Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: A nuclear
weapon is a sin...
Officials in Jerusalem angrily dismissed reports of a breakthrough in last
Saturday’s nuclear negotiations in Istanbul between six world powers (P5+1) and
Iran and most emphatically the claim that “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu played his expected role in this choreography” by criticizing the
negotiators for giving Iran a five-week freebie for continuing enrichment
without limitation, as cited in a Washington Post article on Wednesday,
April 18, by the columnist David Ignatius.
Iran is presented as ready to
agree to stop enriching uranium to 20 percent and halt work at its underground
facility for higher enrichment near Qom, and export its stockpile of highly
enriched uranium for final processing to 20 percent for use in medical isotopes.
Israeli sources say this report is false: Far from this being the shape of an
eventual settlement, it was the shape of American demands relayed to Tehran in
side-channels going via Paris and Vienna. Israel was never informed of Iran
accepting this formula or its presentation to the Istanbul meeting.
Above all, they stressed, Netanyahu has not and will not play a role in any
choreography of this kind staged by the Obama administration.
The Americans
appear to have been taken in by the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei’s public pledge in February not to commit the “grave sin” of building a
nuclear weapon as representing the Islamic regime’s face-saver for caving in to
US pressure. The WP article is indeed captioned” “The stage is set for a deal
with Iran.” Nothing, say debkafile's military and intelligence sources, is farther from the
truth. According to our Iranian sources, there is no sign of the Iranians caving
in.
The article itself appears to represent Washington’s comeback for a radio
interview aired a few hours earlier, Tuesday, April 17, by Israeli Deputy Prime
Minister and Minister for Strategic Affairs Moshe Ya'alon, in which he sharply
criticized the Obama administration for its handling of the nuclear dispute with
Iran: "We (Israel) no longer believe in the Americans, and on the Iran issue, we
are not in the same boat."
“Three years ago, Iran had 1,200 kilos of low enriched uranium; today it has
five and a half tons,” he pointed out.
Ya'alon also warned that after the way the proceedings went in Istanbul,
right after the second round of talks on May 23 in Baghdad, “Israel will review
its steps,”
Citing the classical Hebrew adage: If I do not watch out for
myself, who will? (אם אין אני לי מי לי?) , he noted: “Obama
too has said Israel has the right to self-defense.”
The deputy prime minister was the first Israeli national figure to suggest
that, after May 23, the Netanyahu government would approach a decision on the
date for a countdown to an attack on Iran’s nuclear program.
Yaalon certainly said enough to cause some agitation in Washington, judging
by the flood of phone calls debkafile’s sources report coming in from Washington with requests
for clarifications.
Earlier that Tuesday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in
another radio interview that the“P5+1” group’s talks with Iran must result in a
clear-cut resolution, the end of Iran’s nuclear program. He did not believe they
would, although he hoped to be proved wrong.
The two Israeli ministers would
not have delivered their downbeat comments if indeed US talks with Iran over and
under the negotiating table had achieved, or even approached, the breakthrough
depicted in Washington.
