Iran deal confirms need for regime change - but where?
In testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, Matt Levitt reports that the main beneficiaries of the sellout to a nuclear-armed Iran are the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and Hezbullah.
While the Iran deal leaves much open to interpretation, one thing is
certain: for Iran this deal is strictly transactional, not
transformational. To the contrary, Iran is almost certain to increase
its clandestine activities and support for proxies engaged in asymmetric
warfare and reasonably deniable intelligence and terrorist operations.
In other words, Hezbollah is about to take a place of even greater
prominence within the planning of Iran's revolutionary elite. Hezbollah
heeded Tehran's call to step into the breach of the Syrian war, and as a
result has drifted even further into the Iranian orbit as a result of
its intimate operations with the IRGC there.
But designating only Hezbollah entities -- or those connected to other
Shiite militia or terrorist groups answering to Iran -- is not enough.
Whether through Treasury designations or other tools, IRGC and Qods
Force officers and entities engaged in Iran's ongoing illicit conduct
must also be taken to task.
There are many areas of the Iran deal that warrant close attention as
the agreement moves toward implementation. Contending with what
Secretary Lew referred to as "Iran's menacing behavior" -- in particular
through its own IRGC Qods Force and Lebanese Hezbollah -- must be at
the top of the list. Failure to do so would not only undermine the logic
of the Iran deal as articulated by the administration, it would also
add to the very real trust deficit currently affecting our relationships
with allies both in the region and around the globe...
Michael Rubin argues that the 'deal' is done, and the only answer now is for the West to push regime change in Iran.
With a deeply flawed JCPOA now a fact-of-life, with Iran empowered
and able to walk away with an industrial-scale, advanced nuclear weapons
program in 15 years, perhaps the best Plan B for the next
administration to consider is an all-out effort for regime change. After
all, the problem isn’t the Iranian people but rather the
unrepresentative theocracy which rules over them, nor is the problem
really the potential nuclear weapons; rather, it is those that would
wield them.
Regime change does not mean direct involvement, let alone military
involvement. Instead, it requires broadcasting geared to undermine the
regime and its legitimacy on bands to which the Iranian public actually
listens. It requires real and consistent support for Iranian trade
unions. With the IRGC or revolutionary foundations controlling most
Iranian industry and often failing to pay workers on time or failing to
provide them safe working conditions, there is ample room to organize.
If the Iranian government is forced to pump its windfall into back wages
rather than missiles, even Obama, and Senator Bernie Sanders cannot
object. And if those workers then organize and disrupt Iran’s oil
fields, for example, no one in Washington should shed any tears. There
are other economic tools in the U.S. arsenal as well which might exploit
the inflation that Iran will face as its economy absorbs its windfall
of cash.
There is no magic formula for regime change, but Obama and the
Democrats in Congress have effectively initiated a 15-year countdown.
Obama has cast America’s lot with Iran, and there is some wisdom to an
“Iranian strategy” so long as Iran is not led by the Islamic Republic.
Let the conversation begin, and efforts to undermine Khamenei’s rule to
accelerate exponentially. That would not only be the path to peace, it
would also be realization of a strategy that is decades too late in
coming.
Well, yeah, but who says we have 15 years (that assumes Iran abides by the deal)?
I also doubt that the Obama administration - or any successor Democratic administration - would be willing to do anything that would undermine the Iranian regime. Obama's whole goal in making Iran a nuclear-armed power was to provide a counter-balance to Israel in the Middle East. If Iran does not become a nuclear power, or is not willing to use that power, Israel remains the dominant power in the region, something the obsessively anti-Israel Obama (and the Left-dominated Democratic party) wish to avoid at all costs. This will only change if the Republicans win the next US Presidential election.
The other shoe drops: Egypt sponsoring IAEA resolution to monitor Israel's nuclear capability
The other shoe may be about to drop on Israel. Egypt is introducing a resolution at an IAEA meeting in September, which will call on the international regulator to monitor Israel's nuclear program. Iran is likely to join the resolution. And while the resolution would not be binding like a Security Council resolution, it would certainly cause diplomatic embarrassment to Israel.
A senior Foreign Ministry official said he feared the recent nuclear deal between Iran and the six powers will make it hard for Israel to defeat the resolution.
The resolution, titled “Israeli nuclear capabilities,” has been repeatedly proposed by Egypt in recent years. It condemns Israel, demands that it open its reported nuclear facilities to IAEA inspection, and calls for an international conference on making the Middle East a nuclear-weapons-free zone.
...
Though Egypt is the IAEA resolution’s chief sponsor, Iran seems likely to join the move. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif indicated as much by publishing an article in The Guardian titled, “Iran has signed a historic nuclear deal – now it’s Israel’s turn.”
Zarif wrote that Israel must be pressured to join the NPT and advance an international conference on a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East. Israel, he wrote, has “an undeclared nuclear arsenal and a declared disdain towards non-proliferation, notwithstanding its absurd and alarmist campaign against the Iranian nuclear deal.”
For the last three years, Israel has succeeding in mustering a majority against Egypt’s IAEA resolution, thanks partly to proposals for a direct regional security dialogue with Arab states under UN auspices. Egypt and various other countries rejected these proposals, but they earned Israel considerable international credit.
The campaign to thwart the latest resolution began two weeks ago, when the Foreign Ministry sent a cable to all Israeli embassies and consulates instructing them to urge their host governments to oppose it.
“The resolution is fundamentally biased and mistaken, aimed at diverting global attention from the real dangers of nuclear proliferation in this region,” the cable’s talking points said. “This move will further politicize the IAEA and undermine the trust necessary for any regional dialogue on this issue.”
Israel has also sent personal envoys to several countries it considers key to winning the vote. For instance, former Foreign Ministry director general Nissim Ben Shitrit went to Argentina about 10 days ago, on the assumption that if Argentina doesn’t back the Arab proposal, other Latin American countries would likely follow suit.
Senior Israeli officials are divided over how the Iranian deal will impact the IAEA debate. Some argue that following the Iran agreement, America and other leading countries won’t want to raise the pressure on Israel even further. But others fear that with the Iran deal done, the international focus will shift to Israel’s nuclear program. They also fear Israel will enjoy less American support than in the past, due to the severe tensions with Washington over the Iran deal.
I hope that the 78% of American Jews who voted for this administration are pleased. Surely they will still have those smirks on their ugly faces when - God Forbid - as Mike Huckabee said last week, Israelis are led to the ovens.
On my first trip to Israel, in 1972, my father z"l (of blessed memory) took our family on a tour that started in Tel Aviv and ended in Eilat. On the way, we passed what you see pictured at the top. The guide told us that we were not to tell anyone what we saw there (all we did was drive past it) and that he would not tell us what it is. My father told me at the time that it was 'obviously' a nuclear reactor.
As you might recall, last month, the Obama administration made public for the first time that Israel is a nuclear power. Yes, we've all known that for 40-50 years (or thought we did), but the Obama administration made it official. They did so by releasing some - but not all - of the US documents relating to what may have been one of the greatest intelligence failures in US history: the failure to realize that Israel was becoming a nuclear power until it was too late to stop it.
Those documents have now been reviewed and a fascinating summary of them appears here. Here are a few short paragraphs from a very long and fascinating story.
So how did Washington finally discover Dimona, and why was the attitude
one of great concern? The story that we reconstruct here, which is based
upon newly unearthed, hitherto obscure primary sources, is still
incomplete and fragmentary. Much of the record is still classified at
the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, not only in State
Department files but also in the records of the Atomic Energy
Commission. Indeed, over 100 documents from 1960-61 still remain
classified at NARA until a pending declassification request sets them
free. Yet, based on the available declassified record, it is possible to
tell a fascinating story, much of which is novel.
The first report that Israel was secretly building a large nuclear
reactor with French assistance came to the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv
through an American source. In late July 1960, David Anderson, an
employee of American Machine and Foundry Atomics—the company that
installed the Atoms for Peace reactor at Nachal Soreq—informed U.S.
Embassy officials that he had heard that French personnel were
constructing “a 60 megawatt atomic power reactor” in the Beersheba area.
His source was an Israeli oil company director who told Anderson that
the French nationals were working on a project described to him as “gas
cooled power reactor capable of producing approximately 60 megawatts of
electrical power.” Anderson’s understanding was that the project had
been underway for “about two years,” with the completion date two years
off. This report is the first and earliest available U.S. document that
makes explicit reference to the Dimona project as it was actually
underway.
When the U.S intelligence community got wind of the
embassy report, it took time to digest it; U.S. officials realized that
more information was needed, given that they had no independent sources
to corroborate the report. The CIA formulated a list of questions about
French-Israeli collaboration, including the organizations involved in
the project, reactor specifications and plans for spent fuel, e.g.,
whether the Israelis were building a chemical separation plant. Only in
October 1960 did the State Department send the CIA questions as an
“Instruction” to the U.S. embassy in Israel, with the embassy in Paris
and the U.S. mission to the IAEA also receiving copies. The request for
information did not get high priority; it had a “Routine collection
priority.”
...
In early January 1960, Ambassador Reid brought these questions up in
another meeting with Ben-Gurion. The telegram itself remains classified,
but a summary is available. The essence of the matter, according to
Ben-Gurion, was that: (1) Israel “has no plans for producing nuclear
weapons”; (2) Israel had no plutonium, but “as far as we know” returning
the plutonium produced by the reactor was a “condition” imposed by the
country (France) that sold the uranium; and (3) it would not accept IAEA
inspection, especially if Russians were involved, or international
safeguards “until all reactors are treated as equals.” The implication
was that Israel would not accept international safeguards and
inspections until they applied to every reactor around the world.
Ben-Gurion, however, did allow for the possibility of visits by
representatives of “friendly power,” an offer that the incoming Kennedy
administration would pursue. How State Department officials interpreted
these statements remains unknown, but they probably saw the answer about
nuclear weapons as evasive.
More answers would come from the
French, who asserted that plutonium produced in the reactor would be
returned to France, that France and Israel had agreed that the reactor
was for “exclusively peaceful use” and that French inspectors would be
visiting the reactor. Yet what mechanisms were in place to assure that
the French took the plutonium and to assure that Israel kept its pledges
remained unclear.
Sometime in late January 1961, days after
John F. Kennedy was sworn in, the U.S. Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence
Committee prepared a “post-mortem” study on the SNIE on Dimona. This
document is one of the most intriguing documents in the collection. Its
aim was to explain why the U.S. intelligence community had failed to
detect in real time the Israeli nuclear project, and, indeed, how late
it was in making that determination. It provides an account of what was
known, and when, about the Israeli nuclear program, concluding that
Washington might have seen through Israeli “secrecy or deception” and
better understood Israeli intentions at least a year earlier if the
“atomic energy intelligence community had properly interpreted” the
available information. In essence, the overall conclusion was that the
root cause of the delay was not so much the absence of information as
that some important reports and items of information had been lost in
the shuffle and the dots not properly connected.
As the
classification of this document is only “secret,” and the document is
relatively brief and deliberately vague about the intelligence means and
sources employed in the final determination (e.g., it does not refer
explicitly to the U-2 flights), it is quite possible that the
intelligence community had more sensitive information that it excluded
from this version of the post-mortem or that a more thorough report on
the subject existed with higher classification.
Ultimately, the
challenge of Dimona was too big for Eisenhower to resolve; it had to
fall in the lap of his newly elected successor. Ben-Gurion would tell
Kennedy the very same cover story and make sure that U.S. visitors to
Dimona learned very little. Israel continued to refuse IAEA safeguards
on Dimona. And Washington would discover that France had little power to
ensure that Israeli kept its promises.
Obama's revenge continues - exposes Israel's nuke program
Did you ever have a kid throw a tantrum and just start throwing things around your house? That's what Barack Hussein Obama is doing. He's having a tantrum and he's throwing around pieces of the US-Israel relationship.
The mainstream media has largely missed it, but early last month, the Obama administration exposed details about Israel's nuclear program. The details were part of a 1987 report on the nuclear capabilities of Israel and the NATO countries. But Israel - and only Israel - has been exposed.
[T]he Pentagon early last month quietly declassified a Department of
Defense top-secret document detailing Israel's nuclear program, a highly
covert topic that Israel has never formally announced to avoid a
regional nuclear arms race, and which the US until now has respected by
remaining silent.
But by publishing the declassified document from 1987, the US
reportedly breached the silent agreement to keep quiet on Israel's
nuclear powers for the first time ever, detailing the nuclear program in
great depth.
The timing of the revelation is highly suspect, given that it came as tensions spiraled out of control between
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama ahead
of Netanyahu's March 3 address in Congress, in which he warned against
the dangers of Iran's nuclear program and how the deal being formed on
that program leaves the Islamic regime with nuclear breakout
capabilities.
Another highly suspicious aspect of the document is that while the
Pentagon saw fit to declassify sections on Israel's sensitive nuclear
program, it kept sections on Italy, France, West Germany and other NATO
countries classified, with those sections blocked out in the document.
The 386-page report entitled "Critical Technological Assessment
in Israel and NATO Nations" gives a detailed description of how Israel
advanced its military technology and developed its nuclear
infrastructure and research in the 1970s and 1980s.
Israel is "developing the kind of codes which will enable them to
make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and fusion
processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level," reveals the report,
stating that in the 1980s Israelis were reaching the ability to create
bombs considered a thousand times more powerful than atom bombs.
The revelation marks a first in which the US published in a document a description of how Israel attained hydrogen bombs.
The report also notes research laboratories in Israel "are equivalent
to our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge
National Laboratories," the key labs in developing America's nuclear
arsenal.
Israel's nuclear infrastructure is "an almost exact parallel of the
capability currently existing at our National Laboratories," it adds.
"As far as nuclear technology is concerned the Israelis are
roughly where the U.S. was in the fission weapon field in about 1955 to
1960," the report reveals, noting a time frame just after America tested
its first hydrogen bomb.
Institute for Defense Analysis, a federally funded agency operating under the Pentagon, penned the report back in 1987.
Obama's term cannot come to an end soon enough. What a despicable piece of dirt.
Israel's Supreme Court ruled on Sunday that convicted nuclear traitor Mordechai Vanunu may not leave Israel.
The High Court of Justice on Sunday rejected the petition of Mordechai
Vanunu, the man who leaked information regarding Israel’s reported
nuclear weapons program in 1986, to leave the country via the West Bank.
The
court said that while it agreed with Vanunu that his situation should
be examined periodically and with rigor to ensure that restrictions on
him were not being maintained unnecessarily, it believed the state had
met its standard of proof for maintaining the restrictions at this time.
At
Wednesday's hearing on the issue, Vanunu’s lawyer, the charismatic and
colorful Avigdor Feldman, thundered away at the state, saying, “This man
is not allowed to leave a country that does not want him in it and in
which he does not want to be.”
He added that Vanunu merely wanted to leave the country to marry his girlfriend and live out his life quietly.
Vanunu
was formerly a technician at the Dimona nuclear plant who was
imprisoned for 18 years for divulging secrets related to Israel’s
purported nuclear weapons program.
Since his release from prison
in 2004, Vanunu has had a range of highly unusual restrictions placed on
his movement and his right to interact with other persons, particularly
foreigners and the press.
The High Court has numerous times
approved these restrictions, and Vanunu has numerous times violated
them, sometimes being temporarily penalized or reprimanded.
Could someone traveling abroad please bring this man some deodorant on their return? That stuff is very expensive here....
In a Russian Television segment that was played repeatedly on television and on the internet, UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk has once again accused Israel of being 'genocidal.'
Let's go to the videotape.
That video is an incredible collection of anti-Semites and nut cases. UN Watch's Hillel Neuer adds:
Falk uses his imprimatur as a UN official to
make the grievously false accusation that Israel is acting with
“genocidal intent” and perpetrating a “Holocaust.”
If Israel really is “genocidal,” it only follows logically that Falk will justify violence against Israelis, as he did in a recent blog post,
berating “demands by Israel that Palestinians renounce violence” while
Israel “sustains a structure of occupation and oppression.”
It’s time for
the the U.S. to at least attempt to remove the 9/11 conspiracy theorist
and Hamas supporter from his post—and to eliminate his prejudicial and
outdated Human Rights Council mandate.
UN Watch today sent a letter to
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urging him to condemn Falk. When the
name of the world body is misused to promote specious canards—and as an
odious warrant for terrorism—the UN chief has a moral duty to speak out.
But the truth
is that Falk, like other Human Rights Council appointees, answers only
to the U.S. and the 46 other member states of the UNHRC. In this case, the buck does not stop with Ban Ki-moon; it stops with Samantha Power, U.S. ambassador to the UN. That is why I have urged her, in a UN Watch letter sent today, to take action.
(You can do it too, by clicking here to send Ambassador Power a message.)
And to think that Russia Today interviewed me nearly four years ago. I haven't seen anything this anti-Semitic on the web from a non-Nazi website in a long time.
Burg was Knesset Speaker from 1999 to 2003 with the Labor party. The
calls to investigate him come after a recent statement, in which he
said: “Enough ambiguity – Israel has nuclear and chemical weapons, and
we need to have an open, bold public debate about it.”
According to Maariv, the Legal Forum sent a letter to the State Prosecution and to police calling to investigate Burg.
The Forum argued that during Burg’s years as the Knesset Speaker and
as a member of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, he was exposed
to Israeli state secrets. “Now he is deciding unilaterally to reveal
Israel’s nuclear and chemical capabilities to the enemy, and the world,
and even encouraged other Members of Knesset to do the same,” the group
argued.
Israel has traditionally maintained a policy of nuclear ambiguity.
Burg is reportedly expected to head a conference in the near future
which will discuss Israel’s alleged nuclear and chemical weapons.
Calling for a "nuclear-free zone" in the Middle East, Rouhani said
that Israel was the only country in the region that had not yet signed
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and requested that it do so
"without delay."
The developed world focuses on preventing states
without nuclear weapons from acquiring them, Rouhani said, but the
international community should also focus on disarming countries that
have stockpiled hundreds or thousands of them since Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.
"Nonproliferation derives its legitimacy from the larger
objective of nuclear disarmament," he said, calling for a "high-level"
conference within five years geared toward the "complete elimination" of
the greatest weapons.
In a veiled reference to a Russian-brokered
deal that will rid Syria of its massive chemical weapons stockpile,
Rouhani said "all weapons of mass destruction" should be eliminated in
the Middle East.
Addressing the General Assembly in his capacity
as the head of the Non-Aligned Movement, Rouhani commended the "valuable
contribution" of nuclear weapon-free zones to international peace and
security. "A peaceful and secure world remains a shared ideal for us
all," he said.
"We have an architecture of treaties and norms that aim
to achieve this agreed goal, yet thousands of these weapons continue to
pose the greatest threat to peace.
"Almost four decades of
international efforts to establish nuclear weapon-free zones have
regrettably failed," he said. "Urgent, practical steps toward the
establishment of such a zone are necessary. The international community
has to redouble efforts in support of the establishment of this zone."
What Rohani of course fails to mention is that none of the western democracies that have nuclear weapons have ever threatened to use them, whereas countries like Iran and North Korea threaten to do so constantly.
We'll give up our nuclear weapons - if we have them - when the rest of the countries of this region make peace with us and stop calling for our destruction. That's not going to happen in your lifetime or mine.
IAEA votes AGAINST resolution calling on Israel to join NPT after US fails to stop vote
The International Atomic Energy Agency has voted down a call for Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty after the United States tried to stop the vote from taking place.
Member states of the UN nuclear agency on Friday rejected
an Arab resolution singling out Israel for criticism over its assumed
atomic arsenal, in a diplomatic victory for Western powers that opposed
the initiative.
Arab
states had submitted the non-binding resolution to the annual gathering
in Vienna for the first time since 2010 to signal their frustration at
the lack of progress in efforts to move toward a Middle East free of
nuclear weapons. Fifty-one countries voted against the text and 43
states for.
Frustrated
over the indefinite postponement last year of an international
conference on banning atomic arms in the region, Arab states proposed a
non-binding resolution expressing concern about "Israeli nuclear
capabilities."
The
resolution called on Israel to join a global anti-nuclear weapons
treaty and place its nuclear facilities under IAEA monitoring.
The
United States said this week the move would hurt broader diplomatic
efforts towards creating a Middle East zone free of weapons of mass
destruction. Israel said it would deal a "serious blow" to any attempt
to hold regional security talks.
But
Ambassador Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy, head of the Arab League group at the
IAEA, made clear the text would not be withdrawn before a vote ... on Friday.
Hmmm. I wonder what made so many countries come to their senses. By the way, how did the US vote? Here's betting they voted 'present'.....
Moadim l'Simcha - a happy holiday to all of you. (The proper answer to that greeting is 'Chagim u'Zmanim l'Sasson' - which means holidays and times for joy).
Russian President Vladimir Putin is blaming Israel for Syria's possession of weapons of mass destruction.
According to AFP, Putin said that Syria had developed chemical weapons "as an alternative to the nuclear weapons of Israel."
The
Russian president claimed that the "the technical advantage of Israel
-- we need to say this directly -- is such that it doesn't need nuclear
weapons. Israel is already in a technical military sense several heads
above the countries in the region."
Putin added that "nuclear weapons just make it a target. They just create foreign policy problems."
What a load of you-know-what. Is it Israel's fault that Bashar al-Assad has followed in his father's footsteps and used chemical weapons on his own people? If they were developed as an 'alternative to the nuclear weapons of Israel,' why is Assad using them to attack his own people?
Moreover, did it ever occur to Putin that maybe the only reason that the Assad's never used their chemical weapons against Israel is because they knew that if they did, they would find themselves back in the 8th century?
Does Putin believe that Russia's nuclear weapons make him a target?
Aren't you Americans glad that Putz Obama let this guy live another day?
Arabs pushing to single out Israeli nukes, US not pleased
It's been a wild day and after this I am going back to work....
The Arab countries are pushing for an IAEA resolution demanding that Israel sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (and thereby expose whether we have had nuclear weapons for the last 50 years), and the United States is not pleased about it.
Frustrated over the postponement of an international conference on
ridding the region of atomic arms, Arab states have proposed a
resolution at a UN nuclear agency meeting expressing concern about
"Israeli nuclear capabilities".
The non-binding text submitted for the first time since 2010 to this
week's member meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency calls on
Israel to join a global anti-nuclear weapons pact and place its atomic
facilities under IAEA monitoring.
Israel is widely believed to
possess the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal, drawing frequent Arab
and Iranian condemnation. It has never acknowledged having atomic
weapons.
US and Israeli officials - who see Iran's atomic activity
as the main proliferation threat - have said a nuclear arms-free zone
in the Middle East could not be a reality until there was broad
Arab-Israeli peace and Iran curbed its program.
Washington is
committed to working toward a Middle East zone free of weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) and their delivery systems, the US envoy to the IAEA
said.
But the Arab resolution "does not advance our shared goal of
progress toward a WMD-free zone in the Middle East," Ambassador Joseph
Macmanus said in a comment emailed to Reuters.
"Instead, it undermines efforts at constructive dialogue toward that common objective," Macmanus added.
Am I the only one who suspects that the Obama administration is secretly pleased about this resolution, but doesn't feel it can say so?
Israel has all but suspended
its development of nuclear warheads and has not produced new ones since
2004, a new report published over the weekend by nuclear proliferation
experts Hans Kristensen and Robert Norris, said. Their findings are
largely in line with a similar assessment by the Pentagon's Defense
Intelligence Agency.
...
Norris and Kristensen's report alleged that
while Israel has never admitted to developing nuclear weapons of any
kind, between 1967 and 2004 it had produced an average of three nuclear
warheads a year and was in possession of 80 nuclear warheads by 2004.
The two alleged that prior to its suspension,
the annual production of nuclear warheads gradually increased according
to the various security threats Israel has faced over the years, adding
that besides the nuclear warheads, Israel has fissile material
sufficient to arm between 115 and 190 warheads.
According to the report, Israel decided to
suspend its alleged production of nuclear warheads because it is
"satisfied" with its current arsenal and "could increase the quantity,
and may even double it, if it sees fit."
Despite the halt in production, they said, it is likely that Israel's nuclear weapons stockpile may increase slightly by 2020.
Unknown assailants burglarized the home of the head of the Israel Atomic
Energy Commission two nights ago at Moshav Bet Yitzhak, and made off
with a briefcase full of documents, a wallet, and a mobile device,
police reported on Tuesday.
The house belongs to Brigadier
General Dr. Shaul Horev, head of the IAEC and a senior official in the
Prime Minister's Office. Horev is in charge of Israel's nuclear energy
policy, one of the most sensitive jobs in the security establishment.
Yael
Doron, Spokeswoman for the IAEC, denied reports that a laptop was
stolen from the house, and said that none of the documents in the
briefcase were classified.
She also said that all signs indicate
that the people who burglarized the house had no idea who they were
targeting and the crime was purely criminal in nature.
The moshav
is located in a narrow part of Israel only a few kilometers from the
northern West Bank, and burglaries are highly common in the area.
On
Tuesday morning Sharon sub-district police sent out a court-issued gag
order which banned the publication of the identity of the owner of a
house broken into in Bet Yitzhak, what was stolen, who the suspects are,
and the fact that the house has surveillance cameras. A source in the
Sharon sub-district would not comment on reports that Horev and his
family were at home at the time of the robbery and that the burglars
grabbed the suitcase from near the front door and fled shortly after
entering.
Middle East nuclear disarmament is America’s stated policy. The only
question is how to make it happen. A former senior Israeli intelligence
official told me that the Obama administration expects Iran to acquire
nuclear weapons in the near future. At that point, the official
predicted, Obama will propose that both Israel and Iran give up their
nuclear arsenal.
After his re-election Obama has more “flexibility,” as he told Russian Prime Minister Dimitri Medvedev over an accidentally open microphone last March. Since the presidential election, the Obama administration has turned decisively against Israel:
1) Sat on its hands while the Palestine Authority obtained “observer
status” at the United Nations, a setback that could not have occurred
(as former UN ambassador John Bolton explained) if the US had used its diplomatic muscle to avert it, as in the past, and advised at least one country to vote for the UN resolution;
2) Tacitly encouraged five European countries to deliver a strong diplomatic rebuke to Israel, according to Israeli diplomats;
3) Denounced Israel
for a “pattern of provocation action” that “puts peace further at risk”
on Dec. 18–for planning additional homes in an area that every proposed
peace agreement in the past twenty years has assigned to Israel, and
after the Palestine Authority broke the cardinal rule of the Oslo
Process by going to the UN rather than engaging in bilateral
negotiations;
4) Proposed Sen. Chuck Hagel (R.-Nebraska) for Secretary of Defense,
after “the sentiments he’s expressed about the Jewish lobby border on
anti-Semitism,” according to the Anti-Defamation League.
Obama is a radical utopian who identifies deeply with so-called colonial peoples, as I argued back in February 2008 (and
Dinesh D’Souza documented vividly in his 2012 film). The more his
utopian policies fail–in Libya, Egypt, Syria, and of course Iran–the
harder he will push them. Political constraints made him scrap the idea
of Israeli nuclear disarmament in May 2010.. Now those constraints are
gone. Israel’s friends in Congress will have to draw the line somewhere.
The best place and time to draw the line is here and now, on the Hagel
nomination.
There's only one sentence with which I don't entirely agree here and that's the last one. As you all have figured out, I am all in favor of the Chuckster going down to ignominious defeat. But I believe that Obama will attempt to disarm Israel regardless of whether Hagel or someone else is running the Pentagon. The difference is that Hagel runs a think tank, the Atlantic Council that has gone so far as to suggest that the US should seek an alliance with Iran.
In December, the Atlantic Council issued the major position paper — part advice to Mr. Obama in his second term, part vision for the world in the next 17 years.
Mr. Hagel did not write “Envisioning 2030: U.S. Strategy for a Post-Western World,” but it corresponds with his and the Atlantic Council’s efforts to seek global cooperation, not confrontation.
The paper predicts that Iranian hard-liners will be unable to insulate the population from democratic movements in Egypt, Tunisia and other neighboring states.
“It
is difficult to envision an already globalized Iranian public not being
inspired by regional examples of popular democratic governance,” the Atlantic Council says. “For U.S. strategy, Iran
should be viewed as a potential natural partner in the region. … A
post-mullah dominated government shedding Shia [Muslim] ideology could
easily return to being a net contributor to stability by 2030.”
...
The Atlantic Council paper puts pressure on Israel to make peace. A word search of the document did not produce a reference to Hamas.
“The
U.S. will need to persuade its Israeli ally to recognize that the
changing strategic calculus in the region will require Tel Aviv to make
peace with its Arab neighbors to have a secure future as a democratic,
Jewish state,” the document states. “However, the United States would be
wise to also develop a contingency strategy that takes into account a
possible scenario where the Israel-Palestinian issue remains unresolved to 2030 and the impact of such a reality on the U.S. role in the region.”
Part of the problem here is that even our friends don't understand that Fatah and the 'Palestinian Authority' share Hamas' goals. That's due in part to utopians like Shimon Peres who believe that peace must be made with one's eyes closed.
Peres admits Israel has 'nuclear option,' says that you have to make love and peace 'with your eyes closed'
There's a lengthy interview by Ronen Bergman with Shimon Peres that is going to be in the Sunday Times Magazine. For my money, there are four big points here and I disagree with him on all of them:
2. Peres is convinced that Barack Hussein Obama will take action to stop Iran. JPost thought that was worthy of a headline. I disagree. Obama wasn't even capable of pulling the trigger on Osama Bin Laden. What makes anyone think he would pull it on an entire country?
3. Peres says one must make love and peace with his eyes closed. I won't comment about love, but making peace with a deadly enemy with one's eyes closed is suicidal folly.
4. Among the list of actions for which Peres takes credit, he includes 'create a nuclear option in a small country.' Whether or not its true, why did he have to tell everyone?
Final assault on Israel? UN General Assembly calls on Israel to allow nuclear inspectors
We can thank President Hussein Obama for opening this Pandora's box as well. The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on Monday to call on Israel to open its nuclear facilities to IAEA inspection. The resolution also expressed support for a now-canceled (although one of the sponsors - Britain - says it's only been postponed) conference of all of the signatories to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. And wait - it gets better.
There were two paragraphs of the resolution that were voted on separately and one of them - to which the US voted in favor! - calls on all countries to immediately join the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Only Israel and India voted against that one (Hat Tip: MFS - The Other News).
All the Arab nations and Iran had planned to attend the conference in
mid-December in Helsinki, Finland, but the United States announced on
Nov. 23 that it wouldn’t take place, citing political turmoil in the
region and Iran’s defiant stance on nonproliferation. Iran and some Arab
nations countered that the real reason for the cancellation was
Israel’s refusal to attend.
The resolution, approved by a vote of 174-6 with 6 abstentions, calls on
Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty “without further
delay” and open its nuclear facilities to inspection by the
International Atomic Energy Agency. Those voting “no” were Israel, the
U.S., Canada, Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau.
I find it incredible that India did not vote no on this....
Resolutions adopted by the 193-member General Assembly are not legally
binding but they do reflect world opinion and carry moral and political
weight.
Israel refuses to confirm or deny it has nuclear bombs though it is
widely believed to have a nuclear arsenal. It has refused to join the
Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, or NPT, along with three nuclear weapon
states - India, Pakistan and North Korea.
The Arab proposal to create a weapons-of-mass-destruction-free zone in
the Mideast, and to pressure Israel to give up its undeclared arsenal of
perhaps 80 nuclear warheads, was endorsed at an NPT conference in 1995
but never acted on. In 2010, the 189 parties to the 1970 treaty called
for convening a conference in 2012 on the establishment of a WMD-free
zone in the Middle East.
The resolution, which was approved by the assembly’s disarmament
committee before the conference was cancelled, noted the decision to
hold it “with satisfaction.”
The number I have heard is not 80 but 200. And I suppose that there is no point in arguing that Israel has allegedly had nuclear weapons for 50 years, and as the only democracy in the region has not, and is unlikely to introduce their use into the region. This isn't about logic....
While the United States voted against the resolution, it voted in favor
of two paragraphs in it that were put to separate votes. Both support
universal adherence to the NPT, and call on those countries that aren’t
parties to ratify it “at the earliest date.” The only “no” votes on
those paragraphs were Israel and India.
Aren't you glad Hussein Obama is still President? What could go wrong?
A conference that was to be held next month in Finland to promote a nuclear free Middle East has been postponed indefinitely due to the lack of consensus amongparties who would need to reach agreement. The conference was postponed by its sponsors.
"As
a co-sponsor of the proposed conference ... the United States regrets
to announce that the conference cannot be convened because of present
conditions in the Middle East and the fact that states in the region
have not reached agreement on acceptable conditions for a conference,"
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement.
Nuland
said that "a deep conceptual gap persists in the region" on how to
handle regional security and arms control, adding that "outside states
cannot impose a process on the region any more than they can dictate an
outcome."
Following the US announcement that the talks would not
be taking place next month, British Foreign Office Minister Alistair
Burt said Saturday that the conference was only being postponed rather
than cancelled altogether.
"We support the convening of a
conference as soon as possible. We endorse fully the work of the
Conference Facilitator, Finnish Under-Secretary of State Jaakko Laajava,
to build consensus on next steps," he added.
The plan for a meeting to lay the groundwork for the
possible creation of a WMD-free Middle East was agreed to at a May 2010
conference of 189 parties to the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,
or NPT.
The United States, feared the conference, which was to be
held in Finland, could be used as a forum to bash Israel, a concern
likely to have increased after eight days of fierce Israeli-Palestinian
fighting that ended with a ceasefire on Wednesday.
I could have told them two years ago that there would never be a nuclear free Middle East. Heck, I did tell them two years ago that there would never be a nuclear free Middle East.
Martin Kramer eviscerates the Democrats' Israeli shill, Ephraim Halevy
Former Mossad Director Ephraim Halevy, who has become a professional shill for the Democrats, wrote the following in the New York Times last week:
Whenever the United States has put serious, sustained pressure on
Israel’s leaders—from the 1950s on—it has come from Republican
presidents, not Democratic ones…. Despite the Republican Party’s shrill
campaign rhetoric on Israel, no Democratic president has ever
strong-armed Israel on any key national security issue.
Martin Kramer strongly disagrees. But instead of taking an example from recent times - from President Obama's and President Clinton's pressure on Israel with respect to the 'Palestinians' - Kramer discusses an example that is older, but in many ways more relevant: The Kennedy administration's handling of Israel's purported nuclear capability.
Former Mossad head Efraim Halevy likes Barack Obama and dislikes
Mitt Romney. He’s entitled to his opinion. What he isn’t entitled to do
is make categorical statements that do violence to the historical
record.
I’m teaching a graduate course this semester on relations between
Israel and the United States, and one of my purposes in following a
historical approach is to fortify my students against people who
misrepresent the past for some present purpose. Just the other week, we
spent two hours discussing how President John F. Kennedy (yes, a
Democrat) put the screws on Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and
his successor, Levi Eshkol, over Israel’s nuclear end-run. The story has
been told at considerable length elsewhere, most ably by Avner Cohen, Zaki Shalom, Michael Karpin, and Warren Bass,
so I’ll just recap it here. It’s relevant not only as a corrective to
Halevy’s erroneous claim. It’s essential background to the renewed
debate over Israel’s nuclear posture that the Obama administration has helped to prompt.
When Kennedy entered the White House in January 1961, the CIA had
just concluded that the facility under construction in Dimona, with
French assistance, was destined to become a nuclear reactor. U.S.
intelligence had been one to two years behind the curve on the pace of
Israel’s nuclear program, and Kennedy was worried. He had campaigned on a
promise to stop proliferation. In his third debate with Richard Nixon,
he had warned
that “there are indications because of new inventions, that 10, 15, or
20 nations will have a nuclear capacity, including Red China, by the end
of the Presidential office in 1964. This is extremely serious.” The CIA
would soon list Israel right behind China as a potential proliferator.
In May 1961, just months after his inauguration, Kennedy raised the
issue of Dimona with visiting Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion,
and received a boilerplate assurance that the project had a peaceful
purpose. Kennedy and his advisers continued to suspect otherwise, given
the size of the plant. Israel allowed informal visits, but they were far
from thorough, and in May 1963, Kennedy finally decided to press the
issue and insist on regular inspections. He wrote a letter to Ben-Gurion (May 18), warning that an Israeli weapon would throw open the gates of proliferation everywhere:
We are concerned with the disturbing effects on world
stability which would accompany the development of a nuclear weapons
capability by Israel. I cannot imagine that the Arabs would refrain from
turning to the Soviet Union for assistance if Israel were to develop a
nuclear weapons capability—with all the consequences this would hold.
But the problem is much larger than its impact on the Middle East.
Development of a nuclear weapons capability by Israel would almost
certainly lead other larger countries, that have so far refrained from
such development, to feel that they must follow suit.
Then came the threat. Kennedy, noting the ways the United States had
assisted Israel, warned Ben-Gurion that the U.S. commitment to his
country “would be seriously jeopardized in the public opinion in this
country and in the West as a whole if it should be thought that this
Government was unable to obtain reliable information on a subject as
vital to peace as the question of the character of Israel’s efforts in
the nuclear field.” Years later, Yuval Ne’eman, the physicist who helped
Ben-Gurion write his replies, told
a journalist that “Kennedy was writing like a bully. It was brutal.”
Kennedy’s “Scylla and Charybdis-like letter,” writes Zaki Shalom, “made
it absolutely clear that he wanted Israel to accede to his demands
unconditionally and immediately, and a request of this sort from the
pinnacle of American power, in language so blunt, left Israel no space
for maneuvering.”
For a different perspective on Ben Gurion's dealings with Kennedy over the nuclear issue go here.
The gentleman between Ben Gurion and Kennedy in the picture at the top (which was taken when Kennedy was still a Senator) is Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr.
Report: US offered to let Israel buy nuclear reactors without joining NPT
Haaretz reports that in the summer of 2010, after the blowup over Ramat Shlomo, and when the Obama administration realized just how badly Democrats were likely to fare in the midterm elections (those are my gloss - not Haaretz's), the Obama administration attempted to mollify Israel by allowing it to bid on the purchase of nuclear reactors without joining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Arad's investigation was triggered by a momentary alarm that gripped Netanyahu over a trifling matter - a situation to which he is prone. In the summer of 2010, the Obama administration worked hard to appease Israel, which feared that President Barack Obama had retracted a long-standing presidential understanding not to infringe on Israel's strategic deterrence. Officials in Washington, D.C., and Jerusalem drafted a letter from Obama to Netanyahu. On the Israeli side it was crafted by Arad.
Some Israelis, not Arad, hastened to expose a marginal civilian-commercial point intended for later publication - that the American side had authorized Israel, as an exception to the rule, to conduct talks on the purchase of nuclear power reactors, even though it is not party to the nonproliferation treaty.
It is doubtful whether the reactors' advantage, in reducing the dependence on fuel and gas, would exceed their harm. See last year's Fukushima disaster in Japan as a case in point; or Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas placing them on their target list.
In the spring of 2010, interested parties had started boasting openly of the reactor innovation. In the summer, some Israelis published this clause from Obama's letter. Gary Seymour, the White House official in charge of arms control and nonproliferation, was angered by the publication and considered canceling a visit to Israel.
The storm died down within days. But meanwhile Netanyahu got alarmed, asked the Atomic Energy Committee for a damage estimate (not from the Defense Ministry's experts on the issue ) and launched a Shin Bet investigation - with the attorney general's approval - but without any supervision over proceedings.
Hmmm.
The rest of the column may be less interesting to a lot of you. It deals with a Shin Bet (General Security Service) investigation into alleged leaks by former National Security Adviser Uzi Arad, and how the Shin Bet's investigative powers need to be restrained.
But I don't recall a report like that in the summer of 2010....
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
