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**bsteadman** · 09-30-2013, 05:00 PM

Obama’s Naive Hopes for Peace Deal with Sham “Moderate” Rouhani

Canada Free Press
Joseph A. Klein
9/30/2013

Excerpt:

Three days after being snubbed at the United Nations by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, President Obama made a hurriedly arranged telephone call to Rouhani last Friday as the Iranian president was heading to the airport to return to Tehran. This followed what Secretary of State John Kerry had described as his own “constructive” meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif the previous day.

Obama couldn’t wait to tell reporters after his call with Rouhani how optimistic he was at the prospect of new talks with Iran over its nuclear program. He looked forward to resolving this issue, which “could also serve as a major step forward in a new relationship between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran, one based on mutual interests and mutual respect.”

A twitter account in Rouhani’s name also expressed optimism, stating, “In regards to nuclear issue, with political will, there is a way to rapidly solve the matter.” The message added that “We’re hopeful about what we will see in coming weeks and months.” Alas, the original message text on Rouhani’s Twitter account was deleted. It was most likely too hopeful for the hardliners back home to stomach.

President Obama congratulated Rouhani on his election and praised the supposedly constructive statements Rouhani made while in New York for his address to the UN General Assembly. Obama also reaffirmed to Rouhani his respect for Iran’s right to develop civilian nuclear energy, but noted that Iran’s development of nuclear weapons was unacceptable. In his comments to reporters after the call, Obama said that “we’ve got a responsibility to pursue diplomacy, and that we have a unique opportunity to make progress with the new leadership in Tehran.” However, he added that only “meaningful, transparent and verifiable actions” regarding Iran’s nuclear program could lead to a decision to ease the economic sanctions currently imposed on Iran.

Obama’s problem is that there is no real new leadership in Tehran, only a new figurehead. The real leader remains Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei. He isn’t called Iran’s “supreme leader” for nothing. He is the ultimate decision-maker on the future of Iran’s nuclear program and on any rapprochement with the United States.

Rouhani is Khamenei’s errand boy to find a way to lure the West into pretend negotiations that will buy Iran more time to complete its development of a nuclear bomb and that will provide just enough bait to persuade at least some U.S. allies, if not the Obama administration itself, to lighten up on the sanctions that have been hurting Iran’s economy. Rouhani is an old hand at using negotiations as a cloak behind which the Iranian regime moved forward with its nuclear arms development program. As Congressman Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, pointed out, Rouhani dragged out negotiations with the Europeans a decade ago as Iran’s chief nuclear point man.

The Iranian regime used the time to get more advanced centrifuges spinning away:

“That’s been his past policy. What we need to do is make it very clear that we’re wise to that. We know he’s playing the same playbook that North Korea used to get nuclear weapons, to get out from under the sanctions.”

Rouhani himself has boasted about his successful tactics in using negotiations and temporary suspension of activities that the Iranians had already mastered technically as a smokescreen:

“While we were talking with the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in parts of the facility in Esfahan, but we still had a long way to go to complete the project. In fact, by creating a calm environment, we were able to complete the work in Esfahan. Today, we can convert yellowcake into UF4 and UF6, and this is a very important matter. In fact, UF6 is what the centrifuges feed on; it is the feed material for centrifuges. Therefore, it was important for us to conclude that process… When we wanted to negotiate with the Europeans last year, we had something like 150 centrifuges, but today we have about 500 centrifuges that are ready and operational. We could increase that number to 1,000. We would not have any problems, should we decide to do so. We have made good progress in this area.”

(Hassan Rouhani, Beyond the Challenges Facing Iran and the IAEA Concerning the Nuclear Dossier, from text of speech delivered to the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council in the fall of 2004 while Rouhani was still serving as chief nuclear negotiator with a number of European Union countries)

Rouhani claimed at a news conference last week during his New York City charm offensive, in response to a question whether his diplomatic blitz was intended to just buy the Iranians more time, that, “We have never chosen deceit as a path. We have never chosen secrecy.” This revisionist spin directly contradicts Rouhani’s speech to the Supreme Cultural Revolution Council in the fall of 2004. Iran’s nuclear program, Rouhani said back then, “never was supposed to be in the open. But in any case, the spies exposed it. We wanted to keep it secret for a while.”

Iran’s secrecy about its nuclear program included its years of hiding the construction of an underground nuclear enrichment facility, a cluster of 3,000 connected centrifuges, until its hand was forced in 2009 by Western intelligence’s discovery of the site. And Iran’s secrecy continues, including regarding its Arak heavy-water production plant for weapons-grade plutonium as an alternative means of building a nuclear bomb.

Rouhani used his speech to the UN General Assembly on September 24th to try and set a moderate tone. Indeed, he used the words “moderate” and “moderation” throughout his speech. He even called for a new UN project entitled “the World Against Violence and Extremism.”

Rouhani repeated Iran’s long-standing position that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes and said that his country was prepared to prove its good intentions to the world through “time-bound and result-oriented talks to build mutual confidence and removal of mutual uncertainties with full transparency.” But he also repeated Iran’s demand that its right to enrich inside Iran “and enjoyment of other related nuclear rights” be fully respected. Iran’s “nuclear technology, inclusive of enrichment, has already reached industrial scale,” he said. It would be “an illusion, and extremely unrealistic, to presume that the peaceful nature of the nuclear program of Iran could be ensured through impeding the program via illegitimate pressures.”

Such “illegitimate pressures” include the economic sanctions currently imposed on Iran, which Rouhani described in his speech as “unjust,” a “manifestation of structural violence,” “intrinsically inhumane,” and “against peace.” He also complained that “Propagandistic and unfounded faith phobic, Islamo-phobic, Shia-phobic, and Iran-phobic discourses do indeed represent serious threats against world peace and human security.”

Iran, on the other hand, is a peace-loving nation that eschews violence and intolerance, according to Rouhani. “Iran poses absolutely no threat to the world or the region,” Rouhani tried to assure the General Assembly in one of his more deceitful declarations.

To the contrary, aside from Iran’s potential nuclear threat, it is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism with its tentacles spread around the world directly or through proxies such as Hezbollah. It is providing funding, weapons, training, and sanctuary to numerous terrorist groups in the Middle East and beyond. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a principal arm that the Iranian regime uses to support terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas, as well as to intervene in Syria on behalf of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
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View the complete article at:

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/58225

**bsteadman** · 09-30-2013, 05:21 PM

Moment of Truth at the UN General Assembly

PJ Media
Claudia Rosett
9/28/2013

Excerpt:

You might suppose that the United Nations General Assembly in New York is done with its opening exertions for 2013, now that the new UN celebrity, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, has flown home to help his boss, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, tend to such projects as — how has Rouhani described it? — ”our peaceful nuclear energy program” and “my government’s readiness to help facilitate dialogue between the Syrian government and the opposition.” (Quoting here from the Sept. 19 Washing Post op-ed with which Rouhani’s public relations team prepared the ground for his arrival on the UN main stage.)

For sure, it was an action-packed week at UN headquarters. Even beyond the round-the-clock news of Rouhani — speaking, snubbing, giving interviews, taking phone calls — there were such episodes as the UN General Assembly inviting the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas to take a seat, for the first time, in the onstage beige chair reserved for heads of state (part of the GA’s continuing effort to help the PA do an end-run around the Palestinian promises in the Oslo Accords). There was the usual appearance by Zimbabwe’s longtime despot, Robert Mugabe, who at age 89 did a remarkably spry job of praising the UN and denouncing the U.S., Britain and their allies (“Shame, shame, shame“). There was the not entirely surprising non-appearance of Sudan’s President Omar al Bashir, who had planned to attend (this plan was surprising, given that Bashir is under indictment by the International Criminal Court for his role in Sudan’s genocide). Instead, Bashir sent Sudan’s minister of foreign affairs, Ali Ahmed Karti, who spent the first part of his speech to the GA denouncing the U.S., which he said had denied Bashir a visa to attend the General Assembly (let us note, whatever one’s criticisms of the State Department, at least they got that much right). On the heels of all this, the UN Security Council finally eked out a “Toothless and Unfocused” resolution on Syria, or at least on Syria’s chemical weapons.

But for all that, the action is not quite over. Now comes that rarest of things at the UN General Assembly — a moment of truth. The GA General Debate — the parade of speakers across the main stage — takes a break on Sunday, then resumes on Monday and finishes up with a final morning session on Tuesday. That last round is when Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to speak. Israel was represented at UN meetings last week by its strategic affairs minister, Yuval Steinitz. But for the finale, Netanyahu is flying in, going first to a meeting in Washington with President Obama, then addressing the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.
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View the complete article at:

http://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/mom...eral-assembly/

**bsteadman** · 09-30-2013, 05:31 PM

The ‘Historic’ Phone Call Was a Hostage Negotiation

PJ Media
Michael Ledeen
9/29/2013

Excerpt:

As advertised, Hassan Rouhani was the star of the week at the Great UN Circus. He knew it, and he treated his American hosts with arrogance and contempt, and was duly hailed as a peace-seeker. He spent hours and hours with diplomats (just not American ones), journalists, academic apologists such as Gary Sick, and anti-American rabble rousers like Louis Farrakhan, but he didn’t have time for President Obama.

No matter. When the Iranians told the White House that Rouhani could squeeze in a few words on the phone, Obama eagerly called him up, thereby giving the journalists and apologists the opportunity to use their prepared language about “historic conversation,” etcetera etcetera and so forth.

Rouhani’s basic message was to say “you’d better be nice to me, or you’ll get the hardliners,” and some nasties from central casting duly appeared on cue at the Tehran airport when Rouhani returned from satanic New York City, shouting at the president and even throwing a shoe. A couple of the demonstrators were arrested, underscoring their presumed menace (anyone who believes the “protest” was spontaneous badly needs a lower-school refresher course in totalitarianism). It was overkill; Obama wants a deal. He doesn’t need further convincing.

And he’s willing to pay for it. Quite a lot, in fact. Even before Rouhani deigned to take Obama’s call, we had given the Islamic Republic an ancient treasure, a cup crafted two millenia before Mohammed, said to be worth at least a million dollars.

Remember that Obama gave the Brits a collection of his favorite speeches.

Why such largesse? It’s a shocking present, way beyond the normal. Orders of magnitude greater, in fact. What had the Iranians done to deserve it?

I don’t know, but if I were forced to answer, I’d reply with another question: what did Obama and Rouhani talk about? Yes, I know they exchanged pleasantries about wanting a happier world, but there was one subject raised by Obama. A “senior administration official” told the press on background about it:

The fate of three U.S. citizens who have disappeared or been imprisoned in Iran was discussed during Friday’s historic conversation between the two nations’ presidents, a senior U.S. administration official said.

U.S. President Barack Obama, during his phone call with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, “noted our concern about three American citizens who have been held within Iran — Robert Levinson, Saeed Abedini, and Amir Hekmati — and noted our interest in seeing those Americans reunited with their families,” the official said.

Levinson is a former FBI agent who was disappeared from Kish Island several years ago. He was said to be investigating cigarette smuggling. Abedini is an Iranian-American Christian minister arrested and charged with subversion. Hekmati is an Iranian-American Marine who was said to be visiting relatives in Tehran, and was arrested and charged with espionage.
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View the complete article at:

http://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/201...e-negotiation/

**bsteadman** · 09-30-2013, 06:15 PM

Three Conditions for an Israeli Strike on Iran

Breitbart / Big-Peace
Joel B. Pollak
9/30/2013

Excerpt:

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with President Barack Obama today, he will do so against the backdrop of vastly changed circumstances. President Obama's bungling of the Syria crisis has established that the U.S. is no longer a deterrent force against rogue regimes in the region. His overtures to the Iranian regime, including reference to a bogus "fatwa" against nuclear weapons, have shelved any military option.

It is clearer than ever that if there is to be any use of force against Iran, it will have to be undertaken by Israel. Kenneth Pollack, who does not quite dismiss a military option even though he argues in favor of negotiation and containment in his masterful new analysis of the Iranian crisis, considers an Israeli strike to be the worst of all military options, especially as it is far less likely to succeed than a U.S. attack would be.

There are, however, three conditions that, if met, would make an Israeli strike the best of a range of bad options. One is that the Israeli military possesses a previously undisclosed capability to strike Iran, whether through technology or intelligence, that only becomes apparent in the execution of the attack. That has been the case in previous surprise attacks, such as the one that destroyed Syria's nuclear program in 2007.

A second condition is that an Israeli strike must be able to use Iran's own weaknesses against it. Since Israel is not likely to be capable of sustaining a long air or (especially) ground campaign, it would need to strike in such a way that retaliation is not in Iran's interest. That might happen if Israel targets the key political institutions of the regime, creating renewed potential for an uprising by the regime's domestic opponents.

A third condition is that Israel becomes convinced that it has no other choice. As Pollack rightly points out, one of the reasons Israel has not hit the Iranian nuclear program after watching it grow over two decades is the essential difficulty of the task--and managing the aftermath. Yet Israel will take those risks once it is clear that there is no option left to stop a nuclear-armed Iran, which poses a direct threat to its existence.
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View the complete article, including links and comments, at:

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2...Strike-on-Iran

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Obama's U.N. speech was deeply flawed -- The Baltimore Sun, Cal Thomas

Obama's U.N. speech was deeply flawed -- The Baltimore Sun, Cal Thomas

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