Netanyahu incites UN Congress on Iran nuclear deal

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/news/middle-east/19919-netanyahu-incites-un-congress-on-iran-nuclear-deal

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called on US Congressmen to resist the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in order to "get a better deal" Al-Quds newspaper reported on Sunday.

Speaking to American news network ABC, Netanyahu addressed US lawmakers, urging them not to "approve this bad deal... Resist in order to get a better deal." Netanyahu is giving numerous interviews with American TV stations with the aim of inciting Americans against the deal.
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US Secretary of State John Kerry has defended the deal, telling CNN that if the US withdrawn from the JCPOA, they would never be allowed access to inspect Iranian nuclear plants. "The greatest fear regarding this region is that when there is no deal in this regard," he said.

Ironically, despite Netanyahu's protestations regarding Iran's alleged (and as yet un-proved) moves towards nuclear armament, Israel itself is one of only a handful of countries who have refused to sign up to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and has an estimated 200 operational nuclear warheads. Israel also refuses inspection from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

[Hydra]

1. *Lmao*

Not content simiply to demand we get back on the war track, he complains that we offered to send him placating money...probably in the hopes of getting more.

[Israeli]

2. Netanyahu prepares war against Obama.....

Netanyahu estimates that his current battle against Obama, regardless of its immediate outcome, will cause future American presidents – both Democrat and Republican – to fear confrontation with Israel.

The new US secretary of defence, Ashton Carter, is scheduled to visit Israel Tuesday as analysts in the Israeli press believe his hosts in the defence establishment are waiting for him with wish lists as compensation for the Iran deal. (see link)

Analysts' assumptions follow declarations by Secretary of State John Kerry. In an interview with PBS last Friday, Kerry said President Obama is prepared to upgrade security relations to address specific Israeli concerns.

The American Jewish press reports that the justice department is apparently prepared to allow the release of Jonathan Pollard after he has served thirty years in prison. Pollard, who was sentenced for spying for Israel, has a symbolic presence in Israeli-American relations, and in several cases Israeli politicians requested Pollard be released as part of Israeli-Palestinian prisoners exchanges, suggestions the U.S. administration has consistently refused.

Speculation in the Israeli press suggests that a new justice department neutral stance on Pollard's release may be part of American concessions to Israel, intended to soothe tensions after the Iran deal.

Despite these new American approaches, however, it appears Netanyahu is willing to take the battle to Congress, where he believes he is stronger than Obama in the run-up to January 2017, when a new president enters the White House.

According to analyst Nahum Barnea from the news portal Yedioth Ahronot, Netanyahu has thus far thwarted attempts by Israel's defence establishment to discuss compensation for the Iran with their counterparts in the Pentagon.

Barnea notes that “Netanyahu is worried that negotiations at this time will weaken the chances of defeating the Obama administration in Congress.”

So far, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington, has formed a new lobby group, Citizens for a Nuclear Free Iran, to oppose the nuclear deal the U.S. and other western powers reached last week with Iran.

AIPAC spokesman, Patrick Dorton, told the New York Times that the Israeli lobby intends to start “a sizable and significant national campaign.”

Israeli right-wing news portal including the settler-affiliated Arutz Sheva, report that AIPAC has allocated $20 million for this effort and has already planned an advertising campaign to reach 30 to 40 American states. Arutz Sheva further reports that the group believes it can convince Congress to reject the deal, but is skeptical about gaining enough votes to overturn a veto expected from President Obama as many Democrat representatives remain on the fence.

AIPAC also expects Israeli opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog to call upon Democratic senators to vote against the deal.

Whatever the results of the upcoming battle in Congress, which will end in late September or early October, Netanyahu will have caused turmoil in the American political scene. Netanyahu will then face a second battle against President Obama in the United Nations.

Israeli and American analysts believe Netanyahu is looking ahead with the belief that a Republican president will enter the White House in January 2017. Concerning a possible compensation package for the Iran deal, Netanyahu believes it won't be damaged by his battles against Obama. Netanyahu evaluates that an American administration will not adopt a position similar to the one adopted in 1992, when President Bush withheld $10 billion in loan guarantees from Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir on the eve of Israeli elections, leading to Shamir's defeat and the subsequent Oslo process.

Netanyahu estimates that his current battle against Obama, regardless of its immediate outcome, will cause future American presidents – both Democrat and Republican – to fear confrontation with Israel.

Source: http://www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/aicoment/941-netanyahu-prepares-war-against-obama

[bemildred]

3. Bibi doesn't have the foggiest idea what he is messing with.

And as usual he will accomplish the opposite of what he sets out to do.

[geek tragedy]

6. he's very good at israeli politics--he plays them like a fiddle.

Everyone outside the US and Israel despises him, but he's not worried about that.

[bemildred]

7. Bush the Lesser was popular as all Hell here at one time.

Good polls don't mean a thing in the long run. That's all marketing bullshit anyway.

[geek tragedy]

8. Marketing bullshit is what wins elections. nt

[bemildred]

9. Sometimes.

That's an interesting thought though, how long can Bibi stave off another election?

[Israeli]

10. He plays American Jews like a fiddle geek tragedy......

but not all American Jews ..........


I live in Israel, in Iran's shadow. I voted for Obama. I'm glad I did.

Thank you, Mr. President, for this deal.

By Bradley Burston

I live in Israel. I live in the shadow of Iran. I hold American citizenship as well as Israeli. I pay taxes to both countries. I vote in the elections of each.

In 2008 and 2012, I voted for Barack Obama. I'm glad I did.

I'm glad not only because of landmark changes to America on his watch, not only because of moments of inspiration, of unexpected hope, of enfranchisement, of movement on issues long dismissed as immutable.

I'm glad because I believe that no one but this president would have tried, and succeeded, to land a deal with Iran on nuclear weapons.

I'm glad because Israel is the place we raised our children. They tell us that this is the place where they want to raise theirs. And this deal, fraught as it is, stands a chance of making our future here safer.

Over the weekend I studied the text of the agreement. Start to finish. It makes for a sobering read. As a contract, it gives the sense of spending more time on what Iran gets out of this, than on what Iran needs to give up to get it.

No one can be sure if it will work. No one can know if Iran means to abide by its terms, and put off its bomb by a decade or more.

As complex and jargon-laden as the agreement is, evaluating it comes down to a simple question – who do you trust?

The document is asking us to trust on a level that we've seldom needed to summon. Like it or not, fight it or not, we are trusting this document, and its signatories, with our very lives.

Whom do I trust with the lives of my children?

I trust people like former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy. The agreement, he
argued Sunday, "includes components that are crucial for Israel's security."

Iran made concessions on a series of critical issues, Halevy wrote, noting that the Islamic Republic was "forced to agree to an invasive and unique supervision regime like no other in the world."

I trust Lt. Col (Res.) Uzi Even, a physics professor and former scientist at the Dimona nuclear reactor, who concluded in a detailed analysis that the deal "delays the Iranian nuclear program by 15 years at least, and maybe more.

"The deal was written by nuclear experts and blocks every path I know to the bomb," Even continues. "The Iranians may be celebrating, but they have in fact swallowed a very bitter pill, more so than they would like to let on."

I trust nuclear non-proliferation expert Aaron Stein, who told journalist Max Fisher that under the terms of the agreement, if Tehran tries to build a bomb, "the likelihood of getting caught is near 100 percent," meaning that the agreement "makes the possibility of Iran developing a nuclear weapon in the next 25 years extremely remote."

As complex and jargon-laden as the agreement is, evaluating it comes down to a simple question – who do you trust?

And what about Benjamin Netanyahu? Don't I trust him? Don't I trust him to keep us safe, to safeguard Israel's vital interests, to keep war at bay?

No. Not at all. Absolutely not.

"The attempt to change the rules of the game and include additional demands from Iran in the agreement, like recognizing Israel and halting the support for terror," Halevy wrote this week, "shows that Netanyahu has no interest in any agreement."

Countering critics – Netanyahu in the lead - who contend that having no deal at all would have been preferable to forging this deal, DefenseNews wrote

in a Monday editorial: "Without a deal, Iran — which suspended its bomb program 20 months ago to enter negotiations — would be unchecked in quickly finishing the project: Iran would have a nuclear device, by far the worst possible outcome for the region."

Do I trust Iran? No. And that is where having a deal – a deal with critical monitoring - makes sense. As does the page-after-page emphasis on sanctions to be lifted, part and parcel of selling the deal to the Iranian public.

I do trust Iran expert Meir Javedanfar, who describes a likely outcome had no deal been signed, or if the Israeli prime minister succeeds in his declared campaign to intervene in U.S. politics in order to scuttle the deal within the next two months.

"With what Netanyahu is suggesting, which is the continuation of the current tensions with Iran until Iran completely capitulates … Iran would only need two months to make a nuclear weapon."

"Nobody is trusting Iran, the Iranian regime," maintains Javedanfar, an Iran-born Israeli, who teaches contemporary Iranian politics at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya.

"It’s not about trust – it’s about mistrust and verify.”

Barack Obama could have taken the easy way out, and ducked the most difficult foreign policy challenge of his presidency – a nuclear Iran. Instead, against all odds, against some of the most stringent pressures American politics can dish out, he has driven forward.

Thank you, Mr. President, for this deal.

Source: http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/.premium-1.667121

I despise him geek tragedy....and like Bradley Burston I dont trust him ..."" As complex and jargon-laden as the agreement is, evaluating it comes down to a simple question – who do you trust? ""

Like Bradley Burston I thank your President for this deal.

You need to stop with the ....all Israelis think alike ....we dont geek tragedy....far from it .

[azurnoir]

4. Let him the only thing that can be acomplished is Congress rejecting the deal

however it was unanimously passed by the UNSC, all Congress's rejection will acomplish is either tieing up the US government in the veto process or humiliating Obama and Kerry who still have 18 months in office

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

5. I'n curious where team hasbara stands on this.

How can those who pretend to be democrats both say they support the POTUS but oppose this treaty?

I'm sure it will make for interesting conversation later.