David Singer: "Netanyahu Puts Behaviour Change By Iran On Negotiating Agenda"

Here is the latest article by Sydney lawyer and international affairs analyst David Singer.

He writes:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – addressing the American Congress – has made behaviour change by Iran an essential pre-requisite to the successful conclusion of negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 – France, Germany, United Kingdom, China, Russia and the United States.

Those negotiations – designed to curb Iran procuring a nuclear bomb – have a deadline expiring on March 24.

The threat Iran’s behaviour poses to peace and security in the Middle East and the world’s oil supply was starkly laid out by Netanyahu: 

"Iran's goons in Gaza, its lackeys in Lebanon, its revolutionary guards on the Golan Heights, are clutching Israel with three tentacles of terror. Backed by Iran, Assad is slaughtering Syrians. Back[ed] by Iran, Shiite militias are rampaging through Iraq. Back[ed] by Iran, Houthis are seizing control of Yemen, threatening the strategic straits at the mouth of the Red Sea. Along with the Straits of Hormuz, that would give Iran a second choke-point on the world's oil supply."

Iran’s past attacks on Americans did not escape Netanyahu’s notice: 

"Iran took dozens of Americans hostage in Tehran, murdered hundreds of American soldiers, Marines, in Beirut, and was responsible for killing and maiming thousands of American service men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Netanyahu spelled out Iran’s ever-increasing quest for domination and influence outside its own national borders:

"In the Middle East, Iran now dominates four Arab capitals, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut and Sanaa. And if Iran's aggression is left unchecked, more will surely follow. So, at a time when many hope that Iran will join the community of nations, Iran is busy gobbling up the nations."

Netanyahu warned against the P5+1 agreeing to any 10 year moratorium on Iran gaining a nuclear bomb – without imposing strict conditions requiring an end to such behaviour by Iran:

"Iran could get to the bomb by keeping the deal. Because virtually all the restrictions on Iran's nuclear program will automatically expire in about a decade.

Now, a decade may seem like a long time in political life, but it's the blink of an eye in the life of a nation. It's a blink of an eye in the life of our children. We all have a responsibility to consider what will happen when Iran's nuclear capabilities are virtually unrestricted and all the sanctions will have been lifted. Iran would then be free to build a huge nuclear capacity that could produce many, many nuclear bombs."

Netanyahu’s solution to preventing this catastrophe occurring requires Iran meeting three conditions in any concluded negotiations – each enthusiastically endorsed by a standing ovation from the Congress as Netanyahu declared:

"First, stop its aggression against its neighbors in the Middle East. Second, stop supporting terrorism around the world. And third, stop threatening to annihilate my country, Israel, the one and only Jewish state."

"Thank you for your support"

Behaviour change by Iran has thus been firmly put on the negotiating agenda – and overwhelmingly endorsed by the Congress – with Netanyahu warning: 

"If the world powers are not prepared to insist that Iran change its behavior before a deal is signed, at the very least they should insist that Iran change its behavior before a deal expires. If Iran changes its behavior, the restrictions would be lifted. If Iran doesn't change its behavior, the restrictions should not be lifted. If Iran wants to be treated like a normal country, let it act like a normal country."

Significantly Netanyahu stressed that these three conditions would represent:

"A better deal that Israel and its neighbors may not like, but with which we could live, literally."

The P5+1 must ensure that Iran abandons its belligerent behaviour – or terminate the negotiations.

On Obama's Watch, A Sinister Iranian Nautical Mission?

From the blog of a retired United States Navy officer:

"They’ve been saying they were going to do it, and now they’re on the way.  A pair of Iranian navy ships, the frigate Sabalan and supply ship Kharg, left Bandar Abbas [on Tuesday] morning headed for the Atlantic Ocean.

It has been inevitable that the Iranian navy would make good on its promise to deploy to the Atlantic.  Its ships made a voyage to China in 2013, and have been conducting extended patrols in the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea since late 2008.  An Atlantic expedition has been by no means beyond Iran’s capabilities for some time now.

....But it’s a measure of Iran’s seriousness about her geopolitical plans.  And she has other ways of reaching into the Western hemisphere, from her patronage of Hezbollah, which is all over Latin America, to her joint project with Venezuela to put a missile site off the coast of Maracaibo.

A senior Iranian official, who was recently appointed to one of the highest consultative positions with the Iranian government, was the man responsible for approving the 1994 attack on the Jewish center in Buenos Aires in which 85 people were killed.  Nothing has changed in Iran’s radical posture; sending warships to the Western hemisphere is not a way of trying to be more like the status-quo powers, but is rather a way of showing what a radical, Shia Islamist power can do.

.... [I]f sanctions had not just been loosened on Iran, she wouldn’t have the wherewithal to make this naval expedition to visit her radical pals in Central America."

Read the entire article, with map, here; also here


There's speculation in some quarters (hat tip: LBD) that the supply ship Kharg, which has in the past carried supplies to Sudan and Syria (thought to be Iranian-manufactured materiel), and which, being a naval ship cannot be intercepted on the high seas as arms-laden civilian vessels can, may be bound for Venezuela, where Iran has a drone facility.

It was reported in 2010 that, according to Western intelligence sources,  

'Iran is planning to place medium-range missiles on Venezuelan soil, based on western information sources ...[A]n agreement between the two countries was signed during the last visit of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Tehran on October19, 2010. The previously undisclosed contract provides for the establishment of a jointly operated military base in Venezuela, and the joint development of ground-to-ground missiles....

....Venezuela has agreed to allow Iran to establish a military base manned by Iranian missile officers, soldiers of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Venezuelan missile officers. In addition, Iran has given permission for the missiles to be used in case of an "emergency". In return, the agreement states that Venezuela can use these facilities for "national needs" – radically increasing the threat to neighbors like Colombia.... 

....Venezuela has also become the country through which Iran intends to bypass UN sanctions.... According to a study recently released by the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London, Iran is presently aiming to perfect the already existing solid-fuel, medium-range missile that can carry a nuke to hit regional targets, such as Israel. If a missile base can be opened in Venezuela, many US cities will be able to be reached from there even with short-medium range missiles....

....Iran is soon going to have a nuclear weapon, and there are no signs that UN sanctions will in any way deter the Ayatollah's regime from completing its nuclear program. We know that Iran already has missiles that can carry an atomic warhead over Israel and over the Arabian Peninsula. Now we learn that Iran is planning to build a missile base close to the US borders. How longer do we have to wait before the Obama administration begins to understand threats?'

How long, indeed?

Israel's Ambassador Taub Looks On The Sunni Side Of The Iran Deal

Israel's ambassador in London, Daniel Taub, has been speaking to The Independent newspaper about the Geneva deal on Iran:

“Our concern is that this deal doesn’t provide everything that’s necessary. We look at the deal and we see that the entire mechanism, the infrastructure that’s been established, by deceit, under the nose [of the International Atomic Energy Agency] is really left intact. Not a single centrifuge is dismantled, not a single aspect of the Arak plutonium heavy water reactor, not a single aspect of the military aspect of the programme is actually dismantled. It all remains in place.

The 10,200 centrifuge that were spinning on the eve of the agreement will still be spinning on the day after the agreement.

Our fundamental concern is that at the end of this six-month period… Iran is not going to be further away from being a nuclear weapons

state – it might actually be closer to it. We’re troubled by what’s in the agreement; we’re troubled by differences. One of the things that is troubling to us is that within less than a day of the signing of this agreement there seemed to be a fairly fundamental difference of interpretation between Iran and the negotiators over the right of enrichment .... If there’s such a fundamental difference on principle, then what are we going to do when it comes to issues of practice?...."

However, he also told the paper that concern at the prospect of a nuclear Iran on the part of the Sunni states presents Israel with "a moment of opportunity" to forge links.

Read the report here

The Iranian Nuclear Menace: Al Beeb Calls In The Camel Corps

Alas!  It's so typical of the BBC that as soon as Foreign Secretary William Hague warns that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to a Cold War in the Middle East even worse than the one which existed between the USSR and the Western powers, it calls in the nay-sayers to undermine the argument.

True, an alternate viewpoint provides the balanced reportage that Al Beeb is obligated by its Charter to provide yet conspicuously lacks,  especially regarding the Middle East.   But to quote not one but two pundits (in addition to politicians) who contradict Hague weights the scales well away from equilibrium and smacks of deliberate propagandising.

Indeed, Al Beeb has turned for comment to a seemingly archetypal FCO Arabist, former Ambassador to Iran Sir Richard Dalton, who retired from the Diplomatic Service in 2006 and became an associate of Chatham House, specialising in the Middle East and North Africa.

From 1993-97 he was Britain's consul-general in Jerusalem.  In 1994 the then mayor of that city, Ehud Olmert, slammed as "apartheid" his plans, reflecting British policy, to hold separate Jewish and Arab functions in celebration of the Queen's birthday.  Mr Dalton, as he was at the time, was quoted in The Times as saying: "The real problem is the use of Israeli power in Jerusalem." (Jewish Chronicle, 17 July 1994)

Following three years as Britain's ambassador to Libya, Sir Richard became ambassador to Iran, which had refused to accept in that post fluent Farsi-speaker and Iran-expert David Reddaway on the erroneous assumption that he was a Jew (with links to MI6 for good measure).

In November 2009 Sir Richard appeared in Peter Oborne's notorious Dispatches programme on British TV Channel 4, "Inside Britain's Israel Lobby".

Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland – a frequent critic of Israeli policy who hardly merits the term rabid Zionist – noted in the Jewish Chronicle (27 November 2009) that Dalton was

'one of the star turns on this month's Dispatches probe into the pro-Israel lobby.  If that programme played with a few of the most time-honoured tropes – a shadowy group of rich Jews pulling the strings of powerless politicians – than Dalton helpfully played on a few more.'

Freedland quoted Dalton as follows:

"What's unique about the pro-Israel lobbies is that they have good access to politicians, often operate behind the scenes and have primary regard – even though they may come from Britain – not for the interests of the British people but for a mixture of what they see as British interests and the interests of another country."  [My emphasis]

Commented Freedland sarcastically:

'Powerful, secretive, unpatriotic, and with allegiance to a foreign power – all in a single sentence!  Give that man a prize for sheer economy of language.'

Sir Richard, who spoke in the recent debate at the Cambridge Union in support of the motion "This House Would Rather Have A Nuclear Iran Than War", is quoted on the Al Beeb website thus:

"There are many signs, as reported by the International Atomic Energy Agency, that some research and development relevant to the development of nuclear weapons may still be going on.

But it is wrong to say that Iran is rushing towards having a nuclear weapon.

Indeed, the analysis published to the United States Congress by the top intelligence assessors there indicates that Iran has not taken a decision to have a nuclear weapon."

And despite signs that the regime of the mullahs, and Ahmadinejad himself, believes that strife and mayhem is a necessary prelude to the coming of the Twelfth Imam, young Shashank Joshi of the Royal United Services Institute has this phlegmatic message, which Al Beeb includes near the beginning of the same report:

"If we could live with nuclear weapons in the hands of totalitarian, genocidal states like Stalin's Russia or Mao's China, Iran in contrast – whatever its repulsive internal policies and adventurism abroad – is far more rational."

Rational?!

Ah, happy daze!

"Iran Has Been The World's Central Banker Of Terrorism For Decades": John Bolton Warns On Fox News About Iran

Here's America's former ambassador to the UN again, talking sense about the Ahmadinejad regime's inexorable march towards nuclear capability, its worrying implications for Israel, how talk of sanctions lulls the West into "a false sense of security", how Obama appears to fear a military strike more than he does a nuclear Iran, and how we're running out of time if we intend to do what we should have done four years ago:

The Worldwide Cells That Are All Hezbollah Now

It's hard to contemplate unpleasant realities at the start of a new (Jewish) year, but, alas, it's not all sweetness and honey out there ...

An anti-Israel march in central London

I posted a few days ago about the aggressive "export-the-1979-Revolution" foreign policy that's being openly boasted of in ruling circles within Iran.

Thus a leading member of the country's elite, Hassan Rahimpour Azghadi, declared:

"Today we must get ready for a global operation, and our forces should expand their operation throughout the world.

And a general purpose march through Antwerp

Our fighters are present in all five continents of the world and will fight against imperialism everywhere. We must not fear anyone, and an international jihad must take place to prepare for the Coming [of the Twelfth Imam] ....

 As [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini] declared, we must destroy Israel and free Jerusalem.  We must take our fight into the heart of Europe, America, Africa, Asia ... and just as we helped with the Islamic movement in Lebanon and Gaza, soon there will be an Islamic Republic in Egypt."

Hot on the heels, as it were, of that chilling speech comes the revelation that with a view to creating the hegemony of Islam worldwide, Hezbollah has since 2006 been busily establishing jihadist cells under the direction of Mohammad Hussein Babai, a provincial commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, that among the countries already penetrated is the leader of the free world, and that some of the cells may be armed with "dirty bombs".

The Hezbollah flag in Oslo

To quote Babai:

"Today we are a witness to our power and authority in the world, and because of our Islamic Revolution [of 1979], now there is an Islamic Awakening that, with the leadership of the dear supreme leader, Ayatollah [Ali] Khamenei, will become stronger and more resilient."

Read more, by the pseudonymous Reza Kahlili, a former CIA operative in espionage, here.

In the light of such revelations, perhaps this lady's warnings don't sound so far-fetched after all, but take on an urgency that even the most politically correct liberal should heed ...