President Obama ensured himself an even warmer welcome in Israel next week by ratcheting up his rhetoric about the Iranian nuclear threat in an interview. Speaking with Israel’s Channel 2 television network, Obama did something he had never done before in more than four years of promises and threats about Iran: he gave a precise time frame about how long he thinks the West has before Tehran could realize its nuclear ambition.
The president said that U.S. intelligence believes Iran requires “over a year or so to actually develop a nuclear weapon.” That is a bit more optimistic than the red lines warnings issued by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, which first said the danger zone would be this spring and then revised the estimate to later this year. But it does make it clear that he doesn’t believe negotiations have unlimited time to succeed and, combined with the accompanying warning that the U.S. didn’t want to “cut it that close” and that all options including force remained on the table, constituted the sort of explicit warning that Tehran had never previously received.
But the question hanging over this statement, as well as the good will trip to the Jewish state that seems designed to reassure the Israelis, is whether the Iranians are buying it.
President Obama has been promising that Iran would not get a bomb on his watch since before he was elected president. Over the course of the last four years his rhetoric on this point was consistent. But it has been undermined by a series of feckless diplomatic initiatives that seems to have convinced the ayatollahs Obama’s bark was worse than his bite. Years wasted on engagement and assembling an international coalition that could only agree on weak sanctions did more than give Tehran more time to get closer to its nuclear goal. They also emboldened the Iranians to hang tough in negotiations and to believe that the West would never make good on threats to use force to stop them.
Obama can blame no one but himself for reinforcing that Iranian conviction in recent months. He did it first by choosing a new defense secretary in Chuck Hagel who has been an opponent of the use of force against Iran. He compounded that blunder by going along with a series of concessions offered to Iran at the latest edition of the P5+1 talks, which raised the possibility that it could hold onto the nuclear program that he has vowed to shut down while eliminating some sanctions. The Iranians didn’t bite in no small measure because a decade of negotiations with the West have persuaded them that the longer they hold out the more likely they are to get their bomb.
The president’s apologists may see these two trends—tough talk about the subject aimed primarily at an Israeli audience and olive branches lobbed at the Iranians in the talks—as compatible, but they are actually working against each other. He may think that reassuring the Israelis that he has their back may win him extra time to talk to the Iranians. It is probably true that every such statement makes it more unlikely that Israel would consider acting against Iran on its own. But though the president has often acted as if his main problem was keeping the Israelis in line, what he has done is paint himself into a very uncomfortable corner.
The latest reassurance that he will act and act decisively if necessary is good news if only because it makes it that much more difficult for the administration to wiggle their way out of the president’s commitment to spike Iran’s nuclear program when push comes to shove. By establishing a timeline, Obama has taken one more step toward action that ought to get the attention of the ayatollahs and convince them they must give in. But it is unclear whether this increased resolve comes too late to alter the Iranian perception that they have all the time they need to go nuclear before the West wakes up and realizes this grave threat to their security as well as to Israel’s is imminent.
1) Coincidence that Obama's timeline coincides with 2014 midterm elections? n2) Mongolia is offering to help deal with North Korea (see RealClearWorld today for link to The Diplomat article), and I think Mongolia would be perfect to help with Iran, a nation that still has not recovered from the Monghols. n nIran will only take Obama seriously when Russia and China join him 100% at the UNSC.
The old aphorism, "talk is cheap" is what it's all about. If I were Ahmadinejad, would I believe that Barack Obama is serious about depriving me of nuclear weapons? Let's just take a look at his withdrawing a carrier from the Persian Gulf in order to convince the gullible that the "Sequester" is a disaster. Teddy Roosevelt's dictum of "Speak softly and carry a big stick" is a foreign notion to this president. He doesn't speak softly, he kowtows vividly and loudly. He threw away the big stick.
The Iranians did not even take Bush seriously. n n…And somebody is wondering if Iran will take Obama seriously after his crying "wolf, wolf" pusillanimously for FOUR YEARS? n nI wouldn't take seriously the person who raises such a question.
Even Obama doesn't take Obama seriously.
How is "over a year or so" a precise time frame? It gives only a lower bound, which is the opposite of what is needed.
No one buy it! nBut there is no need to destroy the sites. nThey could become the low fruit hanging. nJust need to know how to do it. nRussia & China are on the Iran side. Anything to weaken the US is good for the Russians and Chinese. At least that is the way they think.
So what do we know about USA foreign policy? First, with regard to the Middle East, the President himself calls all the shots. Second, as in the 2009 Cairo speech, President Obama explicitly tells us that he wants to reach out to "the Muslim World." Third, since taking office, the President's actions point to a "big picture" wherein the USA increasingly withdraws from the Middle East. Fourth, this White House plays its cards with eyes obsessively focused on USA domestic politics. Fifth, in appointing Kerry, Hagel and Brennan, the President carefully chose not principled personalities like Anthony Eden but rather men who –come what may– will certainly go along with any eventual Obama decision to accommodate the ayatollahs' nuclear ambitions, as in a possible deal accepting Iran as a "threshold" nuclear power. Sixth, ten years of public opinion polling tell us Americans regard the Islamic Republic of Iran as USA enemy "Number One" and are exceptionally supportive of Israel. So, what does this all amount to? Despite the fact that some Jews stubbornly continue building homes, schools, hospitals, synagogues, businesses and farms east of the 1949 armistice demarcation line — at this precise juncture — President Obama urgently needs Israel to desist from striking Iran and to validate for the American people his "Neville Chamberlain" plans to accommodate the ayatollahs' nuclear ambitions.This logic explains why he now remarkably pays Israel the signal honor of a presidential visit. For President Obama, the key point is — who in the USA could "credibly" trash his long-standing plan to accommodate the ayatollahs' nuclear ambitions, if the Israel government itself gives an imprimatur that effectively "koshers" this policy in the eyes of the American people? And for sure, fully consistent with this interpretation is the trip's focus on USA-Israel cooperation on anti-missile missiles. But wait there is more! President Obama reasonably expects that the Israel trip will dramatically boost his popularity among Israelis. And, he has probably already calculated that, perhaps after the 2014 mid-term elections, he might be able to use this enhanced popularity as an added way to eventually pressure the Israel government into an unsafe agreement for a Palestinian State.
” President Obama ensured himself an even warmer welcome in Israel next week by ratcheting up his rhetoric about the Iranian nuclear threat ”
” President Obama ensured himself an even warmer welcome in Israel next week by ratcheting up his rhetoric about the Iranian nuclear threat ”
but the Iranians didn’t “bite” because they know that it is all taquiya.
Only those Israelis fooled by this as they have been fooled by others in the past, such as Arafat who soon after signing the Oslo accords told South African Muslims in Arabic of his intent, will be warmed by Obama’s words.
This time though the violence of Arafat will pale in comparison.
I would say that Obama is arriving in Israel for one purpose and one purpose alone. To quietly tell the highest levels of the Israeli government that Iran is a nuclear state and the Jews are more or less on their own.
Ah, another Tobin complaint about Obama's policies, as if Tobin never knows what to expect from this creature. But, says Tobin, just wait until next term. President Rubio (or President Cruz) will show us what manner of great things an ineligible President can do.