Israel recruits gay community in PR campaign against Iran - Haaretz - Israel News

 

Israel recruits gay community in PR campaign against Iran

By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent

Tags: public relations, iran

Israel is stepping up its public relations effort to discredit Iran within the international community, and part of its new campaign focuses on Tehran's abuse of human rights and sponsorship of terrorism.
"We have to lay the foundation in the world, and particularly in Europe, in order to be able to take harsher steps against Iran, especially in the economic sector," said one senior political source in Jerusalem.
The new campaign, to be overseen by the Foreign Ministry, aims to appeal to people who are less concerned with Iran's nuclear aspirations and more fearful of its human rights abuses and mistreatment of minorities, including the gay and lesbian community.

The campaign plans to recruit the international gay community, which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed in 2007 when he said there were no homosexuals living in his country.
The campaign will also reach out to Jewish groups who want to bring more attention to Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial and some members of the Iranian regime's anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist views.
About NIS 8 million have already been budgeted for the new campaign, which also includes increased briefings for foreign journalists on the Iranian nuclear program and greater use of the Internet and sites such as YouTube.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman want to broaden the PR campaign on the subject of Iran in the wake of increasing international willingness to negotiate with Tehran over its nuclear program. One political source said there appear to be greater expectations in the U.S. and in Europe that diplomacy will solve the nuclear dispute.
However, the assumption in Israel is that dialogue will not lead to fundamental change in Tehran's stance and that the regime will not relinquish its nuclear aspirations, even in exchange for an incentives package from the international community.
The senior political source in Jerusalem said it is necessary to lay the groundwork now for the possible diplomatic failure. Despite talk of a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, the current campaign focuses more on harsh economic sanctions against Tehran.

Israel recruits gay community in PR campaign against Iran - Haaretz - Israel News

Oil-Rich Arab State Pushes Nuclear Bid With U.S. Help - WSJ.com

 

ABU DHABI -- The mating of the words "nuclear" and "Persian Gulf" normally sets off alarm bells in Washington. Yet this oil-rich Arab state just across the gulf from Iran is on a crash course to develop nuclear power with U.S. backing.

Dozens of American engineers, lawyers and businessmen have converged on Abu Dhabi in recent months to help the United Arab Emirates get the Arab world's first nuclear-power program running by 2017. "I don't know anyone else who has rolled out a nuclear program of this magnitude this fast," says Jeffrey Benjamin, an American engineer who in October was named project manager for Emirates Nuclear Energy Corp., which oversees Abu Dhabi's nuclear program.

View Interactive

World Nuclear Energy Production

See details on countries' nuclear energy capacity in an interactive map.

Even as the U.S. remains determined to block Iran from developing nuclear weapons, President Barack Obama sees the U.A.E. program as a "model for the world," according to a senior White House official, and by mid-April could move to present a bilateral nuclear-cooperation treaty to Congress for approval. The ability to make electricity through nuclear power is a long way from the ability to build weapons -- and, proponents say, the agreement could make bomb-making harder.

The treaty, signed by former President George W. Bush during his last week in office, would allow American firms to engage in nuclear trade with the U.A.E. To build support, the U.A.E. is agreeing to buy approved nuclear fuel on the international market, rather than enriching uranium or reprocessing plutonium, both of which can be made into weapons-grade material. It will also open its facilities to random international inspections.

The U.A.E.'s push represents a test for nuclear-power advocates who want countries across the globe to go nuclear -- so long as they play by the rules. The U.S. and United Nations officials are championing the U.A.E. as a role model for other developing countries and as a counterexample to Iran. Tehran has repeatedly rebuffed international inspectors, while amassing large quantities of materials that can be used to build bombs. A spokesman at the Iranian mission to the U.N. says Iran's nuclear program is purely for civilian purposes, and says Tehran believes "peaceful nuclear programs" are the right of all signatures to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Some U.S. lawmakers have threatened to block the U.A.E. deal, saying the risks of letting that country split the atom are too large. They cite the U.A.E.'s history as a transit point for sensitive military technologies to Iran, Iraq and Libya. They also make the slippery-slope argument: If one Arab country has nuclear power, others may pile in, and perhaps down the road, seek nuclear weapons as well. Both Saudi Arabia and Egypt have recently announced their desire to develop nuclear-power programs with U.S. assistance.

Western and Asian companies are already salivating at the chance for lucrative contracts with the U.A.E., which has set the end of April as the rough deadline for bids. General Electric Co. and Westinghouse Electric Co. are among the U.S. firms interested in the initial $20 billion in reactor work, say officials familiar with the bidding process. GE and Westinghouse declined to comment.

Facing ambitious timelines set by officials bent on growth, Mr. Benjamin, the American engineer, and his colleagues rarely get far from the Emirates Nuclear Energy headquarters in downtown Abu Dhabi. Many live in an apartment building next to the office and exercise at the same gym. Mr. Benjamin lives three floors above his office.

Surge in Demand

The U.A.E. began exploring nuclear power three years ago as it faced a surge in electricity demand, say Emirati officials. The Persian Gulf country is a federation of seven states, among them Abu Dhabi, the capital, and Dubai. It has among the largest oil reserves in the world. But it's short of the natural gas that is used to fuel power and water-desalination plants, and imports most of its gas from neighboring Qatar.

Reuters

Qatari Emir Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, right, receives United Arab Emirates President Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan at Doha international airport on Sunday. Leaders of the 22-member Arab League gathered in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar for a two-day summit meeting.

Abu Dhabi's ruler, Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan, commissioned a white paper that concluded the country's electricity demand would reach 40,000 megawatts by 2020 from around 16,000 megawatts currently. Nonnuclear options, such as coal-fired plants, solar energy or alternative fuels, were seen either as insufficient to meet demand, too expensive or harmful to the environment.

"Nuclear power was seen both as practical and clean," says Hussain al Nowais, an Abu Dhabi industrialist who took part in the study.

The U.A.E.'s foreign minister announced Abu Dhabi's intentions to pursue nuclear power last May. Officials here say they believe the global economic downturn is temporary and are sticking to ambitious growth plans that assume rising electricity demand.

Bush Initiative

The Bush administration quickly emerged as a powerful partner. Former Bush officials say they wanted to tout the U.A.E.'s nuclear approach to developing nations and to pressure Iran to follow suit. Some former officials say they believed nuclear power was inevitably going to spread farther into the Middle East. A deal with Abu Dhabi could also set a precedent by binding a key economic powerhouse to U.S. technologies and international standards.

"This is the kind of counterexample to Iran we need to actively support," says Jackie Wolcott, a former U.S. envoy who helped negotiate the pact Mr. Bush signed in January.

David Scott is one of the Americans helping to build the nuclear program in the U.A.E. Mr. Scott served as the National Security Council's director for the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa during President Bush's first term. In 2006, he became the director of economic affairs for Abu Dhabi's Executive Affairs Authority, which is run by the crown prince.

Frenzied Growth

On a recent morning, Mr. Scott was in a helicopter over Abu Dhabi, pointing out the frenzied growth of skyscrapers and apartment blocks that he hopes will soon be powered by nuclear energy. Mr. Scott, a graduate of Utah's Brigham Young University, has worked for the U.S. military, the State Department and Occidental Petroleum Corp. On weekends, he and his family ride wakeboards on Abu Dhabi's turquoise waters.

Also in the helicopter was Mohamed al Hammadi, the chief executive of the Emirati nuclear company. Mr. Hammadi was tracking the flight path using the global-positioning system on his cellphone. The 33-year-old, a graduate of the Florida Institute of Technology and a native of Abu Dhabi, said he hardly recognized the town he grew up in.

"Most of this was just desert," said Mr. Hammadi. The Louvre and Guggenheim museums are building branches on an island next to Abu Dhabi's downtown waterfront. A Formula One racetrack built on another nearby island will stage its first event later this year. Farther away from the city, one of the world's largest aluminum smelters is under construction.

Mr. Hammadi's job includes choosing sites for the reactors that are in secure locations and away from population centers, but still close to desalination plants and the power grid. He'll also decide which designs the U.A.E. adopts. Plants must withstand sandstorms and summer heat that can reach 120 degrees.

Following the Western model, the U.A.E. has established an independent regulator to monitor nuclear safety. The regulator's first director general is set to be William Travers, a 58-year-old Florida native. In the 1980s, he was dispatched by the U.S.'s Nuclear Regulatory Commission to help clean up America's worst nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.

Mr. Travers oversees a staff of 30 American, Emirati and European officials that's expected to grow to more than 100 by 2013. The regulatory office is seeking to put in place licensing requirements so the U.A.E. can begin importing components for its nuclear reactors. Mr. Travers says he plans to retain his independence, which is one reason his offices have been literally walled off from the nuclear-energy company, even though they share the same floor. "What they want from me is a safety call," Mr. Travers says from his spartan office.

Emirati officials say they've started developing homegrown talent to run and maintain the reactors. Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi's largest technical school, is teaming up with European and U.S. colleges to create nuclear science and engineering degrees. The government is offering to retrain engineers already working in the nation's petroleum sector.

'Serve My Country'

"I want to see myself in a stronger position so that I can serve my country," said 30-year-old Fahad al Rumaithi, who's preparing for a degree in nuclear engineering after working for the Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Co. in Malaysia and South Korea. He said he spends his spare time reading engineering books on thermodynamics.

Most critics of the program, including some U.S. lawmakers and nonproliferation experts, believe the U.A.E. is unlikely to turn to nuclear weapons. But they have reservations about the country's past role in the flow of sensitive military technologies. The rogue Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan used the port of Dubai to transfer centrifuge technologies to countries like Libya, according to American and U.N. officials. Mr. Khan's network grew to include nuclear sales to North Korea and Iran, before American and international investigators shut him down in 2003.

Iran has allegedly obtained materials for its missile program from front companies based in Dubai. Iran and the U.A.E. are trading partners, exchanging more than $5.5 billion in goods in 2007, according to the European Union.

Some American lawmakers have said they want to block the U.S.-U.A.E. deal on the grounds that the U.A.E. hasn't done enough to combat the flow of funds and technology into Iran.

"If this is to be the model for future nuclear cooperation agreements, don't we want to get this right the first time?" asks Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the Republican vice chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Ms. Ros-Lehtinen wants more assurances that the U.A.E. will support U.S. efforts to confront Iran and that it won't pursue nuclear weapons.

U.A.E. officials say in the past they have been lax in monitoring the flow of sensitive technologies through the ports. But they say they have stepped up enforcement of U.N. sanctions against Iran and tightened business-license regulations for Iranian nationals. They have also signed on to U.S.-led efforts to track air and sea shipments to Iran.

Iranian Crackdown

Over the past three years, U.A.E. officials say, they have shut down 40 Iranian companies operating in Dubai over either export-control violations or lack of proper licenses. In the past six months, Emirati authorities have also blocked more then 10 shipments of goods for potential military use heading to Iran through Dubai, largely from Asia. "We will not allow anyone to use our territory to harm anybody else," said Yacub al-Hosani, a Foreign Ministry official.

The U.A.E. points to Iran's stepped-up rhetoric over Persian Gulf islands that are in dispute between Abu Dhabi and Tehran as evidence that its harder stance isn't going unnoticed.

Emirati officials say their nuclear program won't be derailed by international pressure. The country has already signed a nuclear-cooperation agreement with France, and has tentative deals with Japan and Britain. Companies such as France's Areva SA and Korea Electric Power Co. are preparing to make bids for contracts that could ultimately top $40 billion.

Write to Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com and Margaret Coker at margaret.coker@wsj.com

Oil-Rich Arab State Pushes Nuclear Bid With U.S. Help - WSJ.com

FT.com / UK - US may cede to Iran's nuclear ambition

 

By Daniel Dombey in Washington

Published: April 4 2009 03:00 | Last updated: April 4 2009 03:00

US officials are considering whether to accept Iran's pursuit of uranium enrichment, which has been outlawed by the United Nations and remains at the heart of fears that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons capability.

As part of a policy review commissioned by President Barack Obama, diplomats are discussing whether the US will eventually have to accept Iran's insistence on carrying out the process, which can produce both nuclear fuel and weapons- grade material.

"There's a fundamental impasse between the western demand for no enrichment and the Iranian dem-and to continue enrichment," says Mark Fitzpat-rick, a former state depart-- --ment expert now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "There's no obvious compromise bet-ween those two positions."

The US has insisted that Iran stop enrichment, although Mr Fitzpatrick notes that international offers put to Tehran during George W. Bush's second term as president left the door open to the possible resumption of enrichment.

"There is a growing recognition in [Washington] that the zero [enrichment] solution, though still favoured, simply is unfeasible," says Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council. "The US may still have zero as its opening position, while recognising it may not be where things stand at the end of a potential agreement."

Yesterday, Mr Obama summarised the US message to Iran as, "Don't develop a nuclear weapon" - a form of words that would not rule out a deal accepting Iranian enrichment. Mr Bush was much more specific in calling Iran to halt enrichment.

A series of UN Security Council resolutions since 2006 has forbidden Iran from enriching uranium, with the European Union, Russia and China backing US calls for Tehran to halt the process.

But Iran has sped up its programme during that time and has installed more than 5,500 centrifuges to enrich uranium and has amassed a stockpile of more than 1,000kg of low-enriched uranium - enough, if it were enriched to higher levels, to produce fissile material for one bomb. "Across the political spectrum in Iran, enrichment as a right has become a non-negotiable position," Mr Parsi said.

Asked last month whether the administration was considering allowing Iran to keep a limited enrichment capability, Robert Wood, a state department spokesman, said: "I don't know . . . Let's let the review be completed and then we can spell out our policies."

Some analysts say priority should be given to winning greater access for UN inspectors, to acquire more information about Iran's enrichment plant in Natanz and fill in gaps in knowledge on Iran's nuclear-related activities across the country.

That could provide warning of any move to enrich uranium to weapons grade levels at Natanz and ease fears of clandestine facilities.

Privately both US and Israeli officials say that even the current, more limited inspection regime at Natanz would provide sufficient warning of any "breakout" towards a nuclear bomb. Outside Natanz, by contrast, information on Iran's programme is diminishing.

The US line that Iran is seeking the capability to develop nuclear weapons - but not necessarily such weapons themselves - contrasts with Mr Bush's insistence while in office that it sought nuclear weapons.

Iranian regime insiders have said they would expect a compromise by the US on enrichment to be reciprocated.

FT.com / UK - US may cede to Iran's nuclear ambition

Netanyahu to Obama: Stop Iran—Or I Will - The Atlantic (March 31, 2009)

 

In an interview conducted shortly before he was sworn in today as prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu laid down a challenge for Barack Obama. The American president, he said, must stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons—and quickly—or an imperiled Israel may be forced to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities itself.

“The Obama presidency has two great missions: fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu told me. He said the Iranian nuclear challenge represents a “hinge of history” and added that “Western civilization” will have failed if Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

In unusually blunt language, Netanyahu said of the Iranian leadership, “You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”

History teaches Jews that threats against their collective existence should be taken seriously, and, if possible, preempted, he suggested. In recent years, the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has regularly called for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” and the supreme Iranian leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, this month called Israel a “cancerous tumor.”

But Netanyahu also said that Iran threatens many other countries apart from Israel, and so his mission over the next several months is to convince the world of the broad danger posed by Iran. One of his chief security advisers, Moshe Ya’alon, told me that a nuclear Iran could mean the end of American influence in the Middle East. “This is an existential threat for Israel, but it will be a blow for American interests, especially on the energy front. Who will dominate the oil in the region—Washington or Tehran?”

Netanyahu said he would support President Obama’s decision to engage Iran, so long as negotiations brought about a quick end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “How you achieve this goal is less important than achieving it,” he said, but he added that he was skeptical that Iran would respond positively to Obama’s appeals. In an hour-long conversation, held in the Knesset, Netanyahu tempered his aggressive rhetoric with an acknowledgement that nonmilitary pressure could yet work. “I think the Iranian economy is very weak, which makes Iran susceptible to sanctions that can be ratcheted up by a variety of means.” When I suggested that this statement contradicted his assertion that Iran, by its fanatic nature, is immune to pressure, Netanyahu smiled thinly and said, “Iran is a composite leadership, but in that composite leadership there are elements of wide-eyed fanaticism that do not exist right now in any other would-be nuclear power in the world. That’s what makes them so dangerous.”

He went on, “Since the dawn of the nuclear age, we have not had a fanatic regime that might put its zealotry above its self-interest. People say that they’ll behave like any other nuclear power. Can you take the risk? Can you assume that?”

Netanyahu offered Iran’s behavior during its eight-year war with Iraq as proof of Tehran’s penchant for irrational behavior. Iran “wasted over a million lives without batting an eyelash … It didn’t sear a terrible wound into the Iranian consciousness. It wasn’t Britain after World War I, lapsing into pacifism because of the great tragedy of a loss of a generation. You see nothing of the kind.”

He continued: “You see a country that glorifies blood and death, including its own self-immolation.” I asked Netanyahu if he believed Iran would risk its own nuclear annihilation at the hands of Israel or America. “I’m not going to get into that,” he said.

Neither Netanyahu nor his principal military advisers would suggest a deadline for American progress on the Iran nuclear program, though one aide said pointedly that Israeli time lines are now drawn in months, “not years.” These same military advisers told me that they believe Iran’s defenses remain penetrable, and that Israel would not necessarily need American approval to launch an attack. “The problem is not military capability, the problem is whether you have the stomach, the political will, to take action,” one of his advisers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told me.

Both Israeli and American intelligence officials agree that Iran is moving forward in developing a nuclear-weapons capability. The chief of Israeli military intelligence, Major General Amos Yadlin, said earlier this month that Iran has already “crossed the technological threshold,” and that nuclear military capability could soon be a fact: “Iran is continuing to amass hundreds of kilograms of low-enriched uranium, and it hopes to exploit the dialogue with the West and Washington to advance toward the production of an atomic bomb.”

American officials argue that Iran has not crossed the “technological threshold”; the director of national intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, said recently that Israel and the U.S. are working with the same set of facts, but are interpreting it differently. “The Israelis are far more concerned about it, and they take more of a worst-case approach to these things from their point of view,” he said. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Michael Mullen, recently warned that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would undermine stability in the Middle East and endanger the lives of Americans in the Persian Gulf.

The Obama administration agrees with Israel that Iran’s nuclear program is a threat to Middle East stability, but it also wants Israel to focus on the Palestinian question. Netanyahu, for his part, promises to move forward on negotiations with the Palestinians, but he made it clear in our conversation that he believes a comprehensive peace will be difficult to achieve if Iran continues to threaten Israel, and he cited Iran’s sponsorship of such Islamist groups as Hezbollah and Hamas as a stumbling block.

Ya’alon, a former army chief of staff who is slated to serve as Netanyahu’s minister for strategic threats, dismissed the possibility of a revitalized peace process, telling me that “jihadists” interpret compromise as weakness. He cited the reaction to Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza four years ago. “The mistake of disengagement from Gaza was that we thought like Westerners, that compromise would defuse a problem—but it just encouraged the problem,” he said. “The jihadists saw withdrawal as a defeat of the West … Now, what do you signal to them if you are ready to divide Jerusalem, or if you’re ready to withdraw to the 1967 lines? In this kind of conflict, your ability to stand and be determined is more important than your firepower.”

American administration sources tell me that President Obama won’t shy from pressuring Netanyahu on the Palestinian issue during his first visit to Washington as prime minister, which is scheduled for early May. But Netanyahu suggested that he and Obama already see eye-to-eye on such crucial issues as the threat posed by Hamas. “The Obama administration has recently said that Hamas has to first recognize Israel and cease the support of terror. That’s a very good definition. It says you have to cease being Hamas.”

When I noted that many in Washington doubt his commitment to curtailing Jewish settlement on the West Bank, he said, in reference to his previous term as prime minister, from 1996 to 1999, “I can only point to what I did as prime minister in the first round. I certainly didn’t build new settlements.”

Netanyahu will manage Israel’s relationship with Washington personally—his foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, of the anti-Arab Israel Beiteinu party, is deeply unpopular in Washington—and I asked him if he could foresee agreeing on a “grand bargain” with Obama, in which he would move forward on talks with the Palestinians in exchange for a robust American response to Iran’s nuclear program. He said: “We intend to move on the Palestinian track independent of what happens with Iran, and I hope the U.S. moves to stop Iran from gaining nuclear weapons regardless of what happens on the Palestinian track.”

In our conversation, Netanyahu gave his fullest public explication yet of why he believes President Obama must consider Iran’s nuclear ambitions to be his preeminent overseas challenge. “Why is this a hinge of history? Several bad results would emanate from this single development. First, Iran’s militant proxies would be able to fire rockets and engage in other terror activities while enjoying a nuclear umbrella. This raises the stakes of any confrontation that they’d force on Israel. Instead of being a local event, however painful, it becomes a global one. Second, this development would embolden Islamic militants far and wide, on many continents, who would believe that this is a providential sign, that this fanaticism is on the ultimate road to triumph.

“Third, they would be able to pose a real and credible threat to the supply of oil, to the overwhelming part of the world’s oil supply. Fourth, they may threaten to use these weapons or to give them to terrorist proxies of their own, or fabricate terror proxies. Finally, you’d create a great sea change in the balance of power in our area—nearly all the Arab regimes are dead-set opposed to Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. They fervently hope, even if they don’t say it, that the U.S. will act to prevent this, that it will use its political, economic, and, if necessary, military power to prevent this from happening.”

If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, Netanyahu asserted, Washington’s Arab allies would drift into Iran’s orbit. “The only way I can explain what will happen to such regimes is to give you an example from the past of what happened to one staunch ally of the United States, and a great champion of peace, when another aggressive power loomed large. I’m referring to the late King Hussein [of Jordan] … who was an unequalled champion of peace. The same King Hussein in many ways subordinated his country to Saddam Hussein when Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990. Saddam seemed all-powerful, unchallenged by the United States, and until the U.S. extracted Kuwait from Saddam’s gullet, King Hussein was very much in Iraq’s orbit. The minute that changed, the minute Saddam was defeated, King Hussein came back to the Western camp.”

One of Iran’s goals, Netanyahu said, is to convince the moderate Arab countries not to enter peace treaties with Israel. Finally, he said, several countries in Iran’s neighborhood might try to develop nuclear weapons of their own. “Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons could spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. The Middle East is incendiary enough, but with a nuclear arms race it will become a tinderbox,” he said.

Few in Netanyahu’s inner circle believe that Iran has any short-term plans to drop a nuclear weapon on Tel Aviv, should it find a means to deliver it. The first-stage Iranian goal, in the understanding of Netanyahu and his advisers, is to frighten Israel’s most talented citizens into leaving their country.  “The idea is to keep attacking the Israelis on a daily basis, to weaken the willingness of the Jewish people to hold on to their homeland,” Moshe Ya’alon said. “The idea is to make a place that is supposed to be a safe haven for Jews unattractive for them. They are waging a war of attrition.”

The Israeli threat to strike Iran militarily if the West fails to stop the nuclear program may, of course, be a tremendous bluff. After all, such threats may just be aimed at motivating President Obama and others to grapple urgently with the problem. But Netanyahu and his advisers seem to believe sincerely that Israel would have difficulty surviving in a Middle East dominated by a nuclear Iran. And they are men predisposed to action; many, like Netanyahu, are former commandos.

As I waited in the Knesset cafeteria to see Netanyahu, I opened a book he edited of his late brother’s letters. Yoni Netanyahu, a commando leader, was killed in 1976 during the Israeli raid on Entebbe, and his family organized his letters in a book they titled Self-Portrait of a Hero. In one letter, Yoni wrote to his teenage brother, then living in America, who had apparently been in a fight after someone directed an anti-Semitic remark at him. “I see … that you had to release the surplus energy you stored up during the summer,” Yoni wrote. “There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s too bad you sprained a finger in the process. In my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with a good fist fight; on the contrary, if you’re young and you’re not seriously hurt, it won’t do you real harm. Remember what I told you? He who delivers the first blow, wins.”

Netanyahu to Obama: Stop Iran—Or I Will - The Atlantic (March 31, 2009)

Jewish writer raises a storm in America with his report from a 'tolerant' Iran | Media | The Observer

 

A row has broken out over allegations of antisemitism at the New York Times, America's most vaunted name in journalism and a newspaper with a large Jewish readership.

The storm centres on a column about Jews in Iran written by New York Times journalist Roger Cohen and a cartoon attacking the recent war in Gaza.

The newspaper, and Cohen in particular, has been accused of being too critical of Israel and an apologist for Iran and its leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Cohen's column was written from Iran about the country's small Jewish minority. His piece acknowledged the difficulties the group experienced and portrayed them as part of an Iranian society that he said was more tolerant, democratic and sophisticated than many American critics allowed.

Such sentiments might seem uncontroversial, but in America no one touching on issues around Israel or antisemitism escapes close scrutiny. Cohen was attacked by Jewish writers and bloggers. The Jerusalem Post dubbed him "misled", while the Atlantic Monthly called him "credulous". Others went much further. "The Nazis had Theresienstadt, their 'model' concentration camp used to 'persuade' the gullible that Jews and others who aroused the ire of the Nazis were being treated well. Would Roger Cohen have had no problem portraying that favourably as well?" fumed writer Ed Lasky on the American Thinker website.

Cohen said he was stunned by the vehemence of the response, an impression exacerbated when he visited exiled Iranian Jews in California and was abusively heckled. "I was surprised at the anger and intensity of the reaction ... I expected a reaction but did not expect it to blow up into a whole furore," Cohen said.

Perhaps part of the reason for the intensity of the attack is the fact that he is Jewish himself. "I think it's partly my name. The 'self-hating Jew' things can come to the surface in some of the responses," he said. Another reason is that the column appeared in the Times, which many media experts hardly see as a fierce critic of Israel, given its home audience. "As soon as I read the column I thought a lot of people would be unhappy," said Jack Lule, a journalism professor at Lehigh University.

The debate over Cohen's piece came as the Times published Pat Oliphant's cartoon, which shows a headless figure goose-stepping and pushing a snarling Star of David in front of it. The figure is herding a woman carrying a child labelled Gaza to the edge of a cliff. The cartoon also appeared in the Washington Post, Slate and other publications. It caused instant outrage among Jewish groups. "It is cartoons like this that inspired millions of people to hate in the 1930s and help set the stage for the Nazi genocide," said a statement from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre.

Jewish writer raises a storm in America with his report from a 'tolerant' Iran | Media | The Observer

Eberhard Kronhausen and Phyllis Kronhausen: An Inconvenient Truth About Iran

 

What "inconvenient truth about Iran" could there possibly be that might have escaped even our present, unusually intelligent, political leadership?

Very simply, it is that we are dealing, once again, Hitler-like, with a highly dangerous and obsession-directed leader -- Ahmadinejedad -- of a well-armed and economically important (oil-rich) country, Iran. Furthermore, that particular leader of his country, Iran, sees the world -- again, very Hitler-like -- single-mindedly through the lens of an all-consuming and highly personal obsession of his own making: the absolute need for the destruction of what he calls "the Zionist entity," in other words, the State of Israel.

Contrary to Hitler, though, and not altogether unbelievably, he claims to have, personally, nothing against the Jewish people, as such. He points, for instance, to the, thus far, undeniable fact that thousands of Iranians of Jewish ethnicity are living peacefully and unharmed among their non-Jewish, Iranian fellow-citizens. Iranian Jews, he says -- without anybody having, thus far, been able to prove him wrong -- suffer no discrimination in his country (for instance, no "Nuremberg racial laws" in Iran, as in Hitler's Germany). Much less are Iranian Jews subjected to persecution and harassment as had been true, from the very beginning, in the case of Nazi Germany. Nor are there, as Ahmadinejedad likes pointing out, any restrictions to the personal freedom of Jews, nor of the safety of their property, in Iran. In fact, Jewish Iranians are treated not only by law but in actual, daily life, just like any other Iranians -- and what foreign journalist or other impartial observer has been able to present evidence to the contrary?

So, what is Iran's problem with the Jews all about? Nothing, as much as one can see: For, there simply is no Iranian problem with the Jews, as such, at all!

Iran's "Jewish problem" -- or at least President Ahmadinejedad's, as well as Iran's "Supreme Leader," Ayatollah Ali Khameini's and that of most of the rest of Iran's high-ranking, religious "Mullahs" -- simply is not with the Jews themselves. Rather, it is about the existence of what they call "the Zionist entity" -- in other words, the State of Israel itself!

Their argument is that the State of Israel has, in their view, no legitimacy, as such. That is supposedly so -- if you can twist your mind into the contorted thinking of Iran's present leadership -- because the State of Israel is, to them, a totally artificial creation. As that argument goes, it was settled by people who did not "belong" to that region at all -- that is, according to that distorted view of history -- what eventually became the state of Israel is really Palestinian land, now occupied by "foreigners," that is, principally European Jewish immigrants who, in Iran's view, do not "belong" there.

Put differently, it is in the present Iranian leadership's view a "fact" that these mostly Jewish foreigners of European origin have simply settled on land that belonged to others -- Palestinians, in this case -- which the European, Jewish immigrants and their offspring usurped by either stealth or force. They, then, drove (according to the same argument) most of the original, legitimate occupants of this area -- the Palestinians -- off their land and properties, appropriating them as their own.

It actually is an argument that could be much more easily made in the case of the European settlers of the Americas, Australia, New Zealand, and above all, Africa. In all those cases there was no pre-history of former European presence, history, culture, and occupancy of any of these vast, overseas areas.

In stark contrast, as far as the disputed Palestine is concerned, one would have to disregard entire millennia of former Jewish occupancy of this entire area, from earliest Biblical times on, to make the Iranian argument stick. However, that is the perverted historical view the present Iranian leadership under Ahmadinejedad -- from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the highest religious establishment on down -- have chosen to adopt. Consequently, once having taken that position, no matter how historically wrong it happens to be, the present Iranian leadership see it as nothing less than their religious duty to do away with the hated and, in their distorted view "illegitimate," so-called "Zionist entity," in other words, the State of Israel, itself.

For the same reason the present Iranian leadership, represented by President Ahmadinejedad, is not interested at all in any so-called "two states" solution: To their way of thinking, the only acceptable solution is plainly and simply to, as Ahmadinejedad bluntly enough put it again and again, "wipe the state of Israel ('the Zionest entity') off the map," drive any survivors back to where they had come from, such as Germany, Russia, Romania, or whatever, and return the land to its rightful owners, the Palestinians.

It is safe to assume that the Iranian government's desperate rush to complete the construction of an atomic bomb is to be seen in that light, as well. The Iranian leadership is, of course, fully aware of the fact that Israel already has such an atomic weapon, as well. So, are we to conclude that the Iranian leadership thinks they can, if in possession of the Bomb and perhaps some help from other, friendly states in the area, successfully wage a total war against Israel and so get rid of it, once and for all?

Now, as far as the possession of atomic weapons is concerned: Well, Russia and the United States both have had hundreds of atomic weapons at their disposal, for a very long time. In fact, both countries still have large arsenals of such "doomsday weapons" but without either of them ever having used them against each other. Only once, during the Cuban missile crisis, did they come within a hair of just such a conflagration. The basic fact, though, remains that both countries were fully aware that if either one or the other or them were crazy enough to start an atomic war, it meant "mutually guaranteed destruction." Since neither one nor the other side had any such suicidal impulses, the fact that both sides possessed the capacity to destroy each other, did have (and still has) sufficient restraining effect for preventing any such catastrophic event from happening.

In the Iranian case, though, the same cannot be assumed with the same degree of assurance. What if the Iranian leadership does not have the same survival instincts, as did, fortunately, have the Russian and American leadership, as well as their two countries' populations? Fortunately, neither the Russians nor the Americans have ever had any such concept as "martyrdom" -- much less any desire for experiencing its promised afterlife glories or sensual pleasures, such as eternal, sexual bliss, for those who become "martyrs."

However, can the same be confidently said of the present Iranian leadership?

Furthermore, and in complete contrast to Hitler's Germany, the Iranian leadership, fortunately, cannot count with the absolute loyalty of the vast majority of its population -- especially its large under-30 years old sector. This alone constitutes a great weakness for the Iranian leadership -- whether they care to admit it or not. In fact, this may be the only truly effective deterrent we can count on, in this case.

The truly worrisome point for the authors, though -- one of whom (EK) has had firsthand experience with Hitler's Germany -- is that there may be just enough suicidal ("martyrdom") potential, at least among Iran's leadership, that "mutually guaranteed destruction" may not be a sufficient deterrent -- even absent the absolute loyalty of much of the population.

We consider it, hence, highly risky to allow Iran to come into possession of an atomic weapon. Nor should our forever optimistic Obama leadership give too much weight to such considerations as Ahmadinejedad having, at one time, said he would not mind giving the Israelis 10 years to vacate the country. Hitler also did give the majority of Jews quite a few years to leave Germany -- provided, of course, they were prepared to leave their real estate and other valuable assets in Germany.

The difference between Hitler's monomania against the Jews and that of Ahmadinejedad against the "Zionist entity" (the State of Israel rather than the Jews, as such), is purely psychological and semantic. Politically, though, it is of no consequence: Hitler's hatred of the Jews, as such, seems to have been highly personal, having apparently been based on his fear that his own blood had been polluted by the seduction of one of his female ancestors by the son of her Jewish employer (hence the origin of the myth of "the lecherous Jew, seducing innocent German women!").

In contrast, Ahmadinejedad's obsession with the State of Israel is much more impersonal or ideologically motivated. In the final analysis, the end result, though, amounts to the same thing: "Juden raus!" -- meaning in Hitler's case, ethnic cleansing of the German population (and, eventually, the whole world), from the Jews themselves.

In Ahmadinejedad's case, "Juden raus!" simply means, out with the Jews from Palestine, the land that they, in his opinion, illegally occupied and where they have no right being.

In our opinion, Ahmadinejedad's monomania with the destruction of the State of Israel, though, is no less dangerous than that of his predecessor, Hitler's obsession with the ethnic cleansing of Germany (and, by implication, of the whole world) from the Jews themselves. Let no one kid himself or herself, though -- (Hillary, are you listening?) -- that Ahmadinejedad's obsession is any less dangerous than was, once, Hitler's obsession with the Jews, as such (in fact, Hillary, if anybody, ought to have plenty of personal experience with the power of personal obsessions, such as, for instance, those of her own husband with sex and food!). It should have immunized her against being overly optimistic to prevail over any obsessions with purely logical arguments. She certainly did not succeed, in that respect, in the case of her own marriage, so why should she be so optimistic in the case of Iran?

Let us just hope that we are dead wrong and that there is still some wiggle room to arrive at some kind of rational compromise with the present Iranian leadership! At the same time, it might be the better part of wisdom to be prepared that rational arguments might not be able to prevail over the Iranian leadership's obsession with what they seem to consider the "absolute necessity" of destroying what they like calling "the Zionist entity" -- that is, the State of Israel.

One thing seems sure already: Breaking through this obsession of the Iranian leadership with the destruction of Israel will not be nearly as easy a task as our own "best and brightest" seem to assume. They are, in our humble opinion, not giving nearly enough attention to the psychology involved, in this particular case. Instead, they appear to let themselves be mostly guided by the so-called "facts on the ground," which all seem to indicate that -- giving the problem proper, personal attention -- a rational solution to the Iran problem ought to be possible. The inconvenient truth, though, may -- alas! -- turn out to be otherwise.

• Ahmadinejad
• Genocide
• Iran
• Israel

Eberhard Kronhausen and Phyllis Kronhausen: An Inconvenient Truth About Iran

televisionwashington – Iran Visual News Corps – Israel provides US with intelligence on Iran nuclear site – report -

 

Updated: Wednesday, March 18, 2009

11:00GMT—7:00AM/EST

Washington, 18 March (IranVNC)—A senior Israeli defense official provided fresh intelligence to the United States regarding Iran’s nuclear facility in Arak, during a visit to Washington earlier this week, the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan reported on Wednesday.

During his official visit, Israel Defense Forces [IDF] chief, Gabi Ashkenazi, met with General James Jones, national security advisor to US President Barack Obama, and Dennis Ross, senior advisor to the Persian Gulf.

Unnamed US sources told the Saudi daily that Ashkenazi gave US officials new intelligence about the Arak facility, which is believed to contain a heavy water reactor.

Iran has barred inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] from visiting the site to verify that it is being designed for peaceful uses, reports Reuters. Tehran says that the facility will be used to produce isotopes for medical care and agriculture.

Heavy water can be used in certain nuclear reactors or for the production of plutonium, for use in a nuclear weapons program.

Western powers suspect that Iran may design the nuclear facility in Arak to acquire plutonium as another possible source of bomb-grade fuel, besides uranium from its Natanz uranium enrichment plant, which is under IAEA surveillance.

Last month, the IAEA reported that Iran had built a dome over the reactor, meaning that satellite imagery was no longer able to monitor further construction inside the site.

The Islamic Republic says its nuclear activities are entirely peaceful.

Sources: Al-Watan newspaper, Reuters

televisionwashington – Iran Visual News Corps – Israel provides US with intelligence on Iran nuclear site – report -