Israel insists Iran deal will bring war

[Shah-i-Kot]

Israel insists Iran deal will bring war


Israel insists Iran deal will bring war

Oren Dorell, USA TODAY 1:04 p.m. EST November 19, 2013
Israel lobbying negotiators to reject any deal that would let Iran keep its ability to make nuclear weapon fuel.



Story Highlights

• Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Tuesday that sanctions should not be removed in return for half-measures by Iran
• The United States has been negotiating with nations that include France, England and Russia

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World powers meeting with Iran over its disputed nuclear program will seek an agreement that Israel and some U.S. senators say will leave the Middle East under an Iranian nuclear threat and heighten chances for war.
Secretary of State John Kerry says, however, that the deal being discussed will calm the Middle East and improve the odds of a better deal in the future.
"Nothing that we are doing here, in my judgment, will put Israel at any additional risk," Kerry said in response to Israel's concerns. "In fact, let me make this clear: We believe it reduces risk."
The United States has been negotiating with nations that include France, England, Germany, China and Russia over Iran's nuclear program, which is in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions and is suspected of working toward an atomic bomb. Discussions over the program and what to do about it are set to resume Wednesday in Geneva.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the proposal offered to Iran a "bad deal" and has been lobbying negotiators to ensure that any deal eliminates Iran's ability to make fuel for a nuclear weapon.
Though details of the deal have not been made public, Netanyahu has suggested that Kerry is prepared to accept a deal that allows Iran to keep intact its machinery and facilities for making nuclear weapon fuel.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu was quoted in the German newspaper Bild as saying that Iran already has five bombs' worth of lower enriched uranium and could convert it in a matter of weeks to weapons grade uranium.
Netanyahu reiterated that Iran should be forced to abide by the demands made by the Security Council when it imposed economic sanctions on Iran to force it to open up its nuclear program to inspections. Among the demands is for Iran to dismantle its centrifuges and stop construction of a plutonium reactor being built at Arak, Iran.
"And if they refuse to do so, increase the sanctions," he said. "Because the options are not a bad deal or war. There is a third option: Keep the pressure up; in fact, increase the pressure."
The Obama administration has called the proposed deal "a first step" in broader negotiations to curtail Iran's nuclear program. Iran claims the program is for peaceful purposes and it seeks an easing of the sanctions. The nuclear talks ended without a deal Nov. 9 after world powers incorporated a French demand to set greater limits on Iran's nuclear reactor in Arak.
"This agreement freezes the (Iranian nuclear) threat where it is now," said Gary Samore, Obama's former coordinator on nuclear proliferation who's now at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
"The objective is to reach a final agreement in six months' time that will include dismantling all of Iran's enrichment capacity and the heavy water research reactor. … Whether Iran will accept such a thing is, in my view, very much in doubt."
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Tuesday that sanctions should not be removed in return for half-measures by Iran. He told Fox News said he will introduce a resolution in the Senate that defines what Iran must do before the United States should soften sanctions. The push to strengthen sanctions has gotten support in the Senate from both Republicans and Democrats.
Netanyahu told The Guardian newspaper that world powers should be seeking a more comprehensive deal now, while Iran is under the full brunt of sanctions, not an interim deal to be improved later.
"And if Iran won't dismantle their centrifuges and their plutonium reactor now with all the pressure, when you reduce the (sanctions) pressure, you think you will get a better deal tomorrow? This is a mistake, a terrible mistake, a historic error," he said.

[Shah-i-Kot]

LOL Perhaps I have a strange sense of humor, but I find this news to be entertaining.

I find it amusing that Obama is trying to outwit a Jewish brain. How? Netanyahu is practically US speaker of the Senate and House. His people- Jewish people run the biggest investment banks- Goldmansachs. Their hold over wealth and power is unrivaled. Even Saudi petrodollars are nothing against it. From being nearly wiped out in the European genocide Holocaust, how did they rise up? Whatever you feel about Israel, they got these clowns dancing... and it is funny.

The US administration feel they have the right to negotiate the security of Israel, and that Israel would accept any Geneva nuclear deal at Iran? Israel is not exactly another Arab puppet or Pakistan or Karzai for that matter- not when it enjoys such dominating influence over the US Senate and Congress. What gives to such retarded thinking? I guess that Harvard law degree has gotten the best of his ego.

Since when did US think that Israel was going to be a sitting duck for the sake of US military bases/interests in the region?

Does anyone else find the the thinking here to be hilarious and ironic?

[gadoonwal]

There will be no war between iran and isreal.
shais are secretly close allies of jews state.
They are making fool of the world.

[Shah-i-Kot]

^ that definitely is not true. Israel is making the US foreign policy establishment dance like clowns on the world stage to prevent an Israeli war with Iran. haha

This is how you know how real it is.

Israel's hold on the US government and economy is too vast, and unprecedented (ever since Lincoln took a loan from banks for the civil war, it never stopped).

[Shah-i-Kot]

U.S. says 'very hard' to clinch deal as Iran nuclear talks resume | Reuters

U.S. says 'very hard' to clinch deal as Iran nuclear talks resume

By Parisa Hafezi, Louis Charbonneau and Justyna Pawlak
GENEVA Thu Nov 21, 2013 12:09am GMT

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(Reuters) - Major powers resumed talks on Wednesday on a preliminary agreement to curb Iran's nuclear programme with the United States warning it would be "very hard" to clinch a breakthrough deal this week and Tehran flagging "red lines".
Each side appeared to tempering anticipation of an imminent agreement after the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany came close to winning concessions from Tehran in the last round of negotiations two weeks ago.
Policymakers from the six governments have since said an interim accord on confidence-building steps could finally be within reach to defuse a decade-old standoff and dispel the spectre of a wider Middle East war over the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said remaining differences were narrow in the search for an interim deal that essentially would require Iran to limit its contested uranium enrichment programme in exchange for limited relief from sanctions.
"It is the best chance for a long time to make progress on one of the gravest problems in foreign policy," Hague told a news conference in Istanbul.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said: "We hope the efforts that are being made will be crowned with success at the meeting that opens today in Geneva."
A senior U.S. negotiator was more cautious, telling reporters: "I think we can (get a deal). Whether we will, we will have to see because it is hard. It is very hard ... If it was easy to do, it would have been done a long time ago."
The official, with an eye to prominent sceptics of deal-making with Iran, including Israel and hawks in the U.S. Congress, said the vast majority of sanctions - particularly on Iranian oil exports and banking - would remain intact after any initial pact and Washington would "vigorously" enforce them.
On the other hand, a Western diplomat said there was still a "very high probability" that foreign ministers would return to Geneva this week to try to nail down an agreement in the negotiations, expected to run through Friday.
A second Western diplomat expressed guarded optimism about a deal, but said "the ball is in the Iranian court."
Western governments suspect Iran has enriched uranium with the covert aim of developing the means to fuel nuclear weapons, which Tehran denies. Refined uranium is used to run nuclear power stations - Iran's stated goal - but can also constitute the core of a nuclear bomb, if enriched to a high degree.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech as Western negotiators gathered in the Swiss city that Tehran would not step back from its nuclear rights and he had set "red lines" for his envoys in Geneva. By rights, he was alluding to nuclear fuel production on Iranian soil.
He added, according to his official website: "We want to have friendly relations with all nations and peoples. The Islamic system isn't even hostile to the nation of America, although with regards to Iran and the Islamic system, the American government is arrogant, malicious and vindictive."
Khamenei also called Israel a "rabid dog", and criticised France, which spoke out against a draft deal floated at the November 7-9 negotiating round, for "succumbing to the United States" and "kneeling before the Israeli regime". France said the comments were unacceptable.
The U.S. official said Khamenei's remarks were "of course, of concern." He said leaders in Iran and the United States should not engage in rhetoric that deepens mistrust between the two estranged nations, which have not had diplomatic relations for more than three decades.
TOUGHER TERMS
A senior U.S. State Department official said there would be a bilateral U.S.-Iranian meeting on Thursday. The official did not say who in the U.S. delegation, which is headed by Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, would meet with the Iranians.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu flew to Russia to appeal for tougher terms in any accord with Iran after failing to convince the United States that the world powers are pursuing a bad deal.
Israel, assumed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal, sees a nuclear-armed Iran as a mortal threat and wants its arch-enemy's uranium enrichment capabilities dismantled and its enriched uranium stockpile removed.
Israel worries that the initial deal being discussed in Geneva would buy Iran time to pursue nuclear weapons because it would not scrap its nuclear fuel-making infrastructure.
The six powers see it, however, as a way to cap Iran's nuclear activity as a stepping stone towards a broad final settlement that would eliminate any risk of Tehran "weaponising" uranium enrichment.
White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes sought to allay Israeli misgivings, saying negotiators needed the six months that an interim solution would provide to strike a comprehensive agreement.
"We share the end goal and that's the point of these whole negotiations, which is to prevent Iran getting nuclear weapons," he told CNN.
The last meeting stumbled over Iran's insistence that its "right" to enrich uranium be explicitly recognised and over its building of a heavy-water reactor near Arak that could yield plutonium, an alternative bomb ingredient, once operational.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has since suggested a way around the first sticking point, saying Tehran has the right to refine uranium but is not now insisting that others recognise that right.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the issue of whether Iran will be allowed to enrich uranium in the longer term would not be decided in an interim deal.
A United Nation's inspectors' report last week showed Iran had stopped expanding enrichment and had not added major new components at Arak since August, when moderate Hassan Rouhani replaced hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president.
GOOD FAITH
Zarif, Tehran's chief nuclear negotiator, said on the eve of the meeting there was "every possibility" of a successful conclusion provided there was good faith and the political will among all involved to resolve problems.
American lawmakers urged President Barack Obama's administration to take a tougher line with Iran.
The talks in Geneva started on Wednesday with a meeting between Zarif and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who coordinates contacts with Iran on behalf of the six powers, before a full plenary meeting of Iran and those nations.
After years of confrontation, a shift towards meaningful diplomacy between Iran and the world powers took shape after Rouhani's landslide election victory on a platform to relieve the Islamic Republic's international isolation and try to lift sanctions, which are strangling Iran's oil-dependent economy.
Rouhani wants action soon: Western sanctions have reduced Iran's daily oil export revenue by 60 percent since 2011 and caused its currency to collapse.
Still, diplomats say Iran has so far refused to meet all of the powers' demands. They include suspending enrichment of uranium to 20 percent fissile purity - a significant advance towards the threshold for bomb fuel - as well as limiting its enrichment capacity and mothballing the Arak reactor project.
Western diplomats have kept many of the details of a preliminary deal under wraps but said this would not win Iran relief from the most painful sanctions on oil trade and banking that many believe finally forced it into serious negotiations.
Under an initial deal the OPEC producer is likely to temporarily regain access to precious metals markets and trade in petrochemicals and could see the release of some of its oil revenues frozen in oversees accounts.
The Iranian assets that would be unfrozen as part of any deal this week would amount to less than $10 billion, U.S. national security adviser Susan Rice told CNN.
(Additional reporting by John Irish and Fredrik Dahl, in Geneva, Marcus George and Isabel Coles in Dubai, Steve Gutterman in Moscow, Dan Williams in Jeruselem, Sophie Louet in Paris, David Brunnstrom and Lesley Wroughton in Washington and Dasha Afanasieva in Istanbul; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Christopher Wilson)

[Shah-i-Kot]

Netanyahu: Deal with Iran a ‘historic mistake,’ Israel not bound by it

November 24, 2013 5:20am
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calling an interim deal with Iran on its nuclear program a “historic mistake,” said Israel “has the right and the obligation to defend itself by itself against any threat.”
“What was agreed to last night in Geneva is not a historic agreement, it is a historic mistake,” Netanyahu said Sunday at the beginning of the regular Cabinet meeting, several hours after the agreement was announced. “Today the world has become much more dangerous because the most dangerous regime in the world took a significant step to getting the most dangerous weapon in the world.”
President Obama reportedly was scheduled to call Netanyahu on Sunday to discuss the deal, under which Iran will freeze some nuclear activity in exchange for some sanctions relief.
The United States and five other world powers signed the deal late Saturday night with Iran.
“Iran is committed to Israel’s destruction, and Israel has the right and the obligation to defend itself by itself against any threat,” Netanyahu said. “Israel is not obligated by this agreement. I want to make clear we will not allow Iran to obtain military nuclear capability. ”
According to a White House statement, Iran will stop enriching uranium to 20 percent, but will be able to continue enriching to 5 percent. Iran will neutralize its existing stockpiles of 20 percent enriched uranium and will not install or build any new centrifuges, except to replace damaged machines.
Five percent is well below the enrichment level needed for weaponization. But Netanyahu has warned that allowing Iran to continue enriching uranium even at low levels brings it too close to a breakout capacity for nuclear weapons.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman called the agreement “a new reality in the whole Middle East,” and “the Iranians’ greatest victory” during an interview Sunday morning with Israel Radio in the hours after the agreement was announced.
In terms of the possibility of an Israeli military strike on Iranian nuclear sites, Lieberman said, “As always, all options are on the table.”
He said Israel would look to other allies in deciding how to deal with Iran.
“Israel must look into new directions in addition to the U.S.,” he said. “We must take responsibility regardless of the stance of the Americans or of others. We must make our own independent decisions.”
Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni told Ynet, “This is a terrible deal that will threaten not only us but the entire world.” Livni, the lead negotiator in talks with the Palestinians, said Israel must work with the United States and other allies to make sure the final deal offers better terms.
Naftali Bennett, chairman of the Jewish Home party and a government minister, also came out against the deal.
“If a nuclear suitcase blows up five years from now in New York or Madrid, it will be because of the deal that was signed this morning,” he said in a statement posted on Facebook. “Israel,” he added, “will not be committed to a deal that endangers its very existence.”
Iranian officials reportedly welcomed the agreement, saying it confirmed the country’s right to enrich uranium and that “all plots hatched by the Zionist regime to stop the nuclear agreement have failed,” the state-owned Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
Israeli President Shimon Peres said in a statement: ”The success or failure of the deal will be judged by results, not by words. I would like to say to the Iranian people, you are not our enemies and we are not yours. There is a possibility to solve this issue diplomatically. It is in your hands. Reject terrorism. Stop the nuclear program. Stop the development of long-range missiles. Israel like others in the international community prefers a diplomatic solution.”
Knesset lawmaker Isaac Herzog, the newly elected chairman of the opposition Labor Party, said “the deal that was struck between the world powers and Iran is a fact and Israel must adjust itself to the new situation.”
“Netanyahu must do everything in order to fix the damage that was caused from the public clash with the U.S. and return to an intimate relationship with President Obama and other world leaders,” he said.


Netanyahu: Deal with Iran a ‘historic mistake,’ Israel not bound by it | Jewish Telegraphic Agency