Not rain falling, but bombs. Dropped from Israeli planes.
The western powers signed an interim agreement with Iran last night. As expected a certain, rather stubborn group of folks is not happy about that one bit:
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu characterized the agreement signed with Iran early Sunday morning as a historic mistake.
Directly contrasting US President Barack Obama who praised the agreement as opening a "new path toward a world that is more secure," Netanyahu – speaking at the weekly cabinet meeting — said the world has become more dangerous as a result.
"What was agreed last night in Geneva is not a historic agreement, it is a historic mistake," he said. "Today the world has become much more dangerous because the most dangerous regime in the world took a significant step to getting the most dangerous weapon in the world."
For the first time, he said, the leading powers of the world agreed to uranium enrichment in Iran, while removing sanctions that it has taken years to build up in exchange for "cosmetic Iranian concession that are possible to do away with in a matter of weeks."
Netanyahu said the consequences of this deal threaten many countries, including Israel. He reiterated what he has said in the past, that Israel is not obligated by the agreement.(emphasis mine)
That last sentence is the key one. The whole last week I was on travel, the Israeli press was having kittens over the idea that the west might do anything less than bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran. Which never made much sense to me. For one thing-Iran is the size of Europe, its a big country, and the chances that the Israeli Air Force can get all the things it needs to in one strike ( which is all they would realistically get) are low indeed. Secondly the idea of getting us to do the dirty work for them is full of traps and problems for the US. Not to mention that starting a 4TH war in over a decade is just plain stupid. Thanks GWB, Thanks a lot. Because of your stupid wars-we are in this mess to begin with.
The interests of the US and Israel do not always align. This is going to be one of those times. And Israel will just have to accept that fact.
But I am convinced they won't. They will continue to push and prod to get their way. That's how they do business.
"And by the way, we still expect our over 4 Billion dollars in US aid next year. Got that?"
The apocalyptic rhetoric started in Israel almost immediately:
The deputy speaker of parliament, Likud MK Moshe Feiglin, said on Saturday the interim agreement signed between Iran and the Western powers was tantamount to the Munich Agreement of the late 1930s.
“Like Czechoslovakia at that time, which was not party to the discussions that effectively sentenced it to death, Israel today watches from the sidelines how its existential interest is being sacrificed by the Western powers,” Feiglin said.
“Any rational person understands that we are in the midst of a process leads to a nuclear-armed Iran,” he said. “For years I have warned about the dangers of the strategy adopted by Israel towards the Iranian nuclear threat.”
Feiglin said that entrusting foreign powers to secure Israel’s defense interests is “disastrous” and “much worse than that which led to the Yom Kippur War.”
The lawmaker called on the Israeli government to declare an immediate end to all contacts with the West over the Iranian question and to make clear that it would not be bound by the agreement signed.
I can't wait to see what our group of AIPAC funded whores Congressional stooges has to say about it on Monday.
Some problems are just tough-and there are no easy solutions, especially military ones-and its even tougher when over 60 years of stupidity has gone into the problem of relations with Iran, who are not Arabs.
I will say this again, two things actually. First, one can admire and respect Israel and its citizens-and give them support-without agreeing with everything they ask for. And that leads to my second point, most Americans do not understand Israel at all. They think they do-and they think its a transplanted version of America in the Levant. Trust me, its not-its a different society. They use language and view their situation in a very different way than we do. And they always will. Furthermore-Israel is indeed a melting pot of cultures-and not all of those cultural traditions are ones we would like if we knew the details. That still does not stop us from being supportive-but supportive does not mean, contrary to what Rev Hagee and the members of AIPAC believe, a blank check.
So buckle up boys and girls, 2014 is going to be an up and down ride.
"The Lord is our Shepherd says the psalm, but just in case, its Iran we gotta bomb!"
?
Bush’s fault? srsly?
The war in Iraq and to a lesser degree in Afgh was an enabler of Iranian ambitions-and allowed hardliners to come to the fore in 2005. They lost a threat to their west and the 90's had taken away the traditional Iranian problem of the bear looking to carve off another chunk of Persia-as he as three times over the last 300 years.
Hardliners? srsly? First there was Ayatollah Khomeini (in Hell) followed as Supreme Leader by Ayatollah Khamenei. Those ‘moderate’ Iranians you speak of never had a chance and everybody knows that. Iraq under UN sanctions was no threat to Iran. No, what you saw with Iran taking Abu Musa et al is the Iran you get. It’s an expansive power and always has been. Until oil was useful they had little reason to exterminate their neighbors and after oil was found useful the European powers made it impossible, for a while.
I remain optimistic.