Israel Matzav

Cohen gets something right: Obama will abandon Israel

It's Monday and that means it's the day each week that the New York Times inflicts Roger Cohen's drivel about his good friends in Tehran on us. As you might imagine, Cohen was quite pleased with President Obama's plea to the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran:

The innovations in the president’s Persian New Year, or Nowruz, overture to Tehran were remarkable. He referred twice to “the Islamic Republic of Iran,” a formulation long shunned, and said that republic, no other, should “take its rightful place in the community of nations.” Here was explicit American acceptance of Iran’s 30-year-old clerical revolution.

He said establishing constructive ties would “not be advanced by threats,” a retreat from his own campaign position that the military option must always remain on the table. Instead he offered “mutual respect.”

The fact that Obama's outstretched hand was met with a clenched fist is no problem for a dhimmi like Roger Cohen. Did you expect that Ahmadinejad would give up his nukes just for American friendship?

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, responded to Obama with a scathing speech at the country’s holiest shrine in Mashad, recalling every past U.S. misdeed, describing prerevolutionary Iran as “a field for the Americans to graze in,” and demanding concrete steps — like a lifting of sanctions — rather than words.

View all that as an opening gambit. Khamenei also quieted the crowd when it began its ritual “Death to America” chant and he said this: “We’re not emotional when it comes to our important matters. We make decisions by calculation.”

That’s right: the mullahs are anything but mad. Calculation will demand that Iran take Obama seriously.

Of course, in Cohen's 'mind' the mullahs are cold and calculating, but completely rational, and will act in their best interests. And Roger would have us just ignore all that 12th imam stuff the way the World ignored Mein Kampf seventy years ago. Heck, even if Iran is just playing for time, they're just looking to get their nuclear threat in order so that they can speak to Obama as equals. That doesn't mean they'd actually nuke anyone. Does it?

But what's most striking is the glee that this self-proclaimed Jew exhibits at Israel's predicament. It's beneath contempt.

The clock is ticking — and Obama’s will not be the same as that of Israel’s prime minister designate, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Already divergent U.S. and Israeli approaches to Iran were evident in Israeli President Shimon Peres’s coupling of his own Nowruz address to the Iranian people (not its leaders) with a statement predicting that they would rise up and topple “a handful of religious fanatics.” [The idea that Shimon Peres is in cahoots with Binyamin Netanyahu - who is not even Prime Minister yet - would set off hysterical laughter in anyone who had a clue about this country's politics. CiJ].

A senior Israeli official told me Iran has 1,000 kilos of low-enriched uranium and will have 500 more within six months, enough to make a bomb. It could then opt for one of three courses.

Rush for a bomb by shredding the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, adapting its centrifuges and producing enough highly enriched uranium within a year.

Move the process to a secret site, in which case getting a bomb would take longer, perhaps two years.

Or continue making low-enriched uranium so that “it would have enough for 10 bombs if it decides to rush at a later stage.”

And where, I asked, is Israel’s red line? “Once they get to 1,500 kilos, nonproliferation is dead,” he said. And so? “It’s established that when a country that does not accept Israel’s existence has such a program, we will intervene.”

I think there’s some bluster in this. Israel does not want Obama to talk, talk, talk, so it’s suggesting military action could happen in 2009, within nine months. [Let's see if Cohen is as good an analyst of Israeli intentions as he is of Iran's. Heh. CiJ].

Still, this much is clear to me: Obama’s new Middle Eastern diplomacy and engagement will involve reining in Israeli bellicosity and a probable cooling of U.S.-Israeli relations. It’s about time. America’s Israel-can-do-no-wrong policy has been disastrous, not least for Israel’s long-term security.

If God forbid we get nuked, I hope Roger Cohen is here to suffer radiation poisoning with us. But even that is too good a fate for him.

How little Roger Cohen understands about Iran is shown by Amir Taheri's article in the Wall Street Journal that I blogged earlier today. Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arabs all understand what an Iranian nuclear weapon means far better than Cohen the self-hating Jew ever will. After more than 40 years of allegedly living with an Israeli nuclear weapon, all of them realize that they cannot live with an Iranian one.

Is Barack Obama listening to Roger Cohen? You can bet that the Saudis hope that he's not.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:13 PM