No Gaps Between U.S. & Israel on Iran

Haaretz reported:

According to the U.S. official, the Israeli government was the first to be updated by them on what happened in Baghdad after the talks were over. "We updated the Israelis in detail before we updated our own government," the official said. 

"This shows how much trust and security we have in our ties with Israel." 

This was an anonymous senior U.S. official.

"Even if we do not have the patience, we need to give diplomacy a chance before military action…it is still not too late, and I think that Israel also doesn't think it's too late," the official added.

  

On Friday, the head of the U.S. negotiation team, undersecretary of state for political affairs Wendy Sherman, arrived in Israel along with officials from the White House National Security Council working on the Iran nuclear issue – Gary Seymour and Puneet Talwar. 

The American team had a three-hour meeting with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, with National Security advisor Yaakov Amidror, and a number of other senior Israeli officials who deal with the Iran issue, in order to update them on the talks in Baghdad.

 The official said the noose around Iran would continue to tighten:

The U.S. team also stressed in their meetings in Israel that there is no intention to annul the sanctions that have already been imposed on Iran, with an emphasis on the EU oil embargo that will go into effect on June 1.

"There will be more sanctions against Iran if it does not give an answer to the concerns of the international community," the U.S. official said. 

In its talks with Israel, the U.S. delegation underlined that it is still not clear whether or not the Iranians are interested in reaching a deal. "This is the beginning, and we did not expect that there would be an agreement in Baghdad, we will see if we will close the gaps in talks in Moscow," the U.S. official said.

We will see economic chains tightening around Iran.  I wonder if this is the Iraq playbook, only elongated.




In the midst of this deja vu, will Coleman Barks write a letter to President Obama?