Obama distances US from Iran attack

[Jefferson23]

January 5, 2012

By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - United States President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are engaged in intense maneuvering over Netanyahu's aim of entangling the United States in an Israeli war against Iran.

Netanyahu is exploiting the extraordinary influence his right-wing Likud Party exercises over the Republican Party and the US Congress on matters related to Israel in order to maximize the likelihood that the US would participate in an attack on Iran.

Obama, meanwhile, appears to be hoping that he can avoid being caught up in a regional war started by Israel if he distances the United States from any Israeli attack.


New evidence surfaced in 2011 that Netanyahu had been serious about dealing a military blow to the Iranian nuclear program, which is suspected in some circles of being designed to produce nuclear weapons - something Tehran denies.

remainder in full: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NA05Ak01.html

[Scurrilous]

1. Good on him.

Meanwhile...

Ron Lauder: Israel must expand sub fleet amid Iran threat

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4171248,00.html

In New York Post op-ed, World Jewish Congress president says 'nuclear warheads atop medium-range Iranian ballistic missiles should force changes in Israeli’s strategy to survive'

<snip>

"The expansion of Israel's fleet of Dolphin-class submarines would deter a nuclear Iran, World Jewish Congress President Ron Lauder said in an op-ed published by the New York Post on Wednesday.

Lauder, who is close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, urged Israel to reinvent its submarine force "as a strategic deterrent against a potentially nuclear-armed Iran and its terrorist surrogates seeking to literally wipe Israel off the map."

In the article, titled "How subs could save Israel," Lauder said that while the Jewish state has never been a potent sea power, "the reality is, warfare technology that could put Iranian nuclear warheads atop medium-range ballistic missiles should force changes in Israeli’s strategy to survive."

"Even without an atomic threat, Israel faces a dangerous new world. While Iran is saber-rattling in the Straits of Hormuz, it has the means to launch an overwhelming barrage of conventionally armed ballistic missiles across Israel. Within the opening minutes of a surprise attack, Iran could destroy military bases, airfields and command centers. The Israelis are good but they aren’t invincible," wrote the Jewish-American businessman.

"That’s why Israel needs to use the Mediterranean and Indian oceans as a bastion for its diesel-powered submarines. It is reported that the Israeli Navy operates three of these modern, ultraquiet, effectively fresh-air-independent Dolphin-class submarines. Two more subs have been ordered and should be at the dock before the end of this year."

[Jefferson23]

2. Handy tool, Lauder :

snip* The conflict's root cause has always been the Palestinian refusal to accept Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. Every American President who has tried to broker a peace agreement has collided with that Palestinian intransigence, sooner or later. Recall President Clinton's anguish when his peace proposals were bluntly rejected by the Palestinians in 2000. Settlements were not the key issue then.

They are not the key issue now.

His letter to Obama

http://www.haaretz.com/news/ronald-lauder-s-letter-to-obama-1.284322

[Jefferson23]

3. Bomb Iran? Where Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum stand.

The two strongest Republican candidates to emerge from the Iowa caucuses, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, both are open to bombing Iran's nuclear weapons program.

By Scott Baldauf, Staff Writer / January 4, 2012

Republican candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum emerged as the twin frontrunners after the Iowa caucuses on Tuesday, and this is likely to have interesting reverberations for Iran.

Why Iran? Because both former Gov. Romney and former Sen. Santorum are hard critics of the Obama administration’s handling of the country that Romney sees as America’s largest threat. Both men have said they would bomb Iran if that country persisted in its stated drive to develop nuclear weapons. Both believe that Obama’s efforts to negotiate with Iran sends a signal of weakness. And if one of these men emerges as the Republican candidate to go up against Obama, the Republican party will attempt to play to what it regards as its strength – security and foreign policy – and the rhetoric against Iran is only likely to grow sharper.

Obama’s approach to Iran, of course, is shaped by his campaign promise to abandon the unilateralism of the Bush administration, and to work closely with America’s allies to deal with mutual threats, using methods short of war. While the US took the lead in dealing with supposed threats in Iraq – launching the war promising to go after Saddam Hussein’s alleged “weapons of mass destruction” – Europe has taken the lead in dealing with Iran through “critical dialogue” and reminding Iran of its promises to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

Most of the Republican candidates portray this carrot-and-stick approach as weakness, and call for military options.

in full: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2012/0104/Bomb-Iran-Where-Mitt-Romney-and-Rick-Santorum-stand

[aranthus]

4. I love this line. What a joke.

"Europe has taken the lead in dealing with Iran through “critical dialogue” and reminding Iran of its promises to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons."

In real terms that means they're not doing jack, the Iranians are laughing at them all the way to the missle lauch site, and the US is letting them do it. Dialogue will not disuade the Iranians from doing something that they really want to do. Either give them something that they want more than nukes (which we don't have to give), or threaten them with something that will outweigh the value of obtaining nukes (which we can't do). Or back carefully away and let the Israelis do what the region and the world wants done. Then condemn the Israelis for it. That's the ticket.

[Jefferson23]

5. Clinton revives charge of 'covert' site

By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's charge on Tuesday that Iran had intended to keep its nuclear facility at Fordow secret until it was revealed by Western intelligence revived a claim the Barack Obama administration made in September 2009.

Clinton said Iran "only declared the Qom facility to the IAEA after it was discovered by the international community following three years of covert construction". She also charged that there was no "plausible reason" for Iran to enrich to a 20% level at the Fordow plant, implying that the only explanation was an intent to make nuclear weapons.

Clinton's charges were part of a coordinated US-British attack on Iran's enrichment at Fordow. British Foreign Minister William
Hague also argued that Fordow was too small to support a civilian power program. Hague also referred to its "location and clandestine nature", saying they "raise serious questions about its ultimate purpose".

The Clinton-Hague suggestions that the Fordow site must be related to an effort to obtain nuclear weapons appear to be aimed at counter-balancing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta's statement only two days earlier that Iran was not seeking nuclear weapons.

The Clinton and Hague statements recalled a briefing for reporters during the Pittsburgh Group of 20 summit meeting on September 25, 2009, at which a "senior administration official" asserted that Iran had informed the IAEA about the Fordow site in a September 21 letter only after it had "learned that the secrecy of the facility was compromised".

That administration claim was quickly accepted by major media outlets without any investigation of the facts. That story line is so deeply entrenched in media consciousness that even before Clinton's remarks, Reuters and the Associated Press had published reports from their Vienna correspondents that repeated the official Obama administration line that Iran had revealed the Fordow site only after Western intelligence had discovered it.

But the administration never offered the slightest evidence to support that assertion, and there is one major reason for doubting it: the United States did not inform the IAEA about any nuclear facility at Fordow until three days after Iran's September 21, 2009, formal letter notifying the IAEA of the Fordow enrichment facility, because it couldn't be certain that it was a nuclear site.

in full: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NA13Ak02.html