Israel can't afford to bomb Iran while Obama-Rouhani negotiate

Here is an interesting article that shows us some of the results of our "End the Famine" prayer campaign (Aug. 6 to Sept. 14, 2013). That prayer campaign, I believe, resulted first in Obama's refusal to break Jacob's treaty with Laban. Hence, no attack on Syria. On the heels of this came Obama's phone call to the Iranian president and the subsequent negotiations. Israeli PM Netanyahu is "livid" over this, the article says, but it appears to me that the result is that WW3 has been averted, and the coming war will be limited to that region.

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20131019/OPINION/310190317/-1/OPINION/

By John B. Quigley

John B. Quigley is a professor of law at Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.

October 19, 2013 10:35 PM

 

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is livid over President Barack Obama's telephone call with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, and over the prospect that the standoff over Iran's nuclear program may be resolved by diplomacy.

Netanyahu wants a military strike against Iran. He says that is the only way to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

But the jury is still out on Iran's intentions. Iran does, to be sure, have a nuclear program, but it is not clear whether Iran plans to take that program past civilian uses of nuclear power. The Obama administration is estimating, to Netanyahu's chagrin, that even if Iran were to move full speed toward nuclear weaponry, it would take a year or more to get there....

Netanyahu is on shaky ground to be arguing that the possession of nuclear weapons by Iran would be the catastrophe he claims. Since the 1960s, Israel has had a monopoly in the Middle East on nuclear weapons. Israel is reliably thought to have warheads ready to deploy a sizable arsenal of nuclear weapons on a moment's notice. Yet, alone among nuclear powers, Israel refuses to acknowledge even that it has nuclear weapons. When Israel has been called on its nuclear program, the United States has stepped in to protect it. The United States will not state publicly that Israel has nuclear weapons.

While Iran is a party to the 1968 nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Israel is not. So while Israel chides Iran for concealing what it is developing, Israel has never opened itself to any outside monitoring.