Arkansan lands blow on Iran official in NYC
WASHINGTON — Protests after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Wednesday speech at the United Nations sparked an international incident when a Fayetteville, Ark., man admittedly punched Iran’s deputy foreign minister, who was walking on the street outside the U.N. complex.
Greg Nelson, 50, said he’s made a trip from Arkansas to New York each year to protest the Iranian regime. When he saw the diplomat, Ramin Mehmanparast, walking near the protest with a phalanx of bodyguards, Nelson said he “got a little worked up.”
“I thought the guy was Ahmadinejad,” Nelson said.
armed Iran would be a danger to many other countries as well. He cast the battle as one between modernity and the “medieval forces of radical Islam.”
“Deterrence worked with the Soviets because every time the Soviets faced a choice between their ideology and their survival, they chose survival,” he said. But “militant jihadists behave very differently from secular Marxists. There were no Soviet suicide bombers. Yet Iran produces hordes of them.”
Netanyahu has repeatedly argued that time is running out to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power and that the threat of force must be seriously considered. Israeli leaders have issued a series of warnings in recent weeks suggesting that if Iran’s uranium enrichment program continues, it may soon stage a unilateral military strike. This week, Iranian leaders suggested they may strike Israel pre-emptively if they felt threatened, stoking fears of a regional war.
President Barack Obama has vowed to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power but has rejected Netanyahu’s demands for setting an ultimatum past which the U.S. would attack. His administration has urgently sought to hold off Israeli military action, which would likely result in the U.S. being pulled into a conflict and cause regionwide mayhem on the eve of American elections.
Netanyahu’s 2013 Israeli deadline could be interpreted as a type of concession, but Israeli officials insisted action was still needed immediately and that in his speech Netanyahu was referring to the absolute point of no return.
Netanyahu appeared to be trying to soothe his differences with the White House when he offered thanks for Obama’s stance, adding that his own words were meant only to help achieve the common goal.
And he thanked the U.S. and other governments that have imposed sanctions that, he said, have hurt Iran’s economy and curbed its oil exports but have not changed Tehran’s intentions to develop the capacity to build nuclear weapons.
“I believe that faced with a clear red line, Iran will back down. This will give more time for sanctions and diplomacy to convince Iran to dismantle its nuclear weapons program altogether,” the Israeli prime minister said. “Red lines don’t lead to war; red lines prevent war.”
Netanyahu did not detail what should be done if his “red line” was crossed. He pounded away at the dangers posed by Iran.
“To understand what the world would be like with a nuclear-armed Iran, just imagine the world with a nuclear-armed al-Qaida,” he said. “Nothing could imperil the world more than a nuclear-armed Iran.”
A U.N. report last month found that Iran has moved more of its uranium enrichment activities into fortified bunkers deep underground where they are impervious to air attack. Enrichment is a key activity in building a bomb, though it has other uses as well, such as producing medical isotopes.
While Israel is convinced that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon, American officials believe that Iran has not yet made a final decision to take the plunge and that there is still time for diplomacy.
Iran’s talks with world powers over the issue have stalled, however, and Netanyahu argued Thursday that “Iran uses diplomatic negotiations as a means to buy time to advance its nuclear program.”
Israeli officials privately argue that a quick strike now would damage the Iranian program severely and buy more time for diplomacy.
Israel is presumed to have a modest stockpile of nuclear weapons, but it does not admit the stockpile’s existence and has not threatened to use them in Iran.
Only the United States has the heavy, long-range conventional weapons capable of completely eradicating the Iranian program.
“The relevant question is not when Iran will get the bomb,” Netanyahu said. “The relevant question is at what stage can we no longer stop Iran from getting the bomb.”
Meanwhile, an internal report prepared by Israel’s Foreign Ministry calls for an additional round of international sanctions against Iran, an Israeli official confirmed Thursday, in what appeared to be a rare Israeli acknowledgment that there might still be time to try to stop the Iranian nuclear program by means other than military action.
Details of the report were leaked to the Haaretz newspaper and were published Thursday morning as Netanyahu was on his way to New York to address the U.N. General Assembly. An Israeli official who is familiar with the report, but was not authorized to speak about it publicly, confirmed the points that appeared in Haaretz.
The Foreign Ministry report states that the international sanctions already imposed on Iran are having a deep effect on the country’s economy, according to the official, and may, according to some assessments, also be affecting the stability of the Iranian government. But the sanctions have not yet persuaded the government in Tehran to suspend its nuclear drive. Therefore, the report concludes, “another round of sanctions is needed,” the official said.
Netanyahu himself called for economic sanctions against Iran to be intensified at a meeting with the Italian foreign minister earlier this month.
Also Thursday, world powers decided to lay the groundwork for another round of negotiations with Iran, a senior U.S. official said, but they want a significantly improved offer from the Islamic Republic.
The new hope for negotiated end to Iran’s decade-long nuclear standoff came after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with the foreign ministers of Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia — powers that have sought, over several rounds of talks, to persuade Iran to halt its production of material that could be used in nuclear weapons.
The latest stab at a diplomatic compromise collapsed this summer after Iran proposed to stop producing higher-enriched uranium in exchange for a suspension in international sanctions, which Clinton has termed a “nonstarter.” The U.S. official said Iran would have to bring a much better offer to the table this time, but stressed that nations were seeing some signs for optimism and that diplomacy remained “far and away the preferred way to deal with this issue.”
Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s top diplomat, who has been spearheading the international diplomacy with Iran, was instructed to reach out to Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili. Still, no date was set for the possible resumption of the talks with Iran, said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she wasn’t authorized to comment publicly about the private meeting at the United Nations.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, also used his speech Thursday as a rejoinder to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who earlier had harshly denounced Israel from the General Assembly podium with a litany of grievances, including attacks by settlers and Israeli land policies in the occupied territories.
Abbas said he believed that Israel intended to destroy the basis for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He also received widespread applause in declaring that “there is no homeland for us except Palestine, and there is no land for us but Palestine.”
In response, Netanyahu said, “We won’t solve our conflict with libelous speeches at the United Nations.”