by Steve Kramer
The United States, France, Germany, the UK, the EU, Russia, and China are about to resume “negotiating” the JCPOA, better known as the “Iran Deal,” concerning Iran’s nuclear weapons capability, Who’s missing from these meetings? Those countries most at risk from Iran’s warmongering: Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states.
Not only is Israel not invited or even consulted, but the Biden Administration has given a clear warning to Israel to desist from taking any further actions against Iran which might exacerbate tensions, such as cyber warfare, assassinations, or “accidents” which occur in Iran. Evidently, the current US government doesn’t want any impediments to its “longer, stronger” deal with Iran – as if that were possible.
The whole point of negotiating is to maximize your demands and minimize those of your opposite number. Unless it’s a case of unconditional surrender, a win-win scenario is the best path to a successful negotiation. One would think that such a group of heavy hitters opposing Iran would have the upper hand, but the first five negotiators listed above decline to press their advantage. (The latter two are only too happy to see Iran run rings around the Westerners.)
It seems that there is nothing that Iran can do to dissuade the West from acceding to nearly all of Iran’s demands. Iran’s very obvious, usual tactic of postponing meetings for months at a time – as Iran ramps up its nuclear program – doesn’t alarm the West. The Western negotiators just bide their time, as if Iran’s progress towards a viable nuclear weapon isn’t happening. In fact, Iran dramatically progresses towards a bomb and the necessary delivery system, while the Western negotiators say thinks like, “We call upon President (Ebrahim) Raisi to seize this opportunity and return to a good faith effort to conclude our negotiations as a matter of urgency.” (Reuters, 10/21)
Good faith and urgency aren’t in Iran’s vocabulary. This isn’t the first time I’ve decried the West’s responses to Iran’s superior style of negotiating. In 2014, I wrote the articles U.S. ALLIES ITSELF WITH IRAN, IRAN IS RATIONAL, WHO WILL STOP IRAN?, IRAN’S PROGRESS TOWARD NUCLEAR WEAPONS (which begins with, “In an article published in April 2009, I wrote the following…”), and AMERICA’S SHRINKING CLOUT. Many more articles in the years since 2014 followed about Iran’s danger to the West and Western denial of the danger of an Iran with nuclear weapons in hand, or imminent.
A legion of columnists and pundits have been writing on this topic: Iran’s drive toward hegemony over the Middle East and the West’s feckless efforts to impede Iran’s progress. Some have even surmised that the West is rooting for Iran to rule the Middle East, based on the Western negotiating strategy, which declines using its overwhelming military and economic power over Iran, whose power is based mostly on its unrivaled ability to procure proxy armies from other Muslim states which fight Iran’s battles for it. America’s European partners, whose capitals are within range of Iran’s ballistic missiles, join the US in its laid back attitude (so far), for undetermined reasons.
Meanwhile, the Biden Administration puts pressure on Israel, not Iran and its major proxy Hezbollah, Hamas, or other terrorist entities. According to The New York Times: “US officials have requested that Israel refrain from carrying out more attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities as negotiations in Vienna are due to start on November 29, 2021.
In addition, American officials have told their Israeli counterparts that it will be impossible to use cyber weapons to slow down the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, as the US and Israel reportedly did in a joint operation in 2009-2010 using the Stuxnet computer virus.
“American officials have warned their Israeli counterparts that the repeated attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities may be tactically satisfying, but they are ultimately counterproductive,” according to several officials familiar with the behind-the-scenes discussions. The report added that Israeli officials rejected the request and staunchly maintained Jerusalem’s right to act against Tehran, if necessary. (https://www.jpost.com/
While many derided former Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech to Congress during President Obama’s second term (3/2015), it did wake the world up to Iran’s dangerous process of reaching nuclear weapons capability. (Note that the West claims to be unwilling to accept Iran’s building a nuclear weapons arsenal, while Israel will not accept Iran’s nuclear weapons capability.) It’s true that Iran has made great strides towards its goal since Netanyahu’s 2015 offensive, but it might have progressed even more had Netanyahu not started ringing the alarm about Iran’s clandestine progress.
Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has described Iran’s nuclear program as, being at a “very advanced stage.” He expects disagreement with our greatest of friends. Either way, even with the return to an agreement, Israel is, of course, not part of the agreement. Israel is not bound by it…. Iran is threatening to destroy the state of Israel and they mean it and we need to take it seriously.”
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz added: “There’s no doubt that a diplomatic solution is preferable, but alongside that we need to have on the table the use of force, which is diplomacy by other means, referring to a famous quote from military strategist Carl von Clausewitz.” (https://www.timesofisrael.
There is doubt that Israel could interdict Iran’s efforts by itself, or even with the help of its new Gulf allies. Weapons that are probably essential include huge bunker-buster bombs and the heavy bombers sufficient to deliver them. Israel has neither, while the US hasn’t offered to supply them. Nevertheless, the Israeli mantra “Never Again” would not allow Israel to stand helplessly by as a mortal enemy prepares to destroy the Jewish state.
The strongest pronouncement from the Americans was made this October: “US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that if diplomatic talks with Iran fail, the United States “is prepared to turn to other options” to prevent the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon. (https://edition.cnn.com/2021/
Additionally, “A top US general said Iran has the ability to build a nuclear weapon in a very short time and that the US military was ready with other options to prevent this should diplomacy fail. ‘Our president said they’re not going to have a nuclear weapon,’ General Kenneth McKenzie, commander of US Central Command, told TIME magazine in comments published Wednesday. ‘The diplomats are in the lead on this, but Central Command always has a variety of plans that we could execute, if directed.’” (https://www.timesofisrael.
That’s pretty weak tea when confronting a state that is the world’s worst sponsor of terrorism. Israel is the only country willing to say out loud what needs to be done. The fact that Israel’s greatest ally is threatening it with unstated consequences if it doesn’t stop defending itself from a country which means to wipe it off the map is unsettling. It’s made even worse when information from Israel’s renowned intelligence agencies is disregarded. One would expect better from the country that’s supposed to be the leader of the Western world.
As quoted by Poloni:
“Lapid gave a moving speech some years back regarding the Holocaust where he noted that the Holocaust was a product of a general lack of perception that evil exists and surrounds us and means to harm us. It was a fascinating speech that I have listened to several times. He ends his moving monologue by stating:
Let us not fool ourselves, Evil is here. It is around us, it seeks to hurt us. Fundamentalist Islam is an ultimate evil…This is the evil that we all face and Israel stands at the front…We stand in the right place to say to the entire world, we will not board the train again, we will protect ourselves from evil.”
I say; We all deal with evil in one form or another and to different degrees every day. We compromise and backup, side step and go around as much as humanly possible, sometimes we just walk away. But when righteous people and people of good will have backed up as far as they can, when there shoved to the corner and beaten down there is no way …. but up. Then men and women of faith will stand and push back, to hell with where the chips fall……. Because the end result, we fight for is greater than the present pain we have to endure!
In Numbers 25 – Phinehas had reached such a position. When he stood up for Israel, God and Righteousness – justice….. he pinned the two together in death. This is what, I believe the Israelite Nation must do. For 40 years I have stood this position. When Israel stands up to the evil in the world – as Phinehas did – then God will stand up for Israel. God was so thrilled with Phinehas that he gave him a covenant of Peace – Israel will receive their covenant of peace which they have sought after but have not attained, when they believe God and Stand up!
Our sages have taught us that Phinehas action was an action of GREAT KINDNESS……… Present day leaders of Israel had better stand as men and exhibit the GREAT KINDNESS of Phinehas, before it’s too late to stay the Great Plague that is coming.
So here we are and the future is today.
It should come as no surprise that the US would demand this of Israel, even as the bobble-headed hand sock acts as a front for the actual authority in the White House. This should have been easily expected by the return of Obama’s cast of yesteryear authority figures in the persona of Malley and his co-religionists whose dogma worships at the image of a nuclear Iran. The mask is now raised and even the most deluded members of the public can at last come to grips with the the true nature of these self-empowered Radicals and their intentions in the middle east. Hand-holding with the devil will not carry his favor and it will not hold him from his desired path.
The US has created a dominant role for Iran in the region, and this has spanned many administrations, as a by-product of military adventurism or specific policy maneuvers, we now stand at the doorway thru which Iran will finally achieve this goal. Many had hopes of the US aiding Israel in her opposition to Iran’s passage into the nuclear clubhouse, but we can now see that these hopes were in vain. Israel will gain no advantage with the US by standing against her long term ally on this topic, but she has every need to do exactly this. A nuclear Iran will mean the end of the Jewish State as every Sunni nation will fall to Iran’s dominance and Israel’s role as a dominant leader in the region will pass with each Sunni state that falls to either the Mullah’s manipulations or their outright conquest, presuming the maniacal mullahs don’t first employ their new nuclear toy, specifically against Israel.
The Israeli resolve to bow to the will of Bush and Obama seemed to hold the advantage of better opportunity in the future. Unfortunately, the future is today and the govt is teamed with the likes of Horowitz and Abbas, and likely more than half the govt would commit harakiri before they allowed any affront to their US masters in Washington. I am not certain that Israel has the capability to control her borders effectively while committing to strike Iran, I only know that the need is paramount that Iran not be allowed to gain this nuclear advantage. Every war is decided upon the field of battle and sometimes great risks are required and great losses suffered, as Israel has never entered into any war without a certain need to do so. As uncomfortable as I am with the current political arrangement, the task falls to them to see this task completed, and there can be no choice of passively submitting to these American miscreants – not on this topic, not again.
Lapid gave a moving speech some years back regarding the Holocaust where he noted that the Holocaust was a product of a general lack of perception that evil exists and surrounds us and means to harm us. It was a fascinating speech that I have listened to several times. He ends his moving monologue by stating:
This is the messge that must be sent to the mullahs, to Washington and the world. .