Worthless Concessions

With Obamacare falling apart, and new scandals arising every other week (soon to be weekly), and his foreign policy going South faster than a Cheetah on crack, President Barack Hussein Obama needs a "victory" somewhere with anyone fast.  In this case it will be a atrocious agreement with the Mullah's of Iran.

From Debka

The Iranian negotiators face the delegations of six world powers in Geneva Thursday, Nov. 21, with strict orders not to give ground on the two major sticking points holding up a first-step deal on their nuclear program: The heavy water reactor under construction at Arak for producing plutonium and Iran’s “right” to uranium enrichment. If Iran gains those two points, whatever concessions its negotiators may come up with are worthless, because they will leave Tehran in possession of two optional nuclear weaponizing tracks instead of one - plutonium as well as enriched uranium.

debkafile’s sources report that Tehran is fighting tooth and nail for Six-Power acknowledgement of its “right to enrich uranium” – ostensibly to come away from Geneva with a “historic feat” to show the Iranian people that the economic hardship they suffered under economic sanctions was worth the candle.

But concession of this “right” has a more sinister purpose: It would give Iran’s nuclear aspirations the enormous boost of an international license to keep its uranium enrich facilities, including the underground plant in Fordo and the centrifuge production line, fully intact and ready to go at any time.

The infrastructure already standing, say US intelligence sources, is capable of topping up enriched uranium stockpiles already in hand to the amount needed for five nuclear bombs in less than a month – 26 days is the number often cited. The second option of plutonium would also be available when the Arak reactor is finished.

US, Russian and British sources are presenting the gap in the resumed Geneva talks Thursday as minor and bridgeable.

debkafile’s sources say they are just playing for time to chip away at a draft accord that by its nature would be a compromise solution which gives ground to Tehran.

And what compromise can be expected when Washington failed to challenge Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s avowal on Day One of the Geneva talks that Iran will not step back “one iota” from its nuclear rights, and his grotesquely barbaric rant against Israel as “the roguish, filthy, rabid dog of the region,” whose regime is “doomed to extinction?”

This degraded language, not heard since the Nazi German era, informed the Obama administration in the harshest terms that for the sake of a deal, Iran will not give an inch under pressure, whether from economic sanctions or from Israel and parts of the American Jewish leadership.

Khamenei also blasted US government as unworthy of trust.

If President Barack Obama was serious in his often repeated commitment to Israel’s security, he ought to have protested in some way against Khamenei’s unspeakable rhetoric, possibly even delaying the proceedings before they started their second day in Geneva. But the Iranian leader apparently got away with it, judging from the Obama administration’s mild response – a senior US official said it was “uncomfortable,” but did not condemn it as unacceptable like the French President Francois Hollande, and the British Foreign Secretary William Hague declined any comment at all, fearing to rock the boat in Geneva.

Their evasions told Tehran that Washington and London are so hooked on closing a deal at this time that they can be trusted to find some way around the Arak and enrichment hurdles to reach their goal.

The French team alone stood out in Geneva against Iran’s continuing construction of the Arak reactor, arguing that possession of this facility would nullify any other concessions Tehran might offer.

The military has reminded Obama that their readiness has been destroyed by his policies towards the military and that they cannot mount an attack on Iran to stop them.  Thus the need for an "agreement".

The last time John Kerry tried to sign a bad agreement with Iran the French stopped the agreement.  But with many companies already gearing up to supply Iran, the French will not do the same again.  After the the P5+1 nations will not be living under an Iranian nuclear bomb.  Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc... are!  But to Barack Hussein Obama and his pro-Iranian advisor Valerie Jarrett, the only thing that is important is that Obama looks good right then.

Israel and Saudi Arabia are talking about a mutual security pact.  Israel is worried and Saudi Arabia is scared.  Just one thing, is Israel worried enough to try and stop Iran?

Silence

Silence is golden whether it is a parent trying to get the children to sleep, a librarian trying to quiet down a bunch of rowdy teenagers, or a Prime Minister keeping the details of negotiations a secret.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sat in front of the Israeli press for 45 minutes here on Wednesday, just a few hours after meeting US envoy George Mitchell in London and deflected with great acumen the journalists' repeated attempts to pry out of him any real piece of information about what happened during their four-hour meeting.

One journalist after the next asked the prime minister the same question, but from a slightly different angle: What was agreed upon regarding a settlements freeze?

But try as the journalists may, Netanyahu would say nothing - nothing - about the agreement that is apparently being stitched together.

Much has been written about the purported agreement, with one paper saying that the settlement freeze was linked to a tougher American position on Iran, and another paper saying Netanyahu agreed to a nine-month freeze.

But these reports were largely based on speculation, or on third- and fourth-hand information, because the principles are simply not talking.

The reason for the silence, sources in the Prime Minister's Office explain, is because the negotiations are at such a delicate and sensitive stage that one leak could bring the whole agreement down.

And while there is undoubtedly something to this, there is certainly much more to the prolonged silence - the veritable drought of information on the US-Israeli discussions - and it has to do with Israeli domestic politics.

Netanyahu, a former commando in Sayeret Matkal, wants to capture the hill without those defending it knowing that he has even arrived.

The less that comes out about the duration of a settlement freeze, or what exactly it will entail, the better it is for Netanyahu from a tactical political standpoint.

There is American phrase that comes to mind: Holding one's cards close to the chest.

Netanyahu is a shrewd man. He can't give Obama and the Arabs what they want, but doesn't want to appear wanting to destroy the "Peace Process". He has to keep the hardliners in his party happy, while preparing an ambush for his political enemies.

Is he bluffing with a pair of deuces, or is he holding a Royal Flush? His opponents can only wonder and guess, while he just sits with his silence.

At a certain point, however, Netanyahu will have to unveil the agreement, and when he does he will certainly face blistering criticism from the Right both in his party, the coalition, and outside of it.

But he will unveil the plan when he sees fit, highlighting what he sees fit, and couching it in terms that will certainly win over much of the public.

And by that time he will be standing squarely on the hill, and his detractors will be able to do little but scream - noise that he will easily deflect.

Netanyahu and his team spoke with Mitchell and his team for four hours on Wednesday. Major diplomatic moves are afoot, with the public knowing little about the details.

And this suits Netanyahu just fine. His hope is that when the details emerge, and his political opponents begin to organize, it will by then be too late: the hill will already be in his hands.

When the smoke clears we can hope and pray that Netanyahu will pull off the Royal Flush or will have capitulated under the pressure from Obama.

Or he just might pull off the greatest bluff of all time.