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Obama snubs Israel again
Barack Obama did it again. He refuses to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel this month. Netanyahu will attend this year’s General Assembly session at the United Nations in New York City. But according to Israeli officials, Barack Obama can’t bother to make time to see Netanyahu. His “schedule” won’t let him. Everyone who cares to know, knows that’s false. Obama does not want to see Netanyahu. And at least one political observer says that Obama might have thrown away his chances to stay in office by striking this attitude.
Obama and his curious schedule
Talk about Barack Obama’s daily schedule has already embarrassed him. According to some reports, he does not make time for his daily intelligence briefing. Half the time, he misses it. In fact this confirms a report that came out more than a year ago, that looked like sheer speculation. It described Obama as acting more like a truant schoolboy than the President of the United States. He watches sports, or contemporary music, or maybe Fox News on television while taking an official briefing. That report strained credulity when “Ulsterman” first published it. But now The Washington Post asks its readers whether they will accept Obama skipping a daily briefing. Suddenly one can more easily believe Ulsterman and his “Insider,” whom he never names.
So Barack Obama can’t fit the visiting head of an ally state into his schedule? No. Barack Obama snubbed Netanyahu on purpose.
Obama and Netanyahu ever at odds
Barack H. Obama. Photo: Pete Souza, January 13, 2009
The latest excuse is that Netanyahu embarrassed Obama in public. At a recent news conference, Netanyahu, in plain English, said that Israel could not wait any longer for someone to act decisively against Iran over its nuclear program.
The world tells Israel “wait, there’s still time.” And I say, “Wait for what? Wait until when?” Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.
But Obama and Netanyahu don’t like one another. Two and a half years ago, Obama met Netanyahu only briefly at the White House. He then left Netanyahu alone while he, Obama, went to dinner with his family. Netanyahu had to leave by a rear door.
Last year, of course, Obama dumbfounded the leaders of Israel. He insisted that Israel withdraw behind the original 1949 Armistice Line, also mis-called “the 1967 Israel borders.” Netanyahu then spoke to a joint session of Congress. There he chided Obama straight-out for those remarks. Later, the two had a “photo-opportunity meeting” in the White House. Throughout, Obama turned away from Netanyahu, or else cast a baleful glare on him.
And after that, Ulsterman’s Insider said that Obama completely lost his temper. Several people could hear Obama ranting and raving and yelling at the top of his lungs up and down the hallways of the West Wing. His final, ironic command:
Never again! Do you understand me? Never again!
Alan Dershowitz’ warning
This evening, Prof. Alan Dershowitz of Harvard University warned Obama. His message: you should not have snubbed Netanyahu. That snub, says Dershowitz, might cost Obama a majority of Jewish votes nationwide and especially in the State of Florida. And furthermore:
I don’t think the United States ever has the right to stop a sovereign nation from defending its own citizens from the risk of apocalyptic nuclear attack — just as Israel would not have the right to stop the United States from taking action to protect its own citizens.
Dershowitz’ advice: send a clear signal to Iran and Israel both, to do nothing. But the signals that Obama and his Secretary of State are really sending are as clear as mud. Jerrold Sobel knows this. Today he asked his fellow Jews, “What more will it take?”
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Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.
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“Obama does not want to see Netanyahu.”
If I was president of a superpower and the leader of a small, troublesome Middle Eastern state lectured me on how to run my foreign policy then abused my ambassador I don’t think I’d want to see him either.
So Obama doesn’t prioritise Israel. So what? He’s far from the first US President to take that attitude. Given that the USA is still fighting an important and difficult war in Afghanistan Obama probably doesn’t want to encourage Netanyahu to start a war that would enrage Iran and make ISAF’s job in western Afghanistan that much harder.
All this talk about “apocalyptic nuclear attacks” is just irresponsible hyperbole. Iran is still at least a couple of years away from producing one small, crude nuclear weapon, if that is indeed their intent. Building a weapon is the red line that everyone is talking about. Up to that point Iran is acting within their right, as a signatory of the NPT, to master the entire nuclear fuel cycle. This is a right that Israel has not chosen to legally grant itself, so they should stop moaning about Iran doing it.
Are you a nuclear weaponist in addition to the other talents to which you lay claim? If you have evidence that Iran is so backward that the world could wait two years before having to judge what to do about them, I’m sure the governments of both countries involved would love to see it.
“Are you a nuclear weaponist in addition to the other talents to which you lay claim?”
No, but I know a fair bit about them and even more about what’s required to integrate them into a delivery system. Iran isn’t there yet. They’re still well within what they’re allowed to do as an NPT signatory.
“If you have evidence that Iran is so backward that the world could wait two years before having to judge what to do about them, I’m sure the governments of both countries involved would love to see it.”
Iran doesn’t need the evidence. The only other country involved, Israel, has been told by the CIA, SIS and even Mossad that Iran doesn’t present a credible nuclear threat in the immediate future. However Netanyahu has ignored the advice of three of the world’s top intelligence agencies and his own military chiefs of staff and just keeps banging his little tin drum. I wonder what his real motivations are?
Perhaps you do not know, or you now seek to hide from me and my readers, that Iran is working on a “delivery system” (i.e., a missile) at the same time as it works on fabricating enough fissile material to make a warhead or warheads.
And if you have intercepts or other evidence from the CIA, the SIS, and/or Mossad, I would like to see those, too.
“Perhaps you do not know, or you now seek to hide from me and my readers, that Iran is working on a “delivery system” (i.e., a missile) at the same time as it works on fabricating enough fissile material to make a warhead or warheads.”
Iran already has missiles. However there’s a big difference between the sort of nuclear warhead Iran will be able to manufacture in the forseeable future and the sort that will fit inside a missile warhead and function after a ballistic flight. There is no risk whatsoever of Iran being able to launch a nuclear-armed missile at Israel or anyone else for a decade at least.
Evidence, if you please.
“Evidence, if you please.”
Simple. The IAEA has determined that Iran has managed to enrich uranium to 20% U235. If you’re very, very good you can build a fission bomb out of uranium enriched to that level, but it’ll be the size of a truck. It certainly isn’t going to fit in the 22″ wide warhead compartment of a North Korean SCUD knockoff. Iran’s best missile has, optimistically, a 770kg payload. The uranium reaction mass alone for any weapon they’re capable of making would weigh 400kg. Then add in the reflector, tampers, explosive shell, cyclotron, electronics and arming and fusing package; we’re looking at a ton and a half minimum and possibly pushing three tons. It’s not going to happen any time soon.
Iran continues to work on enriching uranium to far higher grades than that. The IAEA is copping out. Everyone knows that Iran has been hiding their activities. That is very easy to do when the authority charges with looking for them, looks the other way. Which is what the IAEA has done.
Your entire argument assumes without warrant that Iran has reached its limit with uranium enrichment, or that there can be any limit to uranium enrichment.
“Iran continues to work on enriching uranium to far higher grades than that.”
Evidence please. In any case, enriching from 20% to weapons grade is not the work of a few months.
“Your entire argument assumes without warrant that Iran has reached its limit with uranium enrichment”
Well no. The IAEA haven’t been entirely asleep on the job. Iran has converted the bulk of its 20%-enriched stockpile (which in any case was about a sixth of what would be needed to build a single crude weapon) to UO2, which is ideal for use in reactors but cannot be further enriched.
“or that there can be any limit to uranium enrichment.”
Clearly there can; 100% U235. So far even the USA hasn’t managed to exceed 98% enriched, and in fact has largely given up the effort; cool kids make their bombs from Plutonium-239 these days. Do let me know if Iran ever manages it, though.
You haven’t shown any convincing evidence that they got no further than twenty, anyway. And the big point is: you don’t want to wait for them to get to a decent weapons grade. You want to hit them before they get the infrastructure in place to ratchet up the enrichment with impunity.
“You haven’t shown any convincing evidence that they got no further than twenty, anyway.”
Well, there’s the fact that they haven’t mastered the centrifuge technology required to get significantly higher. Does that help?
And the big point is: you don’t want to wait for them to get to a decent weapons grade. You want to hit them before they get the infrastructure in place to ratchet up the enrichment with impunity.”
Uh, Terry, enrichment to below weapons grade is something that Iran has a right to do as an NPT signatory. You can’t encourage people to signa treaty then deny them the rights given by signing. Otherwise people might start to think that you’re, oh, untrustworthy?
No. Because I think they have. I say that they are building such centrifuges in that bunker everyone’s talking about.
“No. Because I think they have. I say that they are building such centrifuges in that bunker everyone’s talking about.”
Any evidence for that? Because the IAEA say they haven’t managed to build advanced centrifuges.
Oh, yeah? Well, I think they’re covering up.