Bolton: 'Israel should have attacked Iran yesterday'

Ayatollah Ali Khameni's American lobbyists have published a letter calling on the Obama administration to 'reinvigorate Iran diplomacy.'

The election of Hassan Rouhani to be Iran’s next president presents a major potential opportunity to reinvigorate diplomatic efforts to resolve the standoff over Iran’s nuclear program. We strongly encourage your Administration to seize the moment to pursue new multilateral and bilateral negotiations with Iran once Rouhani takes office and to avoid any provocative action that could narrow the window of opportunity for a more moderate policy out of Tehran.

Once the new president has been inaugurated, the United States should pursue coordinated multilateral engagement on the nuclear issue through the P5+1. Additionally, the U.S. should prepare to redouble its efforts to pursue direct, bilateral negotiations with Iran to engage on issues beyond the nuclear file, such as human rights and regional security. After assessing the orientation of the new Iranian government, the U.S. and partners should prepare to offer a new set of proposals to limit Iran’s enrichment and nuclear materials stockpiles combined with stringent oversight and verification measures.

While it will take time to secure an agreement to resolve all concerns, diplomacy will only succeed if we are prepared to leverage existing sanctions and other incentives in exchange for reciprocal Iranian concessions. Further, in the leadup to Rouhani’s inauguration, it is critical that all parties abstain from provocative actions that could imperil this diplomatic opportunity. For the U.S., no further sanctions should be imposed or considered at this time as they could empower hardliners opposed to nuclear concessions at the expense of those seeking to shift policy in a more moderate direction.

But former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton says that Rouhani is a wolf in sheep's clothing and that Israel should have attacked Iran yesterday. 

“Israel should have attacked Iran yesterday – every day that goes by puts Israel in greater danger, every day Iran makes more progress,” John Bolton, a former US ambassador to the UN, told The Jerusalem Post in an interview on Monday.

“I can understand why Israel wants us to take action, but the longer Israel waits for something that is not going to happen, the greater the danger Israel is in,” the senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute said.

The US and Israel cannot expect to have perfect intelligence about Iran’s nuclear capabilities, but if Israel attacked Iran after it gained that capability, there could be “nuclear retaliation,” he said.

...

Bolton believes that the election of Hassan Rouhani as Iranian president will serve as a trap for the US, which will lull it into a false sense of security and more negotiations, inevitably leading to a nuclear Iran.

One can already see this by the reaction of the EU and the White House to Rouhani’s election, he said.

“The idea that Rouhani will negotiate seriously shows that this administration is on a different planet.”

There have been more than 10 years of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and it has just kept building “a broad and deep infrastructure,” he said.

“Rouhani is a snare for the unwary and we fell right into it,” said Bolton asserting that the main difference between President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the “moderate” president-elect is only rhetorical.

“The moderates say, ‘Stop talking about it,’ and the radicals don’t stop talking about it.” In fact, “Rouhani boasted repeatedly about how he had suckered the EU during negotiations.”

I'm with Bolton on this. The problem is how to time the attack. This could be a good time. The world is busy with Egypt and Syria (and unfortunately, the 'Palestinians').