White House to invite Netanyahu for visit, says spokesman
Yitzhak Benhorin/Ynetnews/News Agencies/Published:09.11.15/ Israel News
Possible visit could take place in November in what would be the first meeting in months between the prime minister and President Obama; House of Representatives ‘defeats’ Iran deal in symbolic vote.
WASHINGTON – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be invited to the White House in early November, Spokesman Josh Earnest said on Friday. The annual conference of the Jewish Federations of North America will begin on November 8, and it is likely that the White House intends the visit to coincide with the event. Earnest said that while the two leaders have disagreements, their relationship regarding defense was stable, and both were committed to strengthening relations. Obama pointedly refused to see Netanyahu in March when the Israeli leader appeared before a joint meeting of Congress and harshly criticized a US-negotiated nuclear deal with Iran, Israel’s enemy. Lawmakers had arranged Netanyahu’s appearance without White House input.
Friday’s announcement of a possible visit came soon after the US House of Representatives defeated a resolution backing the nuclear agreement with Iran in a symbolic vote engineered by congressional Republicans who object to the deal.
House members defeated the measure 269 to 162 in a strongly partisan vote, part of an effort by Republicans to underscore their objections to the international accord despite a vote on Thursday in the Senate that blocked a Republican-led effort to kill it by passing a resolution of disapproval. “This deal is far worse than anything I could have imagined,” John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House, said in a speech harshly critical of the July 14 agreement between the United States, five other world powers and Iran. Twenty-five Democrats joined 244 Republicans in voting against the resolution. No Republicans voted in favor. After a rebellion by some of the most conservative Republicans, party leaders abandoned plans for a House vote on a disapproval resolution, opting for votes on three measures to send a stronger message that a majority of Congress objects to the pact.
Members from each party accuse the other of using the dispute for political purposes. Democrats have accused Republicans of leaping to reject the deal and ignoring US allies and international experts who back it. Some also accused Republicans of politicizing the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by holding the votes on that date. In turn, Republicans accuse Democrats of blindly supporting Democratic President Barack Obama in an agreement they see as going too far in easing economic sanctions on Iran in return for too few concessions on its nuclear program. They also joined with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who lobbied against the deal, in calling it a threat to his country’s existence. An Israeli diplomatic source who could not be named said Israel was pleased with the outcome of the House votes.
Boehner and other Republican congressional leaders are considering more options, including suing Obama, to stop the deal. A disapproval resolution would have derailed the pact by eliminating Obama’s ability to waive many US sanctions on Tehran. The three measures considered by the House would have no similar impact on the agreement. In a second vote on Friday, the House voted 247 to 186 to pass legislation that would bar Obama from waiving, suspending or reducing sanctions under the nuclear agreement.
That vote was even more strongly partisan. Two Democrats joined 245 Republicans in voting yes, while all 186 “no’s” were from Democrats. To become law, that legislation would have to be passed in the Senate and then survive a likely veto. There are no plans now for the Senate to vote on the House measures.
Iran urged to sign nuclear test ban treaty By The Associated Press | United Nations/Saturday, 12 September 2015
The head of the U.N.’s nuclear test ban treaty organization says Iran should follow up on its historic nuclear deal with world powers by ratifying the treaty and assuring it will never conduct a nuclear test explosion. Lassina Zerbo said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press that if Iran doesn’t ratify the treaty, “it will leave room for the doubt that people have put in this deal and the good intentions of Iran.”Zerbo said Iran should have signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, known as the CTBT, before negotiations started on the deal to rein in its nuclear program, in order to give assurances to critics that it has no intention to develop nuclear weapons – and that there is a religious prohibition, or “fatwa,” against possessing them, issued in 2013 by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Ratifying the treaty now, he said, will assure doubters in the U.S. and elsewhere that before or after the nuclear agreement ends in 15 years, Iran will never conduct any nuclear test explosions in a search to develop nuclear weapons. Zerbo said ratifying the treaty will also give Iran a stronger position to say that it has complied with all arms control treaties and is part of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, so “what else do you need from us to show good faith with regard to our intention to only use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes?”
“I believe in what they say, and that’s why I’m telling them, ‘I trust you,’” he said of Iran. But he noted the saying “Trust, but verify” and added, “Why don’t you give us this assurance?”The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty The CTBT organization has 196 member states – 183 that have signed the treaty and 164 that have ratified it. But the treaty has not entered into force because it still needs ratification by eight countries involved in originally negotiating it: Iran, Israel, Egypt, India, Pakistan, North Korea, the United States and China.
If Iran ratifies the treaty, Zerbo said, it would create the conditions in the Middle East for easier ratifications, potentially by Egypt, and would be an essential element for the ultimate goal of creating a nuclear weapon-free zone in the region.
Monitoring
While waiting for the CTBT to enter into force, the organization has spent more than $1 billion on an international monitoring system that can detect a nuclear test by Iran or any other country, Zerbo said. It detected all three tests by North Korea. The system uses four technologies – 170 seismic stations to pick up shock waves from any underground explosion, “hydro-acoustic” monitoring to pick up anything that happens underwater, 48 “infrasound” stations to detect low-frequency waves in the atmosphere that can travel long distances, and 80 “radionucleide” stations to sample the air for radiation, which Zerbo called “the smoking gun.”
The highly sophisticated monitoring systems can also detect earthquakes, tsunamis, air contamination, the movement of whales and the trajectory of space launches, as well as meteors including the ones in Russia in February 2013 and over Thailand on Sept. 7, he said.
