Europe quacks like a duck, ducks like a chicken!

Below is a bleak intelligence assessment of the continued decline of US influence and the rise of Iran's influence. Something Democrats are hastening as they trash GW for his efforts to stave of terrorism and keep it off shore. (See 1 below.)

Democratic nations are bereft of leadership. Is it because they are under pressure and have buckled, is it because their faith in their institutions was always shallow, is it because they have been too successful and their economic success makes their citizenry unwilling to defend their vested interests? Whatever the reason, the consequences of the dry rot of leadership seems to have set in and no one likely to reverse the slide is visibly on the horizon. (See 2 below.)

If GW was the leader I once thought he might be, he would meet with the Iranians and tell them they have two weeks to stop their nuclear experimentation and if they do not we will attack them. GW has nothing to lose. He cannot succeed himself, the Democrats are prepared to make his life miserable and seem to care not one whit about what happens if we lose in Iraq. He is down in the ratings, no one listens to, believes or respects him and I have to assume he would prefer not leaving the intractable problems he faces for his successor. Furthermore, if he truly cares about the future of our nation's freedom he must realize you cannot reason with religious fanatics. Certainly he should have learned this in dealing with the Far Right element in his own party.

If destroying Iran's nuclear capability, its air force and communication grid will inflame Iranian citizens pro-American, history is replete with instances where years after news accommodations are reached. Japan is one example but there are many.

My friend, reporter Khaled Toameh, discusses Abbas' lame plea for the international community not to judge the unity government nor abandon the Palestinians who are incapable of agreeing on the basic and civil demands of TRM, which the Saudis laid to rest at Mecca. Since Abbas cannot get his act together, GW asks Olmert to make further concessions which Olmert refused to do. So what are the three - Abbas, Olmert and Rice - meeting for? More friendly handshakes for the media?(See 3 below.)

Daniel Johnson asks whether Europe is capable of taking its head out of the sand? Yes, it is capable but it is unwilling. Consequently, it has left the heavy lifting, once again, to the US and Israel. (See 4 below.)

Dick

1)The dynamic activity - as so often these days - is in Tehran. Syrian ruler Bashar Assad made a point of starting two days of talks in the Iranian capital “to strengthen bilateral relations” on the day of Rice’s arrival in the region.

Both the Syrian and Iranian governments are heavily involved in thwarting US policy goals on both the Iraqi and the Israel-Palestinian fronts. The Tehran talks are expected to yield more of the same. Assad’s delegation to Tehran included Syria’s former ambassador to Washington, the current foreign minister Walid Moalam, who is reputed to be the most pro-American member of Assad’s government. This was meant as a Syrian-Iranian taunt to show the US, Israeli and Palestinian officials meeting Monday who is calling the shots in the Middle East.

In Beirut Friday, Hizballah’s Hassan Nasrallah declared bald-facedly that weapons are still flowing into Lebanon from Syria and his forces, in South Lebanon too, were rearming. This was another taunt, demonstrating the futility of the UN Security Council resolution 1701 which halted the Hizballah-Israeli hostilities of July-Aug 2006, expanded the UN peacekeepers force, banned the flow of arms to Hizballah and was supposed to demilitarize the south under Lebanese army and UNIFIL control.

A bare seven months after the Lebanon War’s end, Nasrallah stood up to expose the loss of American and Israeli deterrent leverage for affecting the situation in South Lebanon

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wound up the effort to sabotage Rice’s mission. He goaded Washington by informing the outgoing Lebanese ambassador to Tehran Adnan Mansour Friday, Feb. 16, that “Iran and Lebanon are limbs of the same body, but unfortunately the Lebanese part is wounded.” His words were released by the Iranian national news agency IRNA.

Middle East sources note this was the first time a senior Iranian statesman has frankly included Lebanon in the area of influence to which Tehran aspires. Iran’s expansionist ambitions have already produced thrusting offensives with regard to the Palestinians and Iraq. Tehran is in the process of carving out a crescent of Iranian domination that aims at sweeping up Iraq after the American withdrawal, just like Lebanon after Israel’s defeat in the 2006 war. After that, the Palestinians will be sucked willy-nilly into the Iranian orbit.

The Rice-Olmert-Abbas conference does not provide any obstacle to Tehran’s driving ambition. In advance of the event, President George W. Bush phoned Olmert to ask about further Israeli concessions to the Palestinians as incentives to keep them moving along the diplomatic track. He himself had no new ideas. The prime minister replied Israel stood by the Middle East Quartet’s terms for recognizing any Palestinian government – renunciation of violence, acceptance of previous accords, including peace agreements and recognition of the Jewish state.

However, the Quartet’s Palestinian policy was in fact trashed in Mecca ten days ago, when the Saudi king forged a pact with the Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh on terms that excluded all three of its conditions - a pact Washington was helpless to avert.

With these prospects in view, it is not surprising that many US policy-makers including State Department officials advised Condoleezza Rice to call off her Middle East trip and her date with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

2) Coalition Chairman: Leadership crisis is worst in Israel's history


Coalition Chairman Avigdor Yitzhaki of Kadima said Saturday that Israel's leadership crisis is the most difficult since the state's founding.

"Olmert was the most fitting person from among the gallery presented in the last elections," he said. "It will take time until we succeed in presenting leadership to the public that can be trusted and relied upon. The solution, however, lies not in bringing in those whom we have never liked - Netanyahu for example."

Yitzhaki also said that every beginning prime minister must know that he may have to undergo a police investigation.

Speaking in Be'er Sheva, Yitzhaki said that the Kadima leadership will convene shortly to determine the party's stance on the candidacy of Vice Premier Shimon Peres (Kadima) for president.

The coalition chairman said Peres is a man rich in virtues and well suited to the position of president, but that there is no reason to hasten his appointment through amending "personal" legislation that would change the selection of president to a secretive, rather than an open, process.

Yitzhaki added that the process of distributing cabinet posts would be carried out in cooperation with Labor and Yisrael Beiteinu.

3) Don't condemn us yet, Palestinians plead
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH


On the eve of the meeting between Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, PA leaders here stepped up their efforts to persuade the international community to accept the "national unity" Mecca agreement between Fatah and Hamas and lift the financial sanctions imposed on the Palestinians in the aftermath of Hamas's rise to power.

Warning that failure to deal with the new Hamas-led coalition would strengthen the extremists among the Palestinians at the expense of the "moderates," PA representatives expressed hope that Abbas would succeed in persuading Rice not to make a "hasty decision" regarding the unity government.

Sources close to Abbas expressed fear that a US decision to boycott the proposed coalition would be followed by a similar move on the part of the Europeans. They also warned that such a decision would play into the hands of Hamas and place Fatah in an embarrassing situation.

"Hamas will score many points on the Palestinian street if the international community continues to boycott the Palestinian government," the sources said. "All we are saying is that the international community should first wait to see the new government's policy. The unity government will certainly be better than the outgoing Hamas government."

Nabil Abu Rudaineh, a spokesman for Abbas, said the US administration must avoid making prejudgments regarding the unity government. "The Americans must give the new government a chance to prove that it will fulfill the demands of the Quartet and the requirements of the peace process," he said.

"If the Americans are serious about advancing the peace process, then they must give the new government a chance.

"The US and the rest of the international community should respect the will of the Palestinians. The unity government enjoys the backing of all Arab states and Palestinian factions. An American rejection [of the unity government] will be regarded as a challenge to all the Arabs. The Israeli position regarding the Mecca agreement hasn't been positive so far."

Abbas, who met in his office Saturday with US State Department envoy David Welch, said Washington and the international community should accept the Mecca agreement.

Abbas explained that he had no choice but to sign the agreement with the hope that it would prevent an all-out war between Fatah and Hamas.

PA official Saeb Erekat, who participated in the meeting, described the talks as "thorough and candid." He said Abbas stressed the importance of ending the financial sanctions and expressed his desire to resume peace talks with Israel on the basis of US President George W. Bush's two-state vision. "We want a meaningful peace process that will end the occupation," Erekat quoted Abbas as telling the US diplomat.

Erekat said Welch made it clear during the meeting that the US position regarding the unity government would depend on whether the new coalition meets the conditions of the Quartet - recognizing Israel, renouncing violence and abiding by previous agreements signed between the PLO and Israel.

"This is the American position and we heard it again today," Erekat added. "Anything else that was said in this regard does not reflect the official US stance." According to Erekat, Abbas also reassured the US diplomat that the PLO and the PA, and not the new government, would be in charge of future negotiations with Israel.

PLO executive member Yasser Abed Rabbo, who is closely associated with Abbas, appealed to the US to accept the Fatah-Hamas deal. "The PLO and Palestinian Authority are now trying to market the Mecca agreement to the international community with the hope that they will accept it," he said. "Our message to the world is that the new unity government will represent all Palestinian factions and is the fruit of national accord. The new government will respect the agreements and commitments made by the Palestinians. Therefore, it should be given the chance it deserves."

Nasser Laham, editor of the Bethlehem-based Maan news agency, expressed fear that Rice's visit to the region would lead to another round of internal strife in the PA-controlled territories. "Rice is coming to impose new conditions," he said. "My fear is that this woman's visit will lead to renewed fighting. Rice never came to the region with good news for any Arab and Palestinian."

In Gaza City, meanwhile, outgoing PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh launched coalition talks Saturday by meeting with leaders of the Islamic Jihad organization. Haniyeh, who has five weeks to form a unity government, is also expected to meet with representatives of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) in a bid to convince them to join the coalition.

Islamic Jihad representative Khaled al-Batsh ruled out the possibility that his organization would join the Hamas-led coalition because of its opposition to the political aspect of the Mecca agreement. PFLP official Kayed al-Ghul said he was pessimistic regarding the prospects of the success of the Mecca agreement.

"Because this agreement is based on the principle of partnership, the power struggle between the two sides will continue and the government will be unable to function," he said. "On the other hand, external pressure on the Palestinians will disrupt the work of the government and probably bring it down."

In a separate development, unidentified gunmen fired at the home of outgoing PA Planning Minister Samir Abu Aisheh in Nablus late Friday night. No one was hurt, but some windows were broken.

There was no claim of responsibility, but Hamas issued a statement in which it accused "agents of the Israeli occupation" of being behind the attack in order to
derail the Mecca accord.•

4) Europe's Iran Problem. Problem? What problem?
by Daniel Johnson

The leaders of Europe can no longer pretend that they don't know what Iran is up to. A leaked internal document prepared for the European Union's foreign ministers warns that it is probably too late to prevent the Iranian government from acquiring nuclear weapons. "At some stage we must expect that Iran will acquire the capacity to enrich uranium on the scale required for a weapons programme." The document also admits that efforts to impede the Iranian nuclear program have failed. "In practice . . . the Iranians have pursued their programme at their own pace, the limiting factor being technical difficulties rather than resolutions by the U.N. or the [International Atomic Energy Agency]." Nor do the limited sanctions announced by the U.N. Security Council hold out any hope: "The problems with Iran will not be resolved through economic sanctions alone."

So now they know. Years of diplomacy have made virtually no difference. Carrots and sticks have been tried and failed. The regime in Tehran is determined to become a nuclear power--the first nuclear power with a yearning for martyrdom. Europe's strategy has hitherto been merely to play for time--but time is on Tehran's side.

Europe's reaction? Nil. By tacit agreement, it has been left to Israel and the United States to hint at possible military action to destroy the nuclear facilities that European companies have helped to create. Europe has done little to isolate Iran or put pressure on its leaders and its people. Germany and other European Union states
head the list of trading partners with Iran. As was the case with Iraq, the fact that so many Europeans are making so much money out of an evil regime has contributed to Europe's political paralysis.

Yet Europe has an overwhelming interest in preventing the emergence of an Islamist bomb. European territory would be directly threatened by a nuclear-armed Iran, equipped with long-range missiles. Europe would also be in greater danger than the United States from terrorist organizations armed with radioactive ("dirty") or even nuclear bombs from Tehran. Iranian terrorists have a history of setting off bombs in Europe. Nuclear blackmail is far more likely to be used against European states than against the United States, and European states are judged by Tehran to be far less likely to retaliate than Israel.

For these and many other practical reasons, Europe should be reacting far more vigorously than it is to the Iranian provocation. But there is an even more important reason Europe should be forcing the issue rather than appeasing the mullahs.

The moral case for stopping President Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Khamenei in their tracks is that both have vowed to annihilate Israel. Ahmadinejad's threat ("Israel must be wiped off the map"), repeated in different forms several times over the past two years, is well known. He was quoting Ayatollah Khomeini, whose successor as supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, set out his solution to the Middle East problem in 2000: "the annihilation and destruction of the Zionist state." The means to accomplish the eradication of Israel are now almost in their grasp.

Why, the political establishment of Europe implicitly asks, should we lift a finger for Israel? Well, Israel is Europe's orphaned offspring. It was Europe--specifically Britain--that conceived the Jewish National Home in Palestine with the Balfour Declaration in 1917. It was Europe--specifically Germany, but with help from collaborators in almost every nation on the Continent--that drove hundreds of thousands of Jews to emigrate, and then murdered six million who could not escape. It was Europe--specifically the E.U.--that gave the Holocaust a unique status in defining the values that Europe's institutions enshrine. Generations of children have been taught that the commemoration of the Holocaust is not only a moral imperative, but constitutive of European civilization.

Now that the threat of a second Holocaust is staring Europe in the face, however, its leaders are in denial. Worse: They seem insouciant. Why is the E.U., which makes so much of its humanitarian credentials, which sees itself as a creature of the Enlightenment, so seemingly indifferent? The answer, I fear, lies in the process that has deprived Israel of legitimacy and branded Zionism as a relic of European imperialism. That process has been grinding away for decades, but only now is it becoming plain that Europe's vast superstructure of collective atonement for the Holocaust has been hollowed out from within. The calumny that Israel--the most liberal and egalitarian country in the Middle East--is an "apartheid state" has hardened into a conviction. The mud has stuck.

Yet if Israel is attacked and--God forbid--destroyed by Iranian nuclear bombs, then European civilization will have perished, too. The destruction of Israel would signal the demise of the Judeo-Christian morality that ennobled Greco-Roman culture to create the only Europe that was ever worth preserving. I for one could not live in a society that could even contemplate such a second Shoah. I would turn my back on such a Europe, shake the dust from my feet, never to return.