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November 22, 2009
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Obama’s Iran sanctions strategy is routed by Chinese, Russian rebuffs
DEBKAfile Special Report
November 18, 2009, 6:09 PM (GMT+02:00)
Chinese president Hu Jintao said clearly after meeting US
president Barack Obama in Beijing Tuesday, Nov. 17, that their governments disagree on tougher sanctions for Iran – or any other issue relating to the Islamic republic. DEBKAfile’s sources report that this rebuff has led Washington’s efforts to round up big power endorsement of harsh penalties for Iran’s continued intransigence on its nuclear program, such as an embargo on refined petrol products and gasoline, have come to a dead end. The efficacy of unilateral American sanctions, the only non-military option still left to Washington, is questionable.
Secretary of state Hillary Clinton made a last-ditch bid Wednesday, Nov. 18, to scale China’s negative wall, before the US president left for South Korea.
She tried to talk the Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo into at least issuing a Beijing statement on Iran. He refused outright.
The Chinese rejection followed a rebuff from Moscow in the form of a comment by Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov that it was premature to say that diplomatic efforts for defusing tensions over Iran’s nuclear program had failed. He said it was too soon
to talk about stepping up sanctions on Iran, if at all, so contradicting the supportive message Obama received from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev when they met in Singapore last week and agreed that time was running out for Iran to respond to international efforts to meet it halfway.
Tuesday, before Beijing and Moscow knocked sanctions on the head, Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu said optimistically that the Iranian nuclear issue should be left for the world
powers and international community to deal with. In a few short hours, that option had melted away.
In the last 24 hours, Israelis have been too busy discussing the expansion of the Gilo neighborhood
of Jerusalem to notice that their former and current governments, headed respectively by Ehud Olmert and Binyamin Netanyahu, have just suffered one of their biggest foreign policy defeats. They are now confronted with a most unwelcome dilemma.
Begin Excerpt from MIDDLE EAST ONLINE
November 19, 2009
Little behind Obama’s tough Mideast talk
Analysts: Obama has no real power over Israel despite his hard tone against Tel Aviv.
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is hardening its tone against Israel, but analysts warned Wednesday the tough talk was mere bluster hiding the lack of a viable plan to revive the Middle East peace process.
“You’ve had three ‘no’s’ to an American president in his first year,” said Aaron David Miller, who has served as advisor on Middle East peacemaking to previous US administrations
President Barack Obama is now “faced with the default position, which is words,” said Miller from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
” And the louder they shout, the more there is a paradox.
The tougher the words are, the weaker we look.”
Ten months into office, Obama has hit a brick wall as his high-profile push to restart negotiations falls flat, damaging his broader aim to improve ties with the Arab and Muslim world.
After coming into office vowing to make the push for an elusive peace a top priority, the administration appears weaker than ever in the Middle East.
Israel’s hardline Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly defied US calls to totally halt illegal Jewish settlements.
After Tel Aviv on Tuesday approved the building of hundreds of new homes in Palestinian East Jerusalem, Obama said such moves make it harder for Israel to make peace with its neighbors and ensure its own security.
“I think it embitters the Palestinians in a way that could end up being very dangerous,” the president warned on Fox News Wednesday.
Haim Malka, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said that “the administration’s change of tone is intended to send a strong message that settlement building hurts efforts to restart negotiations.”
But it is “unclear whether the tougher language and approach will actually help restart substantive negotiations or merely heighten Israeli misgivings about negotiations with a weak and divided Palestinian leadership,” he said.
Shibley Telhami, a Middle East analyst at the University of Maryland, said Obama had no choice but to make a strong statement on the project in Gilo, Palestinian East Jerusalem.
“The administration has been counseling privately against this project, and obviously it is seen as a direct challenge,” Telhami said.
On Tuesday White House and State Department officials both voiced dismay at the construction plans and warn the move could stymie hopes of breathing fresh life into the deadlocked peaace talks.
Amjad Atallah, an analyst with the New America Foundation, said the latest US remarks show “the administration has decided to draw a rhetorical line in the sand” but without making Israel pay the consequences.
“You can expect the Israelis to continue poking their finger in America’s eye — until they are made to stop,” Atallah said.
In a sign of just how far apart the two sides are, Palestinian officials have said they intend to ask the UN Security Council to recognize Palestinian statehood in a unilateral move discouraged by the US.
All Jewish settlements are illegal under international law because they are built on Arab land (mainly Palestinian), illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.
Around 200,000 illegal Jewish settlers are estimated to have moved into the dozen or so Israeli settlements in Palestinian East Jerusalem.
There are about 300,000 more illegal Jewish settlers currently living in settlements the Palestinian West Bank.
The settlers adhere to radical ideologies and are extremely violent to almost-defenceless Palestinians.
Israel occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem in 1967.
Under international law, neither East nor West Jerusalem is considered Israel’s capital. Tel Aviv is recognised as Israel’s capital, pending a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.
East Jerusalem is considered by the international community to be illegally occupied by Israel, in contravention of several binding UN Security Council Resolutions.
In these resolutions, the United Nations Security Council has also called for no measures to be taken to change the status of Jerusalem until a final settlement is reached between the sides.
Declaring Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is an attempt to change this status, and is thus a violation of these Security Council resolutions.
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