Re: ISRAEL FURIOUS OVER IRAN DEAL

Admin Tue 26 Nov 2013, 8:59 pm

Geneva: The Abandonment of the Jews
Posted by: Michael Freund November 26, 2013 , 3:31 pm
If international diplomacy had its own Richter scale to measure the magnitude of strategic earthquakes, Geneva 2013 would earn a place of pride alongside Munich 1938.

With the stroke of a pen in Geneva, the world has entered an alarming new phase, one in which the United States has turned its back on its allies and embraced a long-standing foe. Indeed, rather than ratcheting up the pressure on Iran, Washington has instead turned up the heat on Israel, forcing the Jewish state into a corner, and a dangerous one at that.
Make no mistake. The agreement signed over the weekend between Iran and the West constitutes a surrender of historic proportions, one that rewards the misbehavior of the ayatollahs while punishing Israel’s steadfast reliability.

If international diplomacy had its own Richter scale to measure the magnitude of strategic earthquakes, Geneva 2013 would earn a place of pride alongside Munich 1938.

Consider the following: Since July 31, 2006, the United Nations Security Council has adopted no less than six resolutions requiring the Iranians to “suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development.”

Nearly all these resolutions were adopted under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which means they are legally binding on Iran and all UN member states. Nonetheless, Tehran has merrily continued to violate its international obligations, enriching uranium to its heart’s content as it has advanced towards its goal of building a nuclear weapon.

Enter Barack Obama and John Kerry, who agreed at Geneva to soften economic sanctions against Iran while allowing their nuclear scientists to continue to enrich uranium up to a level of five percent, even though such activity has been repeatedly prohibited.
In other words, the mullahs have now received an imprimatur from Washington to continue violating the UN Security Council resolutions which the US itself had supported.
This, by definition, is an act of retreat in the face of Iranian obstinacy and disobedience, a move that sends a perilous message of weaknessprecisely at a time when determination is warranted.
In effect, the Iranians are being told that if you violate and obfuscate long enough, eventually the West will fold.

If that isn’t appeasement, then what is? Moreover, the Geneva accord does not require Iran to dismantle even a single centrifuge, leaving in place its future capacity to surge forward towards the nuclear finish line at a time of its choosing.

Yet one thing that Geneva most certainly did accomplish is that it tightened the screws on Israel, making it significantly more difficult for Jerusalem to take unilateral military action in the coming months against Iranian nuclear installations.
With much of the world pinning its hopes on the flawed agreement with Iran, an Israeli resort to military force at this time would elicit more than just the usual howls of protest from the international community.
The Geneva accord appears designed to pen in Israel more than it does Iran, an attempt to handcuff the Jewish state for the next six months by vastly raising the diplomatic and political costs of military action.

And so, just as he has done with various other crises that have arisen on his watch, Obama is once again kicking the can down the road, pushing off the need to make hard decisions on Iran for a few months in the hopes that something, anything, will enable him to avoid the moment of truth.
BUT IN doing so, Obama is imperiling Israel and its future by signaling toIran that he is willing to live with a situation in which they are on the brink of the nuclear threshold. For a president who famously told the Atlantic magazine in March 2012 that “We’ve got Israel’s back,” Obama sure has a curious way of showing it, by putting the squeeze on the Jewish state.
Everyone who supports Israel, Jew or Christian alike, should be alarmed by this turn of events.
The United States has recklessly rolled the dice with the fate of its closest ally in the Middle East, inexplicably placing its faith in a rogue regime, one that has repeatedly vowed to finish what Hitler began.
It was 29 years ago, in 1984, that historian David S. Wyman published a seminal volume, The Abandonment of the Jews, on America’s failure to stop the Nazi slaughter of European Jewry. Marshaling painstaking evidence, Wyman conclusively demonstrated that America and its leadership could have saved millions of Jews. In the preface to his book, Wyman concluded with a simple yet chilling question, “Would the reaction be different today?” Sadly, the agreement forged with Iran in Geneva gives us a glimpse of what the answer might be.

Admin Tue 26 Nov 2013, 8:32 pm

Israeli Minister Calls for Jewish Visitation Rights to Temple Mount Over Hannuka
Posted by: Doni Kandel November 26, 2013 , 3:30 pm
"One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the graciousness of the LORD, and to visit early in His temple. (Psalms 27:4)
Knesset Interior Committee chairwoman Miri Regev instructed police on Monday to allow Jewish visitors onto the Temple Mount unimpeded by Arab protestors over the Hannuka holiday, which begins Wednesday at sundown, according to the Jerusalem Post.

“Just because some Muslims throw stones when Jews go up to the Temple Mount is not a reason to prevent them from going, as happened over Succot,” Regev told police Ch.-Supt. Avi Biton during the committee hearing.

“Police must allow Jews to go up to the site on Hanukka,” she continued. “Special arrangements are made for Muslim prayer there during Ramadan and similar arrangements must be made for Jewish visits on Jewish holidays.”
Jewish groups attempting to ascend to the mount frequently complain that the police do not do enough to ensure their safety and are often the reason why their attempted visits fail.

“For me, the festival of Hanukka represents the time that Jews stood up for their freedom and equality,” said Rabbi Yehuda Glick, a spokesman and activist for the Joint Association of Temple Organizations group. “We don’t want to harm or disturb anyone, but simply wish to pray at Judaism’s holiest site, while the police are hostile to, and continue to humiliate, Jewish visitors.”

Likud MK Moshe Feiglin, who has been active on the issue for many years, said activists should not direct complaints at police, since they only carry out the government’s wishes. Feiglin, who was personally banned by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu from visiting the Temple Mount, said the problem is one of government policy, not police actions.
Bayit Yehudi MK Zvulun Kalfa also spoke at the hearing, describing the situation as one of “national importance,” and saying it was “unbelievable that Jewish people cannot get access to their holiest place.”

Admin Tue 26 Nov 2013, 8:19 pm

Netanyahu Sending National Security Adviser To The US To Discuss Iran
Posted by: Staff Writer November 26, 2013 , 3:41 pm

Following his failure to stop the P5+1 from entering an interim agreement with Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided he will dispatch his national security advisor to the United States to advise America on how to best move forward regarding a possible permanent deal on Tehran’s nuclear program, according to The Times of Israel. That permanent deal, he said, must ensure “the dismantling of Iran’s military nuclear capability.”

“I spoke last night with President [Barack] Obama. We agreed that in the coming days an Israeli team led by the national security adviser, Yossi Cohen, will go out to discuss with the United States the permanent accord with Iran,” Netanyahu told members of his Likud party.

Following the announcement of the interim deal, Netanyahu told the media that it was a “historic mistake.” In their phone conversation, initiated by Obama, Netanyahu asked the president — who kept Israel in the dark for months about the back-channel US-Iran negotiations that helped shape the deal — to begin US-Israel consultations on the permanent deal right away, and Obama consented, Israel’s Channel 2 reported. Hence the dispatch of Yossi Cohen.

On Monday, Netanyahu reiterated his commitment to keeping Iran from acquiring a bomb but started to shift his focus from the interim deal to the intended permanent one, saying, “This accord must bring about one outcome: the dismantling of Iran’s military nuclear capability.”

“I would be happy if I could join those voices around the world that are praising the Geneva agreement,” Netanyahu remarked. “It is true that the international pressure which we applied was partly successful and has led to a better result than what was originally planned. But this is still a bad deal. It reduces pressure on Iran without receiving anything tangible in return. And the Iranians who laughed all the way to the bank are themselves saying that this deal has saved them.”

Obama also asked Netanyahu not to lobby allies in Congress to push legislation for more sanctions on Iran, Israel’s Channel 2 news reported.

“The President underscored that the United States will remain firm in our commitment to Israel, which has good reason to be skeptical about Iran’s intentions,” US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro wrote on Facebook.

Israeli TV news reported late Sunday that Netanyahu was “extremely angry” with Obama over the deal, that he fears the international sanctions regime will now crumble, that the US had not come clean to Israel over a secret back channel of talks with Iran, and that Israel’s military option for intervening in Iran is off the table for the foreseeable future now that the interim deal is done.

Admin Tue 26 Nov 2013, 9:42 am

Netanyahu & Iran
The prime minister's hard line on Iran reflects his deep sense of duty to defend the Jewish state against an existential threat.
by Michael Oren

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been labeled a warmonger, a wolf-crier and an opponent of peace at any price because of his policies on Iran.
Here's what Netanyahu's critics say: His warnings of a bad deal are designed to undermine measures to slow Iran's nuclear program and test its openness to long-term solutions. His insistence on strengthening, rather than easing, sanctions will weaken Iranian moderates and drive them from the negotiating table — precisely what Netanyahu allegedly wants. Similarly, his demands for dismantling Iran's uranium enrichment facilities and removing its nuclear stockpile are intended to replace diplomatic options with military ones.

The critics claim that he is again playing the doomsayer, the spoiler of efforts to avoid conflict and restore Iran to the community of nations.
Why would any leader subject himself to such obloquy? Why would he risk international isolation and friction with crucial allies? And why, as some commentators assert, would Netanyahu jeopardize a peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear threat and drag his country — and perhaps not only his — into war?
The answers to these questions are simple.
Netanyahu is acting out of a deep sense of duty to defend Israel against an existential threat. Such dangers are rare in most countries' experience but are traumatically common in Israel's, and they render the price of ridicule irrelevant.

Moreover, when formulating policies vital to Israel's survival, the prime minister consults with Israel's renowned intelligence community, a robust national security council and highly specialized units of the Israel Defense Forces. Netanyahu may at times appear to stand alone on Iran, but he is backed by a world-class body of experts.

In 2011, these same analysts predicted that the Arab Spring, which was widely hailed as the dawn of Middle Eastern democracy, would be hijacked by Islamic radicals. They foresaw years of brutal civil strife. Netanyahu publicly expressed these conclusions and was denounced as a naysayer by many of the same columnists who are now lambasting him on Iran.

Yet it is precisely on Iran that Israeli specialists have proved most prescient. They were the first, more than 20 years ago, to reveal Iran's clandestine nuclear activities. They continued to scrutinize the program, emphasizing its military goals, even after 2003, when weaponization was purportedly halted.

Throughout several attempts at diplomacy, these experts have disclosed the ways that Iran systematically obstructed United Nations observers, lied to world leaders and hid nuclear facilities, such as the one at Fordow, which can have no peaceful purpose. Israeli intelligence has accurately tracked Iran's support for terrorist organizations, its role in the massacre of thousands of Syrians and its responsibility for attacks against civilians in dozens of cities around the world.

This does not mean that Israeli estimates are infallible. Since the failure to foresee the 1973 Yom Kippur War, intelligence officials are wary of long-standing conceptions and rigorously question them. Nevertheless, Israeli experts agree that for hegemonic purposes and internal security, the Iranian regime wants and needs the bomb.
Consequently, it will employ any ruse to preserve the ability to produce a weapon in a matter of weeks while obtaining some relief from sanctions.
Israelis cannot indulge in speculation. Our margin for error is nil.
Iranian leaders know — and Israel's analysts agree — that lessening the economic pressure on Iran will send an incontrovertible message to foreign companies, many of which are already seeking contracts with Tehran, that the sanctions that took years to build are ending. Iran could drag out any confidence-building period indefinitely while producing fissile materiel for multiple bombs.

Top-flight intelligence helped Israel grapple with the challenges posed by the Arab Spring, but the stakes regarding Iran — the lives of 8 million Israelis — are vastly greater. Pundits may posit that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is a moderate, but Israelis cannot indulge in speculation. Our margin for error is nil.
Knowing that, Netanyahu is duty-bound to warn of Iranian subterfuge, to insist that Iran cede its centrifuges, cease enrichment, close its heavy-water plant and transfer its nuclear stockpiles abroad.
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He has a responsibility to explain that although Israel has the most to gain from diplomacy, it also has the most to lose from its failure. He is obliged to stress that the choice is not between sanctions and war but between a bad deal and stronger sanctions. And as the prime minister of the Jewish state, Netanyahu must assert Israel's right to defend itself against any existential threat.
Critics can call him militant or intransigent, but Netanyahu is merely doing his job. Any Israeli leader who did less would be strategically and morally negligent.
This op-ed originally appeared in the LA Times, Nov. 21, 2013

Admin Mon 25 Nov 2013, 6:18 pm

Admin Mon 25 Nov 2013, 6:09 pm

13 Reactions to the Iran Agreement
Posted by: Ayal Kellman November 25, 2013 , 3:43 pm
13 High Profile Reactions to the Iran Deal
Leaders from around the world have reacted to the deal brokered with Iran in a variety of ways.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister
“What was agreed last night in Genève is not a historic agreement, it is a historic mistake,” Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting. “Today the world has become a much more dangerous place, because the most dangerous regime in the world has taken a significant step toward attaining the most dangerous weapon in the world.”

Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran
“Without a doubt the grace of G-d and the prayers of the Iranian nation were a factor in this success.”

Mohammad Javad Zarik, Foreign Minister of Iran
“Our nation has no trust in the American administration it’s now time for action. This is an opportunity for the west to make efforts to restore trust in the Iranian nation.”

Ariel Cohen, Senior Research Fellow at the The Heritage Foundation
“It is a defeat of Western diplomacy because Iran was on the verge of economic collapse and it was very close to doing what the west would have told it to do, abandoning its plans to enrich uranium, and dismantling the nuclear enrichment infrastructure, period. This is exactly what the US did with North Korea when they did not insist on the dismantlement of their capacity and we ended up with a totalitarian communist regime with nuclear weapons.”

Matt Brooks, Executive Director of the Republican Jewish Coalition
“No matter what the specific provisions of the deal are, President Obama’s diplomacy is giving cheer to Tehran’s rogue regime and causing alarm among our friends in the region…..Congress and the American people need to speak out against this flawed deal.”

Ron Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress
“Iran must be judged by its actions, not its words and promises, because they are not worth the paper they are written, nothing in the deceptive behavior of Iran and its leaders in recent years should make the world believe that they will honor this agreement.”

Avigdor Liberman, Israeli Foreign Minister
“The whole political spectrum says this is a bad deal and that it is not binding for us, we are now in a new reality that is different from yesterday and it requires us to reevaluate the situation with good judgment, responsibility and determinedly.”

Uzi Landau, Israeli Tourism Minister
“The winds of Munich are blowing from Genève, the government must act immediately to convince the world that the deal signed is a bad one.”

Naftali Bennett, Israeli Economy and Trade Minister
“If a nuclear suitcase exploded in New York or Madrid in five years, it will be because of the agreement signed this morning, Israel will not be bound by an agreement that endangers its existence.”

Uri Ariel, Israeli Construction and Housing Minister
“Today, Iran is celebrating what the whole world will cry about in the future.”

Yuli Edelstein, Israeli Speaker of the Knesset (Parliament)
“Seventy years after the greatest crime in the history of mankind, we have no choice but to hope that history will not repeat itself.”

Moshe Feiglin, Member of Knesset
“The idea that we need to share the responsibility for taking care of Iran with the whole world is disastrous, when Ahmadinejad started threatening to destroy us, the world’s jaw’s dropped and expected an Israeli military reaction. It would have been easier then.”

Rabbi Marvin Hillel, Dean and Founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center
“Iran has taken a page from their North Korean friends whose negotiations with the United States did nothing to stop Pyongyang from breaking out as a nuclear power when it suited them. Tehran has not been forced to destroy a single centrifuge. What will be different six months from now other than the Iranian regime will replenish their coffers with billions of dollars?”

Admin Mon 25 Nov 2013, 4:55 pm

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2013KISLEV 22, 57746:13 PM ISTSITE UPDATED 1 MINUTE AGO
THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
BY BRADLEY KLAPPER, JULIE PACE AND MATTHEW LEE November 24, 2013, 8:34 am
White House held secret talks with Iran for past year
High-level, face-to-face meetings were kept from Israel and allies
US President Barack Obama speaking to his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani, on Friday Sept. 27, marking the first time the two countries' leaders engaged each other since 1979. (photo credit: Pete Souza via White House Twitter page)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States and Iran secretly engaged in a series of high-level, face-to-face talks over the past year, in a high-stakes diplomatic gamble by the Obama administration that paved the way for the historic deal sealed early Sunday in Geneva aimed at slowing Tehran’s nuclear program, The Associated Press has learned.

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The discussions were kept hidden even from America’s closest friends,including its negotiating partners and Israel, until two months ago, and that may explain how the nuclear accord appeared to come together so quickly after years of stalemate and fierce hostility between Iran and the West.

But the secrecy of the talks may also explain some of the tensions between the US and France, which earlier this month balked at a proposed deal, and with Israel, which is furious about the agreement and has angrily denounced the diplomatic outreach to Tehran.

President Barack Obama personally authorized the talks as part of his effort — promised in his first inaugural address — to reach out to a country the State Department designates as the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism.

The talks were held in the Middle Eastern nation of Oman and elsewhere with only a tight circle of people in the know, the AP learned. Since March, Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Jake Sullivan, Vice President Joe Biden’s top foreign policy adviser, have met at least five times with Iranian officials.

The last four clandestine meetings, held since Iran’s reform-minded President Hassan Rouhani was inaugurated in August, produced much of the agreement later formally hammered out in negotiations in Geneva among the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China, Germany and Iran, said three senior administration officials. All spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss by name the highly sensitive diplomatic effort.

The AP was tipped to the first US-Iranian meeting in March shortly after it occurred, but the White House and State Department disputed elements of the account and the AP could not confirm the meeting. The AP learned of further indications of secret diplomacy in the fall and pressed the White House and other officials further. As the Geneva talks appeared to be reaching their conclusion, senior administration officials confirmed to the AP the details of the extensive outreach.

The Geneva deal provides Iran with about $7 billion in relief from international sanctions in exchange for Iranian curbs on uranium enrichment and other nuclear activity. All parties pledged to work toward a final accord next year that would remove remaining suspicions in the West that Tehran is trying to assemble an atomic weapons arsenal.

Iran insists its nuclear interest is only in peaceful energy production and medical research.

The diplomatic gamble with Iran, if the interim agreement holds up and leads to a final pact preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, could avert years of threats of US or Israeli military intervention. It could also prove a turning point in decades of hostility between Washington and Tehran — and become a crowning foreign policy achievement of Obama’s presidency.

But if the deal collapses, or if Iran covertly races ahead with development of a nuclear weapon, Obama will face the consequences of failure, both at home and abroad. His gamble opens him to criticism that he has left Israel vulnerable to a country bent on its destruction and that he has made a deal with a state sponsor of terrorism.

The US and Iran cut off diplomatic ties in 1979 after the Islamic Revolution and the storming of the US Embassy in Tehran, where 52 Americans were held hostage for more than a year. But Obama has expressed a willingness since becoming president to meet with the Iranians without conditions.

At the president’s direction, the United States began a tentative outreach shortly after his inauguration in January 2009. Obama and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, exchanged letters, but the engagement yielded no results.

That outreach was hampered by Iran’s hardline former president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, whose re-election in a disputed vote in June of that year led to a violent crackdown on opposition protesters. The next month, relations seemed at another low when Iran detained three American hikers who had strayed across the Iranian border from Iraq.

Ironically, efforts to win the release of the hikers turned out to be instrumental in making the clandestine diplomacy possible.

Oman’s Sultan Qaboos was a key player, facilitating the eventual release of the hikers — the last two of whom returned to the United States in 2011 — and then offering himself as a mediator for a U.S.-Iran rapprochement. The secret informal discussions between mid-level officials in Washington and Tehran began.

Officials described those early contacts as exploratory discussions focused on the logistics of setting up higher-level talks. The discussions happened through numerous channels, officials said, including face-to-face talks at undisclosed locations. They included exchanges between then US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, now Obama’s national security adviser, and Iran’s envoy to the world body, the officials said. National Security Council aide Puneet Talwar was also involved, the officials said.

The talks took on added weight eight months ago, when Obama dispatched the deputy secretary of state Burns, the top aide Sullivan and five other officials to meet with their Iranian counterparts in the Omani capital of Muscat. Obama dispatched the group shortly after the six powers opened a new round of nuclear talks with Iran in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in late February.

At the time, those main nuclear negotiations were making little progress, and the Iranians had little interest in holding bilateral talks with the United States on the sidelines of the meeting out of fear that the discussions would become public, the US officials said.

So, with the assistance of Sultan Qaboos, officials in both countries began quietly making plans to meet in Oman. Burns, Sullivan and a small team of U.S. technical experts arrived on a military plane in mid-March for the meeting with the Iranians.

The senior administration officials who spoke to the AP would not say who Burns and Sullivan met with but characterized the Iranian attendees as career diplomats, national security aides and experts on the nuclear issue who were likely to remain key players even after the country’s elections this summer.

The goal on the American side, the US officials said, was simply at that point to see if the US and Iran could successfully arrange bilateral talks — a low bar that underscored the sour state of relations between the two nations.

Beyond nuclear issues, the officials said the US team at the March Oman meeting also raised concerns about Iranian involvement in Syria, Tehran’s threats to close the strategically important Strait of Hormuz and the status of Robert Levinson, a missing former FBI agent who the U.S. believes was abducted in Iran, as well as two other Americans detained in the country.

Hoping to keep the channel open, Secretary of State John Kerry then visited Oman in May on a trip ostensibly to push a military deal with the sultanate but secretly focused on maintaining that country’s key mediation role, particularly after the Iranian election scheduled for the next month, the officials said.

Rouhani’s election in June on a platform of easing sanctions crippling Iran’s economy and stated willingness to engage with the West gave a new spark to the US effort, the officials said.

Two secret meetings were organized immediately after Rouhani took office in August, with the specific goal of advancing the stalled nuclear talks with world powers. Another pair of meetings took place in October.

Burns and Sullivan led the US delegation at each of those sessions, and were joined at the final secret meeting by chief US nuclear negotiator Wendy Sherman.

The Iranian delegation was a mix of officials the Americans had met in March in Oman and others who were new to the talks, administration officials said. All of the Iranians were fluent English speakers.

US officials said the meetings happened in multiple locations, but would not confirm the exact spots, saying they did not want to jeopardize their ability to use the same locations in the future. But at least some of the talks are believed to have taken place in Oman.

The private meetings coincided with a public easing of US-Iranian discord. In early August, Obama sent Rouhani a letter congratulating him on his election. The Iranian leader’s response was viewed positively by the White House, which quickly laid the groundwork for the additional secret talks. The US officials said they were convinced that the outreach had the blessing of Ayatollah Khameni, but would not elaborate.

As negotiators continued to talk behind the scenes, public speculation swirled over a possible meeting between Obama and Rouhani on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, which both attended in September in New York. Burns and Sullivan sought to arrange face-to-face talks, but the meeting never happened largely due to Iranian concerns, the officials said. Two days later, though, Obama and Rouhani spoke by phone — the first direct contact between a U.S. and Iranian leader in more than 30 years.

It was only after that Obama-Rouhani phone call that the US began informing allies of the secret talks with Iran, the US officials said.

Obama handled the most sensitive conversation himself, briefing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a Sept. 30 meeting at the White House. He informed Netanyahu only about the two summer meetings, not the March talks, in keeping with the White House’s promise only to tell allies about any discussions with Iran that were substantive.

The US officials would not describe Netanyahu’s reaction. But the next day, he delivered his General Assembly speech, blasting Rouhani as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and warning the US against mistaking a change in Iran’s tone with an actual change in nuclear ambitions. The Israeli leader has subsequently denounced the potential nuclear agreement as the “deal of the century” for Iran.

After telling Netanyahu about the secret talks, the United States then briefed the other members of the six-nation negotiating team, the U.S. officials said.

The last secret gatherings between the US and Iran took place shortly after the General Assembly, according to the officials.

There, the deal finally reached by the parties on Sunday began to take its final shape.

At this month’s larger formal nuclear negotiations between world powers and Iran in Geneva, Burns and Sullivan showed up as well, but the State Department went to great lengths to conceal their involvement, leaving their names off of the official delegation list.

They were housed at a different hotel than the rest of the team, used back entrances to come and go from meeting venues and were whisked into negotiating sessions from service elevators or unused corridors only after photographers left.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

Admin Sun 24 Nov 2013, 7:50 pm

Israeli Officials Furious Over Iran Deal
Posted by: Doni Kandel November 24, 2013 , 4:33 pm
"Her adversaries are become the head, her enemies are at ease; (Lamentations 1:5)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a statement on Iran from Jerusalem. PM Netanyahu denounced the world powers’ nuclear agreement with Iran as a historic mistake. (Photo by Haim Zach/ GPO/FLASH90)

At the start of his weekly cabinet meeting today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blasted the US brokered deal with Iran saying, ”What was achieved last night in Geneva is not an historic agreement; it is an historic mistake.

“Today the world has become a much more dangerous place because the most dangerous regime in the world has taken a significant step toward attaining the most dangerous weapon in the world. For the first time, the world’s leading powers have agreed to uranium enrichment in Iran while ignoring the UN Security Council decisions that they themselves led. Sanctions that required many years to put in place contain the best chance for a peaceful solution. These sanctions have been given up in exchange for cosmetic Iranian concessions that can be cancelled in weeks.
‘This agreement and what it means endanger many countries including, of course, Israel. Israel is not bound by this agreement. The Iranian regime is committed to the destruction of Israel and Israel has the right and the obligation to defend itself, by itself, against any threat. As Prime Minister of Israel, I would like to make it clear: Israel will not allow Iran to develop a military nuclear capability.”
A number of other top Israeli officials have come out strongly opposing the deal struck between the P5+1 and Iran late Saturday night, according to The Times of Israel.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that the agreement has shifted the status quo in the Middle East. ‘This brings us to a new reality in the whole Middle East, including the Saudis. This isn’t just our worry’ he told Israel Radio. ‘We’ve found ourselves in a completely new situation.”
When asked if this would lead to an Israeli military strike on Iran, Lieberman said Israel ‘would need to make different decisions.’
Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz, who is responsible for monitoring Iran’s nuclear program, said there is no reason for the world to be celebrating. He said the deal, reached in Geneva early Sunday, is based on “Iranian deception and self-delusion.”
“Just like the failed deal with North Korea, the current deal can actually bring Iran closer to the bomb,” Steinitz said. “Israel cannot take part in the international celebrations based on Iranian deception and self-delusion.”
US President Barack Obama was expected to call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday to discuss the details of the deal. An unnamed source in the Prime Minister’s Office called the agreement a “bad deal that gives Iran exactly what it wants.”
Lieberman slammed the deal as not going far enough, since it does not dismantle the nuclear facilities.
“They have enough uranium to make a few bombs already,” he said.
Economics Minister Naftali Bennett called the deal “bad, very bad.”
“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 on Facebook. “There is still a long campaign ahead of us. We will continue to act in every possible way.”
Finance Minister Yair Lapid panned the interim agreement and said Israel would have to work to make sure a final deal had better terms.
“This is a bad deal that does not bring even one centrifuge to a halt. I am worried not only over the deal, but that we have lost the world’s attention.”

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