran’s feet to the fire, there is nothing preventing Iran from reneging on even this weak deal other than the notion that if Obama is not proved right, Israel will strike.

When fantasy confronts reality - You know it’s a bad deal when…

...You know it’s a bad deal when Obama and Kerry have taken to belittling Israel’s concerns, and to battering American Jewish and congressional critics of the Geneva deal with insinuations of disloyalty, dual loyalty and warmongering. But all is fair in Obama’s drive for a new regional order in which Israel is a bit player and side concern, and America’s grand reconciliation with radical Islam is the paramount strategic objective.

David M. Weinberg..
A Citadel Defending Zion..
28 November '13..

You know that the accord reached in Geneva last weekend between the P5+1 and Iran is a bad deal when US Secretary of State John Kerry proclaims that the accord does not recognize Iran’s “right to enrich” uranium, and five minutes later Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says it does.

Woe to us that Zarif speaks with more credibility than Kerry. Officials in Washington have now confirmed the Iranian interpretation by commenting on the record that it is “not realistic” to expect, even in a further accord, that Iran will agree to zero enrichment.

You know it’s a bad deal when John Kerry says that the accord’s main purpose is to “put time on the clock,” but Dr. Ephraim Asculai, a veteran of both the IAEA and the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, determines that the Iran accord “does not do anything to change Iran’s breakout time, except perhaps in a very minor way.”

Asculai says the interim agreement adds only “a few days” onto the regime’s clock should it decide to sprint toward a bomb.

You know it’s a bad deal when one of the most-ballyhooed Iranian “concessions” is its agreement – for the next six months – not to install plutonium production equipment in the heavy water reactor in Arak.

But this is a joke, since the reactor is still under construction and will be so for at least another 12 months, and Washington now admits that the text of the accord has a loophole which allows Tehran to build components off-site for later installation in the reactor.

You know it’s a bad deal when the second most-celebrated Iranian “concession” is its agreement to temporarily halt enriching uranium to a 20 percent level (and convert what they have into fuel rods or uranium oxide), and to limit the number of centrifuges in Natanz by half and the number of centrifuges in Fordo by three-quarters.

But Israeli analysts term these restrictions almost meaningless. Iran already has more than eight tons of low-enriched uranium, enough for four to five atom bombs; and with nearly 18,000 fully-operational centrifuges, it can enrich uranium to any level it wants within a short period of time. So Iran is already a nuclear threshold country in terms of its ability to produce fissile material, and this situation won’t change. The Iranians can quietly accept the freeze on high-enriched uranium, and make a swift run any day in the future towards the critical amounts needed for a bomb.

You know it’s a bad deal when one of the much-touted-breakthroughs is Iranian agreement to supposedly “intrusive” UN inspections.

But the UN has missed every major Iranian nuclear advance over the past twenty years, and been very slow to call-out the Iranians when it did find evidence of Iranian misdoing. Moreover, the hypothetically-intrusive UN inspections do not include access to the places where Iran is suspected of working on nuclear weaponization, like Parchin. In fact the interim accord doesn’t restrict or relate at all to Iran’s military programs in nuclear metallurgy, warhead design, and long-range missile production.

The NY Times Most Nonsensical Attack on Israel (Yet)

And yet, today’s Times piece is something of a landmark achievement. It gets everything wrong: the history of the peace process, the Iran deal, international law. There is not a word that redeems the paper’s decision to publish this assault on reason.

Seth Mandel..
Commentary Magazine..
26 November '13..

Twitter has been accused of helping to coarsen the culture, increase partisan rage, and further erode the line separating the personal and the political. But there is at least one advantage for writers: Twitter can be an outlet for a curious or ironic observation that has no shelf life and no coherence beyond 140 characters. Some thoughts are tweet-appropriate and nothing more.

Which means there is really no excuse for the New York Times’s decision to publish today’s installment of its ongoing Jodi Rudoren experiment. Rudoren has earned her share of corrections for false claims that editors really should have caught, but everyone makes mistakes, and being dropped into the middle of the Arab-Israeli conflict from the education beat perhaps deserves an adjustment period. But today’s story is not one that gets a few facts wrong or leans heavily toward the Palestinian side of the issue. It’s based on a nonsensical thesis that makes the paper look so desperate to attack Israel that it will throw everything it can find at the Jewish state.

Under the headline “Israelis See Ticking Clock, and Alternate Approaches, on Iran and Palestinians,” Rudoren discusses the supposed hypocrisy on the part of Israel’s government because it opposed the interim deal with Iran but supports interim deals with the Palestinians. (As a side note, this is a lesson the Israelis learned the hard way: they will be criticized for striking agreements and criticized for not striking agreements. It almost literally, as Joe Biden might say, doesn’t matter what Israel does in the opinion of the Western press.)

I’ll let the Times put forth this thesis in Rudoren’s own words:

Israeli leaders on Monday condemned the interim deal on Iran’s nuclear program as an exercise in appeasement by the Western powers and a delaying tactic by Iran. Yet many of them see the same strategy of interim confidence-building steps as the only realistic route to resolving their long-running conflict with the Palestinians.

Israel is outraged that, under the deal signed Sunday, Iran is not required to stop enriching uranium or to dismantle centrifuges while negotiating a final agreement with the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany. At the same time, Israel continues to build West Bank settlements while negotiating with the Palestinians, prompting similar outrage from the international community.

Easing economic sanctions against Iran, Israel argues, will only remove the pressure that brought Tehran to the table in the first place. Yet Israel — as well as the United States — sees initiatives to improve the Palestinian economy as a critical companion to the political and security discussions.

Because so much gets written about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and because of the media’s blatant left-wing bias, consumers of news on the Middle East are often bombarded with exceptionally dimwitted thoughts. It’s more than just the Bibi Derangement Syndrome that makes even rational liberals lose their grip on reality when Benjamin Netanyahu is involved. It’s a propensity on the part of some news organizations to erase the line between the news and editorial pages and go on the attack any time Israeli officials have the temerity to speak up for their country’s interests.

And yet, today’s Times piece is something of a landmark achievement. It gets everything wrong: the history of the peace process, the Iran deal, international law. There is not a word that redeems the paper’s decision to publish this assault on reason.

Israel was the real target of the Geneva negotiations

...But the agreement on Iran’s nuclear program goes beyond not standing with Israel against an existential threat. The president has now entered into a deal that has made Iran’s life much easier and Israel’s life much more difficult and dangerous. We’re witnessing an astonishing moral inversion.

Peter Wehner..
Commentary Magazine..
25 November '13..

British member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan, in speaking about President Obama, told Jamie Weinstein of The Daily Caller, “I’m not sure there has ever been a president who cares less about the U.S.’s relations with her traditional friends.”

That point was underscored and demonstrated again this weekend, with the interim agreement focused on Iran’s nuclear program that the Obama administration agreed to. Jonathan did an excellent job outlining the weaknesses of the deal; so have others (see here and here).

I do find it remarkable that the president, even this president, would put forward a deal that is so manifestly in the interest of Iran and so obviously harmful to both America and Israel. On the latter, I concur with what former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton wrote:

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.

This posture makes sense when you keep in mind that Barack Obama has never been particularly well disposed toward Israel and at times has treated its leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, with contempt. But the agreement on Iran’s nuclear program goes beyond not standing with Israel against an existential threat. The president has now entered into a deal that has made Iran’s life much easier and Israel’s life much more difficult and dangerous. We’re witnessing an astonishing moral inversion.

That there are people who do such things is nothing new; but that such a person would become president of the United States is.

Link: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/11/25/obama-iran-and-israel/#more-837252

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