ISRAEL HAYOM
by Richard Baehr
November 4, 2014

In the last few days, it has become clearer that the Obama administration’s ‎obsession over turning Iran into an ally, or at least no longer a foe, is the single ‎highest foreign policy objective for the White House. This new engagement with ‎the Iranians has included cooperation in the current fight with the Islamic State group in Iraq and ‎Syria, and the continuing negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. The ‎importance of Iran to the administration became more evident when Deputy ‎National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes was caught on tape telling a group of ‎progressive advocates invited to the White House that a nuclear deal with Iran was ‎as big a deal for President Barack Obama in his second term, as passage of Obamacare was for the ‎first term. ‎

‎”Bottom line is, this is the best opportunity we’ve had ‎to resolve the Iranian issue diplomatically, certainly ‎since President Obama came to office, and probably ‎since the beginning of the Iraq war,” Rhodes said. “So ‎no small opportunity, it’s a big deal. This is probably ‎the biggest thing President Obama will do in his ‎second term on foreign policy. This is health care for ‎us, just to put it in context.”‎…..

…..When Democrats and Republicans in the Senate were signing on for a new ‎sanctions bill for Iran in case the negotiations broke down a year back, the heavy ‎pressure for Democrats to back off came directly from the White House in its usual ‎heavy-handed fashion, not from J Street. ‎It now seems likely that the president may use both the Iranian track and the ‎stalled Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to try to squeeze Israel to get at least some ‎of what it wants on both fronts. The Palestinian Authority has threatened to go to ‎the United Nations and demand a Palestinian state be established by a certain date, ‎effectively killing the possibility of any negotiated arrangement with Israel that ‎might achieve this. The Palestinians and their allies on the Security Council could ‎force the United States to use a veto to block such an action. The possibility of an ‎American abstention, which would allow such a resolution to pass, may be part of ‎the messaging that has been going on between the two countries in recent weeks. ‎The White House is clearly nervous that fierce opposition by Israel to what would ‎in almost all likelihood be a pathetically weak nuclear deal with Iran (they get ‎something substantive — sanctions relief — while the West gets almost nothing) could inspire ‎more pushback from Congress, and lead to a public relations problem for the ‎White House……

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