Amir Hossein Motaghi tells Iranian opposition TV that US is ‘mainly there to speak on Iran’s behalf with other P5+1 members’

By Jonathan Beck, TOI

Iranian journalist who was sent to cover the nuclear talks in Lausanne, Switzerland, defected over the weekend.

Amir Hossein Motaghi, who was instrumental in the election of President Hassan Rouhani when he served as his personal aide during the Iranian election, asked authorities in Switzerland to grant him political asylum.

Montaghi told an Iranian opposition channel broadcasting from London that he did not see any sense in his profession as a journalist since he could only write what he was told to write.
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By Ken Blackwell and Bob Morrison, AMERICAN THINKER

It’s a phrase endlessly repeated since 1989. It’s been on the lips of Western diplomats, especially our own State Department types, for a quarter century: “Two-State Solution.” We must have a Roadmap to Peace and that destination must embrace a state for the Israelis and a state for the Arabs of Palestine. Anyone who questions that formulation is in danger of being marginalized. How can you oppose what Secretaries of State of both great American political parties have embraced? How can you say there are any people on earth who are not entitled to a state?

Are the Druze entitled to a state? Are the Kurds entitled to a state? How about the Chaldean or Assyrian Christians? It would seem that the state of Syria, ruled by the minority Alawites, is falling apart. What else do most Arab “states” in that region do?
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Israel fears world powers are rushing toward “very bad deal” with Iran • Minister Yuval Steinitz: Even minimal conditions for worthy framework deal are far from being realized • PM Benjamin Netanyahu speaks with Russian, Indian leaders about Iran deal.

By Shlomo Cesana, Eli Leon, Yoni Hersch, Israel Hayom Staff and Reuters, TOI

With less than 72 hours remaining before the deadline for a framework nuclear agreement between six world powers and Iran,Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday the emerging deal “bears out all of our fears, and even more than that.”
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By Herb Keinon, JPOST

The international community should create a new “peace architecture” to replace UN Security Council Resolution 242, outgoing UN Mideast envoy Robert Serry said Thursday during his final briefing to the Security Council.

Serry – speaking just days after the US said it will reassess its Middle East diplomacy, leading to speculation it may support a UN Security Council resolution setting parameters for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal – said that since the parties at this time do not seem ready to restart talks, “we should not rush them back to the table.”
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Read also: Boehner: Obama’s ‘Animosity’ to Israel is ‘Reprehensible’
House Speaker, who is set to visit Israel, says US pressure on Netanyahu over 4-5 years ‘pushed him to the point where he had to speak up.’

By Yaakov Levi, INN

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met Sunday with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is on a visit to Israel. Speaking before the meeting, Netanyahu said that Israel was “very worried about our common interests in the wake of recent development in the Middle East. As we speak, Iran is acting wildly in Yemen. This is correctly seen by all the countries in the Middle East as a strategic move to dominate the region and therefore we are witnessing something quite unprecedented.”
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By Dan Williams, Yahoo

Jerusalem (AFP) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday denounced as “dangerous” a nuclear accord that world powers are negotiating with Iran, saying it goes beyond what his government had feared.

“The dangerous accord which is being negotiated in Lausanne (Switzerland) confirms our concerns and even worse,” Netanyahu said in remarks at a meeting of his cabinet broadcast on public radio.

Netanyahu denounced the “Iran-Lausanne-Yemen axis which is dangerous for all of humanity and which must be stopped,” making a reference to the Swiss city where the talks are taking place.
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By Anne Bayefsky, FOX NEWS

What country deserves more condemnation for violating human rights than any other nation on earth? According to the U.N.’s top human rights body, that would be Israel.

Last week, Israel was the U.N.’s number one women’s rights violator. This week it is the U.N.’s all-round human rights villain.

The U.N. Human Rights Council wrapped up its latest session in Geneva on Friday, March 27 by adopting four resolutions condemning Israel.  That’s four times more than any of the other 192 UN member states.
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As Tehran hails ‘massive progress’ in talks, Jerusalem protests that regime ‘is working against American-Arab-Israeli interests without paying a price’

BY AVI ISSACHAROFF, TOI

As Iran hailed “massive progress” toward a deal on its nuclear program, an Israeli official described the terms of the looming agreement as “incomprehensibly” bad and rejected the Obama administration’s contention that it would keep the regime a year away from accumulating enough fissile material for a bomb.

Estimating that a framework deal would indeed be signed soon, and that a full agreement would follow in June, the official lamented the US-led negotiators’ apparent readiness to remove sanctions without Iran being required to halt its global terrorist activities, and listed a host of areas in which Tehran was working against American, Israeli and moderate Arab interests without being made to pay a price.
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By John Bolton, NYT

FOR years, experts worried that the Middle East would face an uncontrollable nuclear-arms race if Iran ever acquired weapons capability. Given the region’s political, religious and ethnic conflicts, the logic is straightforward.

As in other nuclear proliferation cases like India, Pakistan and North Korea, America and the West were guilty of inattention when they should have been vigilant. But failing to act in the past is no excuse for making the same mistakes now. All presidents enter office facing the cumulative effects of their predecessors’ decisions. But each is responsible for what happens on his watch. President Obama’s approach on Iran has brought a bad situation to the brink of catastrophe.

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By Ted Belman

Apparently, Obama has agreed to veto the proposed French resolution recognizing Palestine.

“We’re not going to get ahead of any decisions about what the United States would do with regard to potential action at the UN Security Council,” a U.S. official told AFP, hours after French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius announced the plans.

“We continue to engage with key stakeholders, including the French, to find a way forward that advances the interest we and others share in a two-state solution,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Israel paid a high price by cancelling the 1500 units in Har Homa and in turning over to the PA the withheld taxes.

Of course I am speculating.

By Dore Gold, ISRAEL HAYOM

General David Petraeus is the best known top American officer from the Iraq War. There are only a few in the U.S. who know more about internal developments in Iraq than he does. After all, he was commander of the successful “surge” in U.S. forces in Iraq in 2007-2008 that changed the tide of the war and crushed the Iraqi branch of al-Qaida, which was the forerunner of the Islamic State group.

Petraeus was subsequently appointed head of the CIA by the Obama administration, a position from which he had to resign in 2012 as a result of a personal affair. Given his background, when he grants an interview to a major newspaper like the Washington Post about what is currently happening in Iraq and in the Middle East in general, his words can have enormous influence on the centers of power from Cairo to Riyadh.
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BY: Adam Kredo, NEW BEACON

LAUSANNE, Switzerland—Efforts by the Obama administration to stem criticism of its diplomacy with Iran have included threats to nations involved in the talks, including U.S. allies, according to Western sources familiar with White House efforts to quell fears it will permit Iran to retain aspects of its nuclear weapons program.

A series of conversations between top American and French officials, including between President Obama and French President Francois Hollande, have seen Americans engage in behavior described as bullying by sources who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.

The disagreement over France’s cautious position in regard to Iran threatens to erode U.S. relations with Paris, sources said.
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It’s a problem for Jeb Bush

BY: Matthew Continetti, NEW BEACON

Jeb Bush is cleaning up a mess he helped create. It’s a distraction from what he’d rather be doing, which is building an “aura of inevitability” around his soon-to-be presidential campaign. He’s spent the past week distancing himself from the speech that one of his foreign policy advisers, former secretary of State James Baker, delivered to the annual meeting of J Street, the liberal fringe group that pushes tough policies against Israel.

Baker’s speech couldn’t have come at a worse time. The Obama administration is in the midst of a campaign to demonize Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, greeted Netanyahu’s election victory with abuse and threats to abandon Israel to the anti-Semites at the U.N., and is hurtling toward a flawed nuclear agreement with Iran. Having a former high-ranking Republican official tell moldy anecdotes and agree that Israel is responsible for the standstill in the peace process only legitimized J Street and suggested a division in GOP ranks when there isn’t any. The speech risked confirming the suspicions of conservatives and Republicans that Bush isn’t really one of them. Two advisers to national political figures appeared at the J Street conference: White House chief of staff Denis McDonough and James Baker. Surely this White House is company the Bush crew doesn’t want to keep.
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T. Belman. No biggie. If the US can agree to a 10 year sunset clause, it can agree to Iran getting the bomb a few years earlier. What difference does it make?

Limited options for Congress as Obama seeks to bypass lawmakers

BY: Adam Kredo, FREE BEACON

LAUSSANE, Switzerland—The Obama administration is giving in to Iranian demands about the scope of its nuclear program as negotiators work to finalize a framework agreement in the coming days, according to sources familiar with the administration’s position in the negotiations.

U.S. negotiators are said to have given up ground on demands that Iran be forced to disclose the full range of its nuclear activities at the outset of a nuclear deal, a concession experts say would gut the verification the Obama administration has vowed would stand as the crux of a deal with Iran.

Until recently, the Obama administration had maintained that it would guarantee oversight on Tehran’s program well into the future, and that it would take the necessary steps to ensure that oversight would be effective. The issue has now emerged as a key sticking point in the talks.
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T. Belman. Goldberg has a good thought here. The best way to counter a UN imposed solution in favor of the PA is to destroy the PA. Israel just has to stop protecting them and stop subsidizing them and stop supplying them with necessities. Let them find their own electricity and water. Israel will be accused of not abiding by the humanitarian provisions of the FGC but we are accused of violating it by building houses. But then again we should embrace the Levy Report which holds that the FGC does not apply.

If Obama is rethinking his position on Israel, we can do the same.

By Steve Golberg, INN

Ever since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stunning, decisive victory in Israel’s elections, the Obama Administration has been issuing warnings that it is reassessing its previous support for Israel in the international community. Bitterly disappointed at the outcome of the election, President Obama and his spokespeople claim that their reassessment is the result of Netanyahu’s statements on the eve of the election that apparently repudiated his previous support for the two-state solution. Their delicate feelings were also hurt by the Prime Minister’s truthful statement on the day of the election that foreign sources were bringing Israeli-Arabs to the voting booth “en masse” in a coordinated effort to defeat him.
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Netanyahu’s remark that Arabs were being bused ‘in droves’ to polls by foreign-funded NGOs may have been abrasive and inelegant, but is was neither racist nor invalid.

By Martin Sherman, JPOST

Zionism is nothing more – but also nothing less – than the Jewish people’s sense of origin and destination in the land linked eternally with its name. It is also the instrument whereby the Jewish nation seeks an authentic fulfillment of itself. And the drama is enacted in 20 states comprising a hundred million people in 4 1/2 million square miles, with vast resources. The issue therefore is not whether the world will come to terms with Arab nationalism. The question is at what point Arab nationalism, with its prodigious glut of advantage, wealth and opportunity, will come to terms with the modest but equal rights of another Middle Eastern nation to pursue its life in security and peace – Abba Eban, Israel’s former UN ambassador and foreign minister, 1975
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T. Belman. This is a great summary and an accurate view of the Obama’s intentions. Glick’s answer is to extend sovereignty either to all of J&S as she proposed, or to Area C only as Bennett proposed. In addition Israel rally the US forces against Obama’s rapprochement with Iran. It can be done, she says.

Our current situation is unpleasant. But it isn’t the end of the world.

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

On Wednesday, the Jerusalem Municipality announced it is shelving plans to build 1,500 apartments in the Har Homa neighborhood. Officials gave no explanation for its sudden move. But none was needed.

Obviously the construction of apartments for Jews in Jerusalem was blocked in the hopes of appeasing US President Barack Obama.

But is there any reason to believe he can be appeased? Today the White House is issuing condemnations of Israel faster than the UN.

To determine how to handle what is happening, we need to understand the nature of what is happening.
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Vic Rosenthal writes

[..]

This smells like much more than a fit of pique provoked by Netanyahu’s congressional appearance and his election rhetoric (speaking of rhetoric, compare Iran’s “death to America” chants). Obama has been trying to distance the US from Israel from the day that he came into office, and Netanyahu’s interference in Obama’s plan to align the US with Iran against Israel and the Sunni Arabs has only amplified his desire.

Obama seems to have made a considered decision to turn US policy on its head in the Middle East, abandoning traditional allies and making new ones. The most generous explanation is that the president thinks that an Iranian empire can be a stabilizing force, a bulwark against Islamic extremism. He seems to believe that if Iran is allowed to crush its Sunni enemies, take control of the region’s oil reserves, obtain nuclear capability (and by the way destroy Israel), then the region will be in good hands, and the US can safely withdraw to concentrate on domestic issues.
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