Channel 2 commentator says PM is going to polls early so he can handle Iran (fictitious) threat when safely re-elected and with Obama paralyzed in presidential campaign
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is calling early elections so that he and his government will be free to deal with Iran’s nuclear program this September-October, one of Israel’s best-informed political commentators said on Friday night.
Netanyahu has shocked the nation in the past few days by indicating that he will be calling elections a year ahead of their scheduled date in October 2013, leaving analysts baffled as to his reasoning. Speculation has focused on differences among the various coalition parties over legislation on national service for ultra-Orthodox Israelis, and over elements of the national budget.
Netanyahu has shocked the nation in the past few days by indicating that he will be calling elections a year ahead of their scheduled date in October 2013, leaving analysts baffled as to his reasoning. Speculation has focused on differences among the various coalition parties over legislation on national service for ultra-Orthodox Israelis, and over elements of the national budget.
Netanyahu is set on Sunday to announce that he is dissolving parliament and calling elections for September 4 — a year ahead of schedule. In the weeks immediately after that vote, said well-connected commentator Amnon Abramovich on the top-rated Channel 2 news, Netanyahu will head a transition government at home and have no need to worry about voter sentiment, and he knows that President Barack Obama will be paralyzed by the US presidential campaign.
But Abramovich said that the dramatic decision to bring the elections forward relates to Iran. After the September elections, which all polls show Netanyahu winning easily, he will head a transition government for several weeks while a new coalition is formed. During that period, Netanyahu “will not be beholden to the voters,” and will be free to take decisions on Iran that many Israelis might not support, Abramovich said.
Furthermore, he will still have his trusted Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, at his side. Barak is seen as unlikely to fare well in the elections, and may not even retain his Knesset seat, but would retain the defense portfolio until a new coalition is formed.
And finally, said Abramovich, the September-October period would see Obama, who has publicly urged more patience in allowing diplomacy and sanctions to have their impact on Iran, in the final stages of the presidential election campaign, with a consequent reduced capacity to try to pressure Israel into holding off military intervention.
Obama, “on the eve of elections, won’t dare criticize Israel,” said Abramovich. From Netanyahu’s point of view, “the conditions would be fantastic.”
He noted that a transition government is prevented by law from taking dramatic policy decisions — except in critical circumstances, and drew attention to comments from Barak in a newspaper interview Friday in this regard.
“The political-security system will make decisions as needed, even under challenging circumstances,” said Barak about the impact of elections. “We must separate the issue of Iran from the subject of elections.”
Barak also said of the Iranian nuclear drive: “The moment of truth is approaching.”
Netanyahu has been repeatedly drawing parallels in recent weeks between the Iranian nuclear threat to Israel and the Holocaust, has said sanctions are not working, and warned that he will not allow Israel to have to live in the shadow of “annihilation.”
He has also indicated that a decision on military intervention in Iran will have to be taken within months.
Barak, for his part, has stated repeatedly that confronting Iran before it achieves a nuclear weapons capability, however complex, will be far less challenging a prospect than confronting a nuclear Iran.
In the interview Friday with the Israel Hayom daily, Barak recalled a speech given in 2003 by the then-Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who, said Barak, spoke of Israel as being “so small and vulnerable that it is a ‘one-bomb’ nation.
“If one bomb were dropped on it, this nation would not return to its former glory,” Barak quoted Rafsanjani as saying. “After the exchange of blows, Rafsanjani said, Islam would remain and Israel would not remain as it was. He also noted that there need not be any clear markers on the bomb as to where it came from. It could be transported in a shipping container that arrives at some port and simply explodes.”
Added Barak: “I do not delude myself. The moment of truth is approaching. We have to decide what to do about this if the sanctions and diplomacy fail…
“Some say let’s trust the world… I say that in the end we can deal with Iran now or deal with a nuclear Iran that poses a far greater danger… If it obtains a nuclear weapon, it will be very hard to bring it down. Now they are trying to seek immunity for their nuclear program. If they achieve military nuclear capability, for arms, or a threshold in which they can assemble a bomb within 60 days, they will acquire another form of immunity – for the regime.”
Barak recalled Israel being caught off guard in 1973, when it was attacked in the Yom Kippur War and sustained heavy losses. “What happened in 1973? The entire cabinet was blinded and we were forced to pay the price on the battlefield.”
The defense minister also used the interview to castigate several ex-intelligence chiefs and former prime minister Ehud Olmert, who have criticized what they argue is the government’s misguided handling of the Iranian threat, and who have warned that the Netanyahu-Barak duo may be leading Israel into a regional war with dire potential consequences.
Said Barak: “You can trust me when I say this: In the history of the state, there has never been such as orderly decision-making process.”
Additional:
Iran’s IAEA envoy: Britain and France violating NPT
In what is likely to be interpreted as an antagonistic move in times of heightened tension between the West and Iran, the Iranian Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said that both Britain and France (and likely other nations who he didn’t mention) have violated the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, better known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
This is especially interesting given that the West, with Israel being by far the loudest voice on the world scene, continues to take an aggressive approach to the Iranian nuclear program, even going as far as to demand that all nuclear materials be removed from Iran and calling negotiations with Iran a “trap.”
These statements are made even though the head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Lieutenant General Benny Gantz confirmed, along with U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and the U.S. intelligence community, that Iran isn’t developing nuclear weapons.
The Iranian Ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, said at the NPT Review Preparatory Committee held in Vienna that some of the world’s nuclear powers, including Britain and France, have violated the NPT already.
He points to their move to modernize their nuclear arsenals and said that the nations should be held accountable to both the international community and their own people.
It is worth pointing out that one of the world’s most staunch anti-Iranian nations, Israel, is not a signatory to the NPT and refuses to allow inspections of their nuclear arsenal and facilities.
Soltanieh pointed to “the plan to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the modernization of nuclear arsenals” and “constructing new facilities for production of new nuclear weapons” which he says are all “clear indications” of these nations going violating their obligation to begin nuclear disarmament under the NPT, according to Iran’s Press TV.
He also said that the reduction of nuclear weapons cannot be seen as a complete replacement for total nuclear disarmament. He added that reductions in arsenals cannot guarantee a nuclear weapon-free world, something which I personally wholeheartedly agree with.
It is not just my opinion or the opinion of countless anti-nuclear activists across the globe, indeed it is also outlined in Article VI of the NPT which mandates “general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”
Obviously the major Western powers have largely ignored this provision.
It is very much worth noting that while the NPT indeed calls for “general and complete disarmament” Article IV specifically states that uranium enrichment is an “inalienable right” of all of the signatories, meaning that the calls from Israel and other nations are completely worthless.
This is especially true when one considers that Israel isn’t even a signatory, although hypocrisy isn’t quite alien to the terrorist state of Israel.
Keep in mind there have been reports which indicated that the United States will demand the closure of at least one nuclear facility and a complete halt to all uranium production and enrichment during the nuclear negotiations.
What is more, British officials have taken a similar approach, like the Ambassador to the IAEA for the United Kingdom from 2001 to 2006, Peter Jenkins.
In an article for the Telegraph, Jenkins wrote, “our objective was to put a stop to all enrichment in Iran. That has remained the West’s aim ever since, despite countless Iranian reminders that they are unwilling to be treated as a second-class party to the NPT – with fewer rights than other signatories – and despite all the evidence that the Iranian character is more inclined to defiance than buckling under pressure.”
One especially poignant comment on the article came from an individual identified as Mark Stephen Golding who wrote, “Correct Peter except for one ‘small’ point – Britain and America are gunning for regime change in Iran and so called ‘sanctions’ – a strange word for ‘strangulation’ or chocking the pipe that feeds a country’ – are ‘curtain raisers’ for war and with it the complete destruction of a countries infrastructure together with the murder and mutilation of it’s [sic] people – as history records with the massacre of Iraq, the ‘no fly zone’ crushing of Libya for strategic resources and agent Cameron’s threats to Somalia.”
Of course there is also the statement from the British Foreign Secretary William Hague in an interview with the British state media outlet, the BBC, on April 17, 2012.
When the interviewer asked if they would ever tell Iran that they could enrich uranium to low levels, to which he replied, “I don’t think we can give a public commentary all through the details of negotiations,” while also saying that they had not begun to delve into the issues.
“Certainly our position, in line with UN Security Council resolutions, is that enrichment must stop. That is absolutely right,” Hague added.
It is clear that while it is not only the case that Western nations regularly violate the NPT, these same nations take a wholly hypocritical approach to Iran while treating them as if they do not have the same rights under the NPT as the rest of the signatories.
Considering this, it’s quite easy to understand why the Iranians are getting quite exhausted with dealing with the antagonistic approach of the West.
No comments:
Post a Comment