Is Marco Rubio a Sleeper Agent for Netanyahu? 8JAN16

marco rubio r FL, senator, 2016 repiglican presidential candidate and rube for Israel. After reading this from +Mother Jones one has to question just who marco rubio plans to serve and protect if he is elected president?

Is Marco Rubio a Sleeper Agent for Netanyahu?

Why else would the GOP presidential candidate oppose US intelligence keeping an eye on Israel?

—By David Corn

| Fri Jan. 8, 2016 6:00 AM EST

Stephen B. Morton/AP

This week, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) released a television ad that slammed President Barack Obama on several fronts: guns, abortion, climate change (it's not a true threat), and the war on terrorism. In the ad, the almost-top-tier GOP presidential candidate proclaims, "America needs a real commander in chief and a president that will keep us safe." And, as part of his indictment of Obama, Rubio huffs, "He spies on Israel."
Rubio's message seems to be that a strong and effective US leader would not spy on Israel, and that Rubio would not green-light espionage operations that keep an eye on that nation. No doubt, that would delight Israel and its spies, who have long targeted Washington with aggressive espionage operations.

As the Wall Street Journal reported last month, the US intelligence establishment does snoop on Israeli officials. This has outraged conservative supporters of Israel within the United States. But what has such spying unearthed? That Israel spies on the United States.
That's not news. Jonathan Pollard, an American who worked for Navy intelligence, passed a ton of classified information to Israel, in what experts routinely describe as one of the most significant espionage cases in US history. He was caught in 1985, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. In Israel, though, he was hailed a hero. And for years, Israel and some prominent Jewish Americans, including GOP billionaire Sheldon Adelson, pressed for Pollard's release. (Two months ago, he was finally released on parole.) But Pollard was hardly the only Israeli spook who connived to swipe American secrets.
More recently, Jeff Stein, a veteran journalist on the intelligence beat, reported in Newsweek in 2014 that US intelligence officials discussed the issue at a top-secret congressional briefing, noting:

Israel's espionage activities in America are unrivaled and unseemly…going far beyond activities by other close allies, such as Germany, France, the U.K. and Japan. A congressional staffer familiar with a briefing last January called the testimony "very sobering…alarming…even terrifying." Another staffer called it "damaging."

"No other country close to the United States continues to cross the line on espionage like the Israelis do," a former congressional staffer told Stein. This source disclosed that US intelligence officials had cited "industrial espionage—folks coming over here on trade missions or with Israeli companies working in collaboration with American companies, [or] intelligence operatives being run directly by the government, which I assume meant out of the [Israeli] Embassy." In a follow-up story, Stein noted, "Despite strident denials this week by Israeli officials, Israel has been caught carrying out aggressive espionage operations against American targets for decades, according to U.S. intelligence officials and congressional sources. And they still do it. They just don't get arrested very often."
In 2014 one of the documents obtained by Edward Snowden became public, revealing that the National Security Agency and the US intelligence community had long worried about Israeli spying on the United States. It read:

The Israelis are extraordinarily good SIGINT partners for us, but…they target us to learn our positions on Middle East problems. A NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] ranked them as the third most aggressive intelligence service against the U.S.

A 2007 National Security Agency document, also leaked by Snowden, reported that Israeli intelligence was a leader in mounting "espionage/intelligence collection operations and manipulation/influence operations…against U.S. government, military, science & technology and Intelligence Community” organizations.
As the Wall Street Journal reported last March, Israel spied on the US-led talks with Iran regarding Tehran's nuclear program:

The spying operation was part of a broader campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government to penetrate the negotiations and then help build a case against the emerging terms of the deal, current and former U.S. officials said. In addition to eavesdropping, Israel acquired information from confidential U.S. briefings, informants and diplomatic contacts in Europe, the officials said…
"It is one thing for the U.S. and Israel to spy on each other. It is another thing for Israel to steal U.S. secrets and play them back to U.S. legislators to undermine U.S. diplomacy," said a senior U.S. official briefed on the matter.

And how did the United States discover that Israel was spying on it and using the secrets it obtained to subvert official US policy? By spying on Israel:

The White House discovered the operation, in fact, when U.S. intelligence agencies spying on Israel intercepted communications among Israeli officials that carried details the U.S. believed could have come only from access to the confidential talks.

Following this revelation, Foreign Policy noted, "Jerusalem's ongoing espionage campaign has worried U.S. officials so significantly that they have strenuously opposed an effort on Capitol Hill to include Israel in a regime of visa-free travel, which American spies fear will facilitate the travel of Israeli operatives into the United States."
So back to Rubio. As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he presumably is aware of the extensive Israeli intelligence operations against the US government and American businesses. Yet Rubio, a favorite of Likud-loving neocons (and reportedly Adelson), castigates Obama for spying on Israel and its spies. Would he really turn off all US espionage programs focused on Israel, which would give the Israelis a free hand to continue their intelligence operations against the United States? (Is this a plot line for the next season of Homeland?)
I sent the Rubio campaign an email with two questions:

* Does the senator believe that the US government should never mount any intelligence-gathering operations regarding Israel?
* Does the senator believe that the US should not spy on Israel to detect possible Israeli intelligence actions aimed at the United States government, such as the Pollard operation?

The Rubio campaign declined to respond. Without further clarification, Rubio is sending a clear signal: If elected president, he would be good news for the spies of Israel.

David Corn

Washington Bureau Chief

David Corn is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief. For more of his stories, click here. He's also on Twitter and Facebook.

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• BREAKING: The United States Spies on Israel

Lieberman (RIBBENTROP) sworn in as Israel foreign minister 11NOV13

This headline might as well been "Joachim von Ribbentrop sworn in as Israel Foreign Minister". Lieberman's attitude toward Israeli Arabs as well as Palestinians is little different than Ribbentrop's toward Jews. This proves the present Israeli government is not seriously negotiating with the Palestinians in the current peace talks and that their plans are to continue their gestapo like occupation of the West Bank. The American government is wasting it's time and our tax dollars on this Israeli government. Best would be for America to remain committed to protecting Israel's existence but end the loans, subsidies and aid that allows Israel to continue it's illegal and immoral West Bank settlement policies and brutal occupation of the West Bank until the Israeli people elect a government that is sincere in it's desire for peace and capable of honest negotiations wit the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza.

Lieberman, left, stands beside Netanyahu after being sworn in as foreign minister [Reuters]

The hard-line Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman has been sworn in by parliament as the country's foreign minister, a development that could complicate peace talks with Palestinians. The leader of the far-right Yisrael Beitenu party was reappointed to the ministry on Monday after being cleared last week of all charges in a corruption case. He had stepped down as foreign minister last year to defend the charges. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had left the post vacant for Lieberman while he awaited the verdict. The two men warmly hugged after the foreign minister was sworn in by parliament. An Israeli court acquitted him on Wednesday of fraud and breach of trust stemming from allegations he had given an Israeli diplomat an ambassador's post in exchange for a tip-off about a police inquiry into his affairs. The court agreed he had engaged in "inappropriate conduct" but did not find it warranted a criminal conviction. Labour MP Micky Rosenthal said in the parliamentary debate that accompanied Lieberman's confirmation on Monday that although the court had cleared him of  breaking the law, there was still "a giant shadow over his public behaviour". Political wildcard Lieberman will likely use his significant political clout to argue against concessions to the Palestinians, making him an unpredictable player in already troubled US-backed peace efforts. As head of the far-right Yisrael Beitenu party, which is allied with Netanyahu's Likud, Lieberman has been outspoken in his scepticism about the negotiations, saying reaching a permanent peace deal is impossible. Lieberman has been accused of racism, stirring controversy by questioning the loyalty of Israel's Arab citizens and proposing some Arab communities in Israel be shifted to Palestinian control in a land-for-peace deal. He has also called for the removal of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, describing him as an obstacle to peace.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/11/lieberman-sworn-as-israel-foreign-minister-20131111192549418445.html

Bibi thinks he can push the U.S. around. Think again. 17SEP12

BIBI NETANYAHU IS A NAZI PIG AS IS MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD. This is not an anti-semantic or anti-Persian statement, it is my opinion of the policies and philosophies of  netanyahu and ahmadinejad. They are racist, right wing extremest, and netanyahu is no more a friend of America than Iran's mahmoud ahmadinejad. Both men threaten the peace of the world guided by a twisted sense of grandiosity and a perversion of the tenants of their religions and nationalism. They are dangerous to their own people and the world and neither can be trusted. And neither will be allowed to dictate American foreign policy. Neither Israelis or Iranians want another war, nor do Americans, and we must not be forced into one by either of these war-mongerers. From Newsweek's Daily Beast...
Sep 17, 2012 1:00 AM EDT

Bibi thinks he can push the U.S. around. Think again.

The most generous explanation for Benjamin Netanyahu’s brazen, election-season attack on the Obama administration is that it’s a product of the prime minister’s desperate worries about Iran. And clearly, Netanyahu is desperately worried—in a way that most of Israel’s professional security experts are not. They’re mostly worried about 1949: an Iranian nuke that undermines Israel’s dominance in the Middle East, just as the Soviet Union’s atomic test undermined American dominance back then. Bibi, by contrast, is worried about 1942: he’s worried that millions of Jews again face extermination and that, he virtually alone among world leaders, sees the coming Holocaust, which is, indeed, enough to make you lose your cool.

But the problem with this more charitable analysis is that Netanyahu has been brazenly intervening in American politics—often with an eye to screwing Democratic presidents—since long before he became obsessed with Iran. It’s just the way he rolls. In 1989, as Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Netanyahu pushed Congress so hard to scuttle the nascent dialogue between the United States and the PLO that James Baker briefly had him banned from the State Department. In 1998, three days after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, Netanyahu, in a previous stint as Israel’s prime minister, addressed a rally organized by Clinton tormenter Jerry Falwell. Falwell later said, “It was all planned by Netanyahu as an affront to Clinton,” who was pushing Netanyahu to fulfill Israel’s obligations under the Oslo agreement by ceding significant land in the West Bank to the Palestinians.

Perhaps because of his deep ties to America—he attended high school, college, and graduate school in the United States, and held U.S. citizenship until he was in his 30s—Netanyahu has long exuded an extraordinary confidence that he could make the American government bend to his will. In his memoir, Dennis Ross recalls that after Netanyahu’s first meeting with Bill Clinton as prime minister, Clinton remarked in bewilderment, “He thinks he is the superpower and we are here to do what he requires.”

In other words, Netanyahu’s decision to publicly call out Hillary Clinton over Iran last week, soon after his tirade against U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro, is not only about Iran. It’s about Netanyahu’s general belief that when push comes to shove, U.S. leaders can be moved in the direction he wants them to go. And given the way the Obama administration folded after Netanyahu publicly rebuked the president for proposing negotiations based upon the 1967 lines plus land swaps last May, there was no reason for Netanyahu to believe that he couldn’t act the way he always had.

Which makes the Obama team’s sharp-elbowed response all the more remarkable. Not only has the White House not given Netanyahu the deadline for military action that the P.M. reportedly wants, it also refused him a meeting when he comes to the U.S. later this month. Rattled by the administration’s anger, opposition leader Shaul Mofaz and Netanyahu’s own defense minister, Ehud Barak, both reprimanded him for jeopardizing relations with the United States.

The reason Netanyahu’s attacks have backfired is simple: this is about war. (Gali Tibbon / AFP-Getty Images)

Why, this time, did Netanyahu’s intervention fail? First, because he hasn’t closed the deal at home. Over the past 18 months, top security professionals who served under Netanyahu have expressed discomfort—even horror—at his push for a unilateral Israeli strike. Almost immediately after Netanyahu demanded that the U.S. establish “red lines,” about which Iranian behavior would prompt an American strike, Dan Halutz, who led the Israel Defense Forces until 2007, said the U.S. should do no such thing.

The second reason Netanyahu’s efforts have failed is that Obama isn’t as politically vulnerable on Iran as some assumed. Mitt Romney doesn’t talk much about the subject, partly because it’s not a top concern for voters, and partly because voters don’t particularly trust Romney on foreign policy anyway. That’s largely true for Jews as well. According to an American Jewish Committee poll early this year, only 4 percent of American Jews cited Iran’s nuclear program as their No. 1 voting issue (and most of them are likely in Romney’s camp already).

But perhaps the most fundamental reason Netanyahu’s attacks have backfired is the simplest: this is about war. It’s one thing to pressure an American president into backing down on the peace process. It’s another to pressure him into attacking another country. It’s offensive and absurd to expect a president to commit himself to war by a date certain before having taken his case to the American people. Americans do not want Iran to go nuclear, but this is a country weary of war. And, increasingly, it is a country weary of Netanyahu as well.

Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long.
Peter Beinart is editor in chief of Open Zion, a blog about Israel, Palestine, and the Jewish future at The Daily Beast. He is the author of The Crisis of Zionism (Times Books).

For inquiries, please contact The Daily Beast at editorial@thedailybeast.com.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/09/16/peter-beinart-on-netanyahu-s-bullying-act.html

SECRET VIDEO: Romney Tells Millionaire Donors What He REALLY Thinks of Obama Voters (FULL VIDEO) 17SEP12

HERE's the series of videos on mitt robme romney speaking to a group of rich donors and supporters, dissing the middle class, poor and retired, basically dissing all of for not being rich! He has nothing but contempt for most of us and doesn't mince his words. AND he has the nerve to discuss others he accuses of not paying taxes!!! Like he pays his fair share!!!! Thank you MOTHER JONES!!!!!

When he doesn't know a camera's rolling, the GOP candidate shows his disdain for half of America.

 

—By David Corn

During a private fundraiser earlier this year, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told a small group of wealthy contributors what he truly thinks of all the voters who support President Barack Obama. He dismissed these Americans as freeloaders who pay no taxes, who don't assume responsibility for their lives, and who think government should take care of them. Fielding a question from a donor about how he could triumph in November, Romney replied:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

Romney went on: "[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
Mother Jones has obtained video of Romney at this intimate fundraiser—where he candidly discussed his campaign strategy and foreign policy ideas in stark terms he does not use in public—and has confirmed its authenticity. To protect the confidential source who provided the video, we have blurred some of the image, and we will not identify the date or location of the event, which occurred after Romney had clinched the Republican presidential nomination. [UPDATE: We can now report that this fundraiser was held at the Boca Raton home of controversial private equity manager Marc Leder on May 17 and we've removed the blurring from the video. See the original blurred videos here.]
Here is Romney expressing his disdain for Americans who back the president:

At the dinner, Romney often stuck to familiar talking points. But there were moments when he went beyond the familiar campaign lines. Describing his family background, he quipped about his father, "Had he been born of Mexican parents, I'd have a better shot of winning this." Contending that he is a self-made millionaire who earned his own fortune, Romney insisted, "I have inherited nothing." He remarked, "There is a perception, 'Oh, we were born with a silver spoon, he never had to earn anything and so forth.' Frankly, I was born with a silver spoon, which is the greatest gift you can have: which is to get born in America."

More MoJo coverage of Mitt Romney:

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Romney told the contributors that "women are open to supporting me," but that "we are having a much harder time with Hispanic voters, and if the Hispanic voting bloc becomes as committed to the Democrats as the African American voting block has in the past, why, we're in trouble as a party and, I think, as a nation." When one attendee asked how this group could help Romney sell himself to others, he answered, "Frankly, what I need you to do is to raise millions of dollars." He added, "The fact that I'm either tied or close to the president…that's very interesting."
Asked why he wouldn't go full-throttle and assail Obama as corrupt, Romney explained the internal thinking of his campaign and revealed that he and his aides, in response to focus-group studies conducted by his consultants, were hesitant to hammer the president too hard out of fear of alienating independents who voted for Obama in 2008:

We speak with voters across the country about their perceptions. Those people I told you—the 5 to 6 or 7 percent that we have to bring onto our side—they all voted for Barack Obama four years ago. So, and by the way, when you say to them, "Do you think Barack Obama is a failure?" they overwhelmingly say no. They like him. But when you say, "Are you disappointed that his policies haven't worked?" they say yes. And because they voted for him, they don't want to be told that they were wrong, that he's a bad guy, that he did bad things, that he's corrupt. Those people that we have to get, they want to believe they did the right thing, but he just wasn't up to the task. They love the phrase that he's "over his head." But if we're—but we, but you see, you and I, we spend our day with Republicans. We spend our days with people who agree with us. And these people are people who voted for him and don't agree with us. And so the things that animate us are not the things that animate them. And the best success I have at speaking with those people is saying, you know, the president has been a disappointment. He told you he'd keep unemployment below 8 percent. Hasn't been below eight percent since. Fifty percent of kids coming out of school can't get a job. Fifty percent. Fifty percent of the kids in high school in our 50 largest cities won't graduate from high school. What're they gonna do? These are the kinds of things that I can say to that audience that they nod their head and say, "Yeah, I think you're right." What he's going to do, by the way, is try and vilify me as someone who's been successful, or who's, you know, closed businesses or laid people off, and is an evil bad guy. And that may work.

(Note: Obama did not promise his policies would keep unemployment under 8 percent, and 50 percent of college graduates are not unemployed.)

To assure the donors that he and his campaign knew what they were doing, Romney boasted about the consultants he had retained, emphasizing that several had worked for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

I have a very good team of extraordinarily experienced, highly successful consultants, a couple of people in particular who have done races around the world. I didn't realize it. These guys in the US—the Karl Rove equivalents—they do races all over the world: in Armenia, in Africa, in Israel. I mean, they work for Bibi Netanyahu in his race. So they do these races and they see which ads work, and which processes work best, and we have ideas about what we do over the course of the campaign. I'd tell them to you, but I'd have to shoot you.

When one donor said he was disappointed that Romney wasn't attacking Obama with sufficient intellectual firepower, Romney groused that the campaign trail was no place for high-minded and detail-oriented arguments:

Well, I wrote a book that lays out my view for what has to happen in the country, and people who are fascinated by policy will read the book. We have a website that lays out white papers on a whole series of issues that I care about. I have to tell you, I don't think this will have a significant impact on my electability. I wish it did. I think our ads will have a much bigger impact. I think the debates will have a big impact…My dad used to say, "Being right early is not good in politics." And in a setting like this, a highly intellectual subject—discussion on a whole series of important topics typically doesn't win elections. And there are, there are, there are—for instance, this president won because of "hope and change."

Romney, who spoke confidently throughout the event and seemed quite at ease with the well-heeled group, insisted that his election in and of itself would lead to economic growth and that the markets would react favorably if his chances seemed good in the fall:

They'll probably be looking at what the polls are saying. If it looks like I'm going to win, the markets will be happy. If it looks like the president's going to win, the markets should not be terribly happy. It depends of course which markets you're talking about, which types of commodities and so forth, but my own view is that if we win on November 6th, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We'll see capital come back and we'll see—without actually doing anything—we'll actually get a boost in the economy. If the president gets reelected, I don't know what will happen. I can—I can never predict what the markets will do. Sometimes it does the exact opposite of what I would have expected. But my own view is that if we get a "Taxageddon," as they call it, January 1st, with this president, and with a Congress that can't work together, it's—it really is frightening.

At the dinner, Romney also said that the campaign purposefully was using Ann Romney "sparingly…so that people don't get tired of her." And he noted that he had turned down an invitation from Saturday Night Live because such an appearance "has the potential of looking slapstick and not presidential."
Here was Romney raw and unplugged—sort of unscripted. With this crowd of fellow millionaires, he apparently felt free to utter what he really believes and would never dare say out in the open. He displayed a high degree of disgust for nearly half of his fellow citizens, lumping all Obama voters into a mass of shiftless moochers who don't contribute much, if anything, to society, and he indicated that he viewed the election as a battle between strivers (such as himself and the donors before him) and parasitic free-riders who lack character, fortitude, and initiative. Yet Romney explained to his patrons that he could not speak such harsh words about Obama in public, lest he insult those independent voters who sided with Obama in 2008 and whom he desperately needs in this election. These were sentiments not to be shared with the voters; it was inside information, available only to the select few who had paid for the privilege of experiencing the real Romney.
COMING SOON: More from the secret Romney video. (Romney tells his donors he doesn't believe in a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that resolving this conflict is "almost unthinkable," and that he would merely "kick the ball down the field.")

Video production: James West, Adam Serwer, Dana Liebelson, and Erika Eichelberger
Research assistance: James Carter

This story originally contained versions of the videos that were blurred out. You can find those videos, in the order they appear in this post, here, here, here, here, and here.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/secret-video-romney-private-fundraiser

Israeli military chief: Iran will not build nuclear bomb 25APR12

THANK GOD there are still voices of sanity being heard here, in Israel and Iran. The world can not afford another major war, and the people of the world deserve the time to allow negotiations and sanctions to bring a peaceful resolution to this crisis. From the Washington Post....

By Karin Brulliard and Joby Warrick

JERUSALEM — Israel’s military chief said in an interview published Wednesday that he believes Iran will choose not to build a nuclear bomb, an assessment that contrasted with the gloomier statements of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pointed to differences over the Iran issue at the top levels of Israeli leadership.
The comments by Maj. Gen Benny Gantz, who said international sanctions have begun to show results, could relieve pressure on the Obama administration and undercut efforts by Israeli political leaders to urge the United States to get as tough as possible on Iran.
Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have repeatedly stressed that they do not think sanctions and diplomacy will persuade Iran to halt a nuclear program they describe as a military one, and they warn that the time to stop it is quickly shrinking.
But the Israeli security establishment is believed to be far less convinced about the urgency of military action. Gantz made his own reservations clear in a handful of rare interviews with Israeli newspapers, offering comments that analysts said seemed intended to inject nuance into a debate that has reached frenzied heights this spring. Speaking to the newspaper Haaretz, he said that the Israeli military would be ready to act if ordered, but that he did not think that this year would be “necessarily go, no-go.”
Gantz described Iranian leaders as “very rational people” who are still mulling whether to “go the extra mile” and produce nuclear weapons.
“I believe he would be making an enormous mistake, and I don’t think he will want to go the extra mile,” Gantz said of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader. While Gantz cautioned that Khamenei could still change his mind, the supreme leader has said repeatedly that Iran does not intend to build a nuclear weapon, and that its uranium enrichment program is for peaceful purposes.
Although striking in its bluntness, Gantz’s assessment of Iran’s nuclear intentions did not differ dramatically from comments made publicly and privately by other current and former Israeli officials in recent months. Others have also concluded, for example, that Iran intends to achieve nuclear weapons capability but would stop short of assembling and testing a bomb, steps that would almost certainly incur a military response from Israel and perhaps the United States.
But Gantz’s comments differed starkly in tone from those made recently by Netanyahu about the diplomatic efforts of the United States and other world powers. The prime minister recently dismissed the five-week break between this month’s nuclear talks in Istanbul and the next round as a “freebie” that awarded Iran more time to work toward making bombs.
“The centrifuges are still spinning,” Netanyahu told CNN this week. “They were spinning before the talks began recently with Iran, they were spinning during the talks, they’re spinning as we speak. So if the sanctions are going to work, they’d better work soon.”
Ray Takeyh, a former State Department senior adviser on the Persian Gulf region, said Gantz’s comments suggest that Israeli officials, like many of their counterparts in Iran and the United States, are looking for ways to step down from the current crisis.
“Netanyahu is skeptical of the negotiations as a means for Iran to drag things out,” said Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, “but you’re seeing a lot of discussion in the Israeli military suggesting that Israel would like to have a greater degree of flexibility.”
Dennis Ross, who until last fall was the White House’s point man on Iran and the Middle East, said the remarks reflect the fact that “ in the Israeli security establishment there are different views.”
The interviews with Gantz were released as Israel began commemorating its back-to-back Memorial and Independence Days, when Israelis both celebrate the achievement of forging a Jewish state in the Middle East and mourn the sacrifices its citizens have made to stay here. Though talk of an Israeli strike on Iran has cooled in recent weeks, the issue tinged this year’s holiday ceremonies.
Israel views the possibility of a nuclear Iran as an existential threat, and Netanyahu has embraced preventing that scenario as his core mission. When asked whether Iranian leaders are rational — a regular subject of debate here — hawkish Israeli officials argue that murderers who carefully plot their crimes are also rational.
In a speech at a Holocaust Day ceremony last week, Netanyahu said: “The regime in Iran openly calls and determinedly works for our destruction. And it is feverishly working to develop atomic weapons to achieve that goal.”
Netanyahu’s comparisons of the Iranian threat to the Holocaust have been criticized in Israel as unnecessary fear-mongering. Gantz, who is known for his calm demeanor, seemed to echo those calls for restraint.
“Despair not,” he told Haaretz. “The state of Israel is the strongest in the region and will remain so. Decisions can and must be made carefully, out of historic responsibility but without hysteria.”
Shlomo Brom, a retired general who is now an analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, said Gantz’s comments indicated he “doesn’t want to be pushed into rash decisions, so he’s trying to cool it a little bit.”
Military analysts cautioned that Gantz’s comments should not be interpreted as defiance of the political leaders to whom he reports. Instead, they reflect the Israeli intelligence community’s assessment that Iran has not yet decided to make nuclear weapons, as well as the Israeli military’s concern about the potential fallout of an Israeli strike — for Israeli civilians and for the reputation of the military if it does not go well, said Amir Oren, a veteran military analyst for Haaretz.
“Many Israelis get the impression that Netanyahu itches for a fight,” said Oren. “The military does not. The military must weigh the consequences.”
Several former security officials have expressed opposition to the idea of an Israeli strike on Iran. One of the most prominent Israeli officials to break publicly with the Israeli government recently was Meir Dagan, the tough-talking former chief of Israel’s legendary Mossad spy agency.
The opinions of top Israeli officials, too, are far from uniform. Many Israeli leaders are convinced that Iran has resumed warhead work in recent years, though on a much smaller scale than existed prior to 2004, when the U.S. intelligence community believes that Iran was actively working on designing a nuclear warhead. Both countries believe that Iran’s priority now is amassing enough enriched uranium to give its leaders the option to make nuclear weapons.
But in recent interviews, some Israeli officials have said they believe sanctions could deter Iran’s nuclear ambitions, particularly if more countries, including Russia, line up behind them; the Israeli finance minister recently described the Iranian economy as “on the brink of collapse.”
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in a January interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” said he believed Iran would deliberately halt its work just short of the finish line.
“Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No,” Panetta said. “But they are trying to develop a nuclear capability, and that is what concerns us.”
Some Israeli observers described Gantz’s analysis — that sanctions must be given time, but the military option is on the table — as a less theatrical but not fundamentally different one from Netanyahu’s. The big question is how much is bluff, said Or Heller, a military correspondent for Israel’s Channel 10 news.
Gantz indicated that is part of the strategy.
“The military option is the last chronologically but the first in terms of its credibility,” Gantz told Haaretz. “If it’s not credible it has no meaning. We are preparing for it in a credible manner. That’s my job, as a military man.”


Warrick reported from Washington.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/israeli-military-chief-iran-will-not-build-nuclear-bomb/2012/04/25/gIQAQihahT_print.html

U.S. To Israel: Iran Is Feeling Heat From Sanctions & In meeting, Obama to warn Netanyahu against military strikes on Iran 2MAR12

NOTHING can justify us being dragged into another war. If Israel attacks Iran they should be on their own, and suffer the consequences. Pres Obama needs to make it very clear to Israel that sanctions against Iran need to be given time to work and that unilateral military action against Iran will remain just that. From NPR and the Washington Post.....

by Tom Gjelten

Listen to the Story

All Things Considered

[4 min 15 sec]

The White House meeting next Monday between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could be the most critical encounter for the two men since they took office.
Netanyahu is expected to argue that time is running out on efforts to discourage Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Obama may say the Israelis can count on U.S. support, but that they should give sanctions and diplomacy time to work before turning to military action.
After years of relatively ineffective sanctions on Iran, the United States and Europe have finally settled on a series of measures that really do seem to be working.
The latest came in legislation co-authored by Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey. At first he wasn't sure the Obama administration was really committed to a tough sanctions regime, but now he sounds convinced.
"Letting countries throughout the world know that we were serious about the enforcements of these sanctions has already cost Iran in terms of its economy, the value of its currency," he says.
Giving Sanctions A Chance To Work
Cliff Kupchan, an Iran analyst at the Eurasia Group, highlights another way Iran is suffering: The uprising in Syria may mean President Bashar Assad, Iran's friend, is in serious trouble.
"Syria is the only large ally of Iran in the region," Kupchan says. "If Assad goes and even as Assad weakens, Iran's ability to project power, its prestige in the region and its connections to its main proxy, Hezbollah, will be weakened."

Letting countries throughout the world know that we were serious about the enforcements of these sanctions has already cost Iran in terms of its economy, the value of its currency.

- Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J.

Hezbollah, with its weapons and militia in Lebanon, provides Iran a way to retaliate against Israel for any attack — but not if Iran loses the Syria link to Hezbollah.
Between these economic and political setbacks, Kupchan says, time is not on Iran's side. He imagines how the Obama administration may counter an Israeli argument that military action may be needed soon.
"Oil sanctions are in place. The Iranian economy is declining. We've got them in a hole. Let's not hit them now because it may not be necessary," he says, because Iran could yet back down.
Administration officials have gone out of their way in the last few days to emphasize that the United States is in fact prepared to take military action to stop Iran from building a bomb. Obama told The Atlantic magazine in an interview released Friday that Iran — and Israel — should understand that "as president of the United States, I don't bluff."
But at the same time, the White House says sanctions and diplomacy could work.
"We do have visibility into their programs, and Iran has not broken out and started to pursue a weapon," White House spokesman Jay Carney said this week. "So there is time and space to continue to pursue the policy that we have been pursuing since the president took office."
Iran, meanwhile, has always claimed that it's nuclear program is solely for peaceful, civilian purposes.
Disagreement On Timing
But will Netanyahu buy the White House argument? Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, says the administration's case would be stronger if it had moved already against firms in violation of U.S. and European sanctions.
"I think at this point that the administration would have used the ample authority that this president has to send a high-profile message both to Tehran and to Jerusalem that this administration is serious about economic warfare," Dubowitz says.
Though he's a big believer in sanctions, Menendez, the New Jersey senator, says if they don't work, the United States should be prepared to join Israel in taking military action against Iran's nuclear sites. Along with the White House, he thinks there's still time to consider that option — though he recognizes Israel may have a different view.
"I think the only fundamental difference here is not whether or not we seek to prevent Iran from nuclear weapons," Menendez says. "It's the timing which we have. And of course America has the greatest military ability in the world and so therefore the time for us is somewhat different than some of our allies."
So the stage is set for a tense U.S.-Israeli conversation next Monday: President Obama may persuade Prime Minister Netanyahu to be patient — but only by promising that if the time for action does come, the United States will be at Israel's side.

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In meeting, Obama to warn Netanyahu against military strikes on Iran

By Scott Wilson

President Obama plans to caution Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next week against attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, urging patience while international economic sanctions take full effect.
Obama’s meeting with Netanyahu on Monday begins a critical week in his effort to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions and preserve the trust of the United States’ closest Middle East ally. Israeli leaders have made clear they think time is running out to stop Iran from achieving the ability to build a nuclear weapon.
But U.S. officials are not convinced, and many within the administration fear that a pre­emptive Israeli attack could set off a regional war. This disagreement between the United States and Israel will color the meeting between two leaders often at odds over how best to navigate the changing Middle East.
The White House talks are likely to focus on the effectiveness of sanctions and the dangers of an Israeli attack, administration officials say. Obama will seek to avoid discussing the details of how one might unfold out of concern that Israel might interpret such planning as a veiled endorsement of military action.
“We’re trying to make the decision to attack as hard as possible for Israel,” said an administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
For Obama, the political stakes are high. With his approval ratings improving on the strength of a better economy, he still faces the intertwined election-year threats of rising gas prices and the possibility of a military confrontation involving an oil-rich Iran. The issue preoccupies the White House but does not resonate as urgently among Israelis.
How Obama intends to convey his message of patience to Netanyahu, a security hawk who faces political pressures of his own, will entail a measure of public showmanship and private diplomacy.
Administration officials say Obama will attempt to reassure Israel of U.S. resolve while also urging patience and signaling to Iran that the two allies agree on the importance of stopping it from getting a nuclear weapon.
In an interview published Friday in the Atlantic magazine, Obama said that “the Israeli government recognizes that, as president of the United States, I don’t bluff.”
But he suggested that any Israeli strike on Iran before international oil and gas sanctions take effect this summer would undermine the tenuous unity the United States and its allies have built to oppose Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Privately, White House officials say the coalition would explode with the first Israeli airstrike.
“At a time when there is not a lot of sympathy for Iran and its only real ally [Syria] is on the ropes, do we want a distraction in which suddenly Iran can portray itself as the victim?” Obama said in the interview.
Israeli leaders are operating on a far shorter timeline for military action than the United States, which has the ability to fly multiple sorties over days or weeks and drop larger, more sophisticated bombs that would damage even the most well-protected of Iranian nuclear facilities.
The Israelis say their ability to do lasting damage to fortified enrichment facilities is hindered by munitions that are less powerful.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has warned that Iran is approaching what he calls “the zone of immunity,” a milestone after which an Israeli attack would prove far less effective in setting back the Iranian program.
Iranian leaders have said its uranium enrichment program is for civilian power purposes, but international inspectors have uncovered evidence to suggest a military intent. Israel has its own undeclared nuclear program, including a large arsenal of nuclear weapons. Obama has declined to call on Israeli leaders to declare the program, a source of frustration and fear in the Middle East.
Obama begins the week of diplomacy Sunday, when he addresses the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Jewish state’s most conservative and politically influential U.S.-based advocacy group.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll in January showed that nearly half of Americans — 48 percent — disapproved of Obama’s handling of the Iranian nuclear issue. But the poll also found that very few respondents, including Republicans, favored a U.S. military operation against Iran over allowing time for diplomatic efforts such as the oil and banking sanctions to take effect.
U.S. and Israeli officials acknowledge privately that there is diplomatic value in Israel’s public threats of war.
Israel’s anxiety and declared readiness to strike Iran give the Obama administration leverage in persuading Japan, Russia and other countries to rally behind sanctions and tighten them as necessary — or risk a military confrontation with potentially devastating consequences for a fragile global economy.
“People really don’t want war,” said a second administration official. “They really don’t.”
Much of the friction between Obama and Netanyahu has emerged from the administration’s management of the Israeli-Palestinian peace issue. But officials from both countries say that on matters of military cooperation and intelligence sharing, the relationship is strong.
“When the chips are down and there’s a lot at stake, the Israeli prime minister still calls the president of the United States,” said Dennis Ross, a counselorat the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who served as Obama’s senior adviser on Israel and Iran before leaving the National Security Council staff at the end of last year.
Administration officials say that no formal agreement has been reached with Israel over how a strike would be conducted — or when Obama would be informed about it.
Some officials said the assumption inside the White House and the Pentagon is that Israel would not give the United States warning, allowing the administration to deny prior knowledge but also limiting its ability to defend U.S. military assets in the region.
It is unclear whether the subject of an early warning will come up during Obama’s meeting with Netanyahu. While administration officials worry about inadvertently giving Israel a tacit green light by talking about the logistics of a possible attack, Israel might also seek to avoid discussing specifics out of fear that detailed revelations could trigger negotiations that might limit options later, analysts said.
“They’ve always wanted to preserve their own freedom of action,” Ross said.
Instead, Ross and others outside the administration think Obama and Netanyahu will seek an understanding on the zone of immunity concept — that is, when Israel believes it must attack to effectively damage the Iranian program.
Israeli officials have told their U.S. counterparts that it is impossible to know the full scope of the Iranian intent and the reaches of its program.
But Obama told the Atlantic that Iran is not yet in a position to build a nuclear weapon and would require “a pretty long lead time” to do so, if it chose to. That means there is time, he said, for non-military solutions that might prompt Iran to relinquish its nuclear ambitions for good.
“Our argument is going to be that it is important for us to see if we can solve this thing permanently, as opposed to temporarily,” Obama said.

Polling analyst Scott Clement contributed to this report.

 

Ex-Israeli Spy Chief's Iran Comments Spark Row 29JUN11

MEIR DAGAN should be seen as a hero in Israel, not a traitor. Nothing will ensure widespread war in the Middle East and the probable destruction of Israel than an Israeli military strike on Iran. The Israeli people deserve to know what their political leaders are planning when their decisions could result in the deaths of millions. The world knows that Iran is ruled by fanatics who can be considered dangerously insane, now we are learning the political leadership of Israel isn't much different. Meir Dagan has done Israel and the world a huge favor by exposing the warmongering policies of the current Israeli leadership. From NPR...

by Lourdes Garcia-Navarro

Listen to the Story

Morning Edition

[3 min 50 sec]

 

Enlarge Ronen Zvulun/AP Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hugs outgoing Mossad chief Meir Dagan after thanking him at the beginning of a Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Jan. 2.

The former Mossad spy chief's name is on everyone's lips in Israel — with good reason.
Meir Dagan was the head of Israel's spy agency for eight years and has been credited with raising the international prestige of the agency. So it came as a shock to many that upon leaving office he would talk about one of the most sensitive issues here: Iran.
Dagan has said that a military strike on that nation targeting its suspect nuclear program would be disastrous, and he lambasted the current Israeli leadership for being reckless in pursuing that aim. This past week, Dagan was stripped of his diplomatic passport, in apparent retaliation.
"Dagan is very popular in Israel," says Ronen Bergman, a leading Israeli journalist and author of the upcoming book, Mossad and the Art of Assassination. "Something like this coming from his mouth is harmful to the ... prestige of these people in the eyes of the Israeli public."
Bergman says because Dagan is so well respected, his words have been taken very seriously by the public here and that he's faced a lot of censure for speaking out.
"He worked against the code," he says. "He, so to speak, spilled out the inner discussion over one of the major subjects."
People close to Dagan say he felt he had to go public about his concerns. According to sources, while in office, Dagan felt he, Gabi Ashkenazi and the director of the Shin Bet internal security agency, Yuval Diskin, acted as a bulwark against the desire of both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to strike Iran.
But within a few months of each other, all three men retired, leaving what Dagan felt was a "dangerous vacuum." His supporters call him a patriot.

Enlarge Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images An Iranian woman walks past a poster featuring portraits of Israeli military intelligence chief Gen. Amos Yedlin, Dagan and Defense Minister Ehud Barak during an anti-Israeli ceremony in Tehran in 2008.

Dagan's critics want his head.
"You have a difference between elected officials and people who are nominated and Dagan was not elected," says Danny Danon, deputy speaker of the Israeli Knesset and a member of Netanyahu's Likud Party. "The government was elected, Prime Minister Netanyahu was elected. ... A very important official should follow the decisions of the government whether he likes them or not."
Danon says legislation should be introduced to bar public officials from making critical statements like Dagan's after they've left office.
Former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy says Israel has to present a united front publically to an enemy like Iran whatever the internal divisions.
"I don't think it's very wise to discuss the options in this manner. I don't think we have to provide our adversaries with all that information as to our intentions," he says. "I don't think it's a very wise thing or necessary thing to give them a timetable of when or when not we might consider this or that possibility using this or that force."
Halevy says the Iranians would be well advised not to consider the debate going on in Israel as a sign of weakness. Echoing the Israeli government position, he says: All options remain on the table.