Israel Warns China Its Oil Imports From Iran May Be In Danger

Israel’s President, Shimon Peres, met today with China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi. Peres told Jiechi that China should play a significant role in trying to convince Iran to halt its ambitions to achieve nuclear weapons.

During the visit, Jiechi encouraged Israel to begin negotiating with the Palestinians and that China supported the peace plan of giving up more land to the Palestinians. In addition to negotiating with the Palestinians, Jiechi encouraged Israel to open up talks with Syria and Lebanon.

It appears that Shimon Peres is trying to convince China that there may be more at stake in this nuclear arms debate concerning Iran than China might be willing to admit. According to today’s Jerusalem Post, Israel is prepared to tell China that if Iran doesn’t back off from developing nuclear weapons and a military conflict erupts between Israel and Iran, China’s growing demand of oil, much of what it buys from Iran, may be in jeopardy.

The Jerusalem Post has learned that Israeli officials were planning to tell him that China’s oil and natural gas imports from Iran could be jeopardized in the future if pressure does not increase on the Islamic republic to cease its nuclear program and a military confrontation ensues.

During his stay, Israeli diplomats will argue that a more proactive stance on China’s part to pressure Iran will serve Beijing’s interests, by helping to avert a military conflict, thus safeguarding an important energy source for the growing and energy-hungry Chinese economy.

Jiechi will be urged by officials in Jerusalem to up the ante in the campaign to persuade Iran to halt its nuclear development work.

As China grows and develops it has made no bones about the fact they need oil and will do most anything to continue their supply lines to get it. We have often speculated what role China would play in the unrest in the Middle East. A few years ago it might have been a stretch to believe that China would have such an enormous demand for oil and natural gas. Welcome to the high stakes of using oil for leverage.

It is safe to say that China is now well vested in Middle East affairs.

Tom Remington

Obama Seems Willing To Cave In To Iran

Once the United States had a firm stance on dealing with rogue and terrorist supporting countries. That stance was that countries, like Iran, had to meet tough preconditions before any thought of negotiations of any kind could take place. With the Obama administration, things have certainly changed.

Not long after Obama took office, he crafted a video plea to the Iranian leadership to be a good boy and come play with the rest of the world fair. The message in return was clear – mind your own business. But this hasn’t seemingly deterred President Obama. He now seems willing to cave in to his own preconditions, displaying his weakness at the expense of national and international security by allowing Iran to continue to enrich uranium all in hopes that he can sit down with Iran and resolve differences.

According to the New York Times, Obama has convinced other European leaders that the rest of the world needs to look at things differently and appease Iran.

A review of Iran policy that Mr. Obama ordered after taking office is still under way, and aides say it is not clear how long he would be willing to allow Iran to continue its fuel production, and at what pace. But European officials said there was general agreement that Iran would not accept the kind of immediate shutdown of its facilities that the Bush administration had demanded.

“We have all agreed that is simply not going to work — experience tells us the Iranians are not going to buy it,” said a senior European official involved in the strategy sessions with the Obama administration. “So we are going to start with some interim steps, to build a little trust.”

Earlier this week, Israeli President Shimon Peres told the world that Iran is only interested in complete control over the Middle East and not just the state of Israel.

Where will this leave Israel and the United States as Obama continues to show real weakness in dealing with known terrorists such as Iran? Obama has already waffled in his support for Israel leaving them wondering if push came to shove, who he would support.

Israel President Peres Says Iran Out To Control Middle East

Coming as not much of a surprise to most honest people of the planet, Israel President Shimon Peres today said that “Iran has aspirations to control the Middle East”. This response came from Peres in reference to the fact that Egypt and Iran seem plotted against each other because of Egypt finding out that Hizbullah, a known arm of Iran, was plotting targets to destroy in Egypt, including tourist sites.

From the Jerusalem Post:

Speaking after meeting with the country’s top rabbis in honor of the Pessah holiday, Peres told Army Radio, “They fight even without us being involved, and that’s good.”

What Perez was indicating was that Iran is not just focused on the destruction of Israel but will fight anyone who stands in their way to control all the Middle East.

Tom Remington