Ted Belman. The trouble with this scenario is that Iran should be the one to want the negotiations, not the US or be more fearful of their end than the US. The US or Israel could always bomb them.
Is Mossad showing their leftist slant again.
Israeli intelligence officials have apparently come around to the same view shared by both the Obama administration as well as American spy agencies.
Israel’s political leadership is in disagreement with top members of its intelligence services over the benefit of more Congressional sanctions on Iran as negotiations over its disputed nuclear program continue, Bloomberg News is reporting on Thursday.
The rift is so severe that it compelled the Mossad to contradict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and directly warn US Congressional officials that more sanctions against the Islamic Republic at this juncture could effectively spell the end of negotiations, according to Bloomberg.
Israeli intelligence officials have apparently come around to the same view shared by both the Obama administration as well as American spy agencies who say that any attempts by lawmakers to pass tougher anti-Iran legislation could chase Tehran from the negotiating table.
Netanyahu has gone on record as enthusiastically supporting sanctions while placing little faith that talks with the Islamic Republic would yield an agreement that would meet Israel’s security needs.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers are expected to press ahead with a plan for more sanctions on Iran, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said last week, despite White House warnings that they risked derailing nuclear talks.
Lawmakers, who say they fear Obama administration negotiators may not take a hard enough line with Tehran, are also at work on a separate bill to have Congress approve any final agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, Senator Bob Corker, the chairman, told Reuters in an interview.
“There’s continual efforts to try to figure out a way for Congress to play a role to strengthen whatever final deal may occur,” the Tennessee Republican senator said.
Republican Senator Mark Kirk and Democratic Senator Robert Menendez are finalizing a bill for tougher sanctions on Iran if there is no final nuclear deal by June 30.
The Senate Banking Committee is due to hold a hearing on Iran sanctions on Tuesday, said Corker, a member also of that panel.
Kirk and Menendez introduced a sanctions bill in December 2013, but it did not come up for a vote in the Senate, then controlled by President Barack Obama’s fellow Democrats, who lost control of the chamber because of big losses in November elections.
The White House has insisted passage of a sanctions bill now – even one that would impose new restrictions only if there is no deal by the deadline – could prompt Iran to back out of the nuclear talks with six world powers.
According to Bloomberg, both the Prime Minister’s Office as well as the influential America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) have been pushing for the Kirk-Menendez bill, which would impose harsher economic penalties against Iran if there is no agreement in the P5+1 talks by the June 30 deadline.
Congressional leaders, however, were surprised to learn that Mossad officials had briefed a number of key lawmakers, lobbying against the bill. Bloomberg reported that the briefing prompted Menendez to seek clarifications from Israel’s envoy to Washington, Ron Dermer.
“We met with a number of government officials from many different parts of the government,” Republican representative John Barrasso, one of the deputies present during the Mossad briefing, told Bloomberg. “There’s not a uniform view there.”
The Iranian nuclear matter has apparently turned into the latest political football that has entailed the GOP Congressional leadership, the White House, the Prime Minister’s Office, and the Mossad, which is being played against the backdrop of Israel’s upcoming parliamentary elections.
In his State of the Union address before the nation on Tuesday, US President Barack Obama said that new sanctions on Iran would “all but guarantee that diplomacy fails,” heightening the prospects of war.
“Between now and this spring, we have a chance to negotiate a comprehensive agreement that prevents a nuclear-armed Iran, secures America and our allies – including Israel – while avoiding yet another Middle East conflict,” the president said.
“There are no guarantees that negotiations will succeed, and I keep all options on the table to prevent a nuclear Iran,” he continued. “But new sanctions passed by this Congress, at this moment in time, will all but guarantee that diplomacy fails.”
The Republican speaker of the House, John Boehner, responded by inviting Netanyahu to deliver an address to a joint session of Congress, prompting an angry response from the White House.
Michael Wilner and Reuters contributed to this report.
Mossad has come out in public and said these Obama and Kerry company comments are basically lies.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/190364#.VMFZbi5Gh2A
Fact Checker
Obama’s claim that Iran’s nuclear program has been ‘halted’ and its nuclear
stockpile ‘reduced’
By Glenn Kessler January 22 at 3:00 AM ?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2015/01/22/obamas-claim-that-irans-nuclear-program-has-been-halted-and-its-nuclear-stock-pile-reduced/
“Our diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran, where, for the first time in
a decade, we’ve halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material.”
–President Obama, State of the Union address, Jan. 20, 2015
http://www.hangthebankers.com/us-spent-5-billion-to-destabilize-ukraine/
Israpundit readers would be wise to plug in the above-coted url, which also makes clear the subject of how intelligence agencies of the USA and the European Union brought down the democratically-elected but pro-Russian presidency of Viktor Yanukovych early last year; and in so doing, has brought on a new east-west cold war exactly as did US President Truman and his anti-Russian foreign policy advisers did beginning in the summer of 1945.
The modern result of all this is now the piecemeal dismemberment of Ukraine that neither the USA, NATO, nor the bankers who control the EU have the power to reverse or even to stop; plus an economic and military alliance of Russia, China and India which controls almost half the world population, including the entirety of Eurasia and an increasing economic chokehold over much of the rest of the world.
What does this have to do with Israel, the written invitation by the Speaker of the US House of Representatives for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to address both houses of the US Congress on the subjects of growing Islamic terrorism and of the need to exact strongest possible economic and other penalties upon the present Iranian government because of their growing nuclear armaments threat?
The answer should be obvious. Not only is the present administration of the US government an enemy of the very idea of a fully independent, viable and stable Jewish state, but they cannot tolerate the idea of an independent Congress of the United States, despite the fact that a government of balanced executive, legislative and judicial authorities was the basis of the United States Constitution, which was so carefully conceived, enacted and protected by Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, and the immortal Abraham Lincoln.
But now that US Congress is under firm control of a spirited group of elected lawmakers who intend to carry out their function of overseeing and controlling aspects of Obama’s foreign policy that they judge deleterious, not just to Israel, which they regard as the only stable and democratic regime in the entire Middle East, but also the United States itself, regarding which there is evidence of a growing and organized Islamic jihad terrorist movement in this country.
Based on all of the above, which is supported by documentation, and regarding a purported cabal of Israeli Mossad agents undercutting the elected government of their own country, I would not be surprised to learn that this supposition is based on endless efforts of the Obama administration to blow a smokescreen for purposes of blinding the steadfastness of the Congress of the United States — which now openly openly threatens Obama’s control of US foreign policy — and, simultaneously, to boost Netanyahu’s leftist enemies in the coming Knesset election.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
SHmuel HaLevi 2 Said:
Yeah sure when Abbas and Obama sprout wings and fly!!!
If the report is true, and not a provocation, and the actions not a back channel operation authorized by the Prime Minister, those involved at the Mossad should be fired at once.
@ bernard ross:
BB has never been known to run a tight ship and most of those who run agencies do not owe him politically anything and sometimes the opposite because they got appointed over his objections. Sharon ran a tight ship because they had both fear and respect for him. Bb they laugh at him and none respect and few fear him…..
I suspect all of our security agencies and that includes senior elements running the IDF have been corrupted by their American counterparts.
Someone in Israel should be tried for treason. But this goes well beyond just Israel. Iran’s nuke program is on a huge scale far beyond what is needed to threaten Israel. And Iran is close to North Korea which is developing the ability to nuke the U.S. from the southern direction where our defenses are weak. And Iran and North Korea are reported to be helping Syria rebuild its nuclear program. Stopping Iran has implications far beyond its threat to Israel and that point needs to be part of the debate.
this illustrates how foolish it is to have an intelligence agency, unschooled in diplomacy and legality, briefing foreign govs directly without filtering and supervision nor should it release anything directly to the public unsupervised first Its a management snafu in that in Israel every fool gets to have his say regardless of his legal responsibility to his gov. Intelligence agencies should not be allowed to issue unfiltered public notices.
Pardo is an idiot for using obscure and vague phrases like “throwing a grenade in the process”. this shows that he needs muzzling because he has no common sense. Again, the best reason for such agencies to not be allowed to speak directly to other govs or issue opinions. Reading this story paints Pardo as incompetent in his own yapping and those of his subordinates. “carrot and sticks”, “grenades in the process”…. this guy needs a muzzle; common sense says you dont use such language in important diplomatic situations.
@ yamit82:
I am curious as to the dateof Mossad doing this. Was it a past thing being rehashed to counter BB’s trip, in which case it could have been part of an ongoing inelligence cooperation agreement allowing direct advice(in itself foolish) or was it just done now by Mossad after the BB invite which would mean that it would have probably been the result of the US applying pressure to its local 3 stooges in Israel (LIVNI, Lapdog and Herzog). I have never heard of any other country where Intelligence agencies are allowed to make unsupervised public announcements or to operate politically on behalf of foreign govs against their own elected leaders. Unless it was a past approved advisory I think it could be classified as treason and an attempted coup.
Mossad has now denied the report. It was probably an Obamadmin leak. It smelt bad from the get-go frankly. As Mossad are not at the negotiating table, how could they have a definitive opinion about Iran going to war over new sanctions?
@ yamit82:
Warrants an independent prosecutor investigation. Not a one available…
Here is the original Bloomberg Article:
Declassified
Israeli Mossad Goes Rogue, Warns U.S. on Iran Sanctions
496 Jan 21, 2015 7:26 PM EST
By Josh Rogin & Eli Lake
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-01-22/netanyahu-mossad-split-divides-u-s-congress-on-iran-sanctions
Mixed messages and contradictions!!!
Who was the Mossad rep that briefed congressmen???
Did he have official Mossad sanction to provide contrary opinions to the Government? Is it the real Mossad position of just that of a clique within the Mossad? Why is head of Mossad still in office?
Don’t like such purported leaks they smell internal Israeli politics or mass corruption within the Mossad agency.
If BB approved of the briefing he is either incompetent or was fully aware of the message to be delivered and approved of it.
Isnt it treason for mossad to report to a foreign gov rather than the GOI? Did the US handlers activate their local stooges Livni, lapdog and Herzog to instigate this treasonous reporting of the Israeli agency to the US gov instead of the Israeli gov? Imagine the CIA going to a foreign gov to contradict their president. Does Mossad have any supervision, legally, or are they an entity with unlimited authority? I dont understand this, I would expect indictment for treason?
Ludacris to think Iran would walk away from the table no matter what. It’s that table that’s bought them all the time in the world to develop the bomb. Lack of sanctions will result in war.
My opinion? No agreement is better than a bad agreement.
All that Western engagement has done is to strengthen the mullahs and buy Iran time.
New sanctions now are perfect because Iran is being squeezed by falling oil prices.
They’re the last chance we have of peacefully securing regime change in Iran.
Which would put an end to Iran’s hostility to Israel and support for Islamic terrorist groups around the world.
Granting legitimacy to an Islamic theocracy that dreams of the destruction of Israel and the West is not sound policy.
Anyone still doubts that unJewish renegades betrayals are a genetic trait? I mean, that was even lower than the 11 spies betrayal way back in Moses times.
Something must be done to reconstruct a true government system and severely take to task those that did that and others as well.