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Israel has given no assurances it won’t target Iran’s nuclear facilities, top State Department official tells CNN

By Kylie Atwood and Jennifer Hansler, CNN, Fri October 4, 2024, Washington 

Israel has not given assurances to the Biden administration that targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities is off the table in retaliation for the Iranian ballistic missile strikes earlier this week, a top US State Department official told CNN on Friday.

The official added that it is “really hard to tell” if Israel will use the anniversary of Hamas’ October 7 attacks to retaliate.

“We hope and expect to see some wisdom as well as strength, but as you guys know, no guarantees,” the official said when asked by CNN if Israel has assured the US that Iran’s nuclear sites are off the table.

US officials have voiced support for Israel responding to Iran’s missile attack earlier this week, with multiple officials publicly saying there must be consequences. At the same time, officials have also voiced concerns about a regional conflagration as they grapple with an increasingly volatile Middle East.

President Joe Biden said earlier this week the US would not support Israel targeting Iran’s nuclear program.

“If I were in their shoes, I’d be thinking about other alternatives than striking oil fields,” Biden said at a press briefing Friday. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/04/politics/state-department-israel-no-assurances-irans-nuclear-facilities/index.html

October 6, 2024 Posted by | Israel, politics international | Leave a comment

Biden says he would not back Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites

Any Israeli response to Iran’s missile barrage should be ‘proportional’, says the US president.

By Al Jazeera Staff, 2 Oct 2024  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/2/biden-says-he-would-not-back-israeli-strike-on-irans-nuclear-sites

United States President Joe Biden has voiced opposition to any strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites in response to Tehran’s missile attack on Israel.

When asked by reporters on Wednesday whether he would back such retaliation, Biden stated “the answer is no”.

Biden’s comments come a day after Iran fired some 180 ballistic missiles at Israel, its second attack on the country since April. Iran’s most recent attacks on Israeli military sites have come in response to the assassination of key Iran-allied figures, including Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Iran would “pay” for the strike, which reportedly did not cause any serious casualties in Israel but killed one Palestinian in the occupied West Bank.

Analysts warned Israel may seize the chance to launch attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities, a target its leaders have long eyed.

“The risk of an [Israeli] attack on the nuclear programme is particularly high because Iran’s defensive shield Hezbollah is on its knees,” Ali Vaez, the Iran Project director at the International Crisis Group think tank, told Al Jazeera.

“US forces are already in the region shielding Israel, and for Israel, this is potentially a once-in-a-generation opportunity to take care of a major threat that it has perceived from Iran over the past few decades,” he said.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett explicitly called for such an attack in a post on X, saying Israel must “act now to destroy Iran’s nuclear program”.

“We have the justification. We have the tools”, Bennett said.

Biden calls for ‘proportional’ response

In the wake of Iran’s attack, Biden emphasised that the US is “fully supportive of Israel”.

Other US officials warned Iran would face “severe consequences”, with State Department spokesman Matthew Miller telling reporters he was not “ruling anything out”.

On Wednesday, after Biden spoke with allied leaders, he said he would not support an attack on Iran’s nuclear facility. Any Israeli response to Iran, he told reporters, should be “proportional”, a position shared by all nations part of the G7 grouping, including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom.

The White House also said Biden and G7 leaders spoke about coordinating a new round of sanctions against Iran.

Whole Middle East at risk

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said that the attack was warranted, but that Tehran did not seek war with Israel.

Iran’s armed forces warned that Israel would face “vast destruction” if it retaliated.

The escalation between two of the Middle East’s strongest militaries – while war continues to rage in Gaza and Lebanon – has stoked fears of an even broader conflict in the region.

“The idea of Iran and Israel going after each other under the auspices of the United States will burn everyone in the Middle East and beyond,” said Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara.

October 5, 2024 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel may launch symbolic attack on Iran nuclear-related facilities, says Ehud Barak

Israeli former prime minister says in interview it is too late to significantly set back Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, and that a ‘massive’ attack on Iran’s oil facilities is likely.

Julian Borger, Fri 4 Oct 2024 , https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/04/israel-may-launch-symbolic-attack-on-iran-nuclear-facilities-says-ehud-barak
Israel is likely to mount a large-scale airstrike against Iran’s oil industry and possibly a symbolic attack on a military target related to its nuclear programme, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak has predicted.

Barak said there was no doubt there would be an Israeli military response to Iran’s assault on Tuesday with over 180 ballistic missiles, most of which were intercepted, but some landed on and around densely populated areas and Israeli military bases.

“Israel has a compelling need, even an imperative, to respond. I think that no sovereign nation on Earth could fail to respond,” Barak said in an interview.

The former prime minister, who also served as defence minister, foreign minister and army chief of staff, said the model for the Israeli response could be seen in Sunday’s reprisal airstrikes against Houthi-controlled oil facilities, power plants and docks in the Yemeni port of Hodeidah, a day after Houthi fired missiles aimed at Israel’s international airport outside Tel Aviv.

“I think we might see something like that. It might be a massive attack, and it could be repeated more than once,” he told the Guardian. Joe Biden said on Thursday there had been discussions in Washington about a possible Israeli attack on Iran’s oil sector, but it not give any details or make clear whether the US would support such an assault.

Barak, now aged 82, said there had also been suggestions in Israel that it should make use of this opportunity, in reprisal for the Iranian attack, to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities, but he argued it would not significantly set back the Iranian programme.

When Barak served as defence minister from 2007 to 2013, under both Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu, he was among Israel’s most vociferous advocates for bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities, trying and failing to convince presidents George Bush and then Barack Obama, to contribute US military might to the campaign.

On Wednesday, Biden followed Obama in voicing his opposition to any Israeli strikes against Iranian nuclear sites. And Barak himself now accepts the Iran nuclear programme is too far advanced for any bombing campaign to set it back significantly.

“There are some commentators and even some people within the defence establishment who raised the question: Why the hell not hit the nuclear military programme?” Barak said. “A little bit more than a decade ago, I was probably the most hawkish person in Israeli leadership arguing that it was worth considering very seriously, because there was an actual capability to delay them by several years.

“That’s not the case right now, because Iran is a de facto threshold country,” he argued. “They do not have yet a weapon – it may take them a year to have one, and even half a decade to have a small arsenal. Practically speaking, you cannot easily delay them in any significant manner.”

Under a 2015 multilateral nuclear agreement, Tehran accepted tight restrictions on its uranium enrichment and other elements of its programme in exchange for sanctions relief, but that agreement has steadily fallen apart since the US withdrawal under Donald Trump in 2018.

Iran now has a stockpile of enriched uranium that is 30 times higher than the agreed 2015 limit, and it is enriching uranium to up to 60% purity, which in terms of the additional processing required, is very close to 90% weapons grade fissile material. Under the 2015 agreement, Iran’s “breakout time” – the period it would need to produce a nuclear bomb – was at least a year. Now it is a few weeks.

Barak believes there is pressure within the Netanyahu government for at least some symbolic strike against the Iranian programme, even though the former prime minister sees such a gesture as futile.

“You can cause certain damage, but even this might be perceived by some of the planners as worth the risk because the alternative is to sit idly by and do nothing,” Barak said. “So probably there will be even an attempt to hit certain nuclear-related targets.”

While Barak believes that a significant Israeli military response to Tuesday night’s Iranian military attack is now unavoidable and justifiable, he argues the drift to a regional war could have been averted much earlier, if Netanyahu had been open to a US-promoted plan to rally Arab support for a postwar Palestinian government in Gaza to replace Hamas. Instead, Israel’s incumbent prime minister opposed any political “day after” solution that recognised Palestinian sovereignty.

“I think that a strong response is inevitable. That doesn’t mean it was written in heaven a year ago that it’s going to happen,” Barak said. “There were probably several opportunities to limit this conflict before it turned into something like a full-scale Middle East clash. For reasons that cannot be explained under any strategic thought, Netanyahu rejected any kind of discussion of what we call ‘the day after’.

“I do not put the blame for the whole event on Netanyahu. This is basically the fault of Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran behind them,” Barak said. “But having said that, we have a responsibility to take action under a certain innate logic that understands the situation, the opportunity, and the constraints. There is an old Roman saying: ‘If you don’t know which port you want to reach, no wind will take you there.

October 5, 2024 Posted by | Iran, Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Israel’s Ideology of Genocide Must be Confronted and Stopped

Jeffrey D. Sachs • September 30, 2024,  https://www.unz.com/article/israels-ideology-of-genocide-must-be-confronted-and-stopped/

Israel’s violent extremists now in control of its government believe that Israel has the Biblical license, indeed a religious mandate, to destroy the Palestinian people.

When Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the podium at the U.N. General Assembly last week, dozens of governments walked out of the chamber. The global opprobrium of Netanyahu and his government is due to Israel’s depraved violence against its Arab neighbors. Netanyahu purveys a fundamentalist ideology that has turned Israel into the most violent nation in the world.

Israel’s fundamentalist credo holds that Palestinians have no right whatsoever to their own nation. The Israeli Knesset recently passed a declaration rejecting a Palestinian State in what the Knesset calls The Land of Israel, meaning the land west of the Jordan River.

The Knesset of Israel firmly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state west of Jordan. The establishment of a Palestinian state in the heart of the Land of Israel will pose an existential danger to the State of Israel and its citizens, perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and destabilize the region.

To call the land west of the Jordan the “heart of the Land of Israel” is breathtaking. Israel is one part of the land west of the Jordan, not the entire land. The International Court of Justice has recently ruled that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian lands (those outside of Israel’s borders as of June 4, 1967, before the June 1967 war) is plainly illegal. The U.N. General Assembly has recently voted overwhelmingly to back the ICJ ruling and called on Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territories within one year.

There are many sources of this Israeli brazenness, the most important being the backing of Israel by U.S. military power.

It is worth recalling that when the British empire promised a Jewish homeland in Ottoman Palestine in 1917, the Palestinian Arabs constituted around 90% of the population. At the time of the 1947 U.N. partition plan, the Palestinian Arab population was approximately 67% of the population, though the partition plan proposed to give the Arabs only 44% of the land. Now Israel asserts the claim to 100% of the land.

Without the U.S. military backing, Israel could not possibly rule over an Apartheid regime in which Palestinian Arabs constitute nearly one half of the population yet hold none of the political power. Future generations will look back in amazement at the success of the Israel Lobby in manipulating the U.S. military to the severe detriment of U.S. national security and global peace.

Yet in addition to the U.S. military, there is another source of Israel’s profound injustice to the Palestinian people, and that is the religious fundamentalism purveyed fanatics such as the self-proclaimed fascist Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s Minister of Finance, and Minister of National Defense Itamar Ben-Gvir. These fanatics hold fast to the biblical Book of Joshua, according to which God promised the Israelites the land “from the Negev wilderness in the south to the Lebanon mountains in the north, from the Euphrates River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west.” (Joshua 1:4).


At the U.N. last week, Netanyahu once again staked Israel’s claim to the land on Biblical grounds: “When I spoke here last year, I said we face the same timeless choice that Moses put before the people of Israel thousands of years ago, as we were about to enter the Promised Land. Moses told us that our actions would determine whether we bequeath to future generations a blessing or a curse.”

What Netanyahu did not tell his fellow leaders (most of whom had in any event vacated the hall), was that Moses laid out a genocidal path to the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 31):

[The LORD] will destroy these nations before you, and you shall dispossess them. Joshua is the one who will cross ahead of you, just as the LORD has spoken. “The LORD will do to them just as He did to Sihon and Og, the kings of the Amorites, and to their land, when He destroyed them. “The LORD will deliver them up before you, and you shall do to them according to all the commandments which I have commanded you.”

Israel’s violent extremists believe that Israel has the Biblical license, indeed a religious mandate, to destroy the Palestinian people. Their Biblical hero is Joshua, the Israelite commander who succeeded Moses, and who led the Israelites’ genocidal conquests. (Netanyahu has also referred to the Amalekites, another case of a God-ordained genocide of foes of the Israelites, in a clear “dog-whistle” to his fundamentalist followers.) Here is the Biblical account of Joshua’s conquest of Hebron (Joshua 10)

Then Joshua and all Israel with him went up from Eglon to Hebron, and they fought against it. They captured it and struck it and its king and all its cities and all the persons who were in it with the edge of the sword. He left no survivor, according to all that he had done to Eglon. And he utterly destroyed it and every person who was in it.

There is a deep irony to this genocidal account. It almost surely is not historically accurate. There is no evidence that the Jewish kingdoms arose from genocides. Most likely they arose from local Canaanite communities adopting early forms of Judaism. Jewish fundamentalists adhere to a 6th century BCE text that is most likely a mythical reconstruction of purported events several centuries earlier, and a form of political bravado that was common in ancient Near Eastern politics. The problem is 21st century Israeli politicians, illegal settlers, and other fundamentalists who propose to live by—and kill by—6th century BCE political propaganda.

Israel’s violent fundamentalists are some 2,600 years out of step with today’s acceptable forms of statecraft and international law. Israel is duty bound to the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions, not to the Book of Joshua. According to the recent ICJ ruling and UN General Assembly resolution backing it up, Israel must withdraw in the coming twelve months from the occupied Palestinian lands. According to international law, Israel’s borders are those of June 4, 1967, not the Euphrates to the Mediterranean Sea.

The ICJ ruling and U.N. General Assembly vote is not a ruling against the state of Israel per se. It is a ruling only against extremism, indeed against extremism and malevolence on both sides of the divide. There are two peoples, each with roughly half the overall population (and with no shortage of internal social, political, and ideological divisions within the two communities). International law calls for two states, living side by side, in peace.

The best solution, which we should strive for and hope for sooner rather than later, is that the two states, and the two peoples, get along, and actually draw strength from each other. Until then, however, the practical solution will be peacekeepers and fortified borders to protect each side from the animosity of the other, but with each having the chance to prosper. The utterly intolerable and illegal situation is the status quo, in which Israel rules brutally over the Palestinian people.

Hopefully, there will soon be a State of Palestine, sovereign and independent, whether the Knesset wants it or not. This is not Israel’s choice, but the mandate of the world community and of international law. The sooner the State of Palestine is welcomed as member state of the U.N., with the security of both Israel and Palestine backed by U.N. peacekeepers, the sooner will peace come to the region.

October 4, 2024 Posted by | Israel, Religion and ethics | Leave a comment

‘Western Press Obscured the Sheer Terror of What Israel Had Carried Out’: CounterSpin interview with Mohamad Bazzi on Lebanon pager attacks

So this was an entirely indiscriminate attack, and it puts the Western media fascination with Israel’s technological prowess into even sharper focus. We had the Western press marveling at—I’ll just quote a few of the terms—“Israel’s prowess,” “precision,” “James Bond“–type operation. And quite a few other terms that obscured the sheer terror of what Israel had carried out over those two days in Lebanon.

Janine Jackson interviewed NYU’s Mohamad Bazzi about Israel’s terror attacks in Lebanon for the September 27, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

Janine Jackson,

Janine Jackson: Speaking of Israel’s remote detonation of thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies of suspected Hezbollah members in Lebanon, former CIA director and defense secretary Leon Panetta told CBS, ”I don’t think there is any question that it’s a form of terrorism.”

Panetta’s remarks were widely reported, mostly straight, but for Fox, where Sean Hannity said Panetta “had the gall to say Israel is engaging in terrorism against the terror group Hezbollah.”

It seems worth noting: Just before Panetta, CBS viewers heard from a former FBI analyst who said of the explosions in stores, cars and homes that killed some 39 people and injured more than 3,000, including children:

Tactically, what Israel has done has been brilliant. They have severely degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities. They’ve severely degraded Hezbollah’s ability to respond to Israeli things. They’re really hoping that, strategically, Hezbollah gets the message: Stop firing rockets into our country.

That “tactic” has led to more death, more destruction and, some say, more chance of a still wider, more devastating war.

Joining us now to talk about unfolding events and US media’s depictions is Mohamad Bazzi. He’s director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies and journalism professor at New York University, as well as former Middle East bureau chief at Newsday. He joins us now by phone from here in town. Welcome to CounterSpin, Mohamad Bazzi.

Mohamad Bazzi: Thank you for having me.


JJ: CBS segued from the “brilliant tactic” guy to Leon Panetta by saying that some saw Israel’s action as a “deception one step too far. The United Nations labeled the operation a violation of international law, and it’s raised some eyebrows here at home too.” It’s equally hard to imagine that this wasn’t a violation as that it wouldn’t immediately be condemned as such, had anyone else carried it out, would you say?

MB: That’s an excellent point. It would certainly have been condemned, let’s say, if Russia had carried out a similar operation, or even something a fraction of this kind of attack, in Ukraine.

I think one of the things that struck me, and I suspect it struck you and others who watch the Western media, is the sense of marvel over the ingenuity of Israel’s technological prowess. So what we had is a lot of the coverage framed as, “Oh, this is taking a page out of a spy thriller, or a dystopian movie.”

And in some ways, what unfolded in Lebanon last week was something dystopian, but it wasn’t a movie. It affected real people’s lives. And so many in the Western media were fixating on the novelty of Israel’s attack, and sometimes celebrating it, but they neglected to acknowledge or even consider the sheer terror experienced by tens of thousands of Lebanese civilians. And this is a society that suffered through years and years of trauma, and this was the latest attack that unfolded in this incredibly pernicious way.

A lot of the coverage also didn’t get into the question of whether this constituted a war crime. And, on the face of it, it seems to meet the definition of a war crime: Human Rights Watch, a few other rights organizations, issued statements noting that international humanitarian law forbids the use of booby traps, especially with objects that have such important use for civilians. I think it would fit the definition of a war crime, beyond just being an act of terrorism that’s meant to instill terror in a civilian population.

JJ: Hezbollah, like Hamas, is for many US media consumers almost like a sports team, or like a kaiju, a monster like Godzilla. And I think it might sound strange to some to think that they aren’t solely a military force in Lebanon, but in fact have a much broader role.

MB: Yeah, a lot of media consumers and listeners in the US don’t get the context. They don’t get the background that Hezbollah is not only a militia, it is not only the militia that’s labeled a terrorist group by the US and by many countries in the EU, but it’s also the most dominant military force in Lebanon, and it’s also the most powerful political party and political movement in the country.

So Hezbollah runs an extensive social service network. It operates schools and hospitals and supermarkets and credit unions.

…………………………..It’s the act of terror. It’s the imprecise nature, this deliberate setting off of detonations of thousands of small bombs that went off at the same time on a Tuesday afternoon, as people were going about their daily lives. And so the bombs went off in grocery stores and hospitals and sidewalk cafes and barbershops. The next day, on Wednesday, some of the walkie-talkie explosions went off during the funerals of people who had been killed the day before during the pager explosions.

So this was an entirely indiscriminate attack, and it puts the Western media fascination with Israel’s technological prowess into even sharper focus. We had the Western press marveling at—I’ll just quote a few of the terms—“Israel’s prowess,” “precision,” “James Bond“–type operation. And quite a few other terms that obscured the sheer terror of what Israel had carried out over those two days in Lebanon……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

JJ: There are calls now for Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, to resign after it’s been reported, I believe by ProPublica, that he was in receipt of assessments, from both USAID and the State Department’s Refugees Bureau, that Israel had blocked deliveries of humanitarian aid to Gaza. He had that information, Blinken did, when he went before Congress, and said there was no evidence of that.

Short even of his resignation, though, how many times do US officials need to lie or hide or dissimulate before journalists stop quoting them credulously? Isn’t it just insulting to readers and to the public at some point?

MB: We certainly have many decades of this, going back to Vietnam, of course, US officials lying about war and lying about US support for allies who commit atrocities.

The report from ProPublica has been an exception. It’s an excellent report. It just came out in the last couple of days, based on internal leaks, because there are officials in the State Department, and elsewhere in the Biden administration, that find all of this unconscionable, and don’t want to see this continued support.

And it’s a very important leak, not just because of what it tells us about Blinken and others in the administration, and their ability and willingness to lie to the US public and to lie to the US media, but it also shows us that there’s actually a fairly straightforward path for the Biden administration to stop its weapons transfers to Israel, because those weapons transfers violate US laws. And if they were honest, and they had admitted it, they would’ve had to stop sending weapons, because that’s what US law requires. It’s what the Biden administration’s own guidelines require.

So that was a tremendously important leak by ProPublica. And, unfortunately, I’ve seen some references to it in the past few days, but it’s not getting the widespread attention in the corporate media and in the legacy media that it should be getting.

It’s certainly getting a lot of attention on social media. People are sharing it, and sharing the documents, and it’s creating these calls for Blinken to resign, or for Biden to do something. But it’s certainly troubling to see the legacy media ignore this as well.

And it all raises the question, what more do you want? What more can be presented to the media for it to change its approach to covering this war?

…………………MB: I would certainly like to see more humane coverage. It’s a basic ask, and it’s unfortunate that we have to make this ask, but I would like to see more humane coverage of Palestinians, of Lebanese, of other Arabs and Muslims.

I think one of the things we’ve seen, just in this past week, in the way that the pager explosions and the walkie-talkie explosions were covered—this marveling over Israel’s ingenuity, it ignores the reality on the ground, but it also contributes to the dehumanization of Palestinians and Lebanese and Arabs, this widespread dehumanization that we’ve seen, certainly for decades, but we’ve seen it ramp up to an extreme since Israel launched its war on Gaza. …..more https://fair.org/home/western-press-obscured-the-sheer-terror-of-what-israel-had-carried-out/

October 3, 2024 Posted by | Israel, media | Leave a comment

The Israeli Government Must Be Stopped

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, October 1, 2024,  https://worldbeyondwar.org/the-israeli-government-must-be-stopped/
David Swanson is Executive Director of World BEYOND War.

The Israeli government has been dragging Western weapons and militaries into wars for far too long, putting all of the world — and its global institutions — at risk. The move into Lebanon, creating more dead, injured, traumatized, and homeless already in huge numbers ought to snap some war supporters out of their trance.

The danger of a catastrophic war on Iran that is joined by the United States and NATO on one side, and additional nations on the other, looms horrifically on the horizon.

It is high time for the world’s governments, including that of Israel’s top supplier, the United States, to begin complying with the International Court of Justice, the United Nations General Assembly, and each of the treaties and domestic laws violated by each arms shipment.

While the UK and Canada have stopped some weapons, that is far from sufficient. While a handful of U.S. Senators anti-democratically plan a vote weeks from now after a U.S. election, on halting illegal arms shipments to Israel, that is far from sufficient, and yet more than we see in the U.S. House of so-called representatives.

Western governments have emboldened the Israeli government with weapons supplies for so long that Israel understands there are no limits. There is nothing it can do that anyone could reasonably expect the U.S. and allied governments not to support, not to protect with propaganda assistance, Security Council vetoes, and yet more instruments of mass killing. That has to change.

Public pressure in the West has prevented western governments from going to war with Iran for decades. But Israel is now expanding an existing war in an effort to create a wider war without any debate or decision. Western media is already using the passive language of “being dragged into” a war — as if no decision need be made at all. This could not be more dangerous, more dishonest, more opposed to the supposed ideal of democracy.

The good people who have raised their voices and taken nonviolent action against the genocide in Gaza for a year and more, and those who have been silent, must all rise up together now and declare that nothing permits wider war, nothing justifies these outrages, no election season puts a pause on our moral duty to protect all life.

October 3, 2024 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Sullivan: US Will Ensure Iran Faces ‘Severe Consequences’ for Attacking Israel

 October 2, 2024 , By Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday that the US would work with Israel to ensure Iran faces “severe consequences” for launching a missile attack on Israel, which came in response to recent Israeli escalations.

“There will be severe consequences for this attack, and we will work with Israel to make that the case,” Sullivan told reporters at the White House.

President Biden said the US was in “active discussions” with Israel on what the response would be. “The United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel,” he said.

Media reports say Iran fired at least 180 missiles at Israel. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said the attack was launched in retaliation for the Israeli assassination of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, the killing of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, and Abbas Nilforoushan, an IRGC commander who was killed alongside Nasrallah.

The IRCG has claimed that 90% of the missiles hit their targets, while Israel claimed most were intercepted. Videos have surfaced that show Iranian missiles making an impact on Israeli military sites. So far, there’s been no word on Israeli deaths, but a Palestinian in the Israeli-occupied West Bank was killed when shrapnel from an intercepted missile fell on Jericho.

The US said that it helped Israel intercept some of the Iranian missiles and portrayed the defense as a success. Sullivan said the Iranian attack “appears to have been defeated and ineffective.”

…………………………………………Iran has signaled that it’s done attacking Israel but warned there would be a “crushing response” if Israel hits back. Israeli officials have made clear that they plan to respond.

“There will be consequences,” said Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari. “Our defensive and offensive capabilities are at the highest levels of readiness. Our operational plans are ready. We will respond wherever, whenever, and however we choose, in accordance with the directive of the government of Israel.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran will “pay” for the attack. “This evening, Iran made a big mistake — and it will pay for it,” he said at a security cabinet meeting. “The regime in Tehran does not understand our determination to defend ourselves and to exact a price from our enemies.”  https://scheerpost.com/2024/10/02/sullivan-us-will-ensure-iran-faces-severe-consequences-for-attacking-israel/

October 3, 2024 Posted by | Iran, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Netanyahu: Israel Is Fighting a War on Seven Fronts

  

The Israeli leader called the UN General Assembly a ‘Swamp of Antisemitic Bile’

by Kyle Anzalone September 27, 2024,  https://news.antiwar.com/2024/09/27/netanyahu-israel-is-fighting-a-war-on-seven-fronts/#gsc.tab=0

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the UN during his remarks at the 79th General Assembly summit on Friday. He called the body a swamp of antisemitism while saying Israel needed to defend itself on seven fronts.

The Israeli leader’s speech was contentious. Before Netanyahu took to the podium, Pakistani Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif blasted Israel for waging a genocide in Gaza and creating a war with Lebanon. As Netanyahu began his address, a large portion of the UN General Assembly body walked out.

During his remarks, Netanyahu referred to the UN General Assembly as a “swamp of antisemitic bile.” He went on to slam the International Criminal Court (ICC) for considering charging him with war crimes, adding the true war criminals are in Iran and its allied nations.

During his address, Netanyahu presented two maps, one titled “the blessing” and the other “the curse.”  The Israeli leader said Tel Aviv is still seeking a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia. He claimed that if Riyadh established official ties with Israel, the world would receive a “blessing,” but Iran represented a “curse” to the region.

The Israeli leader explained “the blessing” was establishing a “landbridge” from India to Israel. The blessing requires Saudi Arabia to enter the Abraham Accords and normalize ties with Israel. Netanyahu claimed that would have happened, but the October 7 Hamas attack prevented the deal.

In the map titled “the curse,” five countries were represented in black: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon. The Israeli leader claimed that Tehran was working to eliminate Tel Aviv using its allies in the region. Netanyahu presented the conflict as a battle between forces of civilization against barbarism.

When discussing Gaza, Netanyahu said “Hamas must go.” He added that any end to the war that would see Hamas remain in power in Gaza is equivalent to allowing the Nazis to rebuild Germany after World War II.

As with Hamas, Netanyahu also said Israel would continue to wage war against Hezbollah until all its objectives were met. Over the past week, Tel Aviv has significantly ramped up its military operations in southern Lebanon, killing over 700 in the past week.

Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com, news editor of the Libertarian Institute, and co-host of Conflicts of Interest.

October 2, 2024 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Illusion of a Solution: Killing Hassan Nasrallah

Australian Independent Media, September 29, 2024, by: Dr Binoy Kampmark,

The ongoing Israeli operation against Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia group so dominant in Lebanon, is following a standard pattern. Ignore base causes. Ignore context. Target leaders, and target personnel. See matters in conventional terms of civilisational warrior against barbarian despot. Israel, the valiant and bold, fighting the forces of darkness.

The entire blood woven tapestry of the Middle East offers uncomfortable explanations. The region has seen false political boundaries sketched and pronounced by foreign powers, fictional countries proclaimed, and entities brought into being on the pure interests of powers in Europe. These empires produced shoddy cartography in the name of the nation state and plundering self-interest, leaving aside the complexities of ethnic belonging and tribal dispositions. Tragically, such cartographic fictions tended to keep company with crime, dispossession, displacement, ethnic cleansing and enthusiastic hatreds.

……………………………………………………… The Israeli strategy in this latest phase was made all too apparent by the number of military commanders and high-ranking operatives in Hezbollah the IDF has targeted. Added to this the pager-walkie talkie killings as a prelude to a likely ground invasion of Lebanon, it was clear that Hezbollah’s leader, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, figured as an exemplary target.

……………………..Israeli officials have been prematurely thrilled. Like deluded scientists obsessed with eliminating a symptom, they ignore the disease with habitual obsession. “Most of the senior leaders of Hezbollah have been eliminated,” claimed a triumphant Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani.

Defence Minister Yoav Gallant called the measure “the most significant strike since the founding of the State of Israel.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated with simplicity that killing Nasrallah was necessary to “changing the balance of power in the region for years to come” and enable displaced Israelis to return to their homes in the north.

Various reports swallowed the Israeli narrative…………………………………………………………………………………..

Ibrahim Al-Marashi of California State University, San Marcos, summarises the efforts of Israel’s high-profile killing strategy as shortsighted feats of miscalculation. “History shows every single Israeli assassination of a high-profile political or military operator, even after being initially hailed as a game-changing victory, eventually led to the killed leader being replaced by someone more determined, adept and hawkish.” Another Nasrallah is bound to be in tow, with several others in incubation.  https://theaimn.com/the-illusion-of-a-solution-killing-hassan-nasrallah/

September 30, 2024 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Israeli nuclear risk no one is talking about

Israel’s ability to build and deploy nuclear weapons, while never officially acknowledged, remains at the heart of its security doctrine

September 27, 2024 https://inews.co.uk/news/world/what-happens-us-stops-supporting-israel-3296914

A tenuous and inherently unstable military stand-off between Israel and Hezbollah – has finally shattered.

The latest outbreak in fighting is certain to result in increasing civilian casualties as Israel and Hezbollah exchange fire across the border.

As Israel faces numerous threats its possession of nuclear bombs lurk behind the growing debate over arms supplies to the nation.

Israel’s use of US-supplied weapons in Gaza in the past year has already forced the Biden administration to address the option of limiting the supply of US arms if US officials determine that Israel has committed gross human rights violations or blocked the movement of humanitarian assistance.

In addition, Senator Bernie Sanders is preparing several resolutions that would affect more than $20bn (£15bn) in US arms sales to Israel.

There is no chance that such measures will pass, but that is not the point. As an AP report noted, “the move is designed to send a message to the Netanyahu regime that its war effort is eroding the US’s long-time bipartisan support for Israel.”

Indeed, Washington and Jerusalem must face the unwelcome fact that such actions by Congress or the White House, however symbolic, may well undermine the longstanding bargain that not only keeps Israel’s conventional arsenals full … but also ensures that its nuclear bombs stay in the basement – undeclared and shrouded in a veil of ambiguity.

The Jewish state has long enjoyed a nuclear weapons monopoly in the region, and its ability to build and deploy nuclear weapons, while never officially acknowledged, remains at the heart of its security doctrine.

In the first days of the October 1973 “Yom Kippur” War, for example, Israel is believed to have placed a small number of nuclear warheads on alert and may have considered their deployment to stop a Syrian tank advance into Israel’s heartland.

It is no accident that Israel has never acknowledged having nuclear weapons. US policies developed in the aftermath of the June 1967 Six Day War have played a critical role in shaping Israel’s conventional and nuclear superiority.

Washington did oppose Israel’s nuclear weapons activities in the 50s and 60s. In the wake of the June 1967 war, however, a quid pro quo with Israel was established.

In return for Israel maintaining a policy of nuclear weapons ambiguity, Washington would guarantee what was termed Israel’s “qualitative military edge” – QME. That is, Washington will ensure that as long as Israel keeps its “bombs in the basement” – undeclared, unacknowledged, and unused – Washington will guarantee Israel the conventional weapons arsenal necessary to defeat any combination of regional enemies.

In the decades since, every change in US political or defence policy, every diplomatic or military engagement with Israel, has featured a ritualistic reaffirmation of Washington’s commitment to maintain Israel’s QME. See for example, the Democrats’ election platform, which declares that “our commitment to Israel’s security, its qualitative military edge, its right to defend itself … is ironclad.”

Indeed, the State Department recently reaffirmed that “the US is by statute mandated … to guarantee that … Israel has a qualitative military edge over rivals in the region. It’s not a discretionary question. It is a statutory requirement, and it is one that we are committed to.,, There is also an important deterrent effect to the United States continuing to send a message to Israel’s adversaries that if they attack Israel, we will defend it. And that’s a message that we will continue to send loud and clear.”

Since Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, Iran under the rule of the ayatollahs has been deemed the biggest challenge to Israel’s regional hegemony in both the conventional and nuclear realms. and the biggest test of “ironclad” US support for QME.

Notwithstanding an officially declared intention to refrain from creating a nuclear weapons option, Iran’s production of highly enriched uranium continues.

Iran’s stock of uranium in the form of uranium hexafluoride enriched to up to 60 per cent purity, close to the roughly 90 per cent of weapons grade, grew an estimated 22.6kg to 164.7kg, according to a confidential quarterly International Atomic Energy Agency report recently sent to member states. According to an IAEA yardstick, that is 2kg short of being enough, in theory, if enriched further, for four nuclear bombs.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken observed in July that “instead of being at least a year away from having the breakout capacity of producing fissile material for a nuclear weapon, (Iran) is now probably one or two weeks away from doing that… what we’ve seen in the last weeks and months is an Iran that’s actually moving forward” with its nuclear programme.

One might think that the prospect of a nuclear stand-off in the Middle East might arouse an international chorus of concern, especially since Blinken’s plaintive warning about a nuclear Iran is part and parcel of the metastasizing failure of US led effort to stabilise the cascading crises already consuming the heart of the Middle East.

Iran has declared its opposition to the development of a nuclear weapons capability and has shown no progress in integrating such a capability as part of its strategic doctrine.

Nevertheless, as Blinken’s remarks illustrate, Iran is proceeding with developing critical constituent parts necessary to achieve a weapons capability while retaining a veil of ambiguity about its intentions.

In the wake of the demise of the JCPOA, Iran’s cultivation of nuclear ambiguity has established a new policy framework for its continuing nuclear programme and tested the continuing relevance of Washington’s commitment to QME.

The blowback from the Gaza war, has had an unexpected and unwelcome impact on this long-held policy.

National Security Memorandum, NSM-20 requires US military aid recipients to provide “credible and reliable assurances” that they will abide by international law when using the weapons or risk losing access to US arms. Israel, it is argued, has violated laws prohibiting the transfer of American military aid to governments that have committed gross human rights violations or blocked the movement of humanitarian assistance.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants Washington to swing the pendulum in the opposite direction. “Give us the tools faster,” he advised Congress, “and we’ll finish the job faster.”

A US decision to withhold arms for Gaza won’t affect the course of the war and it is in any scenario unlikely.

But any US action along such lines, however symbolic, will no doubt test Israel’s confidence in the continuing US commitment to the broader security assurances at the heart of QME, which, like it or not, has succeeded over the decades in restraining the nuclear weaponisation of the entire region and preserved Israel’s nuclear weapons monopoly.

Indeed, the current crisis creates an opportunity for Israel to exploit the relative freedom enabled by Washington’s ineffectual Gaza diplomacy and to test its support for QME to destroy two threats at the heart of Israel’s security doctrine – to destroy Iran’s nuclear and missile infrastructure and to defeat the Iran-led axis now active along Israel’s frontiers.

Should Washington fail the QME test in Israel’s eyes, it might well precipitate a dramatic change in Israel’s nuclear doctrine – ending the thin veil of ambiguity about Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal and sparking a regional nuclear arms race.

Policies that make sense in Jerusalem, however, may not survive scrutiny in Washington. The Biden administration continues to give its “partner” Israel an unprecedented free hand in Gaza, the West Bank and now Lebanon.

And it is taking extraordinary pains to demonstrate its “ironclad” commitment to QME, and thus keep the lid on a potential slide towards the nuclearisation of the crisis and an explicit change in Israel’s nuclear deployment and war fighting doctrine.

President Biden strives to contain rather than confront. He has no interest in prompting a crisis of confidence between Washington and Jerusalem that raises questions about Washington’s commitment to QME and its unwritten support for Israel’s nuclear monopoly. So he is deploying unprecedented military and diplomatic resources, so far without success, to prevent a hot war that has the potential to define the region and perhaps beyond for generations.

Geoffrey Aronson writes about Middle East affairs. He consults with a variety of public and private institutions dealing with regional political, security, and development issues. He has advised the World Bank on Israel’s disengagement and has worked for the European Union Coordinating Office for the Palestinian Police Support mission to the West Bank and Gaza

September 29, 2024 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Looming Catastrophe in the Middle East (w/ Gideon Levy) | The Chris Hedges Report

 September 28, 2024 

It has become quite rare to hear any meaningful accountability for Israel’s actions from Israeli citizens themselves. Israeli journalist Gideon Levy is an anomaly in Israel by today’s standards, as for his entire career he has challenged the apartheid and occupation of the Israeli state. On today’s episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Levy joins host Chris Hedges to discuss his book, The Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe, and explain the spiritual destruction, both of Israel and Palestine, that the current genocide in Gaza is causing as well as the implications of new military operations in Lebanon.

The worst change, according to Levy, is that Israel has lost its humanity. “Everything is acceptable,” Levy tells Hedges as he describes the ongoing slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, the brutal killing of prisoners, the censorship at the hands of the state and the overall indifference to it all.

“There is practically only one camp in Israel, the camp which supports apartheid and occupation,” Levy says.

There isn’t even any room left for empathy of the innocent victims in Gaza, according to Levy. Teachers have been subject to interrogation and termination because they “express[ed] empathy with the children of Gaza, with the victims of Gaza. Even this is not legitimate anymore in Israeli society 2024,” Levy contends.

Although the horrors following October 7 are devastatingly unprecedented, Levy asserts that this entire catastrophe was years in the making and the meaningless gestures of advocating for a two-state solution, for example, will perpetuate it further.

In the first years following the war in 1967, the occupation of Palestinians as a way of life quickly became normalized, according to Levy. “[Palestinians] clean our streets, they build our buildings, they pave our roads and they will never have citizenship. The only people in the world without any citizenship of any state,” Levy says.

As Israeli society attempts to continue this way of living, only disruptive movements and moments, such as the First Intifada, the Yom Kippur war and now October 7, will bring meaningful attention to the Palestinian struggle most of the world is okay with ignoring.

As Levi writes in his book,

“The way of terror is the only way open to the Palestinians to fight for their future. The way of terror is the only way for them to remind Israel, the Arab states and the world, of their existence. They have no other way. Israel has taught them this. If they don’t use violence, everyone will forget about them, and then a little later, only through terrorism will they be remembered. Only through terrorism will they possibly attain something. One thing is certain, if they put down their weapons, they are doomed.”

Levy says that history has told the Palestinians and the world something crucial about Israel: “the message is, if you want to achieve anything from us, only by force. And the message for the world is the same, if you want the world to care about you, raising your voice is not enough. You have to take measures. You have to take actions, and unfortunately, many times violent ones, aggressive ones, and many times even barbarian ones, like on the seventh of October.”……………………………………………more https://scheerpost.com/2024/09/28/the-looming-catastrophe-in-the-middle-east-w-gideon-levy-the-chris-hedges-report/

September 29, 2024 Posted by | Atrocities, Israel, media | Leave a comment

US Gives Israel $8.7 Billion in Military Aid for Operations in Gaza and Lebanon

The new aid comes as the US claims it’s pushing for a ceasefire in Lebanon

by Dave DeCamp September 26, 2024.  https://news.antiwar.com/2024/09/26/us-gives-israel-8-7-billion-in-military-aid-for-operations-in-gaza-and-lebanon/#gsc.tab=0

On Thursday, the Israeli Defense Ministry announced that it secured $8.7 billion in military aid from the US to support its “ongoing military efforts,” meaning the genocidal slaughter in Gaza and Israel’s dramatic escalation in Lebanon.

The ministry said in a statement that its director-general, Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir, concluded negotiations in Washington to secure the military aid. It said the package includes $3.5 billion for “essential wartime procurement” that has already been sent to Israel and a $5.2 billion grant for air defenses.

The ministry said the $5.2 billion for air defenses “will significantly strengthen critical systems such as Iron Dome and David’s Sling while supporting the continued development of an advanced high-powered laser defense system currently in its later stages of development.”

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin vowed Thursday that the US would continue arming Israel and brushed off the idea of the US setting red lines. “We’ve been committed from the very beginning to help Israel, provide the things that are necessary for them to be able to protect their sovereign territory and that hasn’t changed and won’t change in the future,” he said.

So far, the US has not announced the details of the $8.7 billion weapons package, but the funds are likely being pulled from the $17 billion in new military aid for Israel that was included in the $95 billion foreign military aid bill President Biden signed into law back in April. Israel also receives $3.8 billion from the US in annual military aid.

News of the new US support for Israel comes as the Biden administration claims it’s pushing for a ceasefire in Lebanon. But the US has not altered its support of full-throated support for Israel, and the military aid and pledges to defend Israel if the situation escalates have only emboldened Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who rejected the US calls for a truce on Thursday.

September 28, 2024 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Going From “The Civilian Buildings Are Hamas” To “The Civilian Buildings Are Hezbollah”

Caitlin Johnstone, Sep 24, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/going-from-the-civilian-buildings?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=149346214&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

I have no patience for people who this late in the game still say they don’t know enough about the Palestine situation to have an opinion. It’s like, okay, well, that’s a character flaw, and you should change it. 

Western ignorance and indifference on this issue is hurting real human beings; you don’t get to just be all “tee hee I don’t like learning” and expect this attitude to be treated as some kind of cute little personal foible. 

It’s not a complicated issue, bitch. Learn.

Now that Israel has ramped up its attacks on Lebanon, the IDF is saying that Hezbollah are hiding missiles in civilian homes. 

So I guess we’re doing this again. If you liked “All the civilian buildings are Khamas,” you’ll love Israel’s new hit “All the civilian buildings are Khezbollah.”

❖

Israel has spent a year committing genocide, attacking its neighbors, trying to start World War 3, destroying hospitals, assassinating journalists and lying, yet next month the entire western political-media class is still going to spend a day tearfully portraying it as a victim.

Everyone who publicly criticizes Israel gets accused of working for Hamas and Hezbollah, and now Israel apologists are showing up in our notifications making “jokes” about murdering us with weaponized electronic devices. They’re deliberately trying to sow fear among western critics of Israel. 

This is who these people are. This is the quality of person who supports Israel. They’d happily murder us all with the push of a button, just because we criticized their favorite apartheid state.

❖

Netanyahu has reportedly said he is considering a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza. After a year of lies and spin, they’re finally starting to get a bit honest about what this has always been about.

CNN, The Jewish Insider and the Anti-Defamation League have been colluding in a full-on mass media psyop to deceive the public into thinking Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib made an antisemitic comment about her state’s attorney general. CNN’s Jake Tapper has been knowingly lying about comments Tlaib made in an interview, falsely reporting that the congresswoman said Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel only filed charges against anti-genocide protesters “because she’s Jewish and the protesters are not.” CNN’s Dana Bash then repeated these false allegations.

It never happened. They made the whole thing up. Tlaib never made any comments remotely of that nature, and the reporter who did the interview has been all over social media saying CNN is falsely reporting on her words. 

It’s perhaps not the most significant thing happening in the world right now, but it does say important things about the outlets and reporters who tell people how to look at major world events in our society.

CNN, The Jewish Insider and the Anti-Defamation League have been colluding in a full-on mass media psyop to deceive the public into thinking Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib made an antisemitic comment about her state’s attorney general. CNN’s Jake Tapper has been knowingly lying about comments Tlaib made in an interview, falsely reporting that the congresswoman said Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel only filed charges against anti-genocide protesters “because she’s Jewish and the protesters are not.” CNN’s Dana Bash then repeated these false allegations.

It never happened. They made the whole thing up. Tlaib never made any comments remotely of that nature, and the reporter who did the interview has been all over social media saying CNN is falsely reporting on her words. 

It’s perhaps not the most significant thing happening in the world right now, but it does say important things about the outlets and reporters who tell people how to look at major world events in our society.

Biden had another lost at the podium moment the other day, this time forgetting he was meant to be introducing Indian Prime Minister Nerendra Modi after a speech.

Biden supporters were so rabidly nasty to those of us who said he has dementia. They called us Russian agents, fascists, and conspiracy theorists. They never admitted they were wrong. They just pulled him from the race and, much like their president, forgot the whole thing.

It’s so surreal how we’re all seeing clear and undeniable evidence that the US has no functioning president and doesn’t actually need one even as the presidential race consumes all political energy and attention in the nation for months.

During a speech at the Israeli American Council on Thursday, Donald Trump admitted that while he was president the late megadonor Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam were at the White House “almost more than anybody outside of people that worked there” demanding political favors for Israel, and that he “gave” them what they wanted.

In 2013 Sheldon Adelson said the US should drop a nuclear bomb on Iran. This was the sociopathic oligarch who, according to Trump, essentially bought his way into the White House via campaign donations. 

Donald Trump is a big fat Israel slut.

If the UK and US carved out a piece of China or Russia and gave it to the Mormons, that new nation would exist in a continuous state of western-backed violence for as long as it existed. Israel exists in a continuous state of western-backed violence for the exact same reason.

September 26, 2024 Posted by | Israel, media | Leave a comment

Israel: ‘Escalate to De-escalate’

By Ray McGovern and Robert Scheer / ScheerPost Staff Writers, 24 Sept 24  https://scheerpost.com/2024/09/23/israel-escalate-to-de-escalate/

In this week’s episode of “Playing President,” Ray McGovern, 27-year CIA veteran and briefer of five presidents, continues to make sense of the world to “President” Scheer, who prepared for this role through his decades as a journalist, including in-depth interviews with five presidents from Nixon to Clinton. In the universe of “Playing President,” however, Scheer is not a journalist, but instead plays the President of the United States attempting to navigate the geopolitical landscape of governance and media with the help of his trusty daily briefer from the CIA, Ray McGovern.

This week, McGovern updates the president on the major escalations going on in Lebanon via massive Israeli bombing.

September 25, 2024 Posted by | Israel, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Iran ready for nuclear talks at UN ‘if other parties willing’, foreign minister says

By Reuters, September 23, 2024,
Reporting by Dubai Newsroom; editing by Alex Richardson, Christina Fincher and Mark Heinrich https://www.reuters.com/world/iran-ready-nuclear-talks-new-york-if-other-parties-are-willing-foreign-minister-2024-09-23/

DUBAI, Sept 23 (Reuters) – Iran is ready to start nuclear negotiations on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York if “other parties are willing”, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said on Monday in a video published on his Telegram channel.

The U.S., under then-President Donald Trump, withdrew in 2018 from a nuclear accord signed in 2015 by Iran and six world powers under which Tehran curbed its disputed nuclear programme in return for a lifting of international sanctions.

Indirect talks between Washington and Tehran to revive the deal have stalled. Iran is still formally part of the deal but has scaled back commitments to honour it due to U.S. sanctions reimposed on the Islamic Republic.

“I will stay in New York for a few more days than the [Iranian] president and will have more meetings with various foreign ministers. We will focus our efforts on starting a new round of talks regarding the nuclear pact,” Araqchi said.

He added that messages have been exchanged via Switzerland and a “general declaration of readiness” issued, but cautioned that “current international conditions make the resumption of talks more complicated and difficult than before”.

Araqchi said he would not meet with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken: “I do not believe it would be expedient to hold such a dialogue. There were such meetings before but there is currently no suitable ground for that. We are still a long way from holding direct talks.”

Since the renewal of U.S. sanctions during the Trump administration, Tehran has refused to directly negotiate with Washington and worked mainly through European or Arab intermediaries.

Iranian leaders want to see an easing of U.S. sanctions that have significantly harmed its economy. But Iran’s relations with the West have worsened since the Iranian-backed Palestinian Hamas militant group attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, and as Tehran has increased its support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has said the United States is not ready to resume nuclear talks with Iran.

September 25, 2024 Posted by | Iran, politics international | Leave a comment

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