Obama needs to provide real answers to Netanyahu’s arguments

[Solomon2]

The Post's View
Obama needs to provide real answers to Netanyahu’s arguments

U.S. President Barack Obama pauses while speaking about Iran during his meeting with Secretary of Defense Ash Carter in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington March 3, 2015. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

By Editorial Board March 3 at 5:26 PM

THE CONCERNS about a prospective nuclear agreement with Iran raised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a speech to Congress on Tuesday are not — as the White House was quick to point out — new. They had, for example, been spelled out in Senate hearings, as an editorial we published last month recounted. Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to repeat this case before a joint meeting of Congress in defiance of the White House and leading Democrats risked turning what should be a substantive debate into a partisan scrimmage.

Nevertheless, Mr. Netanyahu’s arguments deserve a serious response from the Obama administration — one it has yet to provide. The White House has sought to dismiss the Israeli leader as a politician seeking reelection; has said that he was wrong in his support for the Iraq war and in his opposition to an interim agreement with Iran; and has claimed that he offers no alternative to President Obama’s policy. Such rhetoric will not satisfy those in and out of Congress who share Mr. Netanyahu’s legitimate questions.

His speech singled out “two major concessions” he said would be part of any deal the United States and its partners conclude with Iran. The first is the acceptance of a large Iranian nuclear infrastructure, including thousands of centrifuges for uranium enrichment. The second is a time limit on any restrictions, so that in as little as a decade Iran would be free to expand its production of nuclear materials. Consequently, Mr. Netanyahu said, the deal “doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb; it paves Iran’s path to the bomb.”

The Israeli prime minister’s most aggressive argument concerned the nature of the Iranian regime, which he called “a dark and brutal dictatorship” engaged in a “march of conquest, subjugation and terror.” Saying that the regime’s ideology is comparable with that of the Islamic State, he asserted that it could not be expected to change during the decade-long term of an agreement. He proposed that controls on the nuclear program should be maintained “for as long as Iran continues its aggression in the region and in the world.”

In essence, this was an argument that Iran must be sanctioned and contained while its clerical regime remains in power. That has been the explicit or de facto U.S. policy since 1979, but Mr. Obama appears to be betting that detente can better control Iran’s nuclear ambitions and, perhaps, produce better behavior over time. Yet he has shied from explicitly making that case; instead, his aides argue that the only alternative to his approach is war.

Mr. Netanyahu strongly disputed that point. “Iran’s nuclear program can be rolled back well beyond the current proposal by insisting on a better deal and keeping up the pressure on a very vulnerable regime,” he said. Is that wrong? For that matter, is it acceptable to free Iran from sanctions within a decade and allow it unlimited nuclear capacity? Rather than continuing its political attacks on Mr. Netanyahu, the administration ought to explain why the deal it is contemplating is justified — or reconsider it.

Read more about this topic:

Dana Milbank: Congress declares war at Netanyahu’s request

David Ignatius: Netanyahu’s dangerous zero-sum game

Jennifer Rubin: Obama has the problem, not Netanyahu

Paul Waldman: Netanyahu may have done his allies more harm than good

 

[Dominance]

You could post it under Netanyahu's speech thread.

 

[Arminkh]

The Post's View
Obama needs to provide real answers to Netanyahu’s arguments

U.S. President Barack Obama pauses while speaking about Iran during his meeting with Secretary of Defense Ash Carter in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington March 3, 2015. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

By Editorial Board March 3 at 5:26 PM

THE CONCERNS about a prospective nuclear agreement with Iran raised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a speech to Congress on Tuesday are not — as the White House was quick to point out — new. They had, for example, been spelled out in Senate hearings, as an editorial we published last month recounted. Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to repeat this case before a joint meeting of Congress in defiance of the White House and leading Democrats risked turning what should be a substantive debate into a partisan scrimmage.

Nevertheless, Mr. Netanyahu’s arguments deserve a serious response from the Obama administration — one it has yet to provide. The White House has sought to dismiss the Israeli leader as a politician seeking reelection; has said that he was wrong in his support for the Iraq war and in his opposition to an interim agreement with Iran; and has claimed that he offers no alternative to President Obama’s policy. Such rhetoric will not satisfy those in and out of Congress who share Mr. Netanyahu’s legitimate questions.

His speech singled out “two major concessions” he said would be part of any deal the United States and its partners conclude with Iran. The first is the acceptance of a large Iranian nuclear infrastructure, including thousands of centrifuges for uranium enrichment. The second is a time limit on any restrictions, so that in as little as a decade Iran would be free to expand its production of nuclear materials. Consequently, Mr. Netanyahu said, the deal “doesn’t block Iran’s path to the bomb; it paves Iran’s path to the bomb.”

The Israeli prime minister’s most aggressive argument concerned the nature of the Iranian regime, which he called “a dark and brutal dictatorship” engaged in a “march of conquest, subjugation and terror.” Saying that the regime’s ideology is comparable with that of the Islamic State, he asserted that it could not be expected to change during the decade-long term of an agreement. He proposed that controls on the nuclear program should be maintained “for as long as Iran continues its aggression in the region and in the world.”

In essence, this was an argument that Iran must be sanctioned and contained while its clerical regime remains in power. That has been the explicit or de facto U.S. policy since 1979, but Mr. Obama appears to be betting that detente can better control Iran’s nuclear ambitions and, perhaps, produce better behavior over time. Yet he has shied from explicitly making that case; instead, his aides argue that the only alternative to his approach is war.

Mr. Netanyahu strongly disputed that point. “Iran’s nuclear program can be rolled back well beyond the current proposal by insisting on a better deal and keeping up the pressure on a very vulnerable regime,” he said. Is that wrong? For that matter, is it acceptable to free Iran from sanctions within a decade and allow it unlimited nuclear capacity? Rather than continuing its political attacks on Mr. Netanyahu, the administration ought to explain why the deal it is contemplating is justified — or reconsider it.

Read more about this topic:

Dana Milbank: Congress declares war at Netanyahu’s request

David Ignatius: Netanyahu’s dangerous zero-sum game

Jennifer Rubin: Obama has the problem, not Netanyahu

Paul Waldman: Netanyahu may have done his allies more harm than good

May I ask what people like you crave? Another war in the middle east?

Let's say Obama will all of a sudden change his mind and follow Bibi's suggestions. What do you think is going to happen next?

 

[Solomon2]

May I ask what people like you crave? Another war in the middle east?

Do you crave millions dead in nuclear wars or suffering under the yoke of terror and tyranny that the Iranian mullahs promote?

Let's say Obama will all of a sudden change his mind and follow Bibi's suggestions. What do you think is going to happen next?

I say let's find out. How about you?

 

[ResurgentIran]

No need to open a new thread for every pro-Israel opinion piece, in the Iranian section.

 

[Arminkh]

I say let's find out. How about you?

Ha Ha! Actually I didn't expect any other answer but I wanted to hear from you. "Let's find out" doesn't have any application in strategy. Good that Mr. Obama is actually thinking through what he is doing.

 

[ResurgentIran]

UNITED NATIONS — In the address on Tuesday to the United States Congress by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, we witnessed a new peak in the long-running hype over Iran’s nuclear energy program. Yet all his predictions about how close Iran was to acquiring a nuclear bomb have proved baseless.

Despite that, alarmist rhetoric on the theme has been a staple of Mr. Netanyahu’s career. In an interview with the BBC in 1997, he accused Iran of secretly “building a formidable arsenal of ballistic missiles,” predicting that eventually Manhattan would be within range. In 1996, he stood before Congress and urged other nations to join him to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capability, stressing that “time is running out.” Earlier, as a member of Parliament, in 1992, he predicted that Iran would be able to produce a nuclear weapon within three to five years.
In front of world leaders at the United Nations in September 2012, Mr. Netanyahu escalated his warnings by declaring that Iran could acquire the bomb within a year. It is ironic that in doing so, he apparently disregarded the assessment of his own secret service: A recently revealed document showed that the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, had advised that Iran was “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons.” The United States intelligence community had reached the same conclusion in its National Intelligence Estimate.

Despite extensive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, no evidence has ever been presented to contradict the clear commitment by Iran’s leaders that they would under no circumstances engage in manufacturing, stockpiling and using nuclear weapons. In 2013, for example, only Japan, which has many more nuclear facilities than Iran,was subject to greater agency scrutiny.

Yet, in his speech this week, Mr. Netanyahu claimed the agency had determined that Iran had “a military nuclear program.” This is a gross distortion of the agency’s position. The “possible military dimensions,” which Mr. Netanyahu amplifies on every available occasion, are based not on the agency’s findings but on referrals by other member states with their own political agendas. In one case, in 2012, a former agency directordismissed such a report “because there was no chain of custody for the paper, no clear source, document markings, date of issue or anything else that could establish its authenticity.”

Iran has also alerted the agency to many errors in the relevant documents, and our position has been confirmed by independent nonproliferation experts. We will nevertheless continue to work with the agency to resolve this issue — despite our skepticism, which leads us to recall the notorious forged document about Niger’s “yellowcake” uranium that was used to coax the Security Council into authorizing the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

As one side of the talks that continue in Geneva, Iran can also bear testimony to the campaign of misinformation by Mr. Netanyahu to mislead the global public about the details of those nuclear negotiations. When the parties were finalizing the interim agreement in 2013, Mr. Netanyahu claimed that it would involve Iran’s receiving $50 billion in sanctions relief; the actual amount was about $7 billion. And as for his prediction that Iran would never abide by the terms of the accord, Iran has dutifully stood by every commitment — as the International Atomic Energy Agency has reported.

In our view, Mr. Netanyahu has consistently used these false alarms and outlandish claims both to serve his domestic political maneuvering and to create a smoke screen that relegates the Palestinian question to the margins. We have noted how his rhetoric has intensified in proportion to the international pressure on Israel to stop the settlement activity and end the occupation of the Palestinian territory.

The paradox of the situation is that a government that has built a stockpile of nuclear weapons, rejected calls to establish a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East, made military incursions into neighboring states and flouted international law by keeping the lands of other nations under occupation, now makes such a big fuss over a country, Iran, that has not invaded another country since America became a sovereign nation.

Mr. Netanyahu seems to be in a state of panic at the prospect of losing this tool with which to attack Iran, as we do all in our power to address the genuine concerns of the international community and arrive at a settlement over our country’s nuclear energy program. Iran’s efforts, epitomized by the 2013 interim agreement, aim to resolve the issue with the P5-plus-1 group of countries (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany). Since Israel’s prime minister appears to be a person who thrives on chaos and conflict, we fear that he may have further plans to poison the atmosphere and sow discord among those involved in this historic effort.

There are other great issues at hand in the Middle East. The violent extremism we see in Syria and Iraq is one, and to fight it effectively, we need to ease international tensions. We must all address the problem of the breeding grounds that are delivering fresh recruits to the terrorist cause. Israeli aggression and the occupation of Palestinian territories have always been of major propaganda value for extremist recruitment.

During the quarter-century that Mr. Netanyahu and his allies have tried to keep Iran’s nuclear program at the forefront of the global agenda, they increased the number of illegal settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to more than 750,000 from about 300,000. At the same time, Palestinians have continued to be evicted from their homes and land. This historic wrong, coupled with the blockade of Gaza, is the real ticking bomb in the Middle East. The whole world should work to defuse it by rising above petty politics and the lobbying of narrow-minded pressure groups.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/o...p-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region

 

[Arminkh]

UNITED NATIONS — In the address on Tuesday to the United States Congress by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, we witnessed a new peak in the long-running hype over Iran’s nuclear energy program. Yet all his predictions about how close Iran was to acquiring a nuclear bomb have proved baseless.

Despite that, alarmist rhetoric on the theme has been a staple of Mr. Netanyahu’s career. In an interview with the BBC in 1997, he accused Iran of secretly “building a formidable arsenal of ballistic missiles,” predicting that eventually Manhattan would be within range. In 1996, he stood before Congress and urged other nations to join him to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capability, stressing that “time is running out.” Earlier, as a member of Parliament, in 1992, he predicted that Iran would be able to produce a nuclear weapon within three to five years.
In front of world leaders at the United Nations in September 2012, Mr. Netanyahu escalated his warnings by declaring that Iran could acquire the bomb within a year. It is ironic that in doing so, he apparently disregarded the assessment of his own secret service: A recently revealed document showed that the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, had advised that Iran was “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons.” The United States intelligence community had reached the same conclusion in its National Intelligence Estimate.

Despite extensive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, no evidence has ever been presented to contradict the clear commitment by Iran’s leaders that they would under no circumstances engage in manufacturing, stockpiling and using nuclear weapons. In 2013, for example, only Japan, which has many more nuclear facilities than Iran,was subject to greater agency scrutiny.

Yet, in his speech this week, Mr. Netanyahu claimed the agency had determined that Iran had “a military nuclear program.” This is a gross distortion of the agency’s position. The “possible military dimensions,” which Mr. Netanyahu amplifies on every available occasion, are based not on the agency’s findings but on referrals by other member states with their own political agendas. In one case, in 2012, a former agency directordismissed such a report “because there was no chain of custody for the paper, no clear source, document markings, date of issue or anything else that could establish its authenticity.”

Iran has also alerted the agency to many errors in the relevant documents, and our position has been confirmed by independent nonproliferation experts. We will nevertheless continue to work with the agency to resolve this issue — despite our skepticism, which leads us to recall the notorious forged document about Niger’s “yellowcake” uranium that was used to coax the Security Council into authorizing the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

As one side of the talks that continue in Geneva, Iran can also bear testimony to the campaign of misinformation by Mr. Netanyahu to mislead the global public about the details of those nuclear negotiations. When the parties were finalizing the interim agreement in 2013, Mr. Netanyahu claimed that it would involve Iran’s receiving $50 billion in sanctions relief; the actual amount was about $7 billion. And as for his prediction that Iran would never abide by the terms of the accord, Iran has dutifully stood by every commitment — as the International Atomic Energy Agency has reported.

In our view, Mr. Netanyahu has consistently used these false alarms and outlandish claims both to serve his domestic political maneuvering and to create a smoke screen that relegates the Palestinian question to the margins. We have noted how his rhetoric has intensified in proportion to the international pressure on Israel to stop the settlement activity and end the occupation of the Palestinian territory.

The paradox of the situation is that a government that has built a stockpile of nuclear weapons, rejected calls to establish a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East, made military incursions into neighboring states and flouted international law by keeping the lands of other nations under occupation, now makes such a big fuss over a country, Iran, that has not invaded another country since America became a sovereign nation.

Mr. Netanyahu seems to be in a state of panic at the prospect of losing this tool with which to attack Iran, as we do all in our power to address the genuine concerns of the international community and arrive at a settlement over our country’s nuclear energy program. Iran’s efforts, epitomized by the 2013 interim agreement, aim to resolve the issue with the P5-plus-1 group of countries (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany). Since Israel’s prime minister appears to be a person who thrives on chaos and conflict, we fear that he may have further plans to poison the atmosphere and sow discord among those involved in this historic effort.

There are other great issues at hand in the Middle East. The violent extremism we see in Syria and Iraq is one, and to fight it effectively, we need to ease international tensions. We must all address the problem of the breeding grounds that are delivering fresh recruits to the terrorist cause. Israeli aggression and the occupation of Palestinian territories have always been of major propaganda value for extremist recruitment.

During the quarter-century that Mr. Netanyahu and his allies have tried to keep Iran’s nuclear program at the forefront of the global agenda, they increased the number of illegal settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem to more than 750,000 from about 300,000. At the same time, Palestinians have continued to be evicted from their homes and land. This historic wrong, coupled with the blockade of Gaza, is the real ticking bomb in the Middle East. The whole world should work to defuse it by rising above petty politics and the lobbying of narrow-minded pressure groups.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/o...p-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region

Well written article indeed.

 

[Solomon2]

Ha Ha! Actually I didn't expect any other answer but I wanted to hear from you -

But you did get another answer from me. You're just ignoring it, that's all.

UNITED NATIONS — In the address on Tuesday to the United States Congress by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, we witnessed a new peak in the long-running hype over Iran’s nuclear energy program. Yet all his predictions about how close Iran was to acquiring a nuclear bomb have proved baseless. -

A predictably context-stripping and diverting anti-Zionist piece from the NYT, which prizes media access above accuracy. For as has been pointed out for years, the capability for building nuclear weapons is not the same thing as nuclear weapons themselves. Obama has publicly pledged to prevent the latter, not the former.

 

[Arminkh]

But you did get another answer from me. You're just ignoring it, that's all.

Doesn't change the fact that you are supporting an strategy that you don't know where it ends. You probably have come up with your other comment the same way.

Let's see. Who exactly is living under Iran's tyranny and terror?

Atomic war? Between which two countries? Iran and Israel? Why should they start at the first place? Do they hate each other more than you hated Soviet and vice versa? Or do you think USA and Soviet's leaders back then were wiser than today's Iran's and Israel's leaders? As someone said once, nuclear weapons are built to not be used.

Doesn't change the fact that you are supporting an strategy that you don't know where it ends. You probably have come up with your other comment the same way.

Let's see. Who exactly is living under Iran's tyranny and terror?

Atomic war? Between which two countries? Iran and Israel? Why should they start at the first place? Do they hate each other more than you hated Soviet and vice versa? Or do you think USA and Soviet's leaders back then were wiser than today's Iran's and Israel's leaders? As someone said once, nuclear weapons are built to not be used.

Are you a Jew by any chance?

 

[raptor22]

@Solomon2 The one who has nukes is you ..... and the only one who used it is you ...

 

[SOHEIL]

Answer my @$$

 

[Thəorətic Muslim]

I'm not going to respond for Pres. Obama.

But as far as the world is concerned.

Didn't Bibi go to the UN saying in 1 year Iran can make the 'bomb'?

Rather than continuing its political attacks on Mr. Netanyahu, the administration ought to explain why the deal it is contemplating is justified — or reconsider it.

Whats the alternative? American servicemen and women dying in the street of Tehran to only 3 years later find out the Ayatollah wasn't planing on making nukes?

 

[ResurgentIran]

But you did get another answer from me. You're just ignoring it, that's all.

A predictably context-stripping and diverting anti-Zionist piece from the NYT, which prizes media access above accuracy. For as has been pointed out for years, the capability for building nuclear weapons is not the same thing as nuclear weapons themselves. Obama has publicly pledged to prevent the latter, not the former.

Iran has mastered the enrichment fuel cycle. Every hard part of making a nuclear weapon, Iran has mastered. If we made the political decision, we could make nukes. In other words, its not a technical issue for us. We have the infrastructure, resources and scientific base (over 10.000 nuclear scientists) to assemble a nuclear weapon.
It would behove Netanyahu to realise that a Iranian nuclear weapons capability is a fait acompli.

 

[raptor22]

I'm not going to respond for Pres. Obama.

But as far as the world is concerned.

Didn't Bibi go to the UN saying in 1 year Iran can make the 'bomb'?



Whats the alternative? American servicemen and women dying in the street of Tehran to only 3 years later find out the Ayatollah wasn't planing on making nukes?

As I know he's been lying on this issue since last millennium ... why? to distract people from its nuclear arsenal ...

1992: Israeli parliamentarian Benjamin Netanyahu tells his colleagues that Iran is 3 to 5 years from being able to produce a nuclear weapon – and that the threat had to be "uprooted by an international front headed by the US."

1992: Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres tells French TV that Iran was set to have nuclear warheads by 1999. "Iran is the greatest threat and greatest problem in the Middle East," Peres warned, "because it seeks the nuclear option while holding a highly dangerous stance of extreme religious militanCY."

1992: Joseph Alpher, a former official of Israel's Mossad spy agency, says "Iran has to be identified as Enemy No. 1." Iran's nascent nuclear program, he told The New York Times, "really gives Israel the jitters."

1995: The New York Times quotes US and Israeli officials saying that Iran would have the bomb by 2000.

1998: Donald Rumsfeld tells Congress that Iran could have an intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit the US by 2003.

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