The United States is working to close ranks with Israel on how to tackle Iran’s nuclear project, a senior U.S. senator said on Monday, playing down the prospect of the Israelis attacking their arch-foe unilaterally.“One of the reasons so much dialogue is taking place … is to make sure we are all on the same page that we are all clear what timeframes exist or do not exist, what threat levels may be real or unreal, what options may be on the table for us,” John Kerry, a Democrat and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters during a visit to Israel.
Israel, which has hinted at preemptive strikes against Iranian nuclear sites if it deems international diplomacy with Tehran a dead end, has in recent weeks hosted a slew of Obama administration officials and U.S. military top brass.
Vice President Joe Biden is due to visit next week in what one senior Israeli diplomat described as “a demonstration of the special relationship” between the allies.
Kerry voiced confidence in the efforts of the United States and other world powers to pressure Iran into giving up its uranium enrichment — a process with bomb-making potential, though Tehran denies having hostile designs.
Worried by the specter of a new Middle East war, Washington has spoken out against the idea of Israeli preemptive strikes.
Noting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “common sense” and his talks with U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration, Kerry said: “I think he’s very tuned in to not being rash or, you know, jumping the gun here or doing something that doesn’t give these other opportunities here a chance.”
In parallel to its efforts to muster new sanctions against Iran, the United States has been bolstering the strategic defenses of Israel and allied Gulf Arab states.
That has led some analysts to speculate that Israel, which is assumed to have the region’s only atomic arsenal, could eventually be forced to enter a U.S.-led “containment” policy against a nuclear-armed Iran.
{Reuters/Noam Amdurski-Matzav.com Newscenter}
this guy doesnt seem to ever get it right. doesnt he know what Israel has done in the past and that they have always done it right when they are strong
Israel is being left high and dry. America is throwing Israel under the bus.
Washington eased the threat of harsh sanctions hanging over Iran’s head over its nuclear program at the very moment that it was beginning to take effect and Tehran was showing signs of stress. Tuesday March 2, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters on her plane to Buenos Aires: “We are moving expeditiously and thoroughly in the Security Council, I can’t give you an exact date, but I would assume some time in the next several months.”
This abrupt reversal of US tactics on Iran’s nuclear activities took place when Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak was hardly out the door from Washington after receiving assurances from administration officials that a new round of tough sanctions would be in place by the end of March, with or without the Security Council. Clinton herself assured a Senate panel last week that stiff sanctions would be clamped down on Iran “in the next 30 to 60 days.”
Clinton and defense secretary Robert Gates, when they talked to Barak last Thursday, Feb. 25, were so sure of that timeline that they fixed a date for the defense minister to return got Washington for the second time in a month after sanctions were in place debka file’s Iranian sources add that the Islamic Republic’s leaders were also convinced ast week that the US and likeminded European governments had finally made up their minds to new sanctions in the space of a month. They read the reports leaked to the US media by administration sources about plans to freeze Iran’s external banking connections and cripple Revolutionary Guards businesses, and heard that the White House and a number of staunch European Union governments was ready to go ahead and sidestep the slow-moving, hamstrung Security Council.
Tehran’s anxiety brought Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad running to Damascus on Feb. 25 to pull his alliance together. Brandishing his fist, he warned that Iran would not knuckle under to sanctions and the Middle East stood at the threshold of a new war.
Iran’s war preparations hinged on the assignment of operational tasks to its allies and proxies, including the leaders of eleven Palestinian terrorist organizations based in Syria and Lebanon, who were summoned to Tehran Saturday, Feb. 27. They were given their nstructions and treated to the most vicious anti-Israel, anti-Semitic invective from Ahmadinejad heard anywhere since World War II
In another threat, the deputy Revolutionary Guards commander Hossein Salami stressed Sunday, Feb. 28 that Iran controlled 50 percent of the world’s fuel reserves and if sanctions were imposed, Europe would be very cold next winter.
The Obama administrations response to these threats has been to buckle.
Suddenly, Secretary Clinton announced sanctions would take a leisurely “several months,” so easing Tehran’s concerns and enabling its rulers to carry on its dash for a nuclear bomb even after the new International Atomic Energy Agency director in Vienna Yukiya Amano noted that its peaceful nature could not be confirmed.
The American U-turn has left Israel high and dry with the Iranian nuclear threat looming ever closer.
Month after month, the Obama administration was able to hold Israel back from attacking ts nuclear facilities only by a guarantee of tough sanctions, first promised for the end of last year and latterly by the end of March. Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu believed he was in tune with Washington when he visited Moscow two weeks ago to discuss sanctions in the immediate term and arms sales to Tehran, and sent minister for strategy affairs Moshe Yaalon to Beijing to persuade the Chinese not to stall urgent sanctions at the Security Council. Security Council.
Israeli government officials now feel they have been strung along and, moreover, that their diplomatic efforts in Moscow and Beijing were irrelevant.
To mark Washington’s change of face, John Kerry, chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee landed in Jerusalem this week, to be followed March 8 by Vice President Joe Biden. They are on hand to bulldoze the Obama administration’s bid to keep Israel in what Kerry called “alignment” with Washington on the Iranian nuclear threat. They will first have to explain to prime minister Netanyahu and Barak how their previous”alignment “on speedy sanctions suddenly broke down and no effective international action s any longer in play to delay Iran’s ambitions.
The whole situation just seems so confusing its worth consulting with a udum gudol like reb chaim kaniefski shlita just to find out lian pnei asuf and yishmuel is overhere