Yossi Melman: There is no no existential threat to the Jewish State

In an analysis in Jerusalem Post today, Yossi Melman makes the case that there is no existential threat to Israel and indeed Israel has a submarine capability to make a nuclear retaliatory strike against Iran, should Iran destroy Israel with nuclear weapons. Melman reports that the submarines are coming from Germany out of "pangs of guilt following the Holocaust."

Benjamin Netanyahu made a controversial speech to the U.S. Congress on March 3rd and presented his dire predictions that sounded much like the predictions that he has been making since 1993. He told U.S. legislators, except for the 56 or so legislators who boycotted the speech, that one of the conditions he wants satisfied is for Iran to, "stop threatening to annihilate my country, Israel, the one and only Jewish state." Israel is 20% non-Jewish and there is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapon.

On February 23rd, The Guardian reported in an article titled "Leaked cables show Netanyahu's Iran bomb claim contradicted by Mossad," Israel's equivalent to the American CIA. The documents show Netanyahu's claims in 2012 that Iran was only a year away from having a nuclear weapon were not supported by Israel's own intelligence agency.

An impending deal with Iran and the P-5 nations, which consists of five permanent members of the UN Security Council, China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United States plus Germany, has the rhetoric from Israel increasing in volume even as Haaretz reports that Israel is on the sidelines in terms of the debate. The Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said to CNN on March 6th that the speech had "no effect on the negotiating table."

Speaking from Montreux Switzerland Zarif told Christiane Amanpour that the Iranian side views this entirely as a "manufactured" crisis.

Meanwhile, the Islamophobic right wing media in the U.S. is outraged over Secretary of State John Kerry answering a question about whether a deal with Iran and the P-5 is on the horizon. While holding up crossed fingers he said, "inshallah" - which roughly translates to god-willing in Arabic. Regardless of the shenanigans by extremists who don't want a deal, the media buzz and the positive spin from many traditional news sources point to a framework of a deal being completed on the self-imposed deadline of March 31st, inshallah.