OBAMITS listen up II

The Iranian Nuclear Threat

Posted: 20 May 2009 07:26 PM PDT BY SULTAN


Israel knows it needs to coordinate its strategy on Iran with other nations and that attacking Teheran's nuclear facilities would mean "big trouble," CIA director Leon Panetta said on Wednesday.

"Yes," he said, "the Israelis are obviously concerned about Iran and focused on it. But [Netanyahu] understands that if Israel goes it alone, it will mean big trouble. He knows that for the sake of Israeli security, they have to work together with others."

Yes, Big trouble indeed. Bigger trouble than a nuclear device exploding over Israel at the cost of millions of lives.
But much the same message has been delivered by both Hillary Clinton and Bill Gates. When Netanyahu came to Washington to talk Iran, he got repeated demands that Netanyahu instead implement the ethnic cleansing of Jewish towns, in what the U.N. considers occupied territory. With Hillary Clinton explicitly forbidding "Natural Growth", which refers to children growing up, getting married and living in the same towns as their parents do...

Obama's answer to Israel's concerns over its survival, is to demand the ethnic cleansing of Jews from parts of Israel. He might as well have gone whole hog and delivered it in a speech in Berlin for Holocaust Memorial Day.

Only if Israel somehow prevents Jewish boys and girls from growing up and getting married and living in a place the Beloved Leader does not approve of... will Obama and his minions be prepared to work together on Iran. And this is what he means by working together.


Netanyahu also discussed Iran with Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said.

"The Secretary reiterated President Obama's commitment to try to engage Iran and offer incentives to persuade them to change course in order to become a full-fledged member of the international community," Morrell said.

"However, should Iran rebuff the U.S. initiative, the Secretary told the Prime Minister there would be serious consequences, including much stronger international sanctions,"

So after the endless diplomatic initiatives and the Iranian stalling, there might actually be sanctions... if the international community approves of them. And by the time this whole circus is done, Tel Aviv might well be a radioactive cinder. Meanwhile Kim Jong Il just fell off his chair laughing at the entire charade.

Obama's whole line of "Don't Attack Iran, Attack the Settlements" should begin to get through to any Jew who voted for him, just what Obama's real policy on Israel is.

Meanwhile just in case Netanyahu gets any ideas about attacking Iran, the Obama Administration is obstructing Israel from access to advanced fighter plane technology.
The Obama administration has imposed obstacles on Israeli efforts to procure U.S.-origin fighter-jets.

Administration sources said the White House has drafted measures that could prevent Israel and other non-NATO allies from procuring U.S. fighter-jets, including the F-35. They said the administration would require that Israel obtain special permission from the Defense Department and State Department to acquire the Joint Strike Fighter.

Over the last few months, the administration has rejected a series of Israeli requests regarding modifications of the F-35. They included Israeli electronic warfare systems and acquisition of U.S. software codes that would allow Israel to repair the aircraft's central computer. The U.S. refusal meant that the Israel Air Force would be forced to send the F-35 to the United States for any repairs, a process that could take months.

The bottom line here of course is to sideline any Israeli plans for an air strike against Iran and spread anxiety and uncertainty through Israel's air command. The message is that Israel is out of the loop now. It's a message that Netanyahu got loud and clear on his visit to D.C.

All Iran has to do now is follow the North Korean playbook, stall for time, agree to meaningless negotiations, take in aid money from the US... while moving its nuclear program full speed ahead. And any Israeli move against Iran will mean that it will be accused of fomenting war and opposing a peaceful diplomatic resolution.

Meanwhile Israel's only option is to plan and execute an air strike against Iran's extensive nuclear facilities, that will be kept secret from everyone, including the US forces in the region, and the extensive surveillance infrastructure, including satellites, drones and all intelligence sources. Should Israel's planes be detected, the odds are good that they would either be challenged to turn back, or if word reaches the White House or some of Obama's new Pentagon people, Iranian forces would get an early warning of the strike.

The challenges involved in such an operation are incredible, but Netanyahu's visit was a formality that confirmed that Israel has no other options on the table. The Obama alternative is nothing more than to play footsie with Mahmoud until Iran has the nuclear capabilities to blackmail any other players in the region, including the US, and to destroy Israel.

This is a problem that has been developing for a long time, because of the US failure to stop the chain of proliferation. That chain began with nuclear secrets being passed to the USSR. With the fall of the USSR, nuclear proliferation went out of control. The Clinton Administration took no serious steps against the nuclear proliferation coming out of North Korea. That failure brought nuclear weapons to Pakistan, setting the stage for a potential nuclear exchange with India that may cost hundreds of millions of lives.

If Iran develops nuclear weapons, the next stage in the chain of proliferation will be the many terrorist groups controlled and backed by Iran. It will not be a matter of "if" terrorists get access to a suitcase nuke... but when.

Iran will be able to kill millions anywhere from New York to Jerusalem, without getting the official blame for it. Meanwhile Iran's long range missiles will be used for nuclear blackmail against regional Arab powers, and of course to keep any threatened US intervention at bay.

Though the Arab world had ignored Israel's own secret nuclear arsenal, knowing that they were defensive weapons of last resort, not offensive weapons-- Iranian nuclear development has helped touch off a rash of nuclear programs in the region. Everyone from Egypt to Libya to Saudi Arabia wants their own nukes. And even for those who don't care whether Israel lives or dies, might want to contemplate what the consequences of a nuclear exchange between Egypt and Iran might look like, the resulting effect on Europe, which isn't that far away, or the impact on an oil based economy.

And that's what it comes down to. Obama has made it clear that not only will he not take any action to stop Iran, but he is doing what he can to prevent Israel from taking action against Iran's developing nuclear capabilities.

This comes even as the Obama Administration is tearing down research into next generation anti-missile defense systems and inviting Russia to join a missile defense umbrella for Europe... that was developed to defend against Russian nuclear blackmail. This is not an administration that is interested in the security and safety of the United States or Europe, let alone Israel. It is guided by dogmatic left wing politics that see American security as the problem, not the solution.

Each failure to cut the chain of nuclear proliferation has resulted in disastrous consequences. Now with only a single step separating terrorists from nuclear weapons, the next terrorist attack on America may not claim 3,000 lives... but 3,000,000 lives.

That is the real consequence of the Iranian nuclear threat. And while the US under Obama will certainly take no action, he does not wish to be seen openly working to promote Iranian nuclear weapons either. That is why vocal protests and outcries at this stage can make a real difference in how much interference and blackmail Obama will use against Israel.

And that is what we can do to help stop the Iranian nuclear threat. Ahmadinejad is a madman, Obama is not. He's cynical, cowardly and vulnerable to attacks on his public image. He wants a friendly public relationship with Israel and Jews. He does not want to face protesters or deal with marches. He does not want to be accused of aiding and abetting a would be genocidal mass murderer.

Speaking out, organizing and conducting a loud public campaign of protest, as the Bergson group did against FDR's silence on the Holocaust, can limit how much Obama can interfere with an Israeli strike against Iran. The countdown has begun and the time is now. And we can all be a part of it.
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Last update - 07:18 21/05/2009


Obama is dividing Jerusalem

By Israel Harel

Tags: Israel News, Obama, Islam




Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's enemies have gotten together to promote a few sacred causes: to bring Israel to its knees, to force a Pax Americana on Israel (the "Obama plan") and to grind the prime minister's status to dust.

If the media in his own country is trying to grind Netanyahu down, why shouldn't the American administration - which has mobilized the enthusiastic Israeli media for its own needs - take advantage of the latter's disparaging attitude to attain its goals? (Although it is repelled by such an attitude. In American culture, with its code of honor and restraint, this type of behavior would not pass.)

They have not managed to bring Netanyahu to his knees, but they have managed to fan a foreign fire of Biblical proportions ("Please, with might," Gideon Levy begs Barack Obama in a piece on May 17). This fire persuaded whomever it persuaded that an American presidential initiative can be presented, without any preparatory dialogue with the government in power, that is unacceptable to the vast majority of Israeli Jews.
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Besides the demand to exert powerful pressure on Israel, the peacemakers demanded that Obama also end the "special relationship" between the United States and Israel. These relations, the Israeli patriots explained, are damaging to U.S. interests.

Here, too, their labors bore fruit. The speech on a vision of peace for the Middle East, slated for June 4, will not be given at the White House, not even at a joint session of Congress. Only by delivering the speech in Cairo, intentionally skipping a visit to Jerusalem (and even to Tel Aviv!), will the spirit of peace alight on the lips of the American messiah.

Obama has little knowledge of the history, ideology and psychology of the Arab opposition to the Jewish state's existence. But he has a strategy: to thaw relations with Islam. It is clear what will be demanded in return.

But those who built his program, which purely by coincidence conforms entirely to the ideas of the extreme left in Israel (whose wheeler-dealers are in close touch with Rahm Emanuel and his ilk), are showing an ambition and arrogance that will leave them cooked.

No Arab leader, political or religious, has yet been found who agrees to give up the right of return, which is a central pillar in the Obama plan. The idea to internationalize the Old City and its governance by the United Nations is a futile idea. Only assimilated Jews - and one can be so in Israel, too - could garner support for this idea from a neophyte president, who has no idea how deep the Jewish bond is to its capital, especially to the area containing its most sacred sites.

Obama has tossed a lot of balls into the air, maybe too many. Even a magician like him cannot catch them all. The last ball, the especially heavy one of the Obama plan, might land on his foot, but also on the feet of everyone in the region, who will pay the price imposed on them by the person who wants (by force) to change the order of things. That will also be the case if he does not set aside his disconnected initiatives and quickly connect to reality in other places in the world, as well as at home.

Today, Jerusalem Day, a state ceremony will be held marking 42 years since the liberation of Israel's capital. In his speech, Netanyahu can somewhat cool down Obama's messianic fervor and (politely) make clear to whom - exclusively - Jerusalem belongs. He can pledge that after the Paratroopers liberated the city in 1967, no foreign power will ever again pass through its gates.



Related articles:
Palestinians to agree to Islamic sovereignty over Temple Mount
Saudis pushing Obama for new Mideast plan
Jerusalem worried over breakdown of U.S.-Israel cooperation under Obama

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Jewish World Review May 21, 2009 / 27 Iyar 5769



Bibi Agonistes


By Cal Thomas









http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Things are not always as they appear in the Middle East. Appearances can also deceive whenever an Israeli prime minister and a U.S. president get together in Washington.

During their two-hour meeting at the White House on Monday, it appeared as though Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu were bosom buddies. Netanyahu, especially, praised the new president and claimed agreement with Obama that, as a first priority, Iran must be stopped from possessing nuclear weapons.

A "senior official traveling with the prime minister" (one of those euphemisms required to disguise who is really speaking) told a small group of reporters and columnists following the White House meeting that, for the first time since the creation of Zionism, Jews and Arabs see eye-to-eye concerning the strategic threat a nuclear Iran would present. "This goal supersedes anything else," said the official. In response to questions, the official acknowledged that Arab leaders say one thing to their friends and something quite different to their enemies.

President Obama invoked an end-of-the-year timeline for diplomacy with Iran to work. This would seem to give Iran a green light to pursue its nuclear bomb for the next seven months. At the end of December when we in the West learn that Iran has been stringing us along and using diplomacy as a delaying tactic, what then? Will it be Israel that bombs the nuclear sites, or will it be one or more of those Arab nations supposedly of one mind in opposition to a nuclear Iran?


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It's a safe bet to put your money on Israel doing the dirty work and suffering the usual condemnation — accompanied by more terrorist attacks from Hamas and Hezbollah — from the United States, the United Nations and the European Union, the latter two seeing nothing worth fighting to preserve.

A more sobering assessment has come from RAND, a nonprofit research corporation. In a new report entitled "Dangerous But Not Omnipotent: Exploring the Reach and Limitations of Iranian Power in the Middle East," prepared for the U.S. Air Force, RAND dismisses hopes that bilateral talks between the United States and Iran will alter Tehran's behavior. It calls such hopes "unrealistic" and advocates a broad international effort that would leverage incentives and punishment based on Iran's response. This has been tried before and has mostly proved ineffective because there are countries that do not abide by economic boycotts.

The senior Israeli official noted that while Israel has lived up to its obligations and commitments — especially when it has come to relinquishing land taken from enemies who launched attacks from that land, and who would do so again if they get it back — the Palestinian side has not. Does this not beg the question as to why any future promises should be believed when every previous promise has been broken?

Yes, for 60 years, Arab leaders have been captured by their own propaganda, as one member of the Israeli delegation told me. So how do you reverse that, I asked, and when can the world expect to see them stop publishing textbooks, delivering sermons and printing cartoons in state-owned newspapers that equate Jews with pigs and monkeys and call for their destruction? He couldn't say.

If there is to be a Palestinian state, what kind of state will it be? Would it be allowed to have an army, or a "police force" that would effectively serve as an army? Surely Israel could not stand for another armed force in its neighborhood. Would a Palestinian state be permitted to have an airport and overland access to countries that might supply it with terrorists and weapons?

A recent Washington Times editorial put it well: "The Obama administration should focus less on creating a Palestinian state and more on helping Palestinians earn the right to statehood." That is exactly the right order.

In 1996, Netanyahu came to Washington for the first time as prime minister to meet with President Clinton. I recall him warning the Clinton administration that the greatest threat facing Israel is the arming of Iran with nuclear weapons. He was a prophet then and that prophecy is now on the verge of coming true.

In a rebuke to the president's commitment to diplomacy, Iran conducted a missile test within hours after Netanyahu left Washington for Israel. If Iran gets a nuclear bomb, everything will change in the Middle East. Whatever dim prospects for peace there may be will come unraveled. That's why stopping Iran's nuclear ambitions trumps a Palestinian state and everything else.



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Cal Thomas Archives
JWR contributor Cal Thomas is co-author with Bob Beckel, a liberal Democratic Party strategist, of "Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War That is Destroying America".