| The Western powers are currently engaged in high-stakes negotiations with Iran over its renegade nuclear program. Those talks in Geneva resumed on Wednesday, two weeks after they broke up with a lot of bickering over who was to blame for scuttling a pending deal at the last minute. The US said it was Iran’s fault, but Tehran blamed it on disagreements among Western countries. And indeed, it was France who refused at the last second to sign on to what it called a “fool’s deal.” Israel agrees and has been pulling out all the stops to try to prevent what it considers to be a “very, very bad deal.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials have been lobbying Western leaders in hopes of persuading the US and its allies to toughen its position in the Geneva talks and not give any sanctions relief to Iran. This effort has included Israeli officials detailing the tens of billions of dollars in financial losses Iran is absorbing in order to pursue a nuclear program. That Israeli lobbying campaign has raised some very important questions, such as why would Iran spend so much money on its nuclear facilities and suffer such huge economic losses from sanctions just to enrich a little uranium? Will the deal on the table legitimize Iran’s claim to a right to enrich its own uranium? Will it leave Iran on the verge of becoming a nuclear power? And shouldn’t the West be more patient and apply even greater economic pressure on Iran in order to get a better deal? Iran on the Threshold – That’s our feature this week here on Front Page Jerusalem. We’ll have a report on how Israel is trying to prevent a bad deal coming out of the Geneva talks on Iran’s nuclear program. Our show will focus on the views of the Israeli government as expressed this past week by prominent cabinet minister Yuval Steinitz. |
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Airing the weekend of November 23, 2013 Available on WWW.FRONTPAGEJERUSALEM.COM on Monday, November 25 2013 |
