Reactors.

Before we go any further, this concerns the Telegraph rather than the BBC.

Peter Oborne hates the Jewish Lobby. He’s made programmes about it, so convinced is he that it’s evil. I’ve no idea why he has got this unkind notion into his head, but his obsessional ravings actually sully what’s left of Daily Telegraph. His latest effort concerns the Historic Deal. At the time of writing his article has generated 1113 comments, some of which are truly frightening.

Oborne begins by giving an account of the address William Hague gave - on his return from Geneva - to the ‘pro-Israel Lobby’ (the Conservative Friends of Israel,) which Oborne sees as a sinister cabal. He was sure to specify the glitzy location lest anyone should forget how are rich and greedy these types are. 

Park Plaza Hotel, since you ask.

This was a PR exercise aimed at reassuring ‘friends’ that the deal Hague just signed wasn’t tantamount to throwing Israel under a bus.  No doubt Oborne suspects that such fawning  dutifully carried out on behalf of a government he believes is in the grip of ‘tentacles’ was necessary only because of unseemly pressure from Zionists.

In the manner of the ubiquitous phrase “The BBC has learned”, (you know, that headline which manages both to sensationalise and insinuate that some shady secret or other was procured with difficulty) Oborne has ‘obtained’ a copy of the the briefing pack that was given to attendees. Needless to say he doesn’t think much of it, because it parrots “the overblown rhetoric of Mr. Netanyahu[…] All of which is misleading, ignorant and poorly informed.”

Oborne - perhaps more of a nuclear physicist than me - sincerely believes the Iranians’ plea that their desire for centrifuges and enriched uranium is purely for civilian purposes. Not just for energy, but to diagnose and treat disease as well! 

“The briefing goes on to claim that “Iran has actively enriched uranium to 20 per cent fissile purity, far exceeding civilian purposes”. In fact, there certainly is a civilian purpose for such uranium: it can be used to fuel the Tehran Research Reactor, a facility that produces medical isotopes and nothing else.”

Who’d have thunk it?  Such enriched uranium can be used to fuel the Tehran Research Reactor? Like a machete can also be used to take stones out of horse’s hooves.

While  Mr. O is examining the way the peace deal went down with Jewish lobby, one might wonder why he didn’t apply his penetrating insight to how it went down on the other side. With jubilation, says the Guardian.  You’d think this might be significant, for if the freeze on nukes was such a painful concession for the Ayatollahs, why are they so thrilled? Peter?

A chunk of his piece is devoted to John Kerry, who Oborne believes “can be a great secretary of state, comparable to Baker, Kissinger or even Marshall.”

Then, Oborne seems to have had another idea:

”It is not absurd to speculate that Kerry and Obama will soon press for the prize that has eluded every president so far – a lasting solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.”

Au contraire, as they say. It is quite absurd. How does Oborne imagine Kerry and Obama will convince the overt extreme Islamists of Hamas and the covert extreme Islamists of the PA to unlearn years of ingrained Jew-hate and without further ado love thy neighbour? Can’t see it myself. Unless he means the Iranian version of a lasting solution, and the cancer these isotopes are destined to cure is the ‘cancer of Israel’.