Obama to allow Iran to keep its nuclear program?

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis
March 28, 2009, 11:32 AM (GMT+02:00)

Designated prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu simply pushes away any suggestion of pressure on Israel from the Obama administration in Washington, while Ehud Olmert has said a few days before bowing out that he has left the Iranian nuclear threat to the next government.

Olmert forgot to mention that his government's policy of letting Israel be sidelined on the existential Iranian issue and knuckling under to the US lead and its failed sanctions policy allowed Iran to build up momentum in its race for a nuclear bomb.

Olmert "forgot" to mention that Israel is no longer in a position to stop Iran's nuclear program.
He and foreign minister Tzipi Livni bow out therefore leaving Israel vulnerable as never before to international pressure in all its external policies. Before he takes office, the incoming prime minister is already having his arm twisted by Washington and the European Union on Palestinian statehood – and that is just the beginning because of another development which Olmert "forgot" to mention.

DEBKAfile's Washington sources report that the Obama administration is on the threshold of a major rapprochement with Tehran, a reversal of US policy dramatic enough to block out international sanctions. Iran will be allowed to keep its nuclear program, including military elements and enriched uranium stocks, up to the point of actually assembling a weapon.

Washington will continue the Bush practice of publishing "reports" that Iran is still years away from a weaponizing capability. Tehran will hold the upper hand by retaining the option to go forward and build a bomb within one month of a decision to do so and mount warheads on ballistic missiles already standing ready, as revealed last Sunday, March 25, by Israel's military intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin.

Because of the Olmert-Livni policy position in the last two years, Israel no longer as any say in Washington and international forums on the nuclear-arming of Iran.

The outgoing prime minister mentioned that Israel has a long-range operational arm able to strike anywhere. But he forgot that, on his watch, Israel lost the ability to employ it. DEBKA file's Washington sources report that the Obama administration, like its predecessor, will throw everything they have against an Israeli prime minister who ventures to employ its long-range arm. This will not be news to Netanyahu, any more than Olmert.

Just as Ariel Sharon dumped the Iranian problem in Olmert's lap, he too is handing it down to his successor. He not only avoided solving it but left Israel with less leverage than every before for heading off the fast-approaching peril.

Netanyahu is whistling in the dark when he pretends to see no American squeeze on the horizon of his government-in-waiting. One of the hardest long-term tasks ahead of him will be to rebuild Israel's position as America's needed and respected strategic ally, in the face of Barack Obama's ardent courtship of Iran and the Muslim world.

The US president is willing to ditch Israel as a friend. This will be brought home to Jerusalem when he makes his big speech on April 7 appealing for a grand US-Muslim global reconciliation. The US president is preparing to tie a Palestinian-Israeli settlement - on Washington's terms - to such unrelated issues as Afghanistan and Pakistan as the currency for purchasing Muslim and Arab backing for accommodations of these outstanding terrorist fronts.

Different forms of coercion, including the discrediting of the Netanyahu government if it fails to toe the Obama line, will follow. The incoming prime minister's pretense that "all is well" between him and the US administration is pie in the sky, instead of the resolute, firm hand which Israel needs at the helm these days to recoup command over its basic policies and the international community's faded respect.

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