Obama Plans Major Reversal In Israel Policy as Emboldened Iran Demands Even More Concessions on Nukes

Iran wants more, reports the Free Beacon's Adam Kredo.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland--Iranian negotiators are becoming rigid and unmoving in their stance on a range of key nuclear issues in talks, according to multiple sources familiar with the negotiations who said Tehran is angling to elicit as many concessions as possible from the United States as the talks reach a critical stage ahead of the looming March 31 deadline.

Iran is pushing for major relief from economic sanctions and the ability to continue sensitive research and development on the nuclear and weapons fronts, according to sources quoted in the Iranian state-controlled press on Sunday.

...

"The Iranians are again outplaying the Americans," said one source in Europe familiar with the negotiations. "They know they’'l have to give up certain things eventually. So they're digging in their heels on issues that mean everything and preparing to give ground on relatively minor issues--but not yet, and not until they see how much more the Americans are willing to give."

Previous concessions by the United States appear to have motivated Iran to push harder on issues such as the possible military dimensions of its nuclear program, as well as continued work on advanced centrifuges and increased sanctions relief, according to a second American source apprised of the demands being set forth.

Iran wants to know how much more it can get off President Backseat Becky. My guess is, they can go all the way and then some.

Meanwhile, he's planning on a "crockery-breaking" turn on Israel, writes Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post.

President Obama’s rhetorical assault on Benjamin Netanyahu last week was in part the product of pique. But it also set the stage for what could be another crockery-breaking bid by Obama for a foreign policy legacy, on a par with his opening to Cuba and would-be nuclear deal with Iran.

By declaring Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations dead and blaming Netanyahu, Obama laid the predicate for a decision to go forward with a U.S.-backed U.N. Security Council resolution that would set the terms for a final peace settlement. Envisioned as an updating of U.N. Resolution 242, which has been part of the framework for the Mideast "peace process" since the 1960s, the idea would be to mandate the solution to the questions Israelis and Palestinians have been unable to agree upon for decades, such as the future status of Jerusalem. Not incidentally, it would provide Obama with the Mideast legacy he has craved since his first day in office.

Whether or not it accelerated Palestinian statehood (and most likely it wouldn't), Obama's initiative would set off an earthquake in U.S. foreign relations and for Israel's standing in the world. For nearly half a century, the United States has taken the position that the terms for a peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians must come about as the result of negotiations and not as an imposition by outside parties. At the United Nations, it has been a given that Washington will veto resolutions that aim to compel Israel to accept terms.

Now Obama is contemplating going forward with a resolution that was drafted last year by Secretary of State John Kerry and his Mideast negotiations team at the State Department. The language was drawn up in response to efforts by the Palestinians and France to win support for Security Council resolutions following the collapse of Kerry's attempt to get Israeli and Palestinian assent to a "framework agreement" France announced on Friday that it would renew its initiative, giving Obama a fresh prompt.

A country's currency only has to collapse once for it to lose much of its value, forever. And Obama has deliberately collapsed the currency of America's foreign policy reliability and trustworthiness -- he wants the world to know that we can shift like snakes at any time. That will keep other countries from allying with us, which is good, because America, not Iran, is the great contagion that must be contained.

Oh, Russian tanks are moving deeper into Ukraine. Maybe Obama has Iran's promise that they'll fix that crisis for him, too.

posted by Ace at 06:23 PM

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