Israel poised to strike Iran as Obama Bidens his time Special

Tel Aviv - U.S. Vice President Joe Biden encourages patience during his trip to Israel as its military gears up to strike Iran's nuclear facilities, the region and the world hold their breaths.

Biden tours Israel amid a hailstorm of speculation over an impending Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear capabilities, while Iran’s President arrived in Afghanistan to pursue his country’s interests there. The two diplomatic missions underscore a sensitive regional geopolitical state, signaling tremors in the Middle Eastern balance of power and the state of the Obama administration. Biden told an audience at Tel Aviv University in Israel that the status quo in the region was unsustainable, that his government’s policy was to support Israel’s security stating unambiguously, the “U.S. is determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Period.” Presenting a case for more direct engagement by the president now, several elements of Obama’s agenda are converging in the Middle East, including sliding numbers on perceived national security by the American electorate, a traditional soft underbelly of Democratic administrations. 47% of Americans approve President Obama’s performance on a range of security issues, according to a new Democacy Corps-Third Way poll published March 8th, showing a slide in confidence evidencing disappointment with and pessimism toward the Afghanistan strategy and recent perceptions of security failures. 58% of Americans still generally approve the Afghan mission direction, despite the growing disquiet on the national security front. On Iran, however, only 14% of respondents “feel strongly” positive about Obama’s direction, while another 38% generally approve of his administration’s approach to the Islamic republic. The handling of Iran is a lodestone for Republican attacks against Democrats and it illustrates the constraints to U.S. foreign policy following two wars despite the residual American military presence on Iran’s eastern and western borders. Should Iran go nuclear, a geopolitical game-changing phenomenon, America’s freedom of action would be further encumbered while Tehran’s ability to obstruct international efforts to solve the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis would be enhanced. “Imagine Hezbollah or Hamas operating under an Iranian nuclear security blanket,” mused David Menashri of Tel Aviv University, referring to the groups that have fought Israel tooth and nail with Iranian support for decades. An Israeli preventative assault is the feared outcome of recent developments, one which would start a nuclear arms race between Iran’s neighbours, likely increase Iran’s standing in the Muslim world, and critically confound attempts to constrain Iran’s terrorist proxies. Vice President Biden is consulting Israel on this and a range of other tools designed to prevent Iran developing existential threat capabilities vis-à-vis Israeli survival. Menashri described Iran’s ideological policy of weakening Israeli sovereignty through proxies and rhetoric, met by retorts of equal bellicosity by successive Israeli governments that form the basis not of a pragmatic relationship between the two rivals but of a profoundly populistic dynamic more in tune with regional geopolitics and internal Iranian jockeying. For Iran, nursing its wounds from the ill-conceived presidential elections of late last year, achieving nuclear status would confer legitimacy as well as create leverage from which Tehran could use to destabilize its regional rivals through their shia minorities. In order to develop the necessary nuclear technologies to produce a bomb, the process by which raw uranium is converted into low enriched uranium (LEU) must be repeated in several cycles to increase its purity levels. LEU has 4% purity and is suitable for power generation, while highly enriched uranium (HEU), the weaponised grade of the radioactive substance, is 90%. Western spy agencies differ on the progress Iran has made, unable as they are to confirm the Islamic Republic's claim of reaching 20% enrichment. Iran’s nuclear programme is the subject of international dialogue between members of the Security Council, led by the U.S., seeking to hinder bomb-making capabilities in order to mollify Israel’s preparations for a preventative strike. Biden’s comments indicate an intensified sanctions regime is the preferred track for Obama’s team, as a fury of diplomatic initiatives directed toward Russia and China revealing this course. On Wednesday the U.S. lifted sanctions against the Russian aerospace company Glavkosmos, which prevented the firm from supplying high tech parts to the American market since July 1998. Though this could be related to establishing a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty later this year after START I expired in December, the announcement coincided with Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ claim of consensus with Russia on new sanctions. Moscow’s delayed delivery of S-300 anti-aircraft missile batteries to Iran, capable of significantly disrupting Israeli aircraft, due to “technical issues” appears to confirm, at the very least, the Kremlin’s complicity with the White House. Gates also indicated positive results from a push to have Gulf oil states win China’s support—or abstinence more likely—in any binding security council resolution to coerce Iran into an arrangement whereby its facilities are scrutinised by intrusive inspections from the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). According to Major General (ret.) Giora Eiland, former Head of the Israeli National Security Council, any settlement with Iran induced by stiff sanctions would entail acceptance of Iranian nuclearisation, albeit limited to civilian production. This scenario requires that Iran not be allowed to purchase raw uranium, retain any spent fuel, refuse any snap inspections anywhere and sign their commitment in writing. The challenge to this best-case scenario is on the one hand intransigence by both Iran and the U.S., the latter being long committed to a policy of regime change and likely opposed to any granting of legitimacy such an agreement would confer upon the former, and on the other hand Israel’s vanishing patience. Successive U.S. administrations since 1980 have refused direct negotiations with the leadership in Tehran, fearing the political fallout both at home and with the burgeoning opposition in Iran, lately referred to as the Green Movement. Evidencing the political obstacles to be overcome in Washington and at the UN, Biden paradoxically noted in Tel Aviv, “Iran has refused to cooperate,” adding, the “U.S. is determined to keep up pressure on Iran to change its course.” Brazil’s refusal as a non-permanent member of the Security Council, to support new sanctions against Iran precludes an unanimous resolution, meaning the next few weeks will see intense diplomatic lobbying. Divining the outcome of the latest Middle East brinkmanship lies in unravelling the geopolitics of the region in the context of timing and the expectant new round of peace talks centred on a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine. The European Union, Russia, the U.S. and the United Nations, the so-called Mideast Quartet, will meet in Moscow next week to kick-start negotiations that need prevail over Arab states’ outrage at the latest new settlement expansion in East Jerusalem, which presents the biggest obstacle to a peace agreement. Politics and, potentially, respective election cycles will determine the level of U.S. engagement, and Israel’s acceptance of conditions rendered by international accord. A regime as stable as Iran’s, meaning the continuity of its elite, is naturally endowed with more patience, while Israel’s threat perceptions and the average two-year lifespan of its governments leaves little space for manoeuvre.