I was just thinking, this can't be a colossal blunder. Our guys are too focused, too sharp….. bah,hah,hah… We may find that we need to "vet" our leaders to make sure they are on the same page as "we the people"… no really!
Abject Surrender by the United States
What does Israel do now?
John Bolton, the Weekly Standard
Negotiations for an “interim” arrangement over Iran’s nuclear weapons program finally succeeded this past weekend, as Security Council foreign ministers (plus Germany) flew to Geneva to meet their Iranian counterpart. After raising expectations of a deal by first convening on November 8-10, it would have been beyond humiliating to gather again without result. So agreement was struck despite solemn incantations earlier that “no deal is better than a bad deal.
This interim agreement is badly skewed from America’s perspective. Iran retains its full capacity to enrich uranium, thus abandoning a decade of Western insistence and Security Council resolutions that Iran stop all uranium-enrichment activities. Allowing Iran to continue enriching, and despite modest (indeed, utterly inadequate) measures to prevent it from increasing its enriched-uranium stockpiles and its overall nuclear infrastructure, lays the predicate for Iran fully enjoying its “right” to enrichment in any “final” agreement. Indeed, the interim agreement itself acknowledges that a “comprehensive solution” will “involve a mutually defined enrichment program.” This is not, as the Obama administration leaked before the deal became public, a “compromise” on Iran’s claimed “right” to enrichment. This is abject surrender by the United States.
In exchange for superficial concessions, Iran achieved three critical breakthroughs. First, it bought time to continue all aspects of its nuclear-weapons program the agreement does not cover (centrifuge manufacturing and testing; weaponization research and fabrication; and its entire ballistic missile program). Indeed, given that the interim agreement contemplates periodic renewals, Iran may have gained all of the time it needs to achieve weaponization not of simply a handful of nuclear weapons, but of dozens or more.
Second, Iran has gained legitimacy. This central banker of international terrorism and flagrant nuclear proliferator is once again part of the international club. Much as the Syria chemical-weapons agreement buttressed Bashar al-Assad, the mullahs have escaped the political deep freezer.
Third, Iran has broken the psychological momentum and effect of the international economic sanctions. While estimates differ on Iran’s precise gain, it is considerable ($7 billion is the lowest estimate), and presages much more. Tehran correctly assessed that a mere six-months’ easing of sanctions will make it extraordinarily hard for the West to reverse direction, even faced with systematic violations of Iran’s nuclear pledges. Major oil-importing countries (China, India, South Korea, and others) were already chafing under U.S. sanctions, sensing President Obama had no stomach either to impose sanctions on them, or pay the domestic political price of granting further waivers.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s earlier warning that this was “the deal of the century” for Iran has unfortunately been vindicated. Given such an inadequate deal, what motivated Obama to agree? The inescapable conclusion is that, the mantra notwithstanding, the White House actually did prefer a bad deal to the diplomatic process grinding to a halt. This deal was a “hail Mary” to buy time. Why?
Buying time for its own sake makes sense in some negotiating contexts, but the sub silentio objective here was to jerry-rig yet another argument to wield against Israel and its fateful decision whether or not to strike Iran. Obama, fearing that strike more than an Iranian nuclear weapon, clearly needed greater international pressure on Jerusalem. And Jerusalem fully understands that Israel was the real target of the Geneva negotiations. How, therefore, should Israel react?
Most importantly, the deal leaves the basic strategic realities unchanged. Iran’s nuclear program was, from its inception, a weapons program, and it remains one today. Even modest constraints, easily and rapidly reversible, do not change that fundamental political and operational reality. And while some already-known aspects of Iran’s nuclear program are returned to enhanced scrutiny, the undeclared and likely unknown military work will continue to expand, thus recalling the drunk looking for his lost car keys under the street lamp because of the better lighting.
Moreover, the international climate of opinion against a strike will only harden during the next six months. Capitalizing on the deal, Iran’s best strategy is to accelerate the apparent pace of rapprochement with the all-too-eager West. The further and faster Iran can move, still making only superficial, easily reversible concessions in exchange for dismantling the sanctions regime, the greater the international pressure against Israel using military force. Iran will not suddenly, Ahmadinejad-style, openly defy Washington or Jerusalem and trumpet cheating and violations. Instead, Tehran will go to extraordinary lengths to conceal its activities, working for example in new or unknown facilities and with North Korea, or shaving its compliance around the edges. The more time that passes, the harder it will be for Israel to deliver a blow that substantially retards the Iranian program.
Undoubtedly, an Israeli strike during the interim deal would be greeted with outrage from all the expected circles. But that same outrage, or more, would also come further down the road. In short, measured against the expected reaction even in friendly capitals, there is never a “good” time for an Israeli strike, only bad and worse times. Accordingly, the Geneva deal does not change Israel’s strategic calculus even slightly, unless the Netanyahu government itself falls prey to the psychological warfare successfully waged so far by the ayatollahs. That we will know only as the days unfold.
Israel still must make the extremely difficult judgment whether it will stand by as Iran maneuvers effortlessly around a feckless and weak White House, bolstering its economic situation while still making progress on the nuclear front, perhaps less progress on some aspects of its nuclear work than before the deal, but more on others.
And what can critics of the Geneva deal, in Washington and other Western capitals, do? They can try to advance the sanctions legislation pending in the Senate over administration objections, for the political symbolism if nothing else. Unfortunately, they’re unlikely to succeed over the administration’s near-certain opposition. Tehran judges correctly that they have Obama obediently moving in their direction, with the European Union straining at the bit for still-more relaxation of the sanctions regimes.
Instead, those opposing Obama’s “Munich moment” in Geneva (to borrow a Kerry phrase from the Syrian crisis), should focus on the larger and more permanent strategic problem: A terrorist, nuclear Iran still threatens American interests and allies, and almost certainly means widespread nuclear proliferation across the Middle East. A nuclear Iran would also be essentially invulnerable, providing a refuge that al Qaeda leaders hiding in Afghan and Pakistani caves could only dream of.
So in truth, an Israeli military strike is the only way to avoid Tehran’s otherwise inevitable march to nuclear weapons, and the proliferation that will surely follow. Making the case for Israel’s exercise of its legitimate right of self-defense has therefore never been more politically important. Whether they are celebrating in Tehran or in Jerusalem a year from now may well depend on how the opponents of the deal in Washington conduct themselves.
John Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 2005-06.
Steve Hayward adds: Methinks we should call this for what it is: centrifugal farce.
and
Israel's Netanyahu Says Iran Nuclear Deal a 'Historic Mistake'
JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the agreement between world powers and Iran as a ‘historic mistake’ that doesn’t bind his country.
Israel has “the right and obligation” to defend itself and won’t allow Iran to develop the capability to build atomic weapons, Netanyahu said today at a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.
“What was achieved last night in Geneva is not historic; it is a historic mistake. Today, the world has become a much more dangerous place,” he said in comments broadcast on Israel Radio. “Israel is not bound by this agreement.”
Diplomats said they had a deal early today, the fifth day of meetings in Geneva. The first accord since the Iranian nuclear program came under international scrutiny in 2003 eases sanctions on Iran in exchange for concessions on its atomic work.
Israel’s rejection of the agreement puts it at odds with its closest ally, the U.S., which led the efforts to reach a deal with Iran. An administration official said President Barack Obama would call Netanyahu today to discuss the accord.
Israel wanted world powers to oblige Iran to stop enriching uranium and dismantle an unfinished heavy water reactor at Arak that could eventually produce plutonium, materials that could be used to produce weapons. The Geneva agreement limits uranium enrichment under close monitoring and halts any further development of the Arak reactor.
“This deal will create a new arms race that includes the Middle East,” Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said. Finance Minister Yair Lapid said he was concerned that the accord means “the world is no longer listening to Israel.”
Israeli officials have described Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat, saying all options are on the table to stop it, including a military strike.
“The Iranian regime is committed to Israel’s destruction, and Israel has the right to defend itself, by itself,” Netanyahu said to his cabinet. “Israel won’t let Iran develop military nuclear capability.”
Iran says its program is intended for peaceful purposes.
Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett said yesterday that any deal Israel perceived as bad would increase the chances it would consider military force against Iran.
“A bad deal definitely increases the need for action,” Bennett said on Channel Two television. “If the deal gives Iran the ability to achieve a bomb within six weeks, we won’t be able to sit idly by.”
Alex Zabezhinsky, chief economist at Tel Aviv-based Meitav DS Investment House Ltd., said the agreement reduced risks.
“The deal reduces the risk of military action on Iran by the West or Israel,” he said by phone. “As a result, we are likely to see Israel’s country risk decline.”
Eldad Pardo, a lecturer on Iranian affairs at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said Israel opposes the agreement because its interim nature recalls the 1993 Oslo Accords with the Palestinians, which never ripened into a final peace deal.
“If you reach very quick agreements on what is easy and leave the difficult issues to some future, it may take years,” he said.
Now with Iran, “there is a kind of temporary agreement that will lead to another temporary agreement,” he said. “This isn’t a first step within an agreed-upon structure of where we are heading.”
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