By refusing to see Netanyahu, Obama sharpens his Iran dilemma

DEBKAfile Special Report

President Barack Obama’s refusal Tuesday Sept. 11 to see Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu because “the president’s schedule will not permit that,” left Jerusalem thunderstruck – and Washington too.

At one stroke, round after round of delicate negotiations on Iran between the White House, Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, the US National Security Council, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta collapsed. They had aimed at an agreement on a starting point for the meeting that had been fixed between the two leaders for Sept. 28 in New York to bridge their differences over an attack on Iran’s nuclear program.

By calling off the meeting, the US president has put paid to those hopes and publicly humiliated the Israel prime minister, turning the clock back to the nadir of their relations brought about by the comment by Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Aug. 30: “I don’t want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it” – meaning attack Iran.

By rebuffing Netanyahu, the president demonstrated that the top US soldier was not just talking off the cuff but representing the president’s final position on a possible Israel strike to preempt Iran’s nuclear program.

Tuesday, the US Defense Secretary said: “If Iran decides to make a nuclear weapon, the US would have a little more than a year to stop it.” He added that the United States has “pretty good intelligence” on Iran.

"It's roughly about a year right now. A little more than a year. And so ... we think we will have the opportunity once we know that they've made that decision, take the action necessary to stop (Iran)," Panetta said on CBS's "This Morning" program.

Panetta said the United States has the capability to prevent Iran from building an atomic bomb. "We have the forces in place to be able to not only defend ourselves, but to do what we have to do to try to stop them from developing nuclear weapons," he said.

Some optimists in Jerusalem took these comments to indicate that the crisis had become manageable now that the Obama administration was finally prepared to discuss a timeline and red lines for holding Iran back from making a bomb. This hope was soon dashed by word that the US president would rather confront Israel than Iran.

The White House may also have been incensed by the orders given by Netanyahu and Barak to the IDF to keep going on preparations for attacking Iran alongside the forthcoming meeting between the two leaders.

Netanyahu's comments to a news conference earlier Tuesday are unlikely to have salved angry administration spirits in Washington.

He said that with every passing day, Iran comes closer to a nuclear bomb, heedless of sanctions and diplomac. The world tells Israel 'wait, there's still time'. And I say, 'Wait for what? Wait until when?' Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don't have a moral right to place a red light before Israel," said Netanyahu on a note of frustration against the Obama administration.

debkafile reported earlier Tuesday:

The wrangling over Iran between the offices of the US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Monday, has been reduced essentially to a battle for the agenda of their meeting in New York on Sept. 28: Netanyahu will be pressing for a US commitment to military action if Iran crosses still-to-be-agreed red lines, while the White House rejects red lines – or any other commitment for action – as neither necessary nor useful.

Israel’s latest rebuttal came Monday, Sept. 10 from former Military Intelligence chief, Amos Yadlin, who argued that even without agreed red lines, Israel was quite capable of coping with its enemies without the United States.

The sparring appeared to have reached a point of no return, leaving Obama and Netanyahu nothing more to discuss. However, just the opposite is true. For both leaders their upcoming tête-à-tête is vital. It is the US president’s last chance to prevent an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program before he faces the American voter on Nov. 6, while the prime minister will not forego any opportunity to harness the US to this attack. He needs to prove - not just to the anti-war camp ranged against him at home, but also to assure the military - which has been falsely reported as against an attack - that he bent over backward to procure US backing.

Netanyahu does not feel that even if he fails to talk Obama around (more likely than not), he has lost American support; he counts on the US Congress to line up behind Israel’s case for cutting down a nuclear Iran which is sworn to destroy the Jewish state, as well as sections of the US public and media and some of he president’s Jewish backers, including contributors to his campaign chest.

Those are only some of the reasons why the last-ditch US-Israeli summit cannot be avoided and indeed may be pivotal - both for their participants’ personal political destinies,and for the Middle East at large.

debkafile’s Washington and political sources disclose that their dialogue will have two levels according to current planning:

1. In New York, Obama and Netanyahu will try and negotiate a common framework;

2. At the Pentagon in Washington, defense chiefs Leon Panetta and Ehud Barak will be standing by to render any agreements reached in New York into practical, detailed plans which would then be referred back to the two leaders for endorsement.

The heated dispute between US and Israeli officials over “red lines” was therefore no more than sparring over each of the leaders’ starting-points for their New York dialogue and therefore their agenda and final understandings. Behind the clash of swords, US and Israeli diplomats are working hard to negotiate an agreed starting point. They are putting just as much effort into preventing the row deteriorating into a total rupture before Sept. 28.

Netanyahu discussed another red line Monday when he interviewed President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem, their first meeting in three months. Although the Israeli presidency is a largely titular function, Peres has elected himself senior spokesman for the opponents of an Israeli military operation against Iran.

While their advisers sought to establish agreed lines between them ahead of Netanyahu’s meeting with Obama, debkafile reports that the confrontation between the two Israeli politicians ended inconclusively, because Peres kept on demanding that the prime minister bend to the will of the White House.

Neither US nor Israel can destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities, only cause delay

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis

US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said Tuesday night that he doesn’t believe Israel has made a decision to attack Iran’s nuclear program. “As a sovereign country, they will ultimately make decisions based on what they think is in their national security interest,” he said, but he believed there was “still room to continue to negotiate” and “additional sanctions were beginning to have an additional impact.”  The Secretary added that the Israeli prime minister agrees that military action should be the last resort.

At their joint press briefing in Washington, Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: “I am not privy to [Israel’s] planning. So what I’m telling you is based on what I know of their capabilities. And I may not know about all of their capabilities. But I think it’s fair… to say they could delay but not destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities.”

debkafile’s military and intelligence sources say that neither official said anything new.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have reiterated firmly that the government had not reached a decision on whether to attack Iran. They have fully agreed it must be the last, not the first, option.

The fly in the ointment of US-Israeli interchanges on the subject is to be found in Gen. Dempsey’s rather than Panetta’s phrasing. For instance:

1. Dempsey: “I may not know all of their [Israel’s] capabilities.”

debkafile: The US army chief may know all there is to know about those capabilities but may not be fully apprised of how they are to be used, or when. That doesn’t mean he has no notion of Israel’s plans of operations, but the tight compartmentalization of top-level and IDF operational decision-making on the Iranian topic necessarily results in him not being privy, as he said himself, to every last detail of Israeli planning for action against a nuclear Iran.

This does not rule out Israel, at the critical moment, forewarning Panetta and Dempsey – and through them President Barack Obama – about the event to come.

2. Dempsey:   “But I think it’s fair… to say they [Israel] could delay but not destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities.”

debkafile:  This premise is accurate: Neither Netanyahu and Barak or the IDF generals and security chiefs, past and present, who urge Israel to strike Iran’s nuclear capabilities (They are numerous although antagonists are featured on front pages.) presume that Iran’s nuclear program can be leveled to the ground at one stroke. Israel hopes to hold it up for a couple of years.

But this raises another question: Isn’t it too late for even the United States with its superior capabilities to aspire to total Iran’s nuclear capabilities? 

Neither Panetta nor Dempsey discussed this US capacity but, according to our sources, while the Americans can certainly achieve more and longer-lasting destruction than Israel, they too can no longer destroy the program in its entirety. But they could delay it for four to five years, double the grace period Israel could achieve.

It must be stressed that the longer the world waits for diplomacy or sanctions to take effect and holds back from direction action, the faster the options for even slowing down Iran’s nuclearization shrink - not just for Israel but for the United States too.

The last moment for the United States and Israel, separately or together, to have destroyed Iran’s program went by without action four years ago in 2007. Today, the best they can achieve is to temporarily hold Iran back from building a bomb.

Pentagon makes June gay pride month

Officials say US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta wants to honor the contributions of gay service members

By Pauline Jelinek

WASHINGTON (AP) — Last summer, gays in the military dared not admit their sexual orientation. This summer, the Pentagon will salute them, marking June as gay pride month just as it has marked other celebrations honoring racial or ethnic groups.

In the latest remarkable sign of change since the military repealed the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, the Defense Department will soon hold its first event to recognize gay and lesbian troops. It comes nine months after repeal of the policy that had banned gay troops from serving openly and forced more than 13,500 service members out of the armed forces.

Details are still being worked out, but officials say Defense Secretary Leon Panetta wants to honor the contributions of gay service members.

“Now that we’ve repealed ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ he feels it’s important to find a way this month to recognize the service and professionalism of gay and lesbian troops,” said Navy Capt. John Kirby, a spokesman.

This month’s event will follow a long tradition in the Pentagon of recognizing diversity in America’s armed forces. Hallway displays and activities, for example, have marked Black History Month and Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month.

Before the repeal, gay troops could serve but couldn’t reveal their orientation. If they did, they would be discharged. At the same time, a commanding officer was prohibited from asking a service member is he or she was gay.

Although some feared repeal of the ban on serving openly would cause problems in the ranks, officials and gay advocacy groups say no big issues have materialized — aside from what advocacy groups criticize as slow implementation of some changes, such as benefit entitlements to troops in same-sex marriages.

Basic changes have come rapidly since repeal — the biggest that gay and lesbian soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines no longer have to hide their sexuality in order to serve. They can put photos on their office desk without fear of being outed, attend social events with their partners and openly join advocacy groups looking out for their interests.

OutServe, a once-clandestine professional association for gay service members, has nearly doubled in size to more than 5,500 members. It held its first national convention of gay service members in Las Vegas last fall, then a conference on family issues this year in Washington.

At West Point, the alumni gay advocacy group Knights Out was able to hold the first installment in March of what is intended to be an annual dinner in recognition of gay and lesbian graduates and Army cadets. Gay students at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis were able to take same-sex dates to the academy’s Ring Dance for third-year midshipmen.

Panetta said last month that military leaders had concluded that repeal had not affected morale or readiness. A report to Panetta with assessments from the individual military service branches said that as of May 1 they had seen no ill effects.

“I don’t think it’s just moving along smoothly, I think it’s accelerating faster than we even thought the military would as far as progress goes,” said Air Force 1st Lt. Josh Seefried, a finance officer and co-director of OutServe.

He said acceptance has been broad among straight service members and has put a spotlight on unequal treatment that gays continue to receive in some areas. “We are seeing such tremendous progress in how much the military is accepting us, but not only that — in how much the rank and file is now understanding the inequality that’s existing right now,” he said.

That’s a reference to the fact that same-sex couples aren’t afforded spousal health care, assignments to the same location when they transfer to another job, and other benefits. There was no immediate change to eligibility standards for military benefits in September. All service members already were entitled to certain things, such as designating a partner as one’s life insurance beneficiary or as designated caregiver in the Wounded Warrior program.

As for other benefits still not approved, the department began a review after repeal with an eye toward possibly extending eligibility, consistent with the federal Defense of Marriage Act and other applicable laws, to the same-sex partners of military personnel.

“The department is carefully and deliberately reviewing the benefits from a policy, fiscal, legal, and feasibility perspective,” Eileen Lainez, a Pentagon spokeswoman said Thursday.

Gay marriage has been perhaps the most difficult issue.

Though chaplains on bases in some states are allowed to hold what the Pentagon officials call “private services” — they don’t use the words wedding or marriage — such unions do not garner marriages benefits because the Defense of Marriage Act says marriage is between a man and a woman.

The policy known as “don’t ask, don’t tell” was in force for 18 years, and its repeal was a slow and deliberate process.

President Barack Obama on Dec. 22, 2010, signed legislation repealing it. Framing the issue as a matter of civil rights long denied, Obama said that “we are a nation that welcomes the service of every patriot … a nation that believes that all men and women are created equal.”

The military then did an assessment for several months to certify that the forces were prepared to implement it in a way that would not hurt military readiness. And it held training for its 2.25 million-person force to inform everyone of the coming change and what was expected