Obama Is Pushing Israel Toward War

Events are fast pushing Israel toward a pre-emptive military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, probably by next spring. That strike could well fail. Or it could succeed at the price of oil at $300 a barrel, a Middle East war, and American servicemen caught in between. So why is the Obama administration doing everything it can to speed the war process along?

At July’s G-8 summit in Italy, Iran was given a September deadline to start negotiations over its nuclear programs. Last week, Iran gave its answer: No. Instead, what Tehran offered was a five-page document that was the diplomatic equivalent of a giant kiss-off. It begins by lamenting the “ungodly ways of thinking prevailing in global relations” and proceeds to offer comprehensive talks on a variety of subjects: democracy, human rights, disarmament, terrorism, “respect for the rights of nations,” and other areas where Iran is a paragon.

Conspicuously absent from the document is any mention of Iran’s nuclear program, now at the so-called breakout point, which both Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his boss Ali Khamenei insist is not up for discussion.What’s an American president to do in the face of this nonstarter of a document? What else, but pretend it isn’t a nonstarter. Talks begin Oct. 1.

via Bret Stephens: Obama Is Pushing Israel Toward War – WSJ.com.

2 IDF Warships Cross Suez to Red Sea

In a new signal to Iran, two Sa’ar 5-class Israeli Navy ships crossed through the Suez Canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea on Tuesday to beef up Israel’s naval presence near Eilat.

The passage of the ships comes several weeks after a Dolphin-class submarine passed through the international waterway for the first time.

One of the ships, the INS Hanit, already crossed the canal in June, in what an Egyptian source said was the first time a large missile ship used the strategic waterway, which is the fastest route to get Israeli Navy vessels from the Mediterranean, where they are based, to the Red Sea and beyond.

The other ship to cross on Tuesday was the INS Eilat.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said that under a long-standing treaty, warships can freely sail through Suez as long as they have no hostile intentions against the state that owns the canal. He declined to say whether the maneuver was aimed at sending a message, saying, “I don’t want to analyze an issue that I am not fully aware of.”

The significance of the move is debatable, but could be interpreted as a message to Iran and a demonstration of a strengthening of ties between Egypt and Israel. Iran has recently deployed several of its navy ships in the Gulf of Aden and near Eritrea.

In the event of a conflict with Iran, and if Israel decided to involve its three Dolphin-class submarines – which according to foreign reports can fire nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and serve as a second-strike platform – the quickest route would be to sail them through the Suez Canal. Going through the canal would also be the only way to get to the Gulf of Oman without refueling.

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Half of Israelis Back Immediate Strike on Iran

Just over half of Israelis back an immediate attack on the nuclear facilities of arch-foe Iran but the rest want to wait and see the results of US diplomacy, according to a poll released on Sunday.

Fifty-one percent support an immediate Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, while 49 percent believe the Jewish state should await the outcome of efforts by the US administration to engage with the Islamic republic, said the survey published by Tel Aviv University.

But 74 percent of those questioned said they believe that new US President Barack Obama’s efforts will not stop the Islamic republic from acquiring atomic weapons.

Israel, widely considered to be the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear armed state, considers Iran its arch-foe after repeated statements by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the Jewish state to be “wiped off the map.”

Israel and Washington accuse Iran of trying to develop atomic weapons under the guise of a civilian nuclear programme, a charge Tehran has repeatedly denied.

via Half of Israelis back immediate strike on Iran.

Jordanian King Says US Pushing 57 State Peace Plan

The United States is promoting a peace plan for the Middle East involving a “57-state solution” in which the entire Muslim world would recognize Israel, Monday’s Times of London quoted Jordan’s King Abdullah as saying.

“We are offering a third of the world to meet them with open arms,” the king said. “The future is not the Jordan River or the Golan Heights or the Sinai, the future is Morocco in the Atlantic and Indonesia in the Pacific. That is the prize.” But he warned: “If we delay our peace negotiations, then there is going to be another conflict between Arabs or Muslims and Israel in the next 12-18 months.” The newspaper said the king had hatched the plan with President Barack Obama in Washington in April. Details are likely to be thrashed out in a series of diplomatic moves this month, including Obama’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington next week. “What we are talking about is not Israelis and Palestinians sitting at the table, but Israelis sitting with Palestinians, Israelis sitting with Syrians, Israelis sitting with Lebanese,” said the king. While Palestinians seek a state in their long-running conflict with Israel, Syria wants the return of the Golan Heights, seized by Israel in a

via Jordanian king says US pushing new peace plan.

Iran Deploys Missile Batteries Fearing Israel, US Attack

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps has deployed mobile ground-to-air and ground-to-sea missile batteries in the Strait of Hormuz and other areas in the Persian Gulf, an Iranian source was quoted by Al Watan as saying on Tuesday.

The source told the Saudi-based newspaper that the move was made after Iran received reports that the US and Israel were preparing to attack the Islamic republic’s nuclear facilities.

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Will Israel Be Forced To Face The World Alone?

As Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu prepares for his visit to the United States next week, warnings abound that the Obama Administration’s policies will leave Israel to face Iran and Hamas alone.

The warnings are summed up in recent articles by the West’s two main pro-Israel female commentators: Melanie Phillips and Caroline Glick. Writing in the Spectator (United Kingdom) last week, Philips warns that “Obama is attempting to throw Israel under the Islamist bus.” She cites the report that Obama’s National Security Adviser told a European foreign minister that Obama will be ‘forceful’ with Israel, and plans to impose, with the EU and moderate Arab states, “a satisfactory endgame solution” upon Israel.

“This is all not only evil,” Phillips says, “but exceptionally stupid… The Arab states are beside themselves with anxiety about Iran. They want it to be attacked and its nuclear programme stopped. They are desperately fearful that the Obama administration might have decided that it can live with a nuclear Iran… A Palestine state will be Iran, in the sense that it will be run by Hamas as a proxy for the Islamic Republic. The idea that a Palestine state will not compromise Israel’s security is ludicrous.”

American Jewry: Spineless

After expressing incredulity at the American demands for further Israeli concessions in the light of the utter failure of the Disengagement, Phillips writes that U.S. Jews are reacting “with a total absence of spine… Almost eighty per cent of American Jews voted for Obama despite the clear and present danger he posed to Israel. They did so because their liberal self-image was and is more important to them than the Jewish state whose existence and security cannot be allowed to jeopardise their standing with America’s elite.”

Netanyahu must therefore take Israel’s message to “the ordinary American people,” she concludes: “They do value and support Israel. They do understand that if Israel is thrown under that bus, the west is next. And it is they to whom Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu must now appeal, over the heads of the politicians and the media and certainly America’s Jews and everyone else. He must tell the American people the terrible truth, that America is now run by a man who is intent on sacrificing Israel for a reckless and amoral political strategy which will put America and the rest of the free world at risk.”

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Peres: Israel Supports Two-State Solution, Iran Engagement

Israel is on board with key elements of President Obama’s agenda in the Middle East, Israeli President Shimon Peres told reporters Tuesday after meeting with Obama at the White House.

He said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would support a two-state solution to achieve peace between the Israelis and Palestinians and that if Obama wants to engage Iran, the Israelis are willing to back him.

“Mr. Netanyahu said he will cooperate (with) the commitments of the previous (Israeli) government. The previous government accepted the roadmap (to Middle East peace). In the roadmap, you’ll find the attitude to the two-state solution,” Peres said.

He said Netanyahu is ready to “start to negotiate right away” and does not want to “govern the Palestinian people.”

The Tuesday sit-down was meant to lay the groundwork for a meeting later this month with Netanyahu which the U.S. president hopes will lead to a resumption of the Middle East peace process.

The White House released a statement Tuesday noting that Peres and Obama discussed issues “including the pursuit of a comprehensive peace in the Middle East and Iran’s nuclear program” and saying Obama looks forward to the meeting with Netanyahu.

Peres, more moderate than Netanyahu, had been downplaying the new Israeli leader’s previous refusal to endorse the “two-state solution” that has been the foundation of U.S. policy since early in the Bush administration.

The push for a two-state solution was also at the heart of a political flap Tuesday over the tone the administration was taking with its top ally in the Middle East.

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Netanyahu Considering Land-For-Iran

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly contemplating making a deal with the Obama administration in an effort to encourage a more forceful American response to the Iranian regime.

According to The Jerusalem Post Thursday, Netanyahu may agree to some form of implementation of the so-called Arab peace plan in exchange for an American pledge to more robustly oppose Tehran’s nuclear program.

This Arab plan calls for Israel to withdraw from all land it has controlled since the Six Day War – including Judea, Samaria, the Dead Sea/Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights – and the granting of blanket rights for all “Palestinian” “refugees” to “return home.”

In exchange for this abandonment of historical and biblical Jewish lands and the opening of the doors to an Arab deluge – acts which will mean national suicide – the Arab states say seductively, they will establish full, normal relations with what will be left of Israel.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has signaled Washington and Europe of the new Israeli government’s intention to revise the repeatedly-failed land-for-peace approach to the Israeli-”Palestinian” conflict.

Netanyahu is expected to face enormous pressure to change this stance when he visits Washington on May 18.

It is already in play: President Barack Obama and his state department have repeatedly if diplomatically rejected any Israeli questioning of the viability of the “two-state-solution.”

Pundits expect that Netanyahu will be accorded a frosty reception at the White House and that Obama’s gloves will come off. Administration officials answering journalists’ questions in this way, “assured” them that the president was looking forward to hosting the Israeli.

In part because of the widespread media speculation, Netanyahu’s policy review team is understood to be brainstorming ways to avoid any form of clash that could harden Obama’s heart towards Israel.

via Jerusalem Post: Bibi considering land-for-Iran.

Jordan: Israel Faces War If It Does Not Agree To Arab Terms

Israel faces all-out war within 18 months if it does not come to terms with the Arab world and allow the establishment of a new Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem, according to Jordan’s King Abdullah II.

The Hashemite monarch also declared on America’s Meet the Press television program Sunday that threats from Iran and Al Qaeda will fade away once Jerusalem is divided.

His position basically echoed the Palestinian Authority (PA) stand that its demands are a condition for peace and are not a matter for negotiation, despite diplomatic and media language about Israel and the PA each making concessions.

The king responded to virtually every question concerning the Middle East by pointing to Jerusalem. “In Arab and Muslim minds, the most emotional aspect is the Palestinian cause and that of Jerusalem. And from there leads all the other problems,” he argued.

When program host David Gregory asked if it’s not a “fantasy’ to think that the problem of Al Qaeda will disappear so easily, the Jordanian monarch answered, ”What — what is Al Qaeda’s platform is — is the plight of the Palestinians in Jerusalem under occupation.”

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Turkish Arms Sale To Lebanon Shocks Israel

DEBKAfile quotes senior Israeli military circles as staggered by the discovery that US president Barack Obama had approved a large Turkish arms sale to the Lebanese army, including the services of Turkish military instructors. This was taken as further proof that the US president is deaf to Israel’s immediate security concerns. Lebanese president Gen. Michel Suleiman has more than once threatened neighboring Israel. When he signed the arms deal in Ankara Tuesday, April 21, he once again pledged publicly to place the Lebanese army at the disposal of the Shiite terrorist Hizballah in any confrontation with Israel.

If that happened, said one Israeli source, Israel could find itself under attack not just by Hizballah as in the past, but by a Lebanese army, well trained and armed by Turkey. He noted that more than 50 percent of Lebanon’s fighting manpower are Shiites loyal to Hizballah.

The conviction is growing in Jerusalem that the US president endorsed the transaction as a means of breaking up the long-standing military pact between Israel and Turkey, because it interferes with his Middle East objectives. Our sources note that neither Washington nor Ankara bothered to inform Israel of the transaction or its scope.

After meeting Turkish president Abdullah Gul, Suleiman at the head of a large Lebanese military delegation signed the contracts for the sale and declared with deep satisfaction: “We reviewed the new [US] policies towards the region in the light of President Obama’s recent visit to Turkey.”

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Iran Nuclear Threat

A top Israeli general says Iran is capable of producing a nuclear bomb.

Israel’s military intelligence chief told the country’s Cabinet that Iran has crossed the “technological threshold” of nuclear capability. Major-General Amos Yadlin said this does not mean that Iran actually has an atomic bomb, but that it has the expertise and materials needed to build one.

So how long would it take Iran to acquire the bomb? Israeli analyst Barry Rubin says time is running out.

“There is a big gap between material and bomb,” said Barry Rubin. “But basically, people who are well-informed estimate that Iran will need between 15 months to over three years.”

Rubin says that is a significant timetable considering there is a new administration in Washington, and in a few weeks, there is due to be a new government in Israel.

“We are entering a period in which we can assume that during the administration of this president of the United States and during the term of this prime minister of Israel, Iran will obtain nuclear weapons and those governments will have to make major decisions,” he said.

Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. But Israel has grown increasingly alarmed about Iran’s intentions since 2005, when the Iranian president threatened to wipe the Jewish state “off the map.”

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North Korea Threatens Retaliation

North Korea ordered its armed forces on standby and warned Monday it will retaliate against anyone seeking to block its planned satellite launch, which many fear will disguise a missile test.

The threat was the North’s latest attempt to escalate tensions on the divided peninsula and a strong sign that the communist nation intends to push ahead with the launch despite mounting international pressure to drop the plan. Analysts say Pyongyang is trying to grab President Barack Obama’s attention as his administration formulates its North Korea policy.

Monday’s warning came hours before United States and South Korea kicked off annual war games involving tens of thousands of troops, which the communist nation has condemned as preparations for an invasion.

The joint drills across South Korea began as concerns mounted that Pyongyang could be gearing up to test-fire a long-range missile capable of reaching U.S. territory. North Korea says it plans to launch a communications satellite, but neighboring governments believe it is a cover for a missile test.

Analysts have said a launch could come late this month or in early April when the North’s new legislature, chosen in Sunday’s election, is expected to convene its first meeting to confirm Kim Jong Il as leader.

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South Korea’s Navy On Alert After North Issues Warning Of Conflict

North Korea issued another warning on Sunday, threatening South Korea of a possible military conflict as the former try to restructure its foreign policies against South Korea amid mounting tension in the Korean Peninsula.

The reports on Sunday said the South Korean Defense Ministry officials have indicated that the country’s navy will remain on high alert along the western sea border.

The Communist country warned that it will abandon all the peace agreements with its southern neighbor, adding that he is confident that it’s army has grown to be “invincible”

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) claimed that the South Korean government has been responsible for worsening ties between the two nations.

South Korean president had pledged to reduce tensions by resuming food aid after the talks between the two sides, which accepted truce after 1950-1953 conflict but have not agreed on a peace treaty.

But with Friday’s warning by the North, the political analysts fear that the tension may lead to inevitable military conflict and a war.

“The KPA (Korean People’s Army)… has grown to be the invincible revolutionary ranks all members of which devotedly defend the Party and the leader” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) quoted Kim Jong-Il as saying, without giving a date for the visit, according to AFP.

The state media has blamed the South Korea’s president for trying to avoid his personal responsibility for the two sides’ strained relations by reviving previous bilateral summit accords.

via Source

Uranium For Iranian Nuke Within 2009

Iran will have enough enriched uranium to make a single nuclear weapon later this year, the prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) predicts.

The think tank’s Mark Fitzpatrick made the announcement at today’s launch of its annual global review of military powers.

“But being able to enrich uranium is not the same as having a nuclear weapon.”

However, the survey reports doubts over US Intelligence estimates that Iran halted its work on nuclear weapons six years ago.

This points to Tehran’s continued development of long-range ballistic missiles able to reach targets in Israel and beyond.

The IISS recommends a mixture of carrot and stick as the best international response.

It concluded a dual policy of engagement and sanctions, testing possibilities for Iranian cooperation while adopting targeted containment strategies, is the best way to deal with Iran’s nuclear programme.

Foreign affairs editor Tim Marshall said: “Several think-tanks have come to the same conclusion.

“The intelligence agencies are more reluctant to put a time frame on it, and the report itself says having enough enriched Uranium to build the warhead is not the same as building the warhead itself.”

Source

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