Throwing Israel to the wolves
The “Death to America” crowd in Tehran must not be able to stop laughing today. –˜US intends to seek Iran’s help in solving Syrian civil war,– from the Times of Israel, November 24:
Having overseen an interim deal with Iran on its nuclear program, the Obama administration now intends to try to involve Iran in wider Middle East diplomacy, including an attempt to find a solution to the Syrian civil war, Israeli television reported Sunday night.
The report was one of a series of dramatic revelations and assessments in the Hebrew media on Sunday night, hours after the US and other world powers signed an interim agreement with Iran in Geneva.
Both Israel’s main TV news channels also carried reports flatly stating that Israel’s military option is “off the table” for the foreseeable future. This claim was apparently based on assessments from inside Israel’s military establishment. Israel’s Channel 10 news reported that “the White House is briefing American journalists” with the same message: Israel cannot intervene militarily in Iran now that the interim deal has been signed.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly vowed Sunday to ensure Iran not attain nuclear weapons, but privately the prime minister was said to have acknowledged that the Geneva deal has essentially sanctioned Iran as a nuclear threshold state.
Netanyahu is “extremely angry” over the terms of the deal, under which Iran will be allowed to continue low-level enrichment of uranium for at least the next six months, a Channel 2 report said. It quoted an unnamed senior official in Jerusalem stating: “In Geneva, [US President] Obama established Iran as a nuclear threshold state, and Israel, the prime minister has made clear, cannot live with Iran as a nuclear threshold state.” Israel, the report continued, regards the Geneva deal as “a profound failure” by the Obama administration.
The Israel TV news reports Sunday night also claimed that the Obama administration was still misleading Israel over its newly acknowledged secret back channel negotiations with Iran in recent months. The administration “hid the fact of the secret channel from Israel,” Channel 2 reported, even after it knew that Israeli intelligence had exposed it. Obama only reportedly told Netanyahu about the back channel less than two months ago, when they met at the White House….