July 14, 2015-Netanyahu calls Iran deal ‘historic mistake for world’

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“The implications of the agreement in the foreseeable future are very bad. Iran will continue sending terror cells in all directions, will continue to inflame the Middle East and worst of all – will take a huge step toward becoming a nuclear threshold state,” Hotovely said.

She said that Israel would use any diplomatic means necessary to prevent the confirmation of the agreement by the US Congress.

According to diplomats, the deal, which seeks to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for sanctions relief, will place limits on the amount of nuclear work Iran can do over the next 10 to 15 years in exchange for the easing of economic sanctions.

It will still need to be ratified by Congress in Washington, and Israeli officials have indicated they will continue to fight for a stronger deal.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan told Army Radio the “details of the agreement matter little, so long as they [the Iranians] can ultimately acquire nuclear weapons.”

http://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-calls-iran-deal-historic-mistake-for-world/

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White House: Obama shares Netanyahu’s goal on Iran

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Concerns over Tehran’s true intentions are ‘justifiable’ but there is a ‘window of opportunity’ for diplomacy, spokesman says

While avoiding any direct comment on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday, the White House expressed understanding of the Israeli leader’s doubts over Iran’s recent diplomatic overtures toward the West.

“We’ve said all along, as the president has said, we understand, and it is entirely justifiable, that Israel is skeptical about Iran and Iran’s intentions,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a press briefing hours after Netanyahu’s speech. “After all, this is a country [Iran] whose leadership, until recently, was pledging to annihilate Israel.” 

Responding to questions about Netanyahu’s aggressive rhetoric during his speech, in which he denounced Iranian President Hasan Rouhani’s conciliatory statements as a ruse, Carney asserted that the US, like Israel, was unwavering in its determination to thwart a nuclear-armed Iran. More

‘Obama is coming to tell Netanyahu not to strike Iran’

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Barack Obama will be making his first presidential visit to Israel next month primarily in order to tell Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in person to hold off on any military intervention in Iran, it was reported Sunday.

 

Quoting unnamed Israeli sources, Israel’s Army Radio said the president would indeed seek to host some kind of summit meeting between Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and possibly Jordan’s King Abdullah, to try to re-energize the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

 

But the key reason for the visit and its timing, the report said, is that Netanyahu cited spring 2013 in his speech to the UN General Assembly last fall as a notable deadline relating to thwarting Iran’s nuclear drive, and the president wants to tell the prime minister face-to-face that the time is not yet ripe for military action. “Obama fears that the prime minister will decide to strike in Iran now, at a time when he is backed by a new government and can set up a new security cabinet in which two reported [ministerial] opponents of military intervention — Dan Meridor and Benny Begin — will no longer be present,” the Army Radio report said. Meridor and Begin both lost their Knesset seats in the January 22 elections.

 

Obama will reiterate US determination to ensure that Iran does not attain nuclear weapons, and will remind Netanyahu that the US has military “capacities” that Israel does not possess, the report added.

 

New Secretary of State John Kerry said last week that the diplomatic option remained open, but that all other options were also on the table.

 

“Obama decided to come himself and deliver to Netanyahu the direct message, ‘Don’t strike at Iran. Let me oversee the contacts with Iran as I see fit. If necessary I’ll take action against them. We have capacities that you do not have’,” the radio report said.

 

Netanyahu told Sunday’s cabinet meeting that the upcoming visit was an important reassertion of the strong US-Israel alliance. He said he and the president, when discussing the trip in a phone call two weeks ago, agreed that it would focus on “Iran’s attempt to attain nuclear weapons, the instability in Syria and its implications for regional security, and efforts to advance the diplomatic process between Israel and the Palestinians.”

 

Uzi Arad, Netanyahu’s former national security adviser, told Army Radio that the notion that the Obama visit would be focused primarily on Iran made sense since that was the most urgent regional challenge — “a race against time” — followed by the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, with the Palestinian issue “the least urgent.” Arad said he did not know whether Obama was coming to say precisely what the unnamed sources were asserting, however.

 

The radio report said Obama could have discussed Iran and all other issues with Netanyahu in Washington, DC, in early March, when the prime minister is likely to attend the annual policy conference of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC. But the president preferred not to be dealing with Netanyahu amid the AIPAC gathering, the report indicated, where the White House fears that Netanyahu will deliver “an aggressive speech on Iran.”

 

In interviews last week, US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro said the Obama visit was a sign of unshakable US-Israel relations and an opportunity for “consultations” on key regional issues, notably including Iran’s nuclear drive, the collapse of the Assad regime, and Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.

 

http://www.timesofisrael.com/obama-is-coming-to-tell-netanyahu-not-to-strike-iran/

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President Barack Obama is to visit Israel, the Palestinian territories and Jordan in the next few weeks, at the heart of a wider tour of the Middle East.

 

Israeli television broke news of the trip on Tuesday night, and said the White House had confirmed it would take place next month or in April, and that the details were agreed by Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a January 28 phone call.

 

“The start of the president’s second term and the formation of a new Israeli government offer the opportunity to reaffirm the deep and enduring bonds between the United States and Israel and to discuss the way forward on a broad range of issues of mutual concern, including Iran and Syria,” White House Spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Tuesday. “Additional details about the trip — including the dates of travel — will be released at a later time.”

 

The prime Minister’s Office also confirmed the report on the meeting, but offered no further details.

 

Advance security teams are already in Israel and the West Bank preparing for the visit, the Channel 10 news report claimed. The trip would be Obama’s first to Israel as US president; he visited in 2008 as a candidate.

 

Emanuel Rosen, the station’s experienced diplomatic reporter, said the visit indicated that Obama believes Netanyahu is ready to try to make substantive progress in negotiations with the Palestinians.

 

 Indeed, the report said, it was likely that areas of agreement on key issues had already been reached between the American and Israeli leaderships, since Obama had indicated in the past that he would come to Israel only when he truly believed it would enable a breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian relations.

 

The US, the report said, was pressing for a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks “without preconditions.” That has been Netanyahu’s demand, while the Palestinians have demanded a West Bank settlement freeze.

 

The report said Obama had been considering a visit for later in the year, perhaps to coincide with an annual conference hosted by President Shimon Peres. The news that he was heading here as early as next month, the report said, underlined the sense of potential progress in the diplomatic arena.

 

The report said Obama would be making “a working visit” and would not be accompanied by members of his family. His Middle East trip would also include visits to Turkey, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.

 

The upcoming visit by the newly appointed Secratary of State John Kerry will also prepare the ground for Obama’s arrival.

 

The news came on the day that Israel swore in its 120-member new Knesset, following elections two weeks ago which left Netanyahu poised to forge a new governing coalition.

 

In recent days, Netanyahu has spoken often of a desire to resume peace talks with the Palestinians, and directly called on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to join him at the negotiating table. On Tuesday, in a speech to the new Knesset members, he vowed to steward a “prudent” diplomatic process, speaking of seeking agreements but also of maintaining Israel’s capacity to effectively protect itself against security threats.

 

Netanyahu and Obama have maintained a correct but sometimes obviously strained relationship over the years.

 

Last month, for instance, days after Obama was quoted as castigating Netanyahu for ostensibly turning Israel into a pariah nation and threatening its long-term survival, Netanyahu hit back by declaring that if he were to capitulate to demands for a retreat to the pre-1967 lines, “we’d get Hamas 400 meters from my house.”

 

According to Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg, Obama had lately begun repeating the mantra that Israel under Netanyahu “doesn’t know what its own best interests are.”

 

The key focus of Obama’s reported criticism was Netanyahu’s settlement construction policies, which recently included plans for thousands of homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in response to the Palestinian Authority’s successful gambit to gain nonmember observer state status from the UN in November.

 

“With each new settlement announcement, in Obama’s view, Netanyahu is moving his country down a path toward near-total isolation,” Goldberg wrote. “And if Israel, a small state in an inhospitable region, becomes more of a pariah — one that alienates even the affections of the U.S., its last steadfast friend — it won’t survive. Iran poses a short-term threat to Israel’s survival; Israel’s own behavior poses a long-term one.”

 

Goldberg added that, as regards Netanyahu’s handling of the Palestinians, “the president seems to view the prime minister as a political coward, an essentially unchallenged leader who nevertheless is unwilling to lead or spend political capital to advance the cause of compromise.”

 

Goldberg said Kerry wants to try to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, but Obama “is thought to be considerably more wary. He views the government of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as weak, but he has become convinced that Netanyahu is so captive to the settler lobby, and so uninterested in making anything more than the slightest conciliatory gesture toward Palestinian moderates, that an investment of presidential interest in the peace process wouldn’t be a wise use of his time.”

 

A presidential visit would suggest, however, that Obama has reconsidered.

 

http://www.timesofisrael.com/obama-to-visit-israel-within-weeks/

Israel’s army chief lands in US amid Syria crisis

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Israel’s army chief on Sunday landed in the United States for talks with his American counterpart, amid tension with Syria following a reported Israel airstrike there last week. He arrived as Israel’s defense minister insisted that Israel “means what it says” about preventing advanced weaponry being moved into Lebanon as Bashar Assad’s regime in Damascus loses control.

IDF chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz began a five-day work visit in the United States as the guest of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the IDF announced on Sunday afternoon.

It said Gantz and Dempsey would hold “a series of work meetings together” and with other American officials, and would “discuss current security challenges, the regional security status in the Middle East and military cooperation.”

Gantz was accompanied by the head of the IDF’s Planning Directorate, Maj.-Gen. Nimrod Sheffer.

Apart from the Syria crisis, the two military chiefs will likely also focus on Iran’s nuclear weapons drive. Formally starting the process of building his new government on Saturday night, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said stopping Iran would be his first priority. Late last summer, amid reports that Netanyahu wanted to launch military action against Iran, Dempsey publicly and dramatically declared that he would not want to be “complicit” in any such Israeli action.

Israel’s reported airstrike overnight Tuesday is said to have targeted a convoy carrying advanced anti-aircraft defense systems toward Lebanon, presumably to Hezbollah. Syria said the IAF hit a scientific research center in Jamarya, northwest of Damascus, and on Saturday it released purported video footage of the scene. Other reports have indicated that further sites were targeted, including a biological weapons research center.

A Time magazine article on Friday claimed Washington has given Israel a “green light” to carry out more such raids if it deems them necessary. It said the US was prepared to carry out raids of its own in the Aleppo area if it feared rebels might otherwise gain control of weapons of mass destruction in that part of Syria.

On Wednesday, US officials told The New York Times that Israel notified the United States in advance about the airstrike it carried out. An unnamed Western official told The Wall Street Journal that the convoy was carrying sophisticated Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft weapons, which could constitute a strategic game-changer were Hezbollah to possess them.

Israel has not confirmed Tuesday’s alleged air raid. But Defense Minister Ehud Barak hinted Sunday at Israel’s involvement.

Speaking at a security conference in Munich, Barak said, “What happened in Syria several days ago… that’s proof that when we said something we mean it — we say that we don’t think it should be allowed to bring advanced weapons systems into Lebanon,” he said.

Barak added that he saw the fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad as imminent, and that it would be a major blow to Iran. He added that “Hezbollah from Lebanon and the Iranians are the only allies that Assad has left.”

He said in his view Assad’s fall “is coming imminently” and when it happens, “this will be a major blow to the Iranians and Hezbollah.”

Assad responded to last week’s alleged Israeli strike for the first time on Sunday while speaking with Iranian envoy Saeed Jalili in Damascus. He said that Israel’s aggression “exposes the true role conducted by Israel in collaboration with the external forces hostile [to Syria] in destabilizing security in Syria and weakening it so that it forgoes its national principles.”

“Syria is capable of withstanding any foreign aggression through the awareness of its people and its steadfastness in clinging to the course of resistance,” he said.

Iran on Thursday threatened “grave consequences for Tel Aviv” after the airstrike.

 

http://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-army-chief-lands-in-us-amid-syria-crisis/