Obama Middle East Legacy Suffers Three Setbacks In Six Days of Iran Negotiations

While many in the media will generously report about 'an agreement to keep trying to agree,' -- let's face it: this is where the West and Iran were a year ago.

The past 7 days particularly have not been kind to Obama's attempt at a Middle East legacy, as we have been bombarded with 3 major setbacks to an effective deal with Iran:

Iran Won't Allow Verification Of Its Nuclear Sites -- Will Obama Backtrack on Yet Another Condition For A Nuclear Deal?

The Wall Street Journal reports on how Iran may prevent verification of any nuclear deal with the West

Talks over Iran’s nuclear program have hit a stumbling block a week before a key deadline because Tehran has failed to cooperate with a United Nations probe into whether it tried to build atomic weapons in the past, say people close to the negotiations.

The Israel Project has been following this and other developments very closely. In a series of emails it sent out, TIP explained the huge significance of Iran's refusal.

United Nations Claims Israel Is #1 Violator of Women's Rights

For Immediate Release: March 19, 2015

Contact: info@humanrightsvoices.org Follow us on Twitter

Top Violator Of Women's Rights Around The World? It's Israel Says UN This article by Anne Bayefsky originally appeared on FoxNews. Guess who is the number one violator of women's rights in the world today? Israel. Violating the rights of Palestinian women. At least that is the view of the UN's top women's rights body, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). CSW ends its annual meeting on Friday, March 20 by condemning only one of the 193 UN member states for violating women's rights – Israel. Not Syria. Where government forces routinely employ rape and other sexual violence and torture against women as a tactic of war. Where in 2014 the Assad regime starved, tortured and killed at least 24,000 civilians, and three million people – mostly women and children – are refugees.

MEQ Summer 2015: Daniel Pipes on Why Americans Can Be More Anti-Israel Than Arabs / More Zionist Than Israelis

The following by Daniel Pipes is reposted here with permission of the Middle East Forum:

Americans Battle the Arab-Israeli Conflict

by Daniel Pipes
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2015 (view PDF)

Texas senator Ted Cruz meets with Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Israel, January 11, 2013. A week after taking office, Cruz traveled to Israel on a congressional delegation trip, led by Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell.

When, in the midst of the 2014 Hamas-Israel war, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration briefly banned American carriers from flying to Israel, Sen. Ted Cruz (Republican of Texas) accused Barack Obama of using a federal regulatory agency "to launch an economic boycott on Israel, in order to try to force our ally to comply with his foreign policy demands."[1] In so doing, Cruz made an accusation no Israeli leader would dare express.

This is hardly unique: Over the years, other American political figures, both Republican (Dan Burton, Jesse Helms, Condoleezza Rice, Arlen Specter) and Democrat (Charles Schumer), have adopted tougher, and sometimes more Zionist, stances than the Israeli government. This pattern in turn points to a larger phenomenon: The Arab-Israeli conflict tends to generate more intense partisanship among Americans than among Middle Easterners. The latter may die from the conflict but the former experience it with greater passion.

Summary of Key Points of Netanyahu Iran Speech to Congress -- With Video and Transcript

The substance of Netanyahu's speech:

• Two major concessions have gutted the Iran deal, making it into bad deal: a concession allowing Iran sufficient infrastructure during the deal to permit a breakout (i.e. none or limited dismantlement) and a concession allowing Iran to become a legitimate nuclear power on the brink of breakout after the deal (the sunset clause).
  
  
• Iran should have to meet three conditions, in addition to Iran giving up its nuclear infrastructure, before sanctions are lifted. Iran should be forced to end: aggression against its Arab neighbors, its export of terrorism, its pledge to annihilate Israel. Crucial line: "if Iran wants to be treated like a normal country, let it act like a normal country."
  
  
• Key line overall: "If the deal now being negotiated is accepted by Iran. That deal will not prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. It would all but guarantee that Iran gets those weapons, lots of them."

Two key points Netanyahu made:

Arlene Kushner on Illegal Palestinian Building by EU -- And Netanyahu's Order To Have Them Torn Down

From Arlene Kushner:
February 8, 2015

Hypocrisy Writ Large

Hypocrisy is all around us, but I will focus today on the very significant information that the Israeli NGO Regavim has uncovered regarding the EU:

The Europeans protest long and loud about “illegal Israeli building” in Judea and Samaria. But what it turns out is that they have been supporting illegal Arab building in Area C.  The Oslo Accords assigned full control (civil and military) of Area C to Israel.  This is apparently irrelevant to the EU, in spite of the fact that the EU was a witness to (and according to international lawyer Alan Baker) a guarantor of the Oslo Accords.

Some Initial Implications of the Hezbollah Attack on Israel

Hezbollah's attack on Israel is being treated not as some cross-border spat, but rather as a regional battle. There are a few initial regional angles that are appearing via Naharnet, not known for being either pro-Israel or anti-Hezbollah:

Arlene Kushner on Good News For Israel From Japan, Egypt and the US

From Arlene Kushner:
January 22, 2015

Seeking Sparks of Light

I’m going to do something different today: Start with good news items.  We need to hear that good news, with all the clouds hanging over us. 

The first is the matter of Israeli-Japanese relations, which have blossomed astonishingly in the past year.  This is true in the areas of diplomatic relations, industrial and scientific technology and trade.  On Sunday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrived here for a three-day visit (which ultimately had to be cut short because of an ISIS hostage situation he had to contend with at home).  And it was on Sunday that Prime Minister Netanyahu, referring to the Islamization of Europe, spoke about the need to increase Asian markets. He spoke as well about the “historic opportunity” to join Israeli and Japanese capabilities for mutual benefit.

Phyllis Chesler: Model Awareness: Cosmo UK's Bold Honor Killing Cover

The following by Phyllis Chesler is reposted here with permission of Middle East Forum:

Model Awareness: Cosmo UK's Bold Honor Killing Cover

by Phyllis Chesler
Breitbart
January 20, 2015

http://www.meforum.org/4987/cosmo-honor-killings

^{Originally published under the title, "Cosmopolitan UK Mock-up Cover Depicts Suffocating Victim of Honor Killing."}

Though it will not hit news stands, a mock-up cover released by Cosmo UK is raising awareness about honor killings.

The cover is shocking, gruesome, and bold. It features the face of a woman encased in plastic, being smothered to death. A video shows the plastic wrapping being ripped open, "signifying the release of women from violence."

Cosmopolitan magazine in the UK has released a mock-up cover of their February issue, designed by Leo Burnett Chase,  as part of a campaign to raise awareness about honor killings. The cover is that of a 17-year-old British-Pakistani girl, Shafilea Ahmed, who was suffocated to death by her parents in 2003 for the crime of refusing an arranged marriage.

Cosmo has joined Karma Nirvana and the Henry Jackson Society in organizing an "inaugural Day of Memory for Britain's Lost Women, which will take placeJuly 14—the day of Shafilea Ahmed's birthday."

Will mainstreaming a critique of honor killing reach those most likely to perpetrate so dishonorable a crime? Are this cover and the planned campaign proof that some Europeans are ready to relinquish the failed doctrine of multi-cultural relativism, appeasement, and the "soft" double standard of racism? Is the British legal system finally ready to do whatever it takes to abolish barbaric cultural practices?

What happened to Shafilea?

Shafilea Ahmed was a young British-Pakistani girl whose only crime was that of becoming too "Western." Her parents allegedly sedated her without her knowledge and packed her off to Pakistan to meet her much older cousin to whom she had been promised in marriage. Shafilea responded by drinking bleach in a failed suicide attempt. She refused the marriage. Her mother, Farzana, was furious that she had "made a scene."

Arlene Kushner on ICC Bending Over Backwards To Justify Investigating Israel - And the Situation With Hezbollah

From Arlene Kushner:
January 19, 2015

Without Recourse

It should be, even in our less than perfect world, that international courts were bastions of ethical judgment and impartiality. OK, maybe that’s expecting too much.  Shall we say, just institutions that model some degree of ethical judgment and impartiality. But even this is expecting too much in today’s climate of severely distorted perceptions and values.

The court I have in mind, of course, is the International Criminal Court, which is just one more corrupt – and politically correct – international body.  As today’s JPost editorial has it: the court is unable to “differentiate between good and bad.” Ah, yes.