Bibi and Kerry talk Syria
here was a warming in Jerusalem this week towards the deal to remove chemical weapons from Syria, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other politicians expressing cautious backing.
On Sunday, Netanyahu told US Secretary of State John Kerry: “We have been closely following – and support – your ongoing efforts to rid Syria of its chemical weapons.
“The Syrian regime must be stripped of all its chemical weapons, and that would make our entire region a lot safer.”
Netanyahu stressed that he believes diplomacy with Syria only yielded results because a military threat hung over the embattled state. “What the past few days have shown is something that I have been saying for quite some time, that if diplomacy has any chance to work, it must be coupled with a credible military threat,” he said.
Despite the positivity, many doubts persist. An aide to Netanyahu’s senior partner in the coalition Avigdor Lieberman, chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, told The AJN, “the scepticism remains”, even though it is good that “it seems the major powers are on the same page”.
The aide pointed out, “It’s still the same Syrian government” that has long been dishonest about its chemical capabilities, and commented that Lieberman is waiting to see “whether they are serious or doing this as a time-wasting exercise”.
Kerry sought to respond to concerns like these, saying that Syria will be expected to keep its word. “We cannot have hollow words in the conduct of international affairs, because that affects all other issues, whether Iran or North Korea or others,” he said.
US President Barack Obama took it upon himself to convey reassurance to Israel that agreeing to a deal with Syria doesn’t imply that it will let Iran off the hook over nuclear weapons. “I think what the Iranians understand is that the nuclear issue is a far larger issue for us than the chemical weapons issue; that the threat … against Israel that a nuclear Iran poses is much closer to our core interests,” he said in a television interview. “My suspicion is that the Iranians recognise they shouldn’t draw a lesson that we haven’t struck [Syria] to think we won’t strike Iran.”