February 25, 2009--Iran Moving Foward With Bomb
Iran is moving forward in its march to obtaining nuclear weapons. Today they announced that it is adding an additional 50,000 centrifuges to efforts to enrich uranium. It is clear that despite small roadblocks Iran is keeping on its course towards building the bomb. At the moment Israel has no choice but to try to convince the Obama administration to set itself some deadlines for its talks with Iran. Iran has made a specialty of using talks to delay other nations actions. Israeli sources believe that there is not more than a year window to stop the Iranians. It will be up to the new Israeli government to convince the US that if they cannot convince the Iranians to stop they need to give Israel tacit approval to act. It will be quite a task for Netanyahu with his right wing coalition to build that kind of relationship with Obama.
Likud has begun its official negotiations with its expected coalition partners. While everyone believes the negotiations will come to a successful conclusion, they will not go smoothly. The negotiations between Likud and Lieberman’s party Yisrael Beteinu will be particularly difficult. They are still demanding changes relating to cvil-religious matters, something that Netanyahu cannot give them.
The two religious parties are relatively easy to deal with. They both want money and of course Shas wants to control the Ministry of Religion =0 D and Housing, while Yehadut Ha'Torah wants once again to head the Finance committee of the Knesset. Tommy Lapid will be turning in his grave- all the small progress made in undermining the religious parties power is being lost. --
