1. World Jewish Congress: New Mideast Course for America?by Hana Levi Julian
The World Jewish Congress has added its voice to the growing chorus of concern about the apparent White House hostility towards Israel. The organization sent a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama, expressing the group's deepening concern over the U.S. foreign policy on the Jewish State, as well as the increasing Iranian nuclear threat to Israel and the world.
WJC President Ronald S. Lauder told Obama in the letter released to the media Thursday, “Jews around the world are concerned today... about the nuclear ambitions of an Iranian regime that brags about its genocidal intentions against Israel... that the Jewish state is being isolated and de-legitimized... [and] about the dramatic deterioration of diplomatic relations between the United States and Israel.”
Lauder, heir to the mammoth international Estee Lauder cosmetics fortune, also expressed American Jews' anguish at what appears to be escalating hostility towards Israel from the White House.
“Can it be true that America is no longer committed to a final status agreement that provides defensible borders for Israel?” he asked bluntly. “Is a new course being charted that would leave Israel with the indefensible borders that invited invasion prior to 1967?”
Lauder also asked about the country's strategic ambitions in context of the “broader Middle East,” noting that the Obama administration's “desire to improve relations with the Muslim world is well known."
"But,” Lauder added, “is friction with Israel part of this new strategy? Is it assumed worsening relations with Israel can improve relations with Muslims? History is clear on the matter: appeasement does not work. It can achieve the opposite of what is intended.”
McCain's Warning
U.S. Senator John McCain, meanwhile, contends that the United States has been backing away from a brewing fight with Iran, while that country moves ever closer to having nuclear weapons.
McCain opened a Senate hearing Wednesday by saying that Iran will succeed in obtaining an atomic bomb unless the United States acts more boldly. Speaking figuratively, the Arizona Republican said the U.S. keeps pointing a loaded gun at Iran but failing to “pull the trigger.”
Lauder echoed McCain's concern, asking, “What about the most dangerous player in the region? Shouldn't the United States remain focused on the single biggest threat that confronts the world today? That threat is a nuclear-armed Iran.”
His letter added that world Jewry embraces Obama's “sincerity” in his “quest to seek a lasting peace,” but urged the White House to “end our public feud with Israel and to confront the real challenges that we face together.”
The World Jewish Congress, founded in Geneva in 1936, is an international organization with headquarters in New York representing Jewish communities and organizations in 80 countries on six continents. According to the organization's mission statement, it seeks to “foster the unity and creative survival of the Jewish people while maintaining its spiritual, cultural and social heritage.” Due to its global status, WJC has special credentials and recognition at the United Nations, where it has a diplomatic seat and a presence within many of its institutions, commissions and sub-bodies.
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2. Russia: Iranian Nuke Reactor Ready for August 2010 Launchby Hana Levi Julian
Russia announced Wednesday that the Iranian nuclear reactor it is helping to build is set to launch its operations this August. Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russia's state nuclear corporation, said the reactor currently being completed at Bushehr is on schedule.
Kiriyenko told reporters during a visit to Argentina, “Bushehr doesn't threaten the regime of nonproliferation in any way. No one has any concerns about Bushehr.”
The announcement comes in the wake of the 40-nation nuclear summit just hosted by the Obama administration in Washington, D.C.
Cooperation - Not With Russia
Ellen Tauscher, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, testified Wednesday before the U.S. House Armed Services Committee that President Barack Obama had “gained cooperation from Ukraine, Chile, Canada and others to help lock down this dangerous material.”
She carefully avoided any statement specifying that Russia would cooperate in U.S. efforts to contain Iranian nuclear development activities, focusing instead on Obama's diplomatic successes.
The U.S., she said, had just signed a new START Treaty in Prague, which she said would enable Washington and Russia to “safely reduce our nuclear forces because the threat environment has changed. Today's most pressing nuclear threats come from terrorists and additional countries seeking nuclear weapons."
The nuclear summit was intended to seek commitments from participants to “take steps to secure vulnerable nuclear materials and prevent nuclear smuggling,” Tauscher said, “in order to stop terrorists or criminal organizations from acquiring these dangerous materials.
“We must deny highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium to terrorist groups because they would surely use the material to develop a weapon and use the weapon itself,” she added.
Tauscher avoided mentioning Iran's current activities in precisely this area, an uncomfortable reality made even less palatable by the fact that the U.S. has so far failed to convince the other members of the United Nations Security Council to agree to impose harsher sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
“We are working to build international consensus for steps that will convince Iran's leaders to change course,” she told the committee, “including new UN Security Council sanctions that will further clarify their choice of upholding their NPT (Non Proliferation Treaty) and safeguards obligations or facing increasing isolation and painful consequences.”
Netanyahu and Medvedev
In February, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow on the issue. Netanyahu's meeting came on the heels of an announcement by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the Natanz nuclear plant had begun to enrich uranium up to 20 percent. Netanyahu told Medvedev, "What is needed now are very tough sanctions that can influence this regime and severe sanctions that will considerably and convincingly harm the import and export of oil."
Medevedev was polite but noncommittal in his response, and Russia later announced that it did not believe it necessary to impose such harsh restrictions on Iran at the present time.
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Russia announced Wednesday that the Iranian nuclear reactor it is helping to build is set to launch its operations this August. Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russia's state nuclear corporation, said the reactor currently being completed at Bushehr is on schedule.
Kiriyenko told reporters during a visit to Argentina, “Bushehr doesn't threaten the regime of nonproliferation in any way. No one has any concerns about Bushehr.”
The announcement comes in the wake of the 40-nation nuclear summit just hosted by the Obama administration in Washington, D.C.
Cooperation - Not With Russia
Ellen Tauscher, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, testified Wednesday before the U.S. House Armed Services Committee that President Barack Obama had “gained cooperation from Ukraine, Chile, Canada and others to help lock down this dangerous material.”
She carefully avoided any statement specifying that Russia would cooperate in U.S. efforts to contain Iranian nuclear development activities, focusing instead on Obama's diplomatic successes.
The U.S., she said, had just signed a new START Treaty in Prague, which she said would enable Washington and Russia to “safely reduce our nuclear forces because the threat environment has changed. Today's most pressing nuclear threats come from terrorists and additional countries seeking nuclear weapons."
The nuclear summit was intended to seek commitments from participants to “take steps to secure vulnerable nuclear materials and prevent nuclear smuggling,” Tauscher said, “in order to stop terrorists or criminal organizations from acquiring these dangerous materials.
“We must deny highly enriched uranium and separated plutonium to terrorist groups because they would surely use the material to develop a weapon and use the weapon itself,” she added.
Tauscher avoided mentioning Iran's current activities in precisely this area, an uncomfortable reality made even less palatable by the fact that the U.S. has so far failed to convince the other members of the United Nations Security Council to agree to impose harsher sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
“We are working to build international consensus for steps that will convince Iran's leaders to change course,” she told the committee, “including new UN Security Council sanctions that will further clarify their choice of upholding their NPT (Non Proliferation Treaty) and safeguards obligations or facing increasing isolation and painful consequences.”
Netanyahu and Medvedev
In February, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow on the issue. Netanyahu's meeting came on the heels of an announcement by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the Natanz nuclear plant had begun to enrich uranium up to 20 percent. Netanyahu told Medvedev, "What is needed now are very tough sanctions that can influence this regime and severe sanctions that will considerably and convincingly harm the import and export of oil."
Medevedev was polite but noncommittal in his response, and Russia later announced that it did not believe it necessary to impose such harsh restrictions on Iran at the present time.
Comment on this story
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