13-09-2012, 12:58 AM
The New York Times
September 11, 2012
Israeli Sharpens Call for United States to Set Iran Trigger
By DAVID E. SANGER and ISABEL KERSHNER
WASHINGTON Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel inserted himself into the most contentious foreign policy issue of the American presidential campaign on Tuesday, criticizing the Obama administration for refusing to set clear "red lines" on Iran's nuclear progress that would prompt the United States to undertake a military strike. As a result, he said, the administration has no "moral right" to restrain Israel from taking military action of its own.
Mr. Netanyahu's unusually harsh public comments about Israel's most important ally, which closely track what he has reportedly said in vivid terms to American officials visiting Jerusalem, laid bare the tension between him and President Obama over how to handle Iran. They also suggested that he is willing to use the pressure of the presidential election to try to force Mr. Obama to commit to attack Iran under certain conditions.
He appeared to be responding to a weekend statement by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that the United States was "not setting deadlines" beyond which it would turn to a military solution.
Mr. Netanyahu, speaking at a news conference in Jerusalem, said, "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."
In another sign of tensions, the Israeli Embassy in Washington said late Tuesday that the Obama administration had declined a request from Mr. Netanyahu's office for a meeting with Mr. Obama when the Israeli leader attends the United Nations General Assembly this month. The Obama administration said the decision was due to a scheduling problem and had been conveyed to Israel long ago. (Emphasis mine - AE)
On Tuesday night, Mr. Obama called Mr. Netanyahu to try to calm the situation. The two talked for a full hour, hashing through the Iran confrontation and their misunderstandings.
"President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu reaffirmed that they are united in their determination to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and agreed to continue their close consultations going forward," the White House said in a statement after the phone call.
The White House also tried to tamp down controversy over the request for a meeting, saying that after a possible New York encounter was ruled out, Mr. Netanyahu did not request a meeting in Washington. "Contrary to reports in the press, there was never a request for Prime Minister Netanyahu to meet with President Obama in Washington, nor was a request for a meeting ever denied," the statement said.
The United States says it has no evidence that Iranian leaders have made a final decision to build a bomb. However, the International Atomic Energy Agency's latest report says the country has amassed a stockpile of low- and medium-enriched uranium that, with further enrichment, could fuel as many as six nuclear weapons.
The United States concluded several years ago that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons development program at the end of 2003, though there has been evidence of sporadic work since. The Israelis say Iran is quietly reconstituting a much larger effort.
In demanding that Mr. Obama effectively issue an ultimatum to Iran, Mr. Netanyahu appeared to be making maximum use of his political leverage at a time when Mr. Obama's Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, has sought to make an issue of what Mr. Romney says is the administration's lack of support for Israel.
It is not clear what level of development in Iran's nuclear program would constitute a "red line" in Israeli eyes. Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a research institute, and a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, said in an interview last week, "It is very important to draw a line about the quantities of enriched uranium and the levels of enrichment."
One option that has been widely discussed among experts advising the United States government is capping Iran's uranium enrichment at a reactor-grade level. Also, Iran would be permitted to stockpile no more than 1,764 pounds of that uranium, less than is required, if further enriched, to make a single bomb.
Mr. Netanyahu, who is highly attuned to American politics, seemed to be using his comments to pressure Mr. Obama to specify at which point the United States would be prepared to take military action against Iran, perhaps at the United Nations General Assembly opening this month.
The Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael B. Oren, echoed Mr. Netanyahu in an interview in Washington on Monday night and said the Israeli leadership wanted Mr. Obama and the leaders of other nations to agree on clear limits for Iran.
"We know that the Iranians see red," Mr. Oren said. "We know they can discern the color red. We know that the redder the line, the lesser the chance that they will pass it."
Mrs. Clinton publicly rejected that approach over the weekend. In an interview with Bloomberg Radio, she avoided discussion of Iran's stockpile and said, "We're not setting deadlines" for military action. It was that statement that appeared to have set off Mr. Netanyahu.
Mr. Obama has repeatedly argued with the support of some leading Israeli officials that the United States and Israel have closer security cooperation now than at any other point in history. The United States provided much of the Iron Dome missile defense system for Israel, and for the past five years the two countries worked closely on a major covert operation against Iran called "Olympic Games," an effort to sabotage Iran's enrichment capability with cyberattacks.
But Mr. Obama has stopped well short of saying he would prevent Iran from developing the capability to produce a bomb. He has said only that he would not allow Iran to obtain a weapon; Mr. Netanyahu has said that is not enough.
Depending on how one defines the term, Mr. Obama's aides and former aides acknowledge that Iran may already have that capability. It possesses the fuel and the knowledge to make a weapon, but that would take months or years, and Mr. Obama has argued that allows "time and space" for a negotiated solution.
Mr. Romney had no immediate comment about Mr. Netanyahu's challenge to Mr. Obama, and one of his informal advisers on the Middle East said, "It's probably better at this point to let Netanyahu make the point because it's more powerful that way." The adviser said he was not authorized to speak on the record.
But the Netanyahu comments play right to the Republican nominee's critique of Mr. Obama. On "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Mr. Romney declared that the progress of Iran's nuclear program was Mr. Obama's "greatest failure" in foreign policy.
"The president hasn't drawn us any further away from a nuclear Iran," he said.
There is little doubt that the Iranian effort has progressed. When Mr. Obama took office, Iran had produced enough fuel to make, if enriched further, about one bomb, compared with five or six in the International Atomic Energy Agency's current calculation.
But Mr. Romney's proposals have also steered clear of describing with any precision how far Iran could go before he would use force to stop its program. Like Mr. Obama, he has not said how much progress he would allow Iran to make toward a weapons capability before he authorized a strike.
Instead, he has insisted that Mr. Obama was late to the task of placing "crippling sanctions" on Iran. Yet those sanctions have begun to strike at the heart of Iran's greatest source of national revenue oil sales something that the Bush administration shied away from.
Mr. Netanyahu has been dismissive of sanctions. They are an indirect form of pressure, he has argued, and have not forced Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to scale back the country's nuclear program.
In recent days, the Israelis had appeared to be dialing down the pressure on Washington, with the Israeli news media reporting that Ehud Barak, the defense minister, was rethinking the wisdom of an attack in the coming months. There was speculation that Israeli officials feared that the long-term jeopardy to Israel's relationship with Washington was not worth the short-term gain of setting back, but probably not destroying, Iran's capability.
A number of American officials, in trips to Israel, have argued that an Israeli attack would only drive the nuclear program underground and most likely result in the expulsion of international inspectors, who are the best gauge of the program's progress.
But Mr. Netanyahu revived the tough talk of the past few months and the message that time is running out for Israel.
"So far, we can say with certainty that diplomacy and sanctions haven't worked. The sanctions have hurt the Iranian economy, but they haven't stopped the Iranian nuclear program," Mr. Netanyahu said, adding, "The fact is that every day that passes, Iran gets closer and closer to nuclear bombs."
David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Elisabeth Bumiller and Peter Baker contributed reporting from Washington, and Rick Gladstone from New York.
Adele
....
September 11, 2012
Israeli Sharpens Call for United States to Set Iran Trigger
By DAVID E. SANGER and ISABEL KERSHNER
WASHINGTON Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel inserted himself into the most contentious foreign policy issue of the American presidential campaign on Tuesday, criticizing the Obama administration for refusing to set clear "red lines" on Iran's nuclear progress that would prompt the United States to undertake a military strike. As a result, he said, the administration has no "moral right" to restrain Israel from taking military action of its own.
Mr. Netanyahu's unusually harsh public comments about Israel's most important ally, which closely track what he has reportedly said in vivid terms to American officials visiting Jerusalem, laid bare the tension between him and President Obama over how to handle Iran. They also suggested that he is willing to use the pressure of the presidential election to try to force Mr. Obama to commit to attack Iran under certain conditions.
He appeared to be responding to a weekend statement by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that the United States was "not setting deadlines" beyond which it would turn to a military solution.
Mr. Netanyahu, speaking at a news conference in Jerusalem, said, "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."
In another sign of tensions, the Israeli Embassy in Washington said late Tuesday that the Obama administration had declined a request from Mr. Netanyahu's office for a meeting with Mr. Obama when the Israeli leader attends the United Nations General Assembly this month. The Obama administration said the decision was due to a scheduling problem and had been conveyed to Israel long ago. (Emphasis mine - AE)
On Tuesday night, Mr. Obama called Mr. Netanyahu to try to calm the situation. The two talked for a full hour, hashing through the Iran confrontation and their misunderstandings.
"President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu reaffirmed that they are united in their determination to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and agreed to continue their close consultations going forward," the White House said in a statement after the phone call.
The White House also tried to tamp down controversy over the request for a meeting, saying that after a possible New York encounter was ruled out, Mr. Netanyahu did not request a meeting in Washington. "Contrary to reports in the press, there was never a request for Prime Minister Netanyahu to meet with President Obama in Washington, nor was a request for a meeting ever denied," the statement said.
The United States says it has no evidence that Iranian leaders have made a final decision to build a bomb. However, the International Atomic Energy Agency's latest report says the country has amassed a stockpile of low- and medium-enriched uranium that, with further enrichment, could fuel as many as six nuclear weapons.
The United States concluded several years ago that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons development program at the end of 2003, though there has been evidence of sporadic work since. The Israelis say Iran is quietly reconstituting a much larger effort.
In demanding that Mr. Obama effectively issue an ultimatum to Iran, Mr. Netanyahu appeared to be making maximum use of his political leverage at a time when Mr. Obama's Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, has sought to make an issue of what Mr. Romney says is the administration's lack of support for Israel.
It is not clear what level of development in Iran's nuclear program would constitute a "red line" in Israeli eyes. Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a research institute, and a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, said in an interview last week, "It is very important to draw a line about the quantities of enriched uranium and the levels of enrichment."
One option that has been widely discussed among experts advising the United States government is capping Iran's uranium enrichment at a reactor-grade level. Also, Iran would be permitted to stockpile no more than 1,764 pounds of that uranium, less than is required, if further enriched, to make a single bomb.
Mr. Netanyahu, who is highly attuned to American politics, seemed to be using his comments to pressure Mr. Obama to specify at which point the United States would be prepared to take military action against Iran, perhaps at the United Nations General Assembly opening this month.
The Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael B. Oren, echoed Mr. Netanyahu in an interview in Washington on Monday night and said the Israeli leadership wanted Mr. Obama and the leaders of other nations to agree on clear limits for Iran.
"We know that the Iranians see red," Mr. Oren said. "We know they can discern the color red. We know that the redder the line, the lesser the chance that they will pass it."
Mrs. Clinton publicly rejected that approach over the weekend. In an interview with Bloomberg Radio, she avoided discussion of Iran's stockpile and said, "We're not setting deadlines" for military action. It was that statement that appeared to have set off Mr. Netanyahu.
Mr. Obama has repeatedly argued with the support of some leading Israeli officials that the United States and Israel have closer security cooperation now than at any other point in history. The United States provided much of the Iron Dome missile defense system for Israel, and for the past five years the two countries worked closely on a major covert operation against Iran called "Olympic Games," an effort to sabotage Iran's enrichment capability with cyberattacks.
But Mr. Obama has stopped well short of saying he would prevent Iran from developing the capability to produce a bomb. He has said only that he would not allow Iran to obtain a weapon; Mr. Netanyahu has said that is not enough.
Depending on how one defines the term, Mr. Obama's aides and former aides acknowledge that Iran may already have that capability. It possesses the fuel and the knowledge to make a weapon, but that would take months or years, and Mr. Obama has argued that allows "time and space" for a negotiated solution.
Mr. Romney had no immediate comment about Mr. Netanyahu's challenge to Mr. Obama, and one of his informal advisers on the Middle East said, "It's probably better at this point to let Netanyahu make the point because it's more powerful that way." The adviser said he was not authorized to speak on the record.
But the Netanyahu comments play right to the Republican nominee's critique of Mr. Obama. On "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Mr. Romney declared that the progress of Iran's nuclear program was Mr. Obama's "greatest failure" in foreign policy.
"The president hasn't drawn us any further away from a nuclear Iran," he said.
There is little doubt that the Iranian effort has progressed. When Mr. Obama took office, Iran had produced enough fuel to make, if enriched further, about one bomb, compared with five or six in the International Atomic Energy Agency's current calculation.
But Mr. Romney's proposals have also steered clear of describing with any precision how far Iran could go before he would use force to stop its program. Like Mr. Obama, he has not said how much progress he would allow Iran to make toward a weapons capability before he authorized a strike.
Instead, he has insisted that Mr. Obama was late to the task of placing "crippling sanctions" on Iran. Yet those sanctions have begun to strike at the heart of Iran's greatest source of national revenue oil sales something that the Bush administration shied away from.
Mr. Netanyahu has been dismissive of sanctions. They are an indirect form of pressure, he has argued, and have not forced Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to scale back the country's nuclear program.
In recent days, the Israelis had appeared to be dialing down the pressure on Washington, with the Israeli news media reporting that Ehud Barak, the defense minister, was rethinking the wisdom of an attack in the coming months. There was speculation that Israeli officials feared that the long-term jeopardy to Israel's relationship with Washington was not worth the short-term gain of setting back, but probably not destroying, Iran's capability.
A number of American officials, in trips to Israel, have argued that an Israeli attack would only drive the nuclear program underground and most likely result in the expulsion of international inspectors, who are the best gauge of the program's progress.
But Mr. Netanyahu revived the tough talk of the past few months and the message that time is running out for Israel.
"So far, we can say with certainty that diplomacy and sanctions haven't worked. The sanctions have hurt the Iranian economy, but they haven't stopped the Iranian nuclear program," Mr. Netanyahu said, adding, "The fact is that every day that passes, Iran gets closer and closer to nuclear bombs."
David E. Sanger reported from Washington, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Elisabeth Bumiller and Peter Baker contributed reporting from Washington, and Rick Gladstone from New York.
Adele
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