[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA: That "one of the top intelligence personnel
within the Israeli intelligence field" should say something 180 degrees
wrong is hardly stunning. Many of the "top intelligence personnel within
the Israeli intelligence field" have been and continue to be 180 degrees
wrong. They are still itching to hand over the Golan Heights to someone -
anyone. They are convinced that it would be a fantastic idea to withdraw
from the West Bank in return for a beautiful ceremony on the White House
Lawn. And their answer to everything that has happened until now is that
the only problem is that we haven't made enough concessions fast enough.

By the way, these "top intelligence personnel" also are confident that
that the only reason Iran wants nukes is to deter the world from trying to
bring down their regime - so that the consequences of a nuclear Iran (with
weapons delivery systems in place that they continue to develop and build)
is NOT that Iran might actually nuke us. So they are willing to take risks
that those who respect the Iranians and accept that the Iranians mean what
they say and that the Iranians actually believe in what they profess to
believe in (apocalypse is a good thing) aren't willing to take.]

Remarks With EU High Representative Federica Mogherini After Their Meeting
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Treaty Room
Washington, DC
January 21, 2015
http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2015/01/236180.htm
...

MODERATOR: The first question will be from Margaret Brennan, CBS News.

QUESTION: .... And secondly, you speak quite frequently to Israeli Prime
Minister Netanyahu, and in what appears to be a breach of protocol, as you
know, Congress has requested that he come and speak to a joint session about
the risks of a nuclear deal with Iran. Would doing so be helpful or harmful
to negotiations, and what do you say to those on the Hill who argued quite
forcefully today – some Democrats among them – that there need to be more
sanctions on Iran?

SECRETARY KERRY: ...

With respect to the prime minister and his visit here, look, we welcome the
prime minister of Israel to come and speak in America anytime. And
obviously, it’s a little unusual to learn of an invitation from the speaker’s
office. That said, everybody knows that the subject of Iran is much on
people’s minds. We have no difference in our goal with respect to our
position. We may have – we do have some difference in tactics of how you
achieve that goal. But we are determined that Iran will not get a nuclear
weapon, and the key to our negotiations is to make certain that whatever is
agreed upon will show people with clarity that that is, in fact, the case
that the path to a nuclear weapon is not achievable and/or has been given up
or both together, and that it can be verified. And that is obviously
critical.

So I’m not going to say more about the negotiations at this time. With
respect to more sanctions, our friends in Europe have made it very clear.
Look, we have partners in this. We’re trying to convince our fellow – my
former colleagues in Congress that the United States acting unilaterally is
not always the best step to take. And in this case, we have a number of
other serious partners – China, Russia, France, Germany, Great Britain – and
we are all at this table negotiating together in an effort facilitated by
the EU in an effort to be able to come to some agreement.

Now, the sanctions don’t exist simply because of the United States. And if
all of our partners were to say, “Well, we don’t think you’re going the
right way, we’re going to go do our own thing,” this can all fall apart,
including the sanctions regime. You could lose the sanctions altogether. So
deciding to act unilaterally is not exactly a strategy for success. We’ve
been successful because we’ve kept everybody together, and everybody
together has helped enforce these sanctions over a long period of time. And
it’s very important to allow the Executive Branch of government, which in
our Constitution has the right to be able to do this negotiation, to do it,
and then there’s plenty of time for people to make judgments about how they
feel about it.

So I think in Israel, one of the top intelligence – one of the top
intelligence personnel within the Israeli intelligence field – I won’t name
names, but this person was asked directly by a congressional delegation that
visited there over the weekend what the effect of sanctions would be. And
this person answered that it would be like throwing a grenade into the
process. So we’re asking people to be responsible here, and then let’s have
a good, responsible debate about what the best way to proceed is.

But we are committed, as we always have been, to prevent a nuclear weapon
from being developed in Iran. And I might add the very same voices that are
now raising their objections to not having sanctions or advocating sanctions
at this point are the very same people who said that the interim agreement
that we reached was a disaster, the very same people who said they objected
to it because it was going to allow Iran to go ahead and build its program.
Well guess what? It hasn’t. It’s done the opposite. A stockpile of enriched
uranium at 20 percent has been reduced now into oxide and into a zero
percentage. The work that was being done at the Arak plutonium nuclear
reactor has been stopped cold. Nothing has progressed there. No new
centrifuges have been introduced above the level that were there the day we
signed the agreement. The fact is that we have daily access to an
underground facility that we never had access to on that kind of a basis.