A Daily Analysis
By Marc Schulman

July 20, 2008 Talansky Cross, Nuclear Talks With Iran Deadlock

For the last three days the Prime Minister's lawyers have been attacking Olmert's old friend Talansky on the stand. They have successfully shown that Talansky, who is 72 years old, can be confused by a group of lawyers. Today's Haaretz was dominated by a full transcript of Olmert's first police interrogation regarding this affair. The transcript shows Olmert, who remembers even less than Talansky, doing his cross examination. By attacking Talansky, Olmert's lawyers succeeded in leaving the image of Olmert accepting envelopes full of cash from 'friends' in the publics mind. It is just a matter of time before it all catches up.

Nuclear talks with Iran ended in deadlock again, which was no great surprise. Many commentators concentrated on the fact that the US sent a representative to the talks, and indeed that was a change in the American position. Ultimately, it does not make a difference. Iran will drag the talks out as long as they can so that they can avoid the worst possible sanctions. Those who try to belittle any attempt to connect and compare Iran and Ahmadinejad to Hitler and Germany, do not understand the dreams of the Iranians to be great like Persian empires of old. They also do not understand the religious belief of the Iranians leaders, and how important their religious is to them.

The prisoner exchange with Hezbollah is now history and attention has been turned to Gilad Shalit. Those negotiations are now on hold. The problems are two fold. On one hand Hamas loathes the idea of giving up the card they hold -Gilad Shalit. On the Israeli side there is a realization that Hamas wants the worst of the killers released. There has been a backlash against the release of Kuntar, how much worse would it be if 450 or even 1000 Kuntars are released. Kuntar stating that he want to fight Israel now that he has been released has certainly not helped.