SPECIAL NOTICE:
Hag Sameach! Happy Holiday!
Passover begins tonight at sundown. May all of you who celebrate the holiday have a wonderful seder!
UPDATES
9 am Israel time, Friday, April 3 2015
**The Netanyahu security cabinet is meeting at noon today to determine how to respond to the “very bad” deal that the P5+1 (read: Obama Administration) has made with Iran. This morning, Netanyahu has called the Iranian deal “a threat to Israel’s existence.”
**It hasn’t taken Saudi Arabia long to respond to the Iranian deal. An unnamed Saudi diplomat declared to the Reuters news agency that if “Iran will get things from the agreement in excess of the usual, it will be a new standard for Saudi Arabia to want to get for itself.” The nuclear arms race in the Middle East has begun.
**The suspected kidnapping of a young man near Hebron had the entire country in turmoil last night with security forces stopping cars and scouring areas. It turns out this morning that the kidnapping, which had been reported by the man’s companion, was a fraud. The man is alive and well in Kiryat Arba, but hopefully not for long. He should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
TODAY’S BLOG:
The Iranian Deal is deja vu on so many levels.
Neville Chamberlain: peace for our time.
John Kerry strikes a Chamberlainesque pose.
If you happened, dear reader, to watch the absurd press conference yesterday from Lausanne following the signing of the agreement between the P5+1 and Iran, you saw a mixture of malicious brazenness on the part of the P5+1 and complete deception on the part of Iran.
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The representatives of the P5+1, led by a preening John Kerry, stood in a comedy line laughing, back-slapping, shaking hands, and hugging each other (Kerry almost hugged British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond to the ground) like a bunch of high school boys celebrating their first date. One could easily imagine them having been members of Neville Chamberlain’s negotiating team with Adolf Hitler and reacting the same when Chamberlain made his famous “peace for our time speech” on September 30, 1938.
This unseemly spectacle was quickly followed by gleeful joint statements from European FM Federica Mogherini (remember she is the devoted Yasser Arafataphile who is an avid Palestinian supporter) and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. After Mogherini read her statement in English, Zarif told the official translator not to translate what he was going to say because it was exactly the same as what Mogherini had said.
So the official translator did not translate.
However, Zarif’s Farsi version of the statement was different from the English version in a number of important respects, not the least of which was discussion of sanctions. According to Mogherini, sanctions are to be gradually phased out; according to Zarif they are to end immediately on June 30.
But, as usual, I am getting a little ahead of myself. Perhaps it will be enlightening to review what the P5+1 and Iran agreed on. What are the “general parameters” of the Iranian nuclear agreement that the United States proudly championed yesterday:
1. Iran will continue to enrich uranium.
2. Iran will continue all nuclear research.
3. Every Iranian nuclear facility including the one at Fordo will remain open.
4. Not only will the Arak heavy water facility remain open, it will be upgraded with help from the P5+1.
In other words, the Iranian nuclear weapons program remains up and running.
Late yesterday afternoon the Obama White House published a list of specific details that it says that the Iranians agreed to. It is pointless to even go into this today because Zarif has already angrily tweeted that the list is a fraud–that Iran has not yet agreed to any of items on the list.
It reminds your humble servant of a blog I wrote back on November 26, 2013 when “negotiations” opened in Geneva:
“In a virtually unreported piece of news yesterday, there are wide discrepancies between “the English version” of the agreement reached in Geneva with Iran, and “the Farsi version” being circulated in Iran by the Iranian Foreign Ministry which made and signed the agreement. Specifically, the Farsi version makes no mention of freezing anything, includes no references to schedules and commitments, and does not include any Iranian pledge not to install new “next-generation” centrifuges. According the English version of the agreement, the Iranians promised to submit detailed descriptions of Iranian nuclear sites and activities to the IAEA within 90 days; according to the Farsi version there is no time limit.”
And it is completely pointless to point out that virtually every red line that President Obama set for negotiations in terms of what Iran could not be permitted to have, Iran has succeeded in getting.
What has happened in Lausanne is an appeasement of the first order. Neville Chamberlain would have been proud.
A student from Malawi, who had worked with an Israeli health volunteer in his country battling AIDS, came up to us as we walked down the street in the UC-Davis Picnic Day Parade and wanted to carry the Israeli flag.