US President Barack Obama said Thursday that no matter how powerful the American military, a strike against nuclear facilities in Iran could lead the Islamic Republic to “pursue even more vigorously nuclear weapons in the future.”
He obviously could give no concrete advise as to how Iran could be stopped from producing weapons of mass destruction.
“No matter how good our military is, military options are always messy,” Obama stupidly said as if most of us were not already aware of this most obvious fact.
“Our policy is, Iran cannot have nuclear weapons,” he said, “and I’m leaving all options on the table.”
Again his options are not concrete, are obviously not taken seriously by Iran and are simply options of appeasement to stall time for Obama, not to prevent global destruction, as would be the case if Iran acquired nuclear weapons.
At a press conference in the West Wing of the White House, Obama, speaking primarily about changes to his signature health care law, said he hoped Congress would hold off on new sanctions against Iran as negotiations proceeded in Geneva – “if, in fact, we’re serious about trying to resolve this diplomatically.”
At about the same time Obama was speaking in Washington, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu urged again in Jerusalem for the sanctions pressure to continue.
Netanyahu, speaking to Masa participants, said he was not impressed by an International Atomic Energy Agency report issued Thursday saying the Iranians have slammed the brakes on their nuclear program since the election of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in June.
“I am not impressed with reports that we hear that Iran has not expanded its nuclear facilities and the reason for that is they don’t need to,” Netanyahu said. “They’ve got enough facilities, enough centrifuges to develop and to complete the fissile material which is at the core of an atomic bomb.”
According to the report, Iran has only installed four new centrifuges in the past three months, compared to 1,800 centrifuges in the three months prior to Rouhani’s election.
Netanyahu said the question was not whether the Iranians are expanding their program, but rather how to stop it entirely.
To achieve this, he said, there is a need to continue the sanctions pressure on Iran.
The IAEA report said the Iranians, with 196 kilograms of high-grade uranium, were still a good distance from the 250 kilograms of 20% enriched uranium that Netanyahu stipulated in the UN in 2012 would constitute his red line.
Israeli ministers, meanwhile, did not shy away Thursday from continuing to criticize the US – especially Kerry – for its policy on negotiations with Iran.
Home Front Defense Minister Gilad Erdan said he was “astounded” to hear Kerry slam Netanyahu earlier this week for his criticism of the negotiations.
“I was astounded to hear Kerry’s remarks about why the prime minister is criticizing the agreement being formulated in Geneva without waiting for it to be signed,” he said during a speech at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. “I have not heard such a claim for many years; this is a country that wants to destroy Israel and [get the] conditions that will enable it to carry out its wishes. What do they expect from an Israeli prime minister? Not to cry out when the knife is in the hand, but only when it is across our throat?”
Erdan said it was the public discussion about the terms of the deal being worked out behind closed doors in Geneva that led to a by the failure of the P5+1 and Iran to sign an agreement Saturday night, giving Israel “an additional delay of several days and perhaps even an improvement in the terms of the agreement.”
“Iranian Foreign Minister [Javad] Zarif and his cohorts are going around Geneva and it is impossible to wipe the smiles off their faces,” he said.
“Even they cannot really believe the ease with which they have succeeded in wrecking the sanctions regime.
“We must not be mistaken – an interim agreement will be a permanent agreement,” he continued. “All those involved in the agreement must understand that the moment Iran becomes a nuclear threshold state an arms race will begin in the Middle East and regional uncertainty will increase.”
Erdan’s criticism came a day after Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz publicly challenged US claims that the sanctions relief offered to Tehran for freezing its nuclear program for six months was “modest,” saying instead that the relief would be worth between $20 billion to $40 billion a year.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki dismissed these numbers Wednesday as “inaccurate, exaggerated, and not based in reality.”
Posted with help from
Jerusalem post
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