Israel Matzav

Oh my: Boogie rips Obama

In a speech in Washington on Tuesday night, strategic affairs minister Moshe (Boogie) Yaalon ripped the Obama administration for its policies on Iran.

"Just like the new administration, we too believe that friends should be candid with each other," he said during an address at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "It is our duty to explain to our American friends our concerns."

He was referring to comments that US President Barack Obama and other officials have made recently about the need to be clear with Israel that certain policies, such as settlement expansion, aren't acceptable.

...

Though the minister for strategic affairs and former IDF chief of staff couched his comments as taking on the "conventional wisdom" of the mainstream media, he belittled the notion that dialogue would dampen Iranian nuclear ambitions or that it made sense to aggressively pursue the creation of a Palestinian state.

He argued that policy toward the Palestinians should instead focus on a "bottom up" approach of economic, political, security and education reform to lay the groundwork for a functioning Palestinian entity.

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As for Iran, which Obama has sought to engage through a series of diplomatic overtures, Ya'alon assessed: "If this can be achieved through negotiations and dialogue, wonderful. Since we doubt it very much, we believe the free world, under the leadership of the United States, needs to prepare all the options to deal with this problem and make it clear that it will be ready to use them." He referred to a "credible threat" as the approach most likely to move Iran.

Though speaking generally about Western overtures, Ya'alon also seemed to take a swipe at last week's Cairo address in which the US president expressed regret for Western actions against Muslim states and sought to turn a new page on US-Muslim relations.

Ya'alon said that the West expects that concessions and apologies made to the Arab world will generate reciprocal moves, when instead, "It just strengthens their conviction of victim-hood and their resolve to restore their honor."

Read the whole thing.

For those who want to hear Yaalon's lecture (about 40 minutes long) and the question and answer session (about another 33 minutes), you can find them here.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:57 AM