With Iran Talks Set to Resume, Israel Demands More Overt Threats for War

Israeli Officials: Diplomacy Won't Work Without 'Specificity' in Threats

The west in general and the US in particular are keen to threaten war with Iran at every opportunity. Israeli officials, however, are greeting tomorrow’s resumption of negotiations with Iran with a demand that the west make their threats more overt.

Officials said that the US and others have kept saying that “all options are on the table” so long that no one believes them, and that the threats need “specificity” if Iran is to be cowed into submitting to whatever demands they are presented with tomorrow.

Of course, every time a new round of talks begins, hints of progress are quickly dispelled with a new round of even more aggressive US demands. Israel’s position now is that those demands, whatever they might be, must be backed with the threat of immediate military action if they are refused.

The Israeli officials, who were not named in the reports in the Israeli media, say this is the “only” way diplomacy can work, but Israel’s leadership has been loudly condemning the negotiations at every step in the first place, so their are hardly credible in their estimate of how to make the talks a success.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.