Jewish Hypocrisy (Ezekiel 17)

 
Study estimates Israel’s nuclear weapon count stands at 115
By YOSSI MELMAN
Fri, 20 Nov 2015, 07:18 PM

Report by US based institute estimates Israel produced 660 kilograms of plutonium in 50 years.
A study conducted by the Washington- based Institute for Science and International Security estimated that Israel had 115 nuclear bombs in its possession in 2014.
The study, which was conducted by the institute’s founder David Albright as part of a more comprehensive evaluation of the worldwide inventory of plutonium, approximated that Israel produced plutonium at a rapid pace in the past 50 years since the inception of its nuclear reactor in Dimona, acquiring 660 kilograms of plutonium, taking into account an estimation error of 150 kilograms.

A single nuclear bomb requires three-to-five kg. of plutonium, the study estimated.
Albright’s assessment of Israel’s nuclear bomb inventory differed from previous studies.
Those based on the revelations of Mordechai Vanunu, the former technician at the Dimona nuclear plant who was imprisoned for 18 years for divulging secrets related to Israel’s purported nuclear weapons program, stood at 200. A study by Sweden’s Peace Institute estimated the count at 80 bombs.

Albright’s study reiterated previous suspicions that Israel’s nuclear weapons are produced in the vicinity of Haifa, and also delved into the myriad of nuclear-weapon delivery vehicles at the country’s disposal.

Israel developed the Jericho-ballistic missile, according to Albright, along with nuclear-capable cruise missiles and an aircraft that can deliver nuclear weapons. It also may have the technology to launch missiles from submarines, Albright reported.

According to the study, Israel also has the advanced know how to miniaturize nuclear warheads and fit them on missiles.

Democrats “Iffy” About Iran Deal (Ezekiel 17)

Obama: Some Democrats getting ‘squishy’ in support of Iran deal

By Deirdre Walsh and Sunlen Serfaty, CNN
Updated 8:51 PM ET, Thu July 30, 2015

Intense battle on Capitol Hill over Iran deal

Washington (CNN)

President Barack Obama said Thursday night that he can feel some Democratic members of Congress getting “squishy” in their support of the Iran deal, bowing to the “political heat” they feel from the “fierce” lobbying campaign against the Iran deal.

“Right now, the opponents of this deal have been flooding congressional offices. There are 20 million ads up right now in districts to put pressure on members of Congress. And they are feeling it,” Obama said on a conference call with grassroots supporters. “I’m meeting with the members of Congress and they don’t really buy the arguments of the opponents but I can tell when they start getting squishy and they start getting squishy because they are feeling the political heat.”
The blunt assessment comes as members of Congress head back into their districts for the month of August, and could face contentious town halls with their constituents.

The President turned the call into something of a call to arms ahead of those town halls, telling his supporters to “get loud and active” against the other side’s lobbying effort. He warned them that without their voices, he believes, the same forces that got the U.S. into the Iraq War could scuttle this deal.

“The lobbying that is taking place on the other side is fierce, it is well financed, it is relentless. And in the absence of your voices, you are going to see the same array of forces that got us into the Iraq War, leading to a situation in which we forgo a historic opportunity and we are back on the path of potential military conflict.”

“If you’ve got a whole bunch of folks who are big check writers to political campaigns, running TV ads and billionaires who happily finance super PACs and they are putting the squeeze on members of Congress, even well-meaning ones and good folks, and they don’t hear from you, this opportunity can slip away,” he added.

Obama warns House Democrats

The conference call follows a warning from Obama to House Democrats on Wednesday night not to reject the nuclear deal.

According to two House Democrats who attended a reception at the White House with the President, he predicted there would be fallout for future relationships abroad if Congress failed to back the agreement with Iran at the end of a 60-day review period in September.

New York Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler summarized the president’s message, saying he told House Democrats that if they helped block the deal, “It’s going to greatly lessen our credibility in dealing with anything in the future because people are going to say for a long time: ‘You can’t deal with them because who knows what they’re going to do.'”

Nadler met one-on-one with the President before the entire House Democratic caucus heard a 20-minute presentation by Obama on the details of the deal. Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee who has been skeptical of the Iran deal, also had a one-on-one meeting with Obama.

With no time for questions after the meeting was disrupted by votes, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said that the President invited any member who had questions to come back. A couple dozen took him up on the offer, so after votes were completed that group returned to the White House and spent nearly two hours with the President.

Earnest described the conversation with House Democrats as “taking on directly some of the most common criticism of the agreement” and also noted his interest in having one-on-one meetings.
“Spending time with individual members of Congress and answering their questions directly, again, I think is an indication that the president feels a personal responsibility to engage with members of Congress who are keeping an open mind,” he said.

Earnest said the President will continue to have many other conversations like these over the next several weeks. He disputed the notion that there is a “sense of urgency” right now due to concerns, but rather said it is because many members of Congress are leaving town over the next few weeks so the President want to sit down and talk with many of them before they left.

Following the discussion, Nadler said he’s still wrestling with the decision of how he’ll vote on the deal and the arguments Obama made.

“His message is that this is important, that if we want to avert a nuclear bomb in Iranian hands, we have to vote yes for this, there’s no other way. There are no other alternatives that bear close scrutiny,” he said.

 Nadler said the President “makes an impressive case” but that he still has questions.

A CNN/ORC poll this week found that a majority of Americans want Congress to reject the nuclear deal with Iran. Overall, 52% say Congress should reject the deal, 44% say it should be approved.

Lew Is No Jew (Ezekiel 17)

  

US Treasury Secretary Lew jeered at JPost Annual Conference

Jerusalem Post Israel News

NEW YORK – US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew faced a crowd vocal in its opposition to the policies of President Barack Obama at The Jerusalem Post Conference in New York on Sunday.

Facing sporadic jeers, the cabinet member laid out a broad defense of the Obama administration’s negotiations with Iran from a financial perspective, offering new details of its expectations of a final agreement. And he defended the president’s record on recommitting US support to Israel, speaking over repeated catcalls.

A full text of his remarks is available here.

“I would only ask that you listen to me as we listen to you,” Lew told the crowd, after the Post’s editor-in-chief, Steve Linde, chastised the hecklers.

Lew’s message on a budding nuclear deal with Iran was especially detailed, tailored for a crowd particularly concerned with its consequences.Sanctions will be reimposed automatically if Iran cheats, he asserted, despite acknowledging that the precise measure for snapping back sanctions has not yet been settled.

“We are still developing the exact mechanisms by which sanctions stemming from UN Security Council resolutions would be reimposed,” Lew said.“But we will not allow such a snapback to be subject to a veto by an individual P5 member, including China or Russia.”

And pushing back against Iran’s condition ruling out international inspections at its military sites, Lew said that an agreement must include “robust monitoring and inspection anywhere and everywhere the IAEA has reason to go.”

He said sanctions have cost Tehran $160 billion in oil revenues since 2012 – “revenues Iran can never recoup.”

“Even if Iran were able to quickly double its current oil exports – a big ‘if’ given how low oil prices are today and how much investment Iran’s infrastructure needs to produce at this level – it would take more than three years for Iran to earn that much money,” Lew said, noting that Iran’s GDP is 15 to 20 percent smaller than it would be without the sanctions regime.

Addressing the Islamic Republic’s backing of terrorism, Lew continued, “The unfortunate truth remains that the cost of this support is sufficiently small, that we will need to remain vigilant with or without a nuclear deal to use our other tools to deter the funding of terror and regional destabilization.”

But claims that the Iranian economy will immediately bounce back after a deal are a “myth,” he said. After Tehran takes specific, concrete steps to roll back its program in the initial stage of the final agreement, it is expected to receive roughly $100b. in sanctions relief.

And Lew rejected a recent report in The New York Times that claimed Iran’s fluctuating uranium stockpile, while the interim Joint Plan of Action has been in place, has violated that short-term deal and has complicated talks toward a final one.

“The IAEA did not reach that conclusion,” he contended. “Quite to the contrary.”

But it was Lew’s restatement of Obama’s commitment to the State of Israel and its long-term security that prompted particularly harsh reactions from the crowd. Lew responded by asserting that no one can question the president’s commitment to the Jewish state.

“Whether it was Nelson Mandela emerging from prison after 27 years to negotiate the peaceful end to apartheid, Ronald Reagan sitting at a table with a nation he called the ‘evil empire’ to negotiate the end to the Cold War, or Menachem Begin meeting at Camp David to negotiate a peace accord with Egypt, Israel’s sworn enemy,” Lew concluded, “diplomacy is not conducted with our friends, but with our adversaries.”

Lew’s address was followed by remarks from several current and former Israeli officials, including National Infrastructure, Energy and Water Minister Yuval Steinitz and Ron Prosor, the ambassador to the United Nations.

Prosor focused his remarks on the difficulty of his work at the UN, but took the opportunity to praise the Obama administration, and its fervent defense of Israel on a consistent basis in international fora.
“The United States of America is standing with Israel every single day in this organization,” Prosor said, “and there is nothing that can substitute that.

“Without the United States of America, we would be in real, real trouble,” he added, praising his American colleague, Ambassador Samantha Power.

Veteran Congresswoman Nita Lowey (D-New York) also addressed the conference, and also faced an emotional crowd.

She reminded them of the power of the US-Israel relationship, which she credited to its bipartisan foundations and to a basis of mutual respect.

“Tone down the overheated rhetoric,” she suggested to all sides of the debate.

Find Secretary Lew’s full remarks to the conference at JPost.com.