Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he wants to work together with US President-elect Donald Trump to roll back the US-led nuclear accord with Iran.
Speaking in a wide-ranging interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes set to be broadcast later Sunday, Netanyahu said it was not too late to undo the deal that was the landmark foreign policy achievement of President Barack Obama, noting that he would present Trump with five alternatives to the accord.
“And I’ll talk about it – with President Trump,” said Netanyahu, according to a transcript of the interview, adding that Iran had not rushed toward the bomb before because they “were afraid of retribution.”
The Israeli leader, who campaigned vigorously against the deal, said he has “about five things in my mind,” but declined to elaborate before he had spoken with Trump about the issue.
Asked if he expected a better relationship with Washington after the tumultuous years of the Obama administration, Netanyahu admitted he had differences of opinion with the outgoing US president, particularly on the nuclear deal. But he insisted that the matter was never personal.
The Russia-supported operation of the Syrian government forces has almost liberated the second largest city of Aleppo from militants. The victory prompted lame duck President Obama to make a desperate attempt to turn the tide of war.
On December 8, President Barack Obama ordered a waiver of restrictions on military aid for foreign forces and others in Syria. He deemed it «essential to the national security interests» of the US to allow exceptions from provisions of the Arms Export Control Act (AECA), which aims to prevent taxpayer money being spent on supporting and arming international militant groups through covert operations and third states.
From now on, foreign fighters supporting US efforts in Syria would be excused from restrictions on military assistance once the administration believes «it is essential to the national security». Anyone joining anti-Assad forces can get American arms.
Our initial impression is that this new document backtracks, and is an attempt to buy time for the militants, allow them to catch their breath and resupply», the Russian foreign minister said on December 6.
The move paves the way for trafficking weapons to militants and terrorist groups of all kinds under the false pretense of the fight against Islamic State (IS). US-made weapons, including man-portable anti-air missiles, will spread around the world. They can also be used against American military.
There has never been an «opposition moderate group» declaring that its prime goal was fighting IS, not Assad. And the US government has never provided the entire list of the groups it supports. With that said, there is a great probability that the arms supplied by the US will be used to fight the Syrian government and Russian forces.
The president’s decision would lead to an escalation of the conflict, with the US waging a proxy war against Russia, Syria, Iran and other forces allied with Damascus. The escalation may take place very soon. The requirement to give a 15-day notification to Congress will not delay the shipments from European warehouses as Congress is going to be out of session until January. Evidently, the outgoing team is trying to plunge the Trump’s administration into a deeper commitment to an unwinnable proxy war.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier Sunday that he would work with Trump to dismantle the nuclear agreement with Iran, signed last year over Israel’s fierce criticism of the pact.
Trump said during the campaign he wouldtear up the nuclear deal, calling it a “disastrous” and one of the worst agreements in history and has vowed to take a harder line with Tehran.
“Considering Trump’s character and that he measures the cost of everything in dollars, it does not seem likely that he would take strong action against our country,” he said, but “enemies may want to impose a war on us based on false calculations and only taking into consideration their material capabilities.”
“Such a war would mean the destruction of the Zionist regime (Israel) … and will engulf the whole region and could lead to a world war,” Mehr quoted Dehghan as saying.
Iran has long backed armed groups committed to Israel’s destruction and its leaders have called for it to be wiped off the map. Israel fears that Iran’s nuclear program is designed to threaten its existence.
“Among other consequences of the war,” Dehgan added, “would be the destruction of the city-states on the southern shore of the Persian Gulf, because they lack popular support,” in reference to small Western-allied Gulf states such as the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar.
I have watched incredulous as the CIA’s blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story – blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton’s corruption. Yes this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also.
A little simple logic demolishes the CIA’s claims. The CIA claim they “know the individuals” involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilise a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals? Plainly it stinks. The anonymous source claims of “We know who it was, it was the Russians” are beneath contempt.
As Julian Assange has made crystal clear, the leaks did not come from the Russians. As I have explained countless times, they are not hacks, they are insider leaks – there is a major difference between the two. And it should be said again and again, that if Hillary Clinton had not connived with the DNC to fix the primary schedule to disadvantage Bernie, if she had not received advance notice of live debate questions to use against Bernie, if she had not accepted massive donations to the Clinton foundation and family members in return for foreign policy influence, if she had not failed to distance herself from some very weird and troubling people, then none of this would have happened.
The continued ability of the mainstream media to claim the leaks lost Clinton the election because of “Russia”, while still never acknowledging the truths the leaks reveal, is Kafkaesque.
It is terrible that the prime conduit for this paranoid nonsense is a once great newspaper, the Washington Post, which far from investigating executive power, now is a sounding board for totally evidence free anonymous source briefing of utter bullshit from the executive.
The worst thing about all this is that it is aimed at promoting further conflict with Russia. This puts everyone in danger for the sake of more profits for the arms and security industries – including of course bigger budgets for the CIA. As thankfully the four year agony of Aleppo comes swiftly to a close today, the Saudi and US armed and trained ISIS forces counter by moving to retake Palmyra. This game kills people, on a massive scale, and goes on and on.
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