Ishmael Hates Esau More Than Jacob (Genesis 28)

  

Saudis consider Iran – not Israel – their top enemy, study finds

By The Associated Press
Published 01:49 05.06.15

An Israeli college has quietly conducted an opinion poll in Saudi Arabia, concluding that the Saudi public is far more concerned about the threats of Iran and the Islamic State group than Israel, and that the vast majority of Saudis support a decade-old peace offer to the Jewish state.

The survey conducted by the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya provides Israelis with a rare glimpse inside Saudi Arabia and may change Israeli perceptions about the desert kingdom. The two countries are longtime foes with no diplomatic relations.

The poll found that 53 percent of Saudis named Iran as their main adversary, while 22 percent said it is the Islamic State group and only 18 percent said Israel. The poll, conducted in conjunction with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, surveyed 506 Saudis over the phone and had a margin of error of 5 percentage points. It was carried out over the past two weeks, starting in late May.

The poll also showed that a majority of Saudis think their country should seek nuclear weapons if Iran acquires an atomic bomb. A whopping 85 percent also support the Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative, which calls for peace with Israel in return for a full Israeli withdrawal to its pre-1967 borders.

The results indicate significant common ground between Saudi Arabia and Israel, whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been outspoken in his criticism of an emerging nuclear deal between Iran and global powers. Netanyahu, who believes Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon, says the deal will leave much of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure intact. He has also claimed that unnamed Arab countries, presumably Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Gulf countries, share his concerns. Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons, insisting its atomic program is for purely peaceful purposes.

“What we think here in Israel about the Saudis is not exactly what they are,” said Alex Mintz, who heads the IDC’s Institute for Policy and Strategy and oversaw the survey. “There is a great identity of interests and threats and agendas … some would even like to join forces with Israel.”

The questioners told respondents that they worked for the IDC, though they did not say they or the school were Israeli. Mintz said few people questioned the source of the survey, and those who did raise questions did not make the connection to Israel. He said there were no unpleasant exchanges.

The institute, which last year carried out similar surveys of Iranians and Gazans, said it relied on information gathered from the Saudi Arabian directory and bureau of statistics to proportionally sample 13 regions of the country based on their populations. It said Arabic-speaking Israelis called a mixture of mobile phones and landlines and encountered a 22 percent response rate.

Mintz said the full results of the poll would be revealed next week at the IDC’s 15th annual “Herzliya Conference,” a gathering of Israel’s military and political elite, but offered The Associated Press the data in advance.

Although Israel and Saudi Arabia have no official contact they have grown closer in recent years, mostly due to their common concern over Iran. A quarter of the poll’s respondents said Israel and Saudi Arabia should join forces to fight Iran together.

Saudi Arabia was the driving force behind the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, offering Israel a comprehensive peace with dozens of Arab and Muslim countries in exchange for a withdrawal from all territories captured in the 1967 Mideast war and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Netanyahu has said the initiative might be a starting point for discussions but that it is unacceptable as a take-it-or-leave-it offer.

Mintz said he hoped the Israeli government would seize on the new information to adjust its traditional policies.

“We assume that we know what people in Iran, Gaza and Saudi Arabia think, but guessing and actual empirical evidence is two different things. For example, nobody that I talked to thought that Saudis would say by a margin of 3-to-1 that Iran scared them more than Israel, nobody predicted that,” he said.

“This is really a Sunni-Shiite divide and it has nothing to do with Israel and their focus has shifted. There is a commonality of interests between Saudi Arabia and Israel right now that the Israeli government should take advantage of and capitalize because it is unique in the history of the two states,” he said.

China & Russia, Two Of The Largest Economies Are Helping Iran (Daniel 7)

The Iran nuclear talks will not pivot on whether the Iranian economy is brought to its knees

Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif Zarif still has his game face

Written by

Steve LeVine@stevelevine | Quartz

February 3, 2015

The Obama administration official in charge of sanctions on Iran, Russia, and ISIL, is leaving the US Treasury Department for the No. 2 job at the Central Intelligence Agency. And in an exit interview with the Wall Street Journal, David Cohen suggests his change in roles indicates the elevated importance that sanctions now hold in US foreign policy and national security issues.

Indeed Cohen, Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence since June 2011, essentially affirmed that that the main gripe of Iranian leader Ali Khamenei is valid—the US, through economic sanctions, is trying to force Tehran to its knees. But in asserting that economic stress will ultimately force Khamenei into finally striking a nuclear deal with the West, he misses what may be the core issue in the talks.

No one disputes that the sanctions, combined with low oil prices, have markedly impacted Iran’s financial situation. But the question of whether a deal is struck by the March 24 interim deadline (or the June 30 final deadline) may not ride on such bread-and-butter issues.

Instead, one question may be whether Khamenei is interested more in his people’s living standards, or that of the Revolutionary Guard. Depending on your source, the Guards control between 10% and half the Iranian economy, and thus profit from the current state of affairs. A struggle between the Guards and Iranians who want a nuclear deal is playing out in public.

Another question is whether Khamenei—and the US Congress for that matter—is prepared to stand down from a quarter-century of politics centered on US-Iranian antagonism.

It’s not surprising that Cohen would tout the sanctions on his way over to Langley. But we won’t know until later this year whether he is right.

Obama Looking After His “Nuclear Legacy” Not Iran’s Threat (Daniel 3)

War threat on Iran ‘heightened’ if nuclear talks fail, Obama warns

What Nobel Peace Prize?

By MICHAEL WILNER, REUTERS

01/16/2015 21:01

The Jerusalem Post

WASHINGTON – New congressional action against Iran would blow up an international diplomatic effort to stop their nuclear program through peaceful means, US President Barack Obama said on Friday, in a pointed warning to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Joined by British Prime Minister David Cameron at the White House, Obama said he would veto any new legislation that would “undercut,” “undermine” and “set back” the nuclear talks, now a year old and facing a deadline in March for diplomats to reach a political agreement.

Leaders in Congress, now united under Republican control, are preparing a bill that would trigger new sanctions against Iran should the negotiations fail. The working draft of the bill, they argue, does not impose new sanctions during the talks.

But the Iranians wouldn’t interpret the bill that way, Obama said. The result, he said, would be a collapse in talks with the United States to blame, and the chances of a “military showdown” suddenly amplified.

“There would be some sympathy to that view around the world, which means that the sanctions that we have in place now would potentially fray,” Obama added.

“Congress should be aware that if this diplomatic solution fails, then the risks and likelihood that this ends up being at some point a military confrontation is heightened,” he added. “And Congress will have to own that, as well.”

The White House seeks a deal that would cap and roll back key aspects of Iran’s nuclear program, if not fully dismantle the vast infrastructure currently in place. From a strategic standpoint, the administration seeks to place the onus of a diplomatic failure on the Iranians – a strategy compromised by congressional action.

Cameron said he respected the sovereignty of Congress and would not lobby lawmakers, answering a reporter’s question on whether he had made individual calls to US senators on the matter.
But he also made clear that the United Kingdom opposes any new sanctions measure from Washington.

The talks require “the space for negotiations to succeed,” he said, adding that the timing was wrong for new sanctions measures.

Obama, once again, put the chances of success at the negotiating table at “less than 50-50,” and said, “if Iran cannot say yes…then we’re going to have to explore other options.”

Sanctions are “not the only option,” he continued, in a series of references to the prospect of force.
“I will veto a bill that comes to my desk,” he said, asking lawmakers “to hold off for a few months to see if we have the possibility of solving a big problem without resorting, potentially, to war.

“If I’m not persuading Congress,” he added, “I promise you, I’ll be taking my case to the American people on this.”

Answering a follow-up question from a reporter on the matter, he tampered down his rhetoric on the potential for military confrontation.

“I am not, repeat not, suggesting we are on an immediate war footing should negotiations with Iran fail,” he said.

The Saudi Horn Fights The Iranian Horn (Daniel 7-8)

Nevermind U.S. shale, Saudi Arabia’s oil power play targets Iran’s economy

Diane Francis | December 27, 2014 | Last Updated: Dec 27 7:00 AM ET
More from Diane Francis

The Saudis and Gulf States have engineered this price crash as a tactic in their war against Iran, its potential nuclear bomb and its proclivity to export terrorism across their neighborhood.

All politics are local, except for oil politics.

The Russians think these low oil prices are an American-Saudi conspiracy. American commentators believe that the Saudis have driven down prices to punish North Dakota’s shale oil revolution and drive its high-cost producers out of the game. In Canada, the paranoia in Calgary is that the Saudis and other Gulf oil producers want to drive the oil sands out of business.

But what are the Saudis up to and are they powerful enough to control prices? This week the Saudi minister blamed low prices on oversupply from North America. But that is simply trash talk.

The Saudis and Gulf States have engineered this price crash as a tactic in their war against Iran, its potential nuclear bomb and its proclivity to export terrorism across their neighborhood. This collapse in prices is cheaper than what they face in terms of military and other costs down the road if Iran is not solved.

This cartel’s days are far from over and the Saudis and their Gulf allies are in charge. The Saudis produce 13% of oil worldwide and the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain account for another 12.48% for a total of 25.48%. (All of the oil cartel members represent 45% of all production and 81% of all reserves).

The Gulf States’ control is absolute because the governments own the stuff; they can act unilaterally unlike free enterprise nations; they have more of it than anyone else; they have gotten very rich over the decades and can finance themselves at lower prices and they have the lowest costs in the world so lower prices don’t mean losses.

This means they will win any game of chicken and, by the way, they have done this before. They outlast competitors and can, and do, ignore their cartel colleagues like Nigeria and Venezuela who are dependent on oil revenue and are whining about prices a lot these days.

This price drop is simply economic war waged by the Arabs against Iran and a shot across the bow in the Shia versus Sunni religious war underway in the Middle East. Iran is “Shia” oil and Gulf or Saudi oil is “Sunni” oil. Iran has exported revolution for decades throughout the region and has spent years developing nuclear power that may, or may not, become nuclear weapons. Indications are that Iran has even been financing ISIS (even though it is Sunni-based) just to create chaos among Sunnis. And there is solid evidence that Iran has been supporting the wholesale suppression of Sunnis in both Iraq and Syria.

The timing of this price drop is designed to keep Iran at the nuclear negotiating table by crippling its economy (and that of its nuclear supplier, Russia). These talks continue with faintly positive signs of resolution and the oil cloud will help. It may even be a bargaining chip and that is why it would be a good bet if Iran signs onto a non-proliferation treaty, and meaningful audits and inspections, prices will increase.

 

Few realize that fear grips the Gulf States and has led to a massive military buildup, for political and religious reasons.

“Almost all Middle Eastern and North African states are evolving in the opposite direction of Europe, having doubled – or even tripled – their defense spending in recent years,” according to a 2014 report by the European Union Institute for Securities Studies. “Six of the world’s top ten military spenders are now located in the Middle East and North Africa: all of the Gulf States, for instance, have tripled their spending since 2003.”

Arab concerns are that if Iran gets a bomb, they must too at a cost of half a trillion dollars or more over several years. This means if you are the King of Saudi Arabia the calculus behind this price plummet is simple: lower oil prices at a cost of tens of billions to the Royal treasury in order to avoid spending half a trillion to develop nuclear deterrence. The aim is to bring Iran to heel, and make support for Shia violence against Sunnis difficult or impossible.

By the way, this price crash has been welcomed, endorsed and possibly encouraged by Washington and Europeans, even the Chinese. All three regions are huge net importers of oil and have gotten a boost in their GDPs as a result.

Another side benefit is that Mr. Putin has been delivered the biggest sanction of all for illegally invading Ukraine. The Russian economy, and corporate roster, is headed for a major meltdown and Mr. Putin is now exposed as a potentate with a gasoline station, not a sustainable empire builder.
Another region to benefit is the Western Hemisphere because outlier Venezuela has been humbled and has contributed greatly to Cuba’s change of heart toward Washington. Fellow travellers in Moscow and Caracas can no longer subsidize the Castro regime which has helped lead to the U.S.-Cuba agreement. This is an underappreciated landmark deal that will shift attitudes and alliances throughout South America and the Caribbean where U.S. (and Canadian) companies have been blocked, confiscated and badgered by Cuba and its proteges.

Finally, Canada’s economic prospects have been trimmed somewhat too by the oil situation, but the fallout is far from fatal. Canadians in general will benefit for a while from lower energy costs, but Alberta will feel some pain. However, it’s the most fiercely free enterprise region in the nation whose fortunes have ebbed and flowed on the whims of a handful of sheikhs (and Ottawa) before.

Albertans will do what they always do: tighten their belts, shake out the high-cost producers and continue to be the country’s principle engine of economic growth.

Iranian Nuclear Horn Committed To THE END (Daniel 8:8)

Budget pressure unlikely to deflect Iran from nuclear goals

Iran’s Nuclear Program

By Mehrdad Balali

DUBAI Mon Dec 22, 2014 6:21am EST

(Reuters) – A big oil price slide will hurt Iran’s attempts to rescue battered living standards, but economic pain is unlikely to soften its stance in nuclear talks or end aid to allies such as Syria, matters seen by its ruling clerics as strategic priorities.

Economic misery due to sanctions and mismanagement has been a reality for years, and while social strains in the 76 million population are deep, the clerics will seek to contain them, say experts examining Iran’s budget plans for 2015.

The largest drop in oil prices since the 2008 financial crisis means more budget pressure for the OPEC member, already bereft of tens of billions of dollars in oil revenue due to Western sanctions and years of economic mismanagement.

And tougher economic times may spur Tehran’s determination to end a nuclear dispute and lift sanctions that isolate it from the global banking system and deter most foreign investors.
But significant changes in Iran’s regional strategy including its approach to any nuclear deal are unlikely.

That is partly because funds for security affairs come from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, not the government. He also decides nuclear policy.

“Our support to our brother Assad will never change,” said a senior Iranian official, referring to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “Because of (declining) oil prices we face economic hardship … but we will mange to continue our support to Syria, militarily and financially.”

Ali Vaez, of the International Crisis Group think-tank, said the oil price fall would hurt, but was unlikely to make Iran accept a nuclear deal “that it views as lopsided”.

“Iran’s support for its allies in Iraq and Syria is not a questions of means, it’s a strategic necessity. This is why neither the fall of the rial in 2012 or economic malaise in 2013 affected Iran’s support for its Syrian and Iraqi allies.”

Iran and world powers are negotiating to end a standoff over Tehran’s nuclear goals. Tehran denies Western charges it is seeking nuclear weapons.

President Hassan Rouhani presented a “cautious, tight” budget on Dec. 7 in response to falling oil prices, now almost $10 a barrel below the $70 his budget was based on.

Spending was six percent above this year, a real terms cut due to inflation of 20 percent.

But with revenues pressured, plans to hike defense spending 33 percent prompted speculation that Rouhani wants to placate security hardliners, hoping they will indulge his bid to win a nuclear deal and end sanctions.

POWERFUL HAWKS

Powerful anti-Western hawks in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), who report to Khamenei, have been wary of the negotiations.

They have tolerated the talks, diplomats speculate, largely because his big 2013 election win revealed the depth of anger over economic mismanagement and support for his aim of ending Iran’s international isolation.

Mehrdad Emadi of Betamatrix International Consultancy suggested Rouhani had to consider the IRGC in setting economic policy because it could spoil any nuclear deal.

Greater defense spending was aimed at “giving them a big piece of the public pie so they can stop kicking up a fuss when it comes to negotiations, especially those with the Americans.”

“The IRGC are extremely sensitive to any reduction of ‘military aid’ to what they see as strategic allies.”

The IRGC could ruin any rapprochement with the West it felt might hurt its interests.

Last year, Iran granted Syria a $3.6 billion credit facility to buy oil products, with another $1 billion for non-oil products.

Domestically the government has ways of mitigating the pain.

One is gradual depreciation of the official exchange rate at which it converts oil revenues from dollars into rials. This allows a progressively smaller amount of dollars to supply the same rial revenues.

The central bank’s official exchange has dropped to 27,043 from 25,651 at the end of June and 24,774 at the end of last year. Next year’s budget is based on a rate of 28,500, showing the government plans to continue this strategy.

Meanwhile, the free-market price of the rial has stabilized at about 35,000, far from lows near 40,000 two years ago. That suggests most Iranians think that while cheaper oil will pressure the rial, they do not yet expect an economic collapse or a run on the currency.

Emadi said Rouhani would try to shield the poorest from spending cuts to avoid any repeat of the unrest that followed 2009’s disputed presidential election.

A 30 percent rise in bread prices on Dec. 1 rattled Iranians, but there was no major unrest. Emadi said the government later took steps to compensate poorer households.

There could be further subsidy cuts but open protest was unlikely since “the regime’s machinery of repression still makes this very risky”, said Scott Lucas of EA WorldView, a specialist website on Iran and Syria.

(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi, Andrew Torchia and William Maclean; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Just Another Ben Of Hypocrisy

Netanyahu calls for increased pressure on Iran to abandon nuclear ambitions

Associated Press in Washington
Sunday 7 December 2014 14.49 EST

Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Sunday an extension of nuclear talks with Iran should be used to further increase pressure on the country to give up its atomic weapons ambitions and capabilities. His comments came as US secretary of state John Kerry cited movement in the negotiations and urged patience while vowing that the process would not continue without “tangible progress”.

Speaking to the same middle east policy conference in Washington, Netanyahu and Kerry both pointed to cooperation between moderate Arab states and others in the fight against Islamic State (Isis) extremists as a potentially hopeful sign for defeating the group and improving prospects for Arab-Israeli peace. But they also noted tremendous hurdles in achieving those goals.

Netanyahu said it was fortunate that international negotiators from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany did not meet last month’s deadline for a deal with Iran because he said an agreement reached then “would have effectively left Iran as a threshold nuclear power.”

Those talks have been extended until July 2015, with the goal of reaching a framework for a deal by the end of March.

Netanyahu said Israel’s “voice” and “concerns” had played a critical role in preventing a bad deal from being reached in November. He added it is imperative to use the extra time to step up and reinforce demands that Iran prove its nuclear program is peaceful as it claims and not, as many suspect, a cover for atomic weapons development.

“Now we must use the time available to increase the pressure on Iran to dismantle its nuclear weapons capability,” he said in a videotaped message to the conference at The Brookings Institution.

Netanyahu did not elaborate on how the pressure should be increased. Some Israeli officials and US lawmakers have called for the US to impose more sanctions on Iran but the Obama administration is resisting this, saying more sanctions would violate the terms of an interim agreement reached with Iran and crater the ongoing negotiations.

In his remarks, which followed Netanyahu’s taped speech, Kerry acknowledged differences between Israel and the US on how to approach Iran but stressed that the two countries’ goals are the same.

“While we may disagree on tactics from time to time, when it comes to the core strategic goal – no nuclear weapon – there is not an inch of daylight between the United States and the state of Israel,” he said.

Kerry maintained that the interim nuclear accord with Iran is holding and that fears that the Iranians would cheat have proven to be unfounded thus far. He said new ideas on how to achieve a more durable agreement have been presented and that it was his hope that the late March target for a framework would be met with little need for further negotiation.

“We have no intention of negotiating forever,” Kerry said. “Absent measurable progress, who knows how much longer this could go on.”

But he also stressed the importance of sealing a deal that keeps Iran from having nuclear weapons.
“If we succeed in reaching an agreement, the entire world, including Israel, will be safer for it,” he said.

In his comments, Netanyahu said that cooperation between Israel and moderate Arab states in the fight against Islamic extremism could “open the door to peace” between Israel and the Palestinians. However, he said that the Palestinian leadership must end incitement against Israel if that is to occur.

“The collapse of the old order has made clear to pragmatic Arab governments that Israel is not the enemy,” he said.

Kerry expressed similar thoughts and noted that common cause against extremists was already “making steady, measurable progress” against Isis in Syria and Iraq.

Kerry, who invested considerable time and energy in an unsuccessful attempt to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, said he believed that redefining strategic interests among states throughout the middle east could lay the groundwork for a resumption in talks.

He lamented, however, that conditions are not yet ripe for new peace negotiations, particularly due to heightened tensions between Israel and the Palestinians that have led to an unprecedented amount of frustration. And Kerry once again denounced continued Israeli settlement activity as “undermining the prospects for peace”.

Another wild card, he said, are Israel’s upcoming elections.

Elsewhere on Sunday, Syria said Israeli jets had bombed two installations, one near the capital, Damascus, and the second in a town near the Lebanese border. A report by Syrian state television described the attack as “an aggression”.