Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, seen here addressing a regional economic summit in Tehran in May 2011, says he is "optimistic" that nuclear inspectors will not find anything amiss this week during their visit to the country. (Parmida Rahimi via Creative Commons)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israel, the United States and Iran have all gone deep into mixed-signals territory.

Conversations with Israeli officials, including Defense Minister Ehud Barak, left one prominent journalist convinced that Israel will strike Iran by year’s end. Yet two weeks ago, Barak had said that any possible Israeli attack on Iran is “far off.”

Leon Panetta, the U.S. defense secretary, said in December that any military strike would only set Iran’s nuclear program back a couple years — a remark that some Israelis read as conveying a sense of resignation to the idea that if Iran really wants a nuclear weapon, eventually it will be able to get one. But in a television interview broadcast Sunday, he vowed that the U.S. would take “whatever steps are necessary” to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Meanwhile, Iran is responding to international sanctions with a mix of threats to shut down the Strait of Hormuz and efforts to placate Western concerns about its nuclear program by allowing in inspectors and calling for new talks.

Two questions remain the focus of considerable speculation: Will Israel strike Iran? And will the sanctions cause Iran to bend?

The first question was the subject of a much-discussed Sunday New York Times Magazine cover story by Ronen Bergman, one of Israel’s best-connected security journalists. It featured rare and extensive on-the-record interviews with top Israeli officials, most prominently Barak.

Recent moves by the Iranians have underscored the significance of the second question.

Last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran was ready to sit down for talks to discuss its nuclear program. On Sunday, a team of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, arrived in Tehran.

The team, according to the Associated Press, includes two weapons experts and will visit an Iranian nuclear facility near the religious city of Qom. President Obama’s revelation in 2009 of the until-then secret underground facility helped the U.S. make the case to the world community for intensified sanctions, leading to the recent international squeeze on Iran’s economy and energy sector.

The inspectors’ visit is the first since an IAEA report in November concluded that Iran was engaged in activities — particularly in the area of enhanced uranium enrichment capabilities — that could have no other discernible purpose but weaponization.

Iran continues to insist that its nuclear program has strictly civilian purposes. Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s foreign minister, was quoted by various media on Monday as saying that he was “optimistic” about the results of the inspectors’ three-day visit, and that it could be extended “if necessary.”

“One shouldn’t get too carried away, but I assume they have something to offer or they would not agree to schedule this visit,” said Barbara Slavin, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who has written a book on U.S.-Iran relations titled “Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies.”

But Michael Adler, an Iran expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, noted that the Iranians resisted setting a formal agenda for the inspectors’ visit, which suggested a lack of seriousness by the Iranians.

“Iran has a history of offering to talk when it is under pressure, and then stalling so that the talks delay punitive measures against it,” Adler said.

Iran is also sending mixed messages to the United States in the region. In addition to its threat to shut the Strait of Hormuz in response to mounting sanctions, Iran’s army chief warned a U.S. aircraft carrier not to return to the Persian Gulf. But other Iranian officials later seemed to backtrack, calling the entry of another U.S. carrier into the gulf a routine event. Also this month, Iran test-fired cruise missiles that could be used against U.S. ships.

Israel’s plans, meanwhile, also have been the subject of speculation.

Bergman in his New York Times Magazine article concluded that an Israeli strike before year’s end was all but inevitable.

“I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012,” he wrote. “Perhaps in the small and ever-diminishing window that is left, the United States will choose to intervene after all, but here, from the Israeli perspective, there is not much hope for that.”

A number of Iran experts questioned his conclusions, noting that his article included a wealth of Israelis warning against such a strike — and even referred to Barak’s Jan. 18 statement that any decision to strike was “very far off.”

“It was a very odd article considering all the people he quoted who said that a strike was a bad idea,” Slavin said.

In part, Bergman argues, the feeling that Israel will need to strike Iran stems from what he suggests is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s belief that the U.S. will not attack in its stead should Iran be on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon.

U.S. officials, including Panetta, have tried in recent weeks to emphasize their commitment to stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. In an interview broadcast Sunday, Panetta told the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes” that the United States would take “whatever steps are necessary” to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, calling it a “red line” for both Israelis and the United States.

Asked about the possibility of military action, Panetta responded that “there are no options that are off the table.”

Panetta also stressed the urgency of the situation, suggesting that Iran would be able to develop a nuclear weapon in approximately a year.

“The consensus is that if they decided to do it, it would probably take them about a year to be able to produce a bomb and then possibly another one to two years in order to put it on a deliverable vehicle of some sort in order to deliver that weapon,” Panetta said.

In articulating the notion that Iran could be able to develop a nuclear weapon in fairly short order, Panetta seems to be on the same page as Israeli officials.

In a statement Monday after returning from the annual economic forum in Davos, Switzerland, Barak again sounded a note of concern.

“Over the course of the various meetings” with other leaders at the forum, Barak said, “we repeatedly emphasized our stance that we must urgently intensify and broaden the sanctions against Iran. The determination of world leaders is critical in order to prevent the Iranians from advancing their military nuclear program.

“We must not waste time on this matter; the Iranians continue to advance [toward nuclear weapons], identifying every crack and squeezing through. Time is urgently running out.”

That, at any rate, was the buzz in scholarly circles when reports began surfacing last month that an exceptionally rare collection of ancient Judaic manuscripts — some of them dating back more than a millennia — were discovered in a cave in Samangan province in northeastern Afghanistan.

The manuscripts are of several varieties, both religious and secular, and are drafted in a number of languages, including Judeo-Persian and Judeo-Arabic. Among the documents recovered are fragments of the writings of the Saadia Gaon, a famed Jewish sage born in Egypt in the ninth century, and financial records that may shed light on the little-known medieval Jewish merchant class known as the Raddanites.

But those who have seen the documents, and who are familiar with the shadowy trade in Middle Eastern antiquities, say the fantastic tales of an unsuspecting shepherd happening upon documents of incalculable historic value are not to be believed.

“Generally, you have to be very careful of what a Middle Eastern antiquities dealer tells you,” said Lenny Wolfe, himself a Middle Eastern antiquities dealer based in Jerusalem. “You’re probably safer not believing it.”

What no one disputes is that the documents are authentic and, if they can be made widely available to scholars, can potentially shed light on a period in Jewish history that remains shrouded in mystery.

The documents, which number about 150 — far fewer than the thousands in the Cairo Geniza — are generally believed to be about 1,000 years old, though a few are probably older. They include early texts suggesting the community may have been Karaite, a Jewish sect that rejected rabbinic law and flourished in the 10th and 11th centuries. There are also financial documents that may have much to teach about the Jewish merchants who acted as middlemen along the trade routes between East Asia and Europe. The writings of Saadia Gaon include fragments of a biblical commentary and a rebuttal to the claims of a local heretic. Poems also were recovered.

“I think that it’s a very important find,” said Shaul Shaked, an emeritus professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who saw some of the documents in London several months ago. “This is the first time that we have a large quantity of handwritten documents from that area, from Afghanistan, where we knew vaguely there was some kind of Jewish settlement, a Jewish community, but we had very vague ideas about what their life was like.”

Wolfe told JTA that he had the opportunity to purchase a small portion of the documents recently and is holding them in Jerusalem until a national institution can come up with the money to acquire them. He declined to say how much he paid for them, where he got them or how much it would cost to deliver them to a museum.

In all probability, the manuscripts were illegally smuggled out of Afghanistan. The director of the Afghan National Archives told Reuters that the find was not Afghan, but a Culture Ministry adviser conceded that it’s not uncommon for local antiquities to be shipped abroad where they fetch much higher prices.

As a result, efforts to determine who now holds the documents, where they are being stored or how they were acquired proved to be inconclusive.

What is clear is that the collection is split between several private dealers, at least one of whom is based in London. Other lots are said to be in the hands of dealers in Dubai and Switzerland. Other than Wolfe’s acknowledgement of his holdings, JTA could not confirm claims regarding who has ownership of the documents or how they were acquired.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t lots of colorful stories floating around. One story, which several of those involved had heard, involves a Russian-Jewish billionaire who supposedly had expressed interest in purchasing the manuscripts but had pulled out after his attorneys advised that he may run into legal difficulties. No one would divulge his name.

It “adds an element of mystique,” Wolfe said. “I personally never spoke to any Russian oligarch. What I’ve heard is hearsay. I don’t trust hearsay.”

Menashe Goldelman, a London-based expert in Middle Eastern antiquities who has authored a 23-page report on the documents, told JTA that they emerged on the London market several months ago. Goldelman said he had been enlisted by a dealer to sell the documents on his behalf. At present, Goldelman said he was trying to broker an agreement with the various dealers to bring the collection together. Goldelman estimates their total value at about $5 million.

“They are not things that are stolen from an institution or found in a legal excavation,” Goldelman said. “At some point, everything that comes from the ground goes to the black market. The black market, this is the institution that helps to save this material. If something has, let’s say, commercial value, it gets saved. If you don’t have a commercial value for the manuscript, they go and put it in the fireplace.”

Goldelman’s involvement may not reassure skittish buyers about their provenance. In 2010, two professors reportedly accused him of trafficking in stolen antiquities and protested his scheduled appearance at a conference in Israel. Goldelman’s lawyer denied the accusations and threatened to sue for libel.

None of the experts who have spoken publicly on the matter of the Afghan documents appeared to be too troubled by unanswered questions about their origins, seeming to accept such things as the cost of doing business in ancient artifacts.

“What is important for us is that these fragments and documents don’t get buried again in some safe of a collector,” said Haggai Ben-Shammai, a professor of Arabic at Hebrew University and the academic director of Israel’s National Library. Ben-Shammai said the library was searching for a donor who would acquire the manuscripts on its behalf.

“We don’t have the means to acquire them on our own,” Ben-Shammai said. “We need some assistance in this.”

Representatives of the Middle East Quartet -- the United States, the European Union and Russia -- meet in New york, Sept. 23, 2011. The Quartet joined with Jordan in reconvening Israeli-Palestinian talks this week in Amman.. Left to right, U.N. Quartet Envoy Tony Blair, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the European Union's Catherine Ashton. (State Department)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met this week in Amman for face-to-face talks about how to restart talks. But observers say the two sides showed up Tuesday after more than a year of torpor not so much to talk to one another as to send messages and dispense favors to other players.

Yitzhak Molcho, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s envoy to the talks, met with his Palestinian counterpart, Saeb Erekat, at the Jordanian Foreign Ministry.

One regional player whom both the Israelis and Palestinians hope to please is King Abdullah II of Jordan, who convened the talks together with the Quartet — the grouping of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia that guides the Middle East peace process.

The Israelis are seeking to bolster an ally who thus far has managed to ward off the Islamist tide of the Arab Spring. The Palestinian Authority’s Fatah leadership is nodding to a fellow moderate Arab regime.

“Both sides owe favors to King Abdullah,” said Avraham Sela, a professor of international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “It’s not nice to turn him down, especially when both sides are interested in maintaining warm relations with the king.”

For his part, Abdullah is seeking to show his country’s Palestinian majority that he can still influence the two parties. He also is seeking to stake out a central role in the emerging new Middle East, particularly after the fall of his close ally, Hosni Mubarak, the deposed Egyptian dictator.

“Jordan lacks any anchor in the Middle East right now, and it is searching for an anchor,” said Assaf David, a Jordan expert at the Hebrew University’s Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace. “If Jordan is involved in it and can calm the situation between Israel and the Palestinians, it is very good for Jordan.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas also needs to counter the Israeli-U.S. attempt to depict him as recalcitrant for refusing since October 2010 to allow peace talks unless Israel freezes settlement building.

The Quartet has set a Jan. 26 deadline for the resumption of direct negotiations.

Abbas “has to satisfy the Quartet by dropping his preconditions,” said Yossi Alpher, an Israeli analyst and the co-editor of bitterlemons.net, an online forum for Palestinian and Israeli thinkers.

Netanyahu, for his part, has insisted repeatedly that talks should be held without preconditions — none were set for the Amman meeting.

The purported aim of Tuesday’s talks was to set the stage for more substantive negotiations, although experts question the likelihood of such an outcome.

“Neither Abu Mazen nor Netanyahu is interested,” said Alpher, using Abbas’ nom de guerre. “Abu Mazen because he understands that if he turned down” former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud “Olmert’s far-reaching offer at the end of 2008, he will never hear anything close to that from Netanyahu, and Netanyahu because he presides over a coalition not interested in sustaining a peace process.”

Since his election in 2009, Netanyahu has navigated between Obama administration demands that he make efforts to restart peace talks with the demands of a right-leaning coalition that is resistant to territorial concessions.

The prime minister’s moves toward the peace table have been matched traditionally with nods to hard-liners, and Tuesday seemed no different. Just hours before the meeting, Netanyahu’s government announced tenders for the construction of 300 new units in eastern Jerusalem, including 247 units in Har Homa, a particularly contentious new neighborhood not far from Bethlehem.

Sela said that Israel’s appearance at the peace talks was for the benefit of the international community, particularly the United States, where Netanyahu has tried to cultivate an image of himself as willing to make sacrifices for peace.

The Netanyahu government sees “the problem as not with the Palestinians” but rather “with all those who pressure Israel to make compromise,” he said. “They [the Israelis] see the problem as with the Europeans and the Americans.”

Abbas also may see the Amman meeting as a means to show Palestinians that he can deliver an alternative as he negotiates a unity deal with Hamas that could lead to elections as soon as May. His need for street credibility has been sharpened by the Arab Spring turmoil.

“Abu Mazen needs something in hand, something he can show,” Sela said. “He got very little from the bid to the U.N.” for statehood recognition in September.

In the days leading up to the Amman meeting, the Palestinians reportedly have dropped their demand for a settlement freeze, instead seeking the release of 100 prisoners before restarting talks. A prisoner release to the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority would be a salve to the blow it took when Hamas, its Islamist rival in the Gaza Strip, won the release late last year of more than a thousand prisoners in exchange for Gilad Shalit, the captive Israeli soldier.

Netanyahu, however, rebuffed Abbas’ request, seeing it as a precondition, according to Israeli media reports.

Don’t expect any movement on peace talks until after the U.S. election, Alpher said.

“The Obama administration in the throes of an election year is not going to take any risks in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process,” he said.

The aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush, part of the 5th Fleet, transits through the Strait of Hormuz, Oct. 9, 2011. Iran has threatened to shut off the strait, through which much of the world's oil travels, if it faces new sanctions. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Betsy Knapper)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Obama administration is engaged in a full-court press to persuade Israel that Iran’s nuclear threat can be contained short of war.

The U.S. lobbying has received a mixed reception from Israel, where the Netanyahu government has not ruled out a unilateral strike on Iran.

Iran, meanwhile, is taking an aggressive stance in response to mounting sanctions.

Last week the Iranian naval chief, Adm. Habibollah Sayyari, threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz if Western sanctions intensified. The threat to close the strait — the passageway for oil from the Persian Gulf states — could presage a war, experts said.

“We may be further along the road to war than most people believe,” said Michael Adler, an Iran scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Experts are divided as to the seriousness of the threat to cut off the strait and whether it will lead to war.

Adler said that a direct confrontation between the U.S. and Iran may be inevitable, and that the two countries are headed down that road in “slow motion.”

“Don’t underestimate what the Americans have been saying,” he said, referring to the longstanding U.S. line that all options for dealing with Iran are on the table.

Stephen Rademaker, a former top nuclear arms negotiator in the administration of President George W. Bush, said the blowback Iran would suffer for shutting down the strait suggests that Sayyari was bluffing.

“It would be extremely difficult for them to close the strait for more than a brief period of time,” said Rademaker, now a principal at the Podesta Group, a lobbying shop and think tank. “The U.S. Navy knows how to keep waterways open.”

The resultant war also would give the U.S. a pretext to attack suspected Iranian nuclear sites, he said.

Anthony Cordesman, a former senior U.S. defense intelligence analyst who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that the real threat was not the shutting of the strait — itself an act of war — but of “much lower level attacks which could sharply raise the risk to Gulf shipping.”

Edwin Black, a historian who has written extensively on the Gulf and oil supplies, said the effects of any action in the vicinity of the strait would be far reaching.

“Any conflict in the Persian Gulf would not be limited to the waterways,” Black said. “All they have to do is lob a few medium-range missiles at Abqaiq,” a processing plant in Saudi Arabia “or at Ras Tanura,” a terminal on the coast, “or on the strait,” where shipping lanes are just two miles wide, “and they can take out 70 percent of Saudi exports.”

Iran also is flexing its military muscles. Last Friday, Iran announced that it would fire long-range missiles during a weekend naval drill in the Gulf.

The aggressive posture from Iran comes in the wake of the Obama administration’s increased determination to cut off Iran’s economy as a means of shutting down its nuclear program — and its strenuous efforts to convince Israel’s government that is serious about doing so.

At the most recent U.S.-Israel strategic dialogue on Dec. 1, the U.S. side, led by Deputy Secretary of State William Burns, laid out a detailed plan to accumulate international sanctions against Iran over the next few months. The Americans said their efforts could force Iran to back down from progressing on its suspected nuclear weapons plan or even precipitate regime change.

The plan involves two tracks: aggressive diplomacy engaging states that buy Iranian oil to stop doing so along with lining up other nations — Saudi Arabia, Libya and Iraq were named — to compensate for the estimated 2 million barrels a day that Iran’s isolation would cost the world’s oil markets.

The plan targets, among others, Iran’s Central Bank and its energy sector, and is aimed at squeezing the economy of Iran full force by March, when the International Atomic Energy Agency board next meets and when a new report on Iran’s nuclear weapons capacity is expected to be more damning than ever. Such reports in the past have triggered intensified international sanctions.

The Israelis at the meeting, led by Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, seemed persuaded that the plan had a strong chance of rolling back Iran’s nuclear plans, according to officials who attended. They agreed with American caveats that sanctions must not be rushed.

“The worst thing would be to impose sanctions too soon, and then to have the price of oil go up and Iran profits,” one Israeli at the meeting was quoted as saying.

That reaction would have been a political and diplomatic triumph for the Obama administration — Israeli officials effectively were embracing a more moderate line than Congress, which in the following days passed a law calling for sanctions on the Central Bank to kick in almost immediately.

Except it didn’t apparently “take” in Jerusalem — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued to press for a more immediate ratcheting-up of pressure on Iran, in part by hinting that Israel might take action alone.

Likening himself to Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, who declared statehood against the counsel of some allies, Netanyahu said in a speech — just days after the strategic dialogue — that he would “make the right decision at the right moment,” whatever allies counseled.

That was seen as a rebuke to Leon Panetta, the U.S. defense secretary, who a week earlier had warned that striking Iran could envelop the region in a conflagration.

In subsequent weeks, the Obama administration took steps to reassure Israel that the option of a U.S. military strike was still very much on the table. Panetta said in an interview on CBS that for both Israel and the United States, an Iranian nuclear weapon was a “red line.”

Last week, plans for Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, to visit Israel in January were leaked to Israeli media; his visit likely will coincide with the largest-ever joint U.S.-Israel anti-missile exercise.

The actions have yet to sway Netanyahu into fully cooperating, according to a report in Newsweek. Netanyahu will not agree to give the United States advance warning of a strike, the report said, citing three U.S. officials.

Netanyahu’s posture is a function of Israel perceiving Iran as an existential threat, Rademaker said.

“We’ve seen this threat from Israel in the past,” he said. “A lot of people discount it and say it’s to motivate the U.S. and other countries to do more. That may be true in part, but Israel does see it as an existential threat, and should they conclude that the only way to prevent that existential threat from coming to being is by using force — well, we have examples from 1981 and 2007.”

Rademaker was referring to Israeli pre-emptive strikes on Iraqi and Syrian reactors, respectively.

The strong showing by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic parties is expected to further complicate the 32-year-old peace between the neighbors, while boosting political Islam in neighboring Jordan and the Palestinian territories.

As expected, the Muslim Brotherhood emerged from the first round of parliamentary elections last week as the strongest party, with nearly 40 percent of the vote. More surprising was the powerful showing by an ultra-conservative Salafist party, which captured another quarter of the vote — giving Islamists a hefty majority in the first round of voting.

Last month’s street demonstrations in Cairo calling for the resignation of Field Marshall Tantawi seemed to suggest that the military leadership — which has continued close ties with Israel — is in retreat.

Read more at www.thejewishweek.com]

LINK:

http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/israel/egypt_votes_israel_frets

A new report from the International Atomic Energy Agency found that there is "credible" information suggesting that Iran's nuclear program has military dimensions. Pictured here is a heavy water nuclear reactor near Arak, Iran. (Wikipedia Commons)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The international nuclear watchdog has spoken on Iran, and although its report does not have the smoking gun some had anticipated, it makes a cumulative case damning enough for the Obama administration to ask for increased sanctions.

JTA canvassed Washington Iran-watchers on Tuesday afternoon in the hours after leaked copies of the International Atomic Energy Agency report — 10 pages, with a 14-page annex accumulating the evidence — plunked down on desks across the U.S. capital.

“It’s a pretty impressive layout of the IAEA case based on the info they have that there is a coherent clandestine program dedicated to developing a weapon,” said Michael Adler, a journalist with the French news agency AFP who for years covered Iran’s nuclear program and now is a scholar in residence at the Wilson Center, a congressionally mandated foreign affairs think tank here run by the Smithsonian Institution.

“But it’s not a document you can take to the president and say, ‘This is a serious threat, we’ve got to do something.’ It’s not enough for military action — it’s not enough of an incremental increase.”

The report, officially released only to the 35 nations that make up the IAEA, appeared late Tuesday on the website of the Institute for Science and International Security, which is headed by former U.N. arms inspector David Albright. The report describes as “credible” the information suggesting military dimensions of a nuclear program that Iran has insisted is peaceful, and it says some activities are specific to the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

“Credible,” Adler noted, was well short of “very likely,” the language used earlier this year by the IAEA to describe Syria’s intentions before Israel destroyed an under-construction Syrian reactor in a 2007 airstrike. Some reports in advance of the new IAEA report’s publication suggested that it would have new and damning evidence of an Iranian bomb in the making.

Nonetheless, Obama administration officials have said that they intend to use the report to make the case for intensified sanctions on Iran to other nations that until now have proven reluctant to ratchet up pressure, most significantly Russia and China.

“I can safely say the pressure is going to increase,” Dan Shapiro, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, told JTA in an exclusive interview the day before the report’s release. “The IAEA report will provide information and will provide impetus that will lead the United States and a number of our partners to tighten the pressure.”

Shapiro would not outline the nature of the pressure, but lawmakers in the Congress and pro-Israel groups already were citing the report Tuesday afternoon to tout legislation aimed at tightening sanctions. U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) said the report should trigger the sanctioning of Iran’s central bank, an action that would severely limit Iran’s trade opportunities by cutting it off from any interactions involving the United States.

“Action in the Senate and in the executive branch should occur on collapsing the Central Bank of Iran,” he said in a statement.

The American Jewish Committee agreed, issuing a statement urging “significantly toughened worldwide sanctions on Iran, focusing centrally on the regime’s Achilles’ heel — its banking and energy sectors.”

AJC also said “no options should be off the table,” code for the possible threat of military action. Leaks from Israel in recent weeks have suggested that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were considering such action, although in the past several days Israeli officials have walked back from those claims.

“War is not a picnic. We want a picnic. We don’t want a war,” Barak told Israel Radio on Tuesday before the release of the IAEA report. He said Israel “had not yet decided to embark on any operation,” but that the Jewish state needed to be responsible for its own security and keep its options open.

The strength of the report, analysts said, is that it shows how IAEA inspections, intelligence reports from IAEA member nations and debriefings of associates of A.Q. Khan, the rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist who sold nuclear know-how to Iran, corroborate one another.

The IAEA “wanted to go to lengths to show why this information was credible,” said Peter Crail, a research analyst at the Arms Control Association. “Not only did the intelligence agencies’ information match up with the agency’s own investigations of Iran, it did with discussions with members of the A.Q. Khan network.”

The report details evidence of an indigenous program to develop a trigger for a nuclear device and to acquire from overseas other equipment for manufacturing a nuclear delivery device. It also details evidence of efforts to set up a centrifuge system to enrich uranium to military grades.

The report makes the case that much of Iran’s progress was disrupted by revelations of the program in 2003, and that since then it has been slow to recover.

If anything, that makes the case for heightened sanctions, Crail said.

“There’s a case to be made that existing sanctions on Iran’s nuclear missile program need to be strengthened by Russia, China and the developing world,” he said. “One of the things it details is that they’re trying to procure parts.”

If that’s not a smoking gun, it is its equivalent in terms of cumulative evidence, said Stephen Rademaker, a top nuclear negotiator for President George W. Bush who is now a principal with the Podesta Group, a bipartisan public policy and lobbying outfit.

“It tees up the issue for a political decision as to whether the international community is ready to accept” a nuclear Iran, said Rademaker, who noted the significance of Russia and China’s efforts in advance of the report’s publication to keep it from being released.

“It’s easier to look the other way without the officially authorized international efforts pronouncing the information credible,” he said.

Sharon Squassoni, the director of the Proliferation Prevention Program for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noted that the report was released absent the usual occasion of such reports — an impending IAEA board meeting.

That, she said, suggested that the inspectors believed the matter was urgent enough to merit widespread public debate.

“It shouldn’t just be about diplomacy among a handful of countries,” she said. “These are issues that affect everybody’s security. It’s important to have this information in the public domain.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmou Abbas welcomes hundreds of Palestinians released as part of the prisoner swap for Gilad Shalit in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Oct. 18. (Yossi Zamir/Flash 90)

JERUSALEM (JTA) – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ statehood push at the United Nations may be fizzling, but his supporters insist that he can find a way out of the impasse.

“Abu Mazen is a powerful leader and is very persuasive,” said Ahmad Tibi, an Arab member of Israel’s Knesset, using Abbas’ nom de guerre. “He has managed to convince the majority of the Palestinian people that the way to reach statehood is through nonviolent means.

“The problem is that Abu Mazen does not see this Israeli government as a partner to peace. He believes they are anti-peace.”

Some in the Israeli government have no great love for the Palestinian leader either, particularly since he took the Palestinians’ case to the United Nations. Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said last month that Abbas is the main impediment to peace.

“If there is one obstacle that should be removed immediately, it is [Abbas],” he told reporters. “If he were to return the keys and resign, it would not be a threat but a blessing.”

Israeli President Shimon Peres, however, responded the next day that Abbas and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad “are serious leaders that want peace and are working to prevent violence and extremism in our region.”

Abbas now faces a daunting set of challenges, including strained relations with Israel and the United States, which are angry over the U.N. bid., and a Hamas movement waiting in the wings to seize on his stumbles. Abbas has insisted that he will not resume negotiations with Israel in the absence of a settlement freeze, so the way forward remains uncertain.

“The Palestinian leadership is now in the process of discussing the future and where it wants to go, what options there are on the table and the current status quo with Israel,” said Tibi, who was a special guest of Abbas during his September trip to New York for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly.

With the peace process in a stalemate, Tibi said, “It is possible we could see some dramatic developments [from Abbas] in the near future.”

Since Abbas’ Sept. 23 address at the U.N. General Assembly, when the PA leader told the world that it was time for a “Palestinian Spring” and to see an end to “63 years of suffering,” the Palestinians have faced serious setbacks. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Palestinians will not be able to line up the hoped-for nine Security Council member states — the number needed to give a green light for U.N. membership, though the U.S. has vowed a veto in any case.

In addition, Abbas’ Fatah party took a hit last month as a result of the prisoner swap that won captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit his freedom. Its rival, Hamas, managed to negotiate the release of 1,027 Palestinian security prisoners from Israel. On the day of the prisoner exchange, there were reports describing green Hamas flags flying high over the West Bank.

In response to recent developments, and with statehood looking increasingly unlikely in the near future, Abbas has threatened to disband the Palestinian Authority.

“Of course Abbas is continuing on with his U.N. bid, but if it fails, he could decide to return the keys to Bibi and go back to occupation,” said Tibi, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by his nickname.

Tibi added, however, that Abbas also might decide to call for Palestinian elections in the near future. The latter path has been hinted at in recent months, with senior Abbas aide Nabil Abu Rudeineh suggesting that elections could happen as soon as January.

Hillel Frisch, a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, said he believes that the threat to dismantle the P.A. is little more than a scare tactic.

“I doubt that someone would really dismantle an authority that commands some $3.1 billion directly or indirectly,” he said. “It would be very difficult because there has been so much invested in the P.A. I think these are merely threats to put pressure on the U.S., to put pressure on Israel to dismantle the settlements.”

Frisch said that Abbas faces challenges to his authority both from Hamas and from younger Fatah activists.

“He is scared of factions within his own people, which could become a threat,” Frisch said.

“He is not a strong leader, and as the situation deteriorates, there needs to be a strong person in charge,” he said, adding that former Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat “was a strong leader, but he did not have willingness. Abbas has a willingness but not the strength.”

Isaac Herzog, a member of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee representing the Labor Party, sees the situation a bit differently.

“Abbas has been successful in uniting the Palestinian people and he has the overwhelming support in the West Bank,” he said.

Herzog said that Israel erred in not being more receptive to Abbas’ statehood push.

“We should have run with it because at the end of the day, him and Fayyad are the best partners we can get,” he said. “I’m not saying Abbas is irreplaceable, but he is committed to preserving security and stopping terror, and he has achieved major success in building a political system that works.”

Among the beneficiaries of this tolerance is Gamal Abdel Gawad Soltan, director of the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. This government-sponsored think tank has managed, incredibly, to remain somewhat independent of the state. When I asked why, Soltan explained, “Mubarak was corrupt and authoritarian, but he was not Saddam Hussein, Hafez al-Assad or Moammar Gadhafi.”

Still, why pay scholars who spend every day publishing essays that regularly cut against the grain of government policy? His center, Soltan told me, was established in 1968 “after we lost the war with Israel, to create a place where we could analyze our reasons for failure.”  He continued, “We can conduct our research and publish it, but we can’t mobilize activists. We are allowed to say what we want as long as we don’t oversay it or act on it.”

Soltan’s political views generally line up with those of other Egyptian liberals. He distrusts the Muslim Brotherhood. He doesn’t much care for Israel but has no interest in terminating the peace treaty. As for the activists in Tahrir Square, he finds them immature. In short: a political liberal with the temperament of a conservative.

More outspoken than Soltan is his colleague Hala Mustafa, a borderline revolutionary who also works at the Al-Ahram Center and edits her own magazine, Democracy. Unlike Soltan, she — among a small minority of Egyptian liberals — wants normal relations with Israel.

Not surprisingly, Mustafa has gotten into trouble. The regime mounted a fierce public campaign against her for meeting in her office with the Israeli ambassador. This was actually not so unusual — Israelis visit the Al-Ahram Center on a fairly regular basis — but the government seized the opportunity to attack her, no doubt to intimidate her. It was just “an excuse to put pressure on me,” she said. She was certain that her office was bugged.

Like many Egyptian liberals, Mustafa believes that the military regime and the Muslim Brotherhood will work together. “The regime and the Islamists hate liberalism and Westernization,” she said. In her view, this is part of the reason why Israel must be demonized: “Not because it’s Jewish, but because it’s Western and liberal.”

Mustafa actually tried to resign; the government wouldn’t let her. Perhaps they thought they could keep a better eye on her that way, but they could have put her in jail. Somewhere in the back of the government’s collective mind was the conviction that the disastrous radical days of pre-1967 Nasserism must not be repeated.

Another kind of Egyptian liberal is Ezzedine Choukri Fishere. A novelist and professor of political science, he was appointed, after Mubarak’s ouster, as secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council for Culture.

“If North Korea and the former Soviet Union are a 10 on the scale of social control,” he said, “Egypt under Mubarak was probably a 6.

“I published my first novel in 1995. It was very critical of the government. I wondered if I should write under my own name. But I went ahead and nothing happened. No one in the government reads,” he laughed.

Fishere was in the Foreign Service at the time working at Egypt’s embassy in Tel Aviv, and his view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is sophisticated. “I saw the complexity of the relationship,” he said, “and complexity teaches you things.”

Not that Fishere is pro-Israel. “Egypt has to be frank with the Israelis and the Americans,” he explained, “and say we can no longer help in keeping the Palestinians where they are.”  Cairo had to make its policies more open; that is, “Egypt should be more like Turkey than like Iran.”

Soltan, Mustafa and Fishere say Egyptian culture is slowly becoming a bit more pluralistic, if not more democratic, and that most of the leadership does not aim to impose a one-party state. They’re probably right. Egypt does feel more pluralistic today than it did just a few years ago. At the same time, the country is weighed down by the despotic habits of thousands of years.

Unsurprisingly, Fishere recently departed the government to return to teaching and writing. He was not, however, purged. If ever the likes of him are purged, we’ll know Egypt has re-crossed a dangerous threshold and is becoming more like Iran than like Turkey.

Michael J. Totten (www.MichaelTotten.com.) is a contributing editor at City Journal and author of “In the Wake of the Surge” and “The Road to Fatima Gate.” This article was first published by Jewish Ideas Daily (www.jewishideasdaily.com) and is reprinted with permission.

The effort to pursue the issue at the U.N. Security Council has encountered a stumbling block in Bosnia, where the country’s Serbian co-president appears to have helped cost the Palestinians a crucial ninth vote.

Meanwhile, U.N. officials are sending a strong message regarding any further efforts to get U.N. agencies to follow UNESCO’s lead in granting the Palestinians membership: Please stop.

“I believe this is not beneficial for Palestine and not beneficial for anybody,” Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. secretary-general, said in a Nov. 3 interview with The Associated Press.

U.S. laws requiring an automatic cutoff in funds to U.N. agencies that grant statehood recognition to the Palestinians already have threatened massive cuts to UNESCO, the U.N. cultural and scientific agency.

“When an organization is not properly functioning because of a lack of resources, you have to think about the millions and millions of people who are being impacted and affected,” Ban said.

The Palestinians have taken heed. On Nov. 3, the day that AP published its Ban interview, Riyad al-Malki, the Palestinian foreign minister, said the Palestinians would stick to pursuing the Security Council option.

“The backlash that’s coming from UNESCO, including from the secretary-general, made it clear it might be a risky counterproductive process to go to other agencies,” said Ghaith al-Omari, executive director of the American Task Force on Palestine. “So for the time being they’re concentrating on the Security Council.”

Pro-Israel officials said this should be a “duh” moment for the Palestinians, who had been clearly warned of the dangers — not least by congressional appropriators. The appropriators had said repeatedly that cutting off U.N. agencies recognizing “Palestine“ was a matter not only of policy but law.

“Any agency that was considering the Palestinians will now not consider it,” said Tom Neumann, the executive director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. “There was no margin for wiggling out of it. The State Department is unhappy about cutting UNESCO, but they didn’t have a choice.”

Israel and the United States say the only route to statehood for the Palestinians is through direct negotiations. The Palestinians refuse to return to talks until Israel freezes settlement building.

The Obama administration had made it clear that it would veto any Security Council bid. The Palestinians could have put the United States in the difficult position of having to use its veto in the Security Council by garnering nine votes from the council’s 15 members, the minimum required to approve a membership request. That, the Palestinians believed, would have been an important symbolic victory.

The Palestinians had secured the backing of China, Russia, Brazil, Lebanon, South Africa and India at the Security Council. Pledging to vote against or to abstain were the United States, Britain, France, Germany and close U.S. allies Colombia and Portugal. The U.S., Israel and pro-Israel groups had targeted the three countries that were seen as up for grabs: Nigeria, Gabon and Bosnia.

Nigeria and Gabon, both with close oil-based ties to the Arab world, reportedly moved into the Palestinian column, giving the Palestinians eight votes. That left Bosnia, a recipient of Western assistance that still nurtures hopes of joining the European Union.

The wild card for the Bosnians turned out to be its unique presidency, where U.N. votes must be approved. Three co-presidents represent the country’s major communities — Muslim, Croat and Serb.

The Muslim president reportedly favored statehood recognition, and the Croat’s position was not known. But the Bosnian Serb president, Milorad Dodik, was adamantly opposed, and last week the president’s office announced that lacking unanimity, Bosnia would abstain.

A request to the Palestine Liberation Organization office in Washington as to Palestinian strategies going forward went unanswered.

The Palestinians can still bring the case to the General Assembly, where they have the votes to achieve enhanced observer status, equivalent to the Vatican.

The setbacks to the Palestinians’ U.N. strategy do not mean that the issue of Palestinian statehood is off the table, said Jon Alterman, the director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Absent the diplomatic route, he warned, the Palestinians might press for statehood through violence.

“There’s a frustration that it’s not on the Israeli agenda, it’s dropped from the American agenda and they have to do something to put it back on everyone’s agenda,” Alterman said.

The alternative to progress toward statehood could be the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, under pressure from a populace that is fed up with its diplomatic failures, said Gidi Grinstein, president of the Reut Institute, an Israeli strategic policy think tank.

Speaking Tuesday in Denver to JACPAC, a pro-Israel political action committee, at a session convened during the Jewish Federations of North America’s annual General Assembly, Grinstein said that Israel and the United States should embrace the Palestinian U.N. bid as a means of avoiding what he said would be a disaster.

“Instead of fighting the Palestinian motion in the U.N., embrace it and work for it,” Grinstein said. “There’s a lot of risks on this option, but are there lesser risks with a Palestinian Authority that could implode?”

UNESCO designated Tel Aviv's "White City" -- its 4,000 Bauhaus buildings -- a heritage site in 2003, facilitating funds for rehabilitation projects. (David Lisbona via Creative Commons.)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The immediate consequence of UNESCO’s vote to grant the Palestinians membership is clear: A cutoff of American funding for the U.N.  agency governing the protection of cultures and sharing of scientific knowledge, which stands to lose roughly a fifth of its budget.

What’s less certain is what effect the defunding, mandated by a U.S. law banning aid to U.N. bodies that recognize Palestinian statehood, would have on American — and, by extension, Israeli — influence worldwide.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization voted Monday at its General Conference in Paris to designate Palestine as a full member state. The vote at the agency’s Paris headquarters was 107 in favor to 14 opposed, with 52 abstentions. France cast a surprise vote in favor, while Britain abstained and the United States, Israel and Germany were among the countries voting against. Cheers from the assembled delegates greeted the results.

UNESCO had been warned for weeks that a cutoff of American funding was inevitable if the agency granted full membership to the Palestinians. Among Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress, the Palestinian statehood push at the United Nations is seen as a way of circumventing Israel’s demand for a return to direct talks to negotiate a peace agreement.

“I expect the Administration to enforce existing law and stop contributions to UNESCO and any other U.N. agency that enables the Palestinians to short-cut the peace process,” Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), the chairwoman of the foreign operations subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, said in a statement.

Granger had the backing of the committee’s senior Democrat, Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.).

“Consistent with current law, UNESCO’s action also has put at risk its funding from United States taxpayers, who provide more than one-fifth of UNESCO’s budget,” Lowey said in her statement. “UNESCO must understand that such irresponsible actions have serious consequences.”

Richard Stone and Malcolm Hoenlein, respectively the chairman and executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said in a statement, “We trust that the Administration and Congress will take the appropriate action under U.S. law at the earliest possible time.”

The Obama administration, for its part, acted almost immediately. By Monday afternoon it was already announcing that funding would be cut off, and that UNESCO would not get about $60 million due on Nov. 1.

“Palestinian membership as a state in UNESCO triggers longstanding legislative restrictions which will compel the United States to refrain from making contributions to UNESCO,” said a statement from Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokeswoman.

Susan Rice, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations, tweeted: “Today’s vote to grant Palestinian membership in UNESCO is no substitute for direct negotiations, but it is deeply damaging to UNESCO.”

Some supporters of the Obama administration’s multilateralism, however, expressed concern about the impact that the tough U.S. line on UNESCO would have on American influence.

“Here is this old law, first written in 1990 and updated in 1994, compelling a drastic measure that doesn’t fit the offense,” said Matt Duss, a policy analyst for the Center for American Progress.

Duss outlined what he said were gains that the Obama administration has made at the United Nations: intensifying international sanctions isolating Iran and increasing awareness of human rights abuses in that country.

“The re-engagement at the United Nations has been an important agenda item for the U.S.; it’s done a lot of good,” he said. “Part of that influence is to Israel’s benefit.”

Pulling funding from UNESCO also could jeopardize many non-controversial programs administed by the body, including tsunami early-warning systems and clean water efforts in poor countries.

Conservative critics, however, reject the assertion that taking a tough line with the U.N. harms American interests.

“Can someone explain to me why it is this is a problem for the United States? It’s a problem for UNESCO,” said Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. “All of these organizations need to assess whether their funding from the United States is more important than their support for the bureaucratic creation of a Palestinian state.”

For its part, the Obama administration had immediate concerns: Drawing back from UNESCO could have repercussions with an affiliated body, the World Intellectual Property Organization. Officials from the State Department and the Patent Office briefed “representatives from leading industries” on Monday on the possible repercussions on protecting overseas copyrights.

“The United States is a leading global voice on issues related to patent, copyright, and trademark matters, and should the U.S. be unable to provide its contributions to WIPO, the impact of that voice could be significantly diminished,” a State Department statement said.

Politico reported that representatives of Apple, Google, Microsoft, the Motion Picture Association of America, PhRMA and the Recording Industry Association of America attended — a signal that the Obama administration was ready to bring in big guns to lobby Congress on the issue.

The statement from Nuland emphasized that the administration was exploring its options.

“The United States will maintain its membership in and commitment to UNESCO, and we will consult with Congress to ensure that U.S. interests and influence are preserved,” Nuland said.

Liberal Israel advocacy groups like J Street and Americans for Peace Now urged Congress to reconsider the laws that prompted the funding cutoff.

“Existing legislation regarding the U.N. and the Palestinians must be amended to include sufficient flexibility to protect U.S. national security interests,” Americans for Peace Now said in a statement.

Leading House Republicans seem focused on further ratcheting up the pressure to derail the Palestinian U.N. campaign. In response to the UNESCO vote, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, quickly announced a briefing for Thursday on “How to drop the Palestinian statehood scheme at the U.N.: UNESCO and beyond.” Ros-Lehtinen has introduced a bill that would reinforce existing laws banning funding to international bodies that grant full membership to the Palestinians.

Israel praised the United States for its swift action. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the U.S. defunding announcement was further evidence of a “strong and solid” alliance with Israel.

Yet Israel did not commit to withdraw its own funding of UNESCO, amounting to about 3 percent of the agency’s budget, or to pull out of the organization. An Israeli official told JTA that the government is considering its options.

UNESCO is one of the few multilateral bodies where Israel’s concerns have received a sympathetic hearing; UNESCO runs Holocaust education programs in countries that have otherwise been hostile to such learning.

While Israel has sometimes clashed with UNESCO — such as in 2010, when UNESCO declared that Rachel’s Tomb near Bethlehem and Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs are “an integral part of the occupied Palestinian Territories” — the agency also has taken actions that are seen as friendly. In 2003, UNESCO designated Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus blocks — the “White City” — as a world heritage site, which facilitates international fundraising for historic preservation.

The Israeli official said the government was weighing such successes with the agency against the damage that he said the Palestinian membership vote did to the peace process.

“I don’t see how it’s conducive to the goal of achieving reconciliation,” said the official.

Noting the recent resumption of rocket fire from Gaza on southern Israel, the official said, “While they were accepting the Palestinians to UNESCO, Israelis were in their shelters. So who is the actor you accepted to UNESCO?”