Obama to Israel: Nuclear deal with Iran is “our best bet” – but “we’ve got your backs”

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis April 6, 2015, 11:28 AM (IDT)

Tags:  Barack Obama,  Iran nuclear,  US-Israel,  US-Iran,  Binyamin Netanyahu,

 

Obama's selling points for Israel 

“If anyone messes with Israel, America will be there.” This was the main message US President Barack Obama had for Israel in his New York Times interview with Thomas Friedman Monday, April 6. He was trying to fend off the constant stream of criticism coming from Israel, as well as Washington and the Gulf, of the nuclear framework deal the US-led group of world powers shaped with Iran in Lausanne last week. 

 

On his clash with the Israeli prime minister over diplomacy with Iran, Obama offered a conciliatory note: This deal is “our best bet by far to make sure Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon,” he said. 

 

“I respect Mr. Netanyahu’s security argument and agree that Israelis have every right to be concerned about Iran,” a country that has threatened “to destroy Israel, that has denied the Holocaust, that has expressed venomous anti-Semitic ideas.” 

 

He went on to say, “I would consider it a failure on my part, a fundamental failure of my presidency, if on my watch, or as a consequence of work that I had done, Israel was rendered more vulnerable,” he said. 

 

“But what I would say to them is that not only am I absolutely committed to making sure they maintain their qualitative military edge, and that they can deter any potential future attacks, but what I’m willing to do is to make the kinds of commitments that would give everybody in the neighborhood, including Iran, a clarity that if Israel were to be attacked by any state, that we would stand by them.” 

 

Those words from the US president were certainly welcomed in Jerusalem, but they failed to address the deep concerns besetting Israel and the region over Iran’s rising belligerence, which has drawn encouragement from Obama’s policies: 

 

1. The US president is focusing too narrowly on the nuclear dimension of the Iranian threat, when Tehran is already in the throes of an aggressive drive for regional expansion by conventional military means. It is actively stirring up civil strife and using subversion and terror to disrupt its neighbors. 

Obama talks about Israel’s security concerns in the future tense in potential terms, when already an Iranian noose is tightening around its borders. He must have been apprised by his own intelligence advisers about the tasks Tehran has awarded its proxies, the Lebanese Hizballah, and the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad, for turning the heat on the Jewish state – else why has Tehran raised Hizballah’s rocket-firing capacity against Israel to 1,000-1,500 rockets per day? And why send Hamas tens of millions of dollars for rebuilding the terror tunnels Israel destroyed in the Gaza Strip last summer and replenish its rocket arsenal? 

Israel does not have the luxury of standing by until a foreign power, however friendly, “has its back.”  Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israel Defense Forces have made their own preparations for the worst-case scenario.  But they also ask: Is it right for Israel to be put in this position so that President Obama can claim what he calls “a historic agreement?” 

 

2.  The list of governments skeptical of the value of the nuclear “framework” or “solutions” – depending on which of the Washington or Tehran versions they accept – does not end with Netanyahu. The day before it ran the Obama interview, The New York Times headed a front page story with the caption” Arab allies cry betrayal.” 

Saudi King Salman has clearly decided to brush off White House attempts to sell its nuclear deal with Iran or wait for Obama to catch up with events in the region. He is forging ahead in the defense of what he considers the oil kingdom’s interests. His first step was to go ahead, without consulting with Washington, with military intervention in Yemen to stall the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. 

It is worth noting here that even Netanyahu, in his most heated diatribes against the US president’s policies, never used the term “betrayal. 

 

3.  Obama and his advisers are fond of declaring that a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would not delay its program more than a couple of years. For one thing, that theory has never been proved: Iran could be held back from the nuclear threshold by four or, for that matter, six years. Who’s to say?  By then, Obama would have long been gone and also, by then, the ayatollahs – if they still ruled Iran - might have had a change of heart and decide to drop the current regime’s nuclear bomb aspirations. 

All these propositions are equally speculative. 

Still more short-sighted is the US president’s determination that the talks with Iran are a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see whether or not we can at least take the nuclear issue off the table.” 

Even if the issue is resolved to the US president’s satisfaction by June 30,  which most informed opinion doubts, it will still loom large on the tables of King Salman, Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh el-Sisi, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Netanyahu.  

 

4.  There is also a question of credibility. Whereas Obama now questions the value of tougher sanctions for deterring Iran from violating any nuclear deals, such as are envisaged Congress, just a year ago he was all in favor of these penalties for bringing Tehran to the negotiating table. 

 

5. In his long interview to The New York Times, the president made no mention of the contrasting versions of the Lausanne process produced by Washington and Tehran- as debkafile was the first to disclose in detail on Saturday, April 4. 

So which of the two is the correct one? Or were the two different narratives deliberately cooked up between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif as a selling device for their respective home audiences. 

 

6. Getting to the bottom of the real deal concluded in Lausanne will be further complicated by the secret annexes which were appended and never intended to see the light of day. Middle East rulers can’t be expected to take on faith a deal contracted by outside powers with their neighbor, that includes secret clauses to which they are not privy. 

 

7. Nothing is said in either the US or Iranian version about Tehran’s long-range ballistic missiles or the “research and development” work performed to outfit them for carrying nuclear warheads. Iran doesn’t need these missiles to attack Israel, but they would pose a threat to America. 

 

The Obama interview and reiterated pledge to Israel’s security followed Netanyahu’s latest broadside. 

 

Saying he sees better options than “this bad deal or war,” the prime minister said  to CNN Sunday: "I think there's a third alternative, and that is standing firm, ratcheting up the pressure until you get a better deal.” As it stands now, said the prime minister, "It does not roll back Iran's nuclear program. It keeps a vast nuclear infrastructure in place. Not a single centrifuge is destroyed. Not a single nuclear facility is shut down, including the underground facilities that they built illicitly. Thousands of centrifuges will keep spinning, enriching uranium. That's a very bad deal.” 

 

Netanyahu said Iran is a country of "congenital cheating" and that it can't be trusted to abide by the terms of the deal.

He is Risen- Keith Green - All the earth rejoice, for your King is coming in glory!

The Final Message: 

¹² “Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man ^[g]according to what he has done. ¹³ I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Isaiah 40:10

The Free Offer of Mercy

55 “Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters;
And you who have no ^[a]money come, buy and eat.
Come, buy wine and milk
Without money and without cost.
² “Why do you ^[b]spend money for what is not bread,
And your wages for what does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good,
And delight yourself in abundance.
³ “Incline your ear and come to Me.
Listen, that ^[c]you may live;
And I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
According to the faithful mercies ^[d]shown to David.
⁴ “Behold, I have made him a witness to the peoples,
A leader and commander for the peoples.
⁵ “Behold, you will call a nation you do not know,
And a nation which knows you not will run to you,
Because of the Lord your God, even the Holy One of Israel;
For He has glorified you.”

⁶ Seek the Lord while He may be found;
Call upon Him while He is near.
⁷ Let the wicked forsake his way
And the unrighteous man his thoughts;
And let him return to the Lord,
And He will have compassion on him,
And to our God,
For He will abundantly pardon. Isaiah 55

The Revelation of Jesus-Christ
  
¹² “Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to render to every man ^[g]according to what he has done. ¹³ I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”

¹⁶ “I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things ^[h]for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.”
¹⁷ The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost.
¹⁸ I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book; ¹⁹ and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and ^[i]from the holy city, which are written in this book.
²⁰ He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming quickly.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.
²¹ The grace of the Lord Jesus be with ^[j]all. Amen.

Signs and Seasons - Ray Steadman

Read the Scripture: Genesis 1:14-19

God made two great lights--the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars (Genesis 1:16).

The great question is never How? but Why? The answer to the question, Why did God make the sun and moon and stars? is given in a threefold way here in this passage.

The greater light exists, first, to give light upon the earth, both during the day and at night. We all know that the sun makes the day. The rotation of the earth is what determines the length of the day, and the speed of the earth as it rotates determines the 24-hour duration. Yet that speed is regulated by the moon, which acts as a brake upon the earth. It restricts the speed of the rotation of the earth to the exact time that makes possible the 24-hour-day, which is the length of time best adapted to the needs of humans. Isn't that remarkable? 

Other planets have entirely different lengths of days. On some of the planets, a day would occupy months, and even years, of our time. Others have much shorter days. But God has designated a 24-hour day for our planet because it precisely fits the needs of humanity.

Second, the great lights exist to measure the process of time for days and for years, says the Scripture. They are the means by which we measure time. The orbit of earth around the sun determines the length of the year, which, again, is just right for human needs. The orbit of the earth around the sun is determined by two factors: the gravitational pull of the sun and the velocity of the earth. No one knows what determines the velocity of the earth, what strange force hurls us through space at about 1,100 miles per minute. But here we are told that God has ordained the sun and moon to provide measures of the time that mark off the segments of life we call days and years.

Third, these lights are designed to mark significant events; they are for signs and for seasons. The entire record of human history confirms the truth of this. This is exactly what the sun and moon and stars do. Eclipses are like mileposts in human history, marking off certain dates. We can study events in ancient history because eclipses have been recorded. Many times in the Bible the sun and the moon have served as great signs. 

We are all familiar with the story of the star of Bethlehem. It announced the birth of the greatest person ever born in the history of our globe. There is also the strange darkening of the sun at the time of the crucifixion, an unexplained darkness that lasted for three hours. There have been other times like this. And through the Bible there runs a refrain, beginning in the early books and running through the New Testament, which says there is coming a day when the greatest event the world will ever know, the return of Jesus Christ to earth, will be heralded by the darkening of the sun and the moon's turning to blood. These bodies are provided for signs and for seasons.

You are the Lord of all creation. I see that you have created the signs and seasons to serve Your great redemptive purpose in Jesus Christ.

Life Application: Speculation can unceasingly ask how and why questions. How the seasons came to be we will never know while citizens here. But where can we find the why answers?

We hope you were blessed by this daily devotion.

From your friends at www.RayStedman.org

Roadmap Genesis

France: US caved in Iranian nuclear talks

State Department rejects call for Iran deal to affirm Israel's 'right to exist'

Reblogged from  www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/04/04/state-department-rejects-call-for-iran-deal-to-affirm-israel-right-to-exist/

Published April 04, 2015

FoxNews.com

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April 1, 2015: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference in Jerusalem. (AP)

A State Department official dismissed a plea Friday from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the Iran nuclear agreement include clear recognition of his nation's "right to exist," declaring negotiations are "only about the nuclear issue."

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, in a terse response to a question about Netanyahu's concerns, told reporters, "This is an agreement that is only about the nuclear issue" -- a comment that indicates the Obama administration is not looking to enshrine Israel's security into a final agreement. 

Harf, for her part, suggested the talks are complicated enough already.
"This is an agreement that doesn't deal with any other issues, nor should it," she said.
Obama administration officials have insisted all along that despite their public disagreement with Netanyahu over the Iran deal framework, the U.S. commitment to Israel's security is unwavering. Further, White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters on Air Force One on Friday that the U.S. would not agree to any deal that would threaten Israel.

The Israeli prime minister, though, made the call for the "right to exist" measure during brief remarks early Friday. He blasted the Iran framework deal and said his Cabinet is uniformly opposed to it. He closed his brief address by demanding that any final agreement include "a clear and unambiguous Iranian recognition of Israel's right to exist." 

The statement was prompted by reported statements from a top Iranian military official, who was quoted saying "erasing Israel" off the map is "non-negotiable." 

To that, Netanyahu said: "The survival of Israel is non-negotiable." 
Israel's objections promise to be a major hurdle for the Obama administration as its representatives huddle with those from Iran and five other world powers in pursuit of a final deal by a June 30 deadline.

Last month, Netanyahu railed against the pending agreement in an address before the U.S. Congress. He repeated many of those concerns again, on Thursday and Friday, after the framework was unveiled. 
Netanyahu said it would not shut down a single nuclear facility or destroy a single centrifuge. 
"The deal would legitimize Iran's illegal nuclear program," Netanyahu said. "It would leave Iran with a vast nuclear infrastructure." 

President Obama and Netanyahu spoke by phone late Thursday. 
In a statement on that conversation, the White House said Obama "underscored that progress on the nuclear issue in no way diminishes our concerns with respect to Iran's sponsorship of terrorism and threats towards Israel and emphasized that the United States remains steadfast in our commitment to the security of Israel. " 

According to the White House, Obama told his Israeli counterpart he has directed his national security team to "increase consultations with the new Israeli government about how we can further strengthen our long-term security cooperation with Israel and remain vigilant in countering Iran's threats." 

Read more: http://thelightseed.blogspot.com/#ixzz3WRN2Yqe0

700 club examines future Islamic Antichrist

Sowell on Iran Nuke Deal: “The Most Catastrophic Decision In Human History”

Reblogged from:
http://pamelageller.com/2015/04/iran-nuke-deal-the-most-catastrophic-decision-in-human-history.html/
Thomas Sowell is a national treasure. An intellectual’s intellectual, he is one of, if not the, most clear-eyed, brilliant American thinker.
I, too, am stunned that even now, even still, the media and cultural elites wield totalitarian-like power in the information battle-space. We have suffered non-stop coverage of a non-starter of a religious freedom law in Indiana (currently law in other states, a law once championed by Democrats), and yet little to no mention of the worst deal ever made by America — Obama giving Iran nukes.

 

Etiquette Versus Annihilation
Thomas Sowell | Apr 01, 2015
Clearing the way for Iran to get nuclear bombs may — probably will — be the most catastrophic decision in human history.

Recent statements from United Nations officials, that Iran is already blocking their existing efforts to keep track of what is going on in their nuclear program, should tell anyone who does not already know it that any agreement with Iran will be utterly worthless in practice. It doesn’t matter what the terms of the agreement are, if Iran can cheat.

It is amazing — indeed, staggering — that so few Americans are talking about what it would mean for the world’s biggest sponsor of international terrorism, Iran, to have nuclear bombs, and to be developing intercontinental missiles that can deliver them far beyond the Middle East.

Back during the years of the nuclear stand-off between the Soviet Union and the United States, contemplating what a nuclear war would be like was called “thinking the unthinkable.” But surely the Nazi Holocaust during World War II should tell us that what is beyond the imagination of decent people is by no means impossible for people who, as Churchill warned of Hitler before the war, had “currents of hatred so intense as to sear the souls of those who swim upon them.”

Have we not already seen that kind of hatred in the Middle East? Have we not seen it in suicide bombings there and in suicide attacks against America by people willing to sacrifice their own lives by flying planes into massive buildings, to vent their unbridled hatred?
The Soviet Union was never suicidal, so the fact that we could annihilate their cities if they attacked ours was a sufficient deterrent to a nuclear attack from them. But will that deter fanatics with an apocalyptic vision? Should we bet the lives of millions of Americans on our ability to deter nuclear war with Iran?

It is now nearly 70 years since nuclear bombs were used in war. Long periods of safety in that respect have apparently led many to feel as if the danger is not real. But the dangers are even greater now and the nuclear bombs more devastating.
Clearing the way for Iran to get nuclear bombs may — probably will — be the most catastrophic decision in human history. And it can certainly change human history, irrevocably, for the worse.

Against that grim background, it is almost incomprehensible how some people can be preoccupied with the question whether having Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu address Congress, warning against the proposed agreement, without the prior approval of President Obama, was a breach of protocol.
Against the background of the Obama administration’s negotiating what can turn out to be the most catastrophic international agreement in the nation’s history, to complain about protocol is to put questions of etiquette above questions of annihilation.

Why is Barack Obama so anxious to have an international agreement that will have no legal standing under the Constitution just two years from now, since it will be just a presidential agreement, rather than a treaty requiring the “advice and consent” of the Senate?

There are at least two reasons. One reason is that such an agreement will serve as a fig leaf to cover his failure to do anything that has any serious chance of stopping Iran from going nuclear. Such an agreement will protect Obama politically, despite however much it exposes the American people to unprecedented dangers.

The other reason is that, by going to the United Nations for its blessing on his agreement with Iran, he can get a bigger fig leaf to cover his complicity in the nuclear arming of America’s most dangerous enemy. In Obama’s vision, as a citizen of the world, there may be no reason why Iran should not have nuclear weapons when other nations have them.
Politically, President Obama could not just come right out and say such a thing. But he can get the same end result by pretending to have ended the dangers by reaching an agreement with Iran. There have long been people in the Western democracies who hail every international agreement that claims to reduce the dangers of war.

The road to World War II was strewn with arms control agreements on paper that aggressor nations ignored in practice. But those agreements lulled the democracies into a false sense of security that led them to cut back on military spending while their enemies were building up the military forces to attack them.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.

Report: US has upgraded 'bunker buster' bomb that could be used should Iran talks fail

Reblogged from JP http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Report

Middle East

By JPOST.COM STAFF, REUTERS \

04/04/2015 02:33

• 'US upgrades bomb to thwart Israel strike on Iran'

• 'US successfully tests bunker buster bombs'

• Obama makes case for Iran deal to Congress and Arab l...

Improvement of 'Massive Ordnance Penetrator' was carried out even as nuclear talks with Iran continued, 'Wall Street Journal' reports.

 The Pentagon has been upgrading the biggest bunker-buster bomb in its arsenal even as talks continue over Tehran's nuclear program, readying a weapon that could destroy Iran's facilities if negotiations fail, the Wall Street Journal reported  on Friday.

Work to improve the design, guidance systems and anti-jamming capabilities on the so-called Massive Ordnance Penetrator began before the latest round of negotiations with Iran started.

The most recent test of the 30,000-pound device was in mid-January, the Journal said.

The bomb was created to give US President Barack Obama options for attacking fortified facilities like Iran's Fordow nuclear installation, which is built into a mountain.

As part of the partial nuclear framework agreement reached between world powers and Iran on Thursday, "Iran has agreed to not conduct research and development associated with uranium enrichment at Fordow for 15 years," according to the US fact sheet on the initial deal.

The Journal quoted a US official as saying that, despite the efforts to diplomatically solve concerns over Iran's nuclear program, "The Pentagon continues to be focused on being able to provide military options for Iran if needed.We have not taken our eyes off the ball."

The tentative agreement, after eight days of marathon talks in Switzerland, clears the way for negotiations on a settlement aimed at allaying Western fears that Iran was seeking to build an atomic bomb and in return lift economic sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

The framework is contingent on reaching an agreement by June 30. All sanctions on Iran remain in place until a final deal.

Many details still need to be worked out. Diplomats close to the negotiations said the deal was fragile. It could not be ruled out that the understandings reached could collapse between now and June 30. Experts believe it will be much harder to reach a final deal than it was to agree the framework accord.

The White House has made clear that other contingencies must be in place should nuclear diplomacy break down.

“If you say all options are on the table, you have to have something on the table that’s credible,” the Journal quoted a senior US official as saying. 

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