WarSclerotic

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH

07/30/2013 19:30

Hamas leaders on Tuesday released documents which, they said, prove that Fatah and the Palestinian Authority are responsible for Egyptian media campaign against the Islamist movement in the Gaza Strip.

Iran: Armageddon at hand, prepare for war.

Islamic messiah Mahdi expected to return with Jesus, kill infidels

Published: 18 hours ago

Officials of the Islamic regime last month held their annual conference on the Mahdism Doctrine to prepare for the coming of the last Islamic messiah, the Shiites’ 12th Imam, Mahdi.

Shiites, whose clerics rule Iran with an iron fist, believe that at the end of times, Mahdi, a 9th century prophet, will reappear with Jesus Christ at his side, kill all the infidels and raise the flag of Islam in all four corners of the world, establishing worldwide Islamic governance.

Ali Larijani, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, said at the conference that, “I hope (Iran’s) Islamic Revolution is that of the righteous government before the coming,” according to Fars News Agency, the regime’s media outlet run by the Revolutionary Guards.

“Righteous government” is a key to Mahdi’s return, the Shiites believe.

“It has been stated in the Islamic hadith that a wave of uprisings (such as the current upheavals in the Arab world) … takes place before the main uprising and that the righteous government (takes place) before the coming, which I hope (Iran’s) Islamic Revolution is that.”

The speaker said that metaphysics and modern technology have diminished human spiritualism, causing a sense of nervousness in which people have lost hope, and that this effect will reach its maximum before the coming.

“All mental crises are rooted in hopelessness and despair in life,” Larijani said, “and from a society point of view, this is because the big powers of the world are pushing for a culture that has no identity and with their power give their illicit desires a legal aspect. With the help of their media, they explain away the biggest corruption.”

Many regime officials participated in this year’s conference, including military commanders, and several guests spoke of the importance of the Shiite ideology on Mahdi’s coming and the need for jihad for the final battle. The Mahdaviat conference is convened annually to prepare for the coming.

A high Iranian politician said recently that he believes the Syrian revolution could be the catalyst for sparking a worldwide conflagration that will usher in an era of Muslim domination of the world.

Become a part of the investigative reporting team uncovering the truths about Iran, and get author Reza Kahlili’s “A Time to Betray” about his life as a double agent inside Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

“One can smell from the crisis in Syria the coming … of the end of times and the coming of the last Islamic messiah,” said Ruhollah Hosseinian, a member of the Islamic regime’s parliament. Hosseinian has served as deputy of the Intelligence Ministry and a member of the board of trustees of the Islamic Revolution Document Center.

Based on hadiths by Muhammad and his descendants, the Syrian revolution is a start to the coming of Mahdi, Hosseinian said in a speech quoted by Fars News Agency.

Hadiths from Ali, the Shiites’ 1st Imam, also state that a sign of the coming will be the fall of the walls of Damascus.

Hosseinian told the audience that they should prepare themselves for war.

“The coming of his highness is assured … the prophet has promised that people from the east, which according to the hadith means Iran, take power and prepare for the government of Imam Mahdi.”

Despite the Islamic regime being under crippling U.N., U.S. and EU sanctions, it has refused to stop its illicit nuclear program. Over a decade of negotiations with talks as recent as April with the 5+1 world powers have failed. The West hopes that it could restart negotiations once Iran’s new president, Hassan Rowhani, takes office in August.

However, a former intelligence officer now defected to a Scandinavian country said the West must understand that even the election of Rowhani was by design by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, only to buy time so that the regime could reach its goal of becoming a nuclear-armed state. Some analysts believe that Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons is to facilitate the coming.

Any new negotiations must be prompt and serious, making the Islamic regime understand that there will be no wasting time, said the source, adding that the world’s balance relies on how the West handles the regime’s nuclear ambitions.

Iranian media said Rowhani would nominate Mohammad Forouzandeh, a former chief of staff of the Revolutionary Guard and a former defense minister, to head Iran’s nuclear negotiating team.

Israel Hayom | Disturbing levels of naïveté.

Zalman Shoval

In the 1930s, The Times of London was the main voice of those in Britain who believed in conciliation, who called to appease the Nazi regime or at least to learn to accept it, because “there is no way to stop it regardless.” These days it is The New York Times taking a similar stance pertaining to Iran.

Seventy-four years have passed since the conciliatory approach toward dictators and those who threaten world peace was proven, in all its ensuing cruelty, to be a monumental failure, but it seems that not everyone has learned this lesson.

An editorial in The New York Times calls for a determined stance, not against Iran, heaven forbid, but against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other “hard-liners” in Washington, because they are pushing U.S. President Barack Obama to state clearly to Iranian president-elect Hasan Rouhani that the military option is still on the table if the Islamic republic does not abandon its nuclear aspirations. You can read it again and still not believe it.

And what is this strange objection based on? On a new president being elected in Iran, who unlike his predecessor is full of smiles and sweet words toward the West in general and the United States in particular, and therefore “the United States should reach out to Mr. Rouhani, and with its other partners — Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany — it should put together a broader nuclear proposal. … That should include a process for acknowledging Iran’s right to pursue nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.”

The article also preaches against imposing further sanctions on Tehran, because doing so “would make negotiations impossible.”

The newspaper elegantly disregards the fact that Iran’s nuclear program is in no way under Rouhani’s purview, rather Ayatollah Ali Khamenei calls the shots, and fails to recognize that in Iran’s electoral reality, Rouhani cannot function (and perhaps would not have been elected in the first place) without the overt and covert support of Khamenei and the ayatollahs.

Perhaps more concerning than this specific editorial piece is the fact that over the past few weeks, the international and American media are producing, at a greater rate, more articles, usually penned by “Iranian experts,” arguing to adopt the same conciliatory approach expressed in The New York Times.

While it is true that in the past we also heard from professors, who from their lofty academic perches also advised us to come to terms with an Iranian bomb, they were the negligible minority. Now it is difficult to open a paper without seeing articles, for example, like the one by former U.S. State Department official Cliff Kupchan (currently director for the Middle East at Eurasia Group), who believes that the new Iranian president provides a chance for talks to succeed that should not be squandered.

The concerning question that must be asked, of course, is whether a guiding hand is not behind all of this media activity. While Obama vowed publicly that “Iran will not have a bomb,” there are those who doubt his determination, and the very fact that until now there has not been one clear American warning regarding the military option, could strengthen these misgivings.

It would be an exaggeration to accuse American policymakers of the same conscious policy of appeasement employed in the 1930s in Europe (and in America as well) toward Hitler, but the possibility that Washington will adopt a policy of “containment” is growing stronger. In other words, the U.S. will accept, in actuality, a militarized Iranian nuclear capability, with the warning that if Tehran uses a nuclear weapon it can expect to receive a decisive counterblow.

We must be very clear that accepting a bomb will be understood throughout the entire region as the end of the American superpower’s ability to determine, or at least to influence, matters in the Middle East.

The Israeli prime minister has been unfairly criticized in the past for comparing, allegedly, outgoing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (and Khamenei) to Hitler. But Netanyahu never actually compared the former to the latter, despite the similarities; rather, he recalled the enlightened world’s weak response to the threats and actions of the Nazis toward the Jews. To our great sorrow, this comparison would likely be appropriate if not for Israel’s ability, unlike Europe’s Jews under Hitler’s boot, to defend itself on its own, even against the Iranian threat.

Kerry in secret final-status talks with Netanyahu and Abbas on borders, security, Jerusalem, Jordan Valley.

John Kerry hosts Israel, Palestinian peace negotiators.

The ceremonial launch of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations early Tuesday, July 30, over the Muslim iftar meal in the State Department Jefferson room, made a photogenic front for the real brass-tacks bargaining on core issues of the long Middle East dispute, which Secretary of State John Kerry has been handling discreetly with the principals, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. This was first revealed exclusively in the last DEBKA Weekly issue of Friday, July 26.

While the formal US-led talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams were being set up for the benefit of the public in the US, the Arab world, Israel and the Palestinians, Kerry was putting hard questions to the Israeli and Palestinian leaders and pushing for answers on borders, security, the Jordan Rift Valley and Jerusalem.  From time to time, he brought Arab leaders into the process, especially from the Persian Gulf.
Abbas made his sudden trip to Cairo Monday, July 27 to demonstrate to the US Secretary and Israeli prime minister that he had his own lines to Arab rulers independent of Kerry’s tactics. In the end, his show fizzled. No important Egyptian leader had time to see him before the formal launch of talks in Washington or clue him in on the Egyptian military’s plans for the Gaza Strip and its Hamas rulers.
The technical aspects and negotiating procedures were left to the official negotiators, Justice Minister Tzipi Llivni and Saeb Erekat, to sort out Tuesday. However, debkafile’s sources in Jerusalem and Washington report exclusively that Kerry had meanwhile challenged Netanyahu on three core issues:

Would he adopt the security arrangements-versus-borders formula conceded by his predecessor Ehud Olmert to President Obama and Abbas in early 2009, in which he offered to cede around 94.6 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinians?
Although the Palestinians never accepted the offer, they are now trying to make it the starting-point of the current round of talks. If Netanyahu rejected this, Kerry asked what alternative he had in mind in terms of territory he is prepared to cede on the West Bank – bearing in mind that Jewish settlements stand on app. 9.8 percent of the West Bank (not counting Jerusalem).
In this way, the US Secretary quietly launched final-status negotiations on future borders

He also asked the Israeli prime minister what he meant in terms of the scope and depth of Israel’s proposed withdrawal when he insisted that Israel must retain a security presence on the Jordan Rift Valley which marks part of Israel’s eastern border. Kerry wanted to know if Jewish communities would be removed and only a military presence left in place.

This question jumped the process fast forward to the interrelations between security measures and the final borders between the Israeli and Palestinian states.

Kerry also wanted to find out how much financial aid Israel was ready to commit for raising the standard of living of West Bank Palestinians.
A question he addressed to both Netanyahu and Abbas related to the deployment of an international force as a buffer between the Palestinians and the Israel Defense Forces.
The prime minister was open to discussing this plan. Abbas gave his answer from Cairo Monday night when he declared that “not a single Israeli must remain in the Palestinian state, whether soldier or civilian.” He indicated that he would not object to an international force on the lines of UNIFIL in Lebanon or the Multinational Force in Sinai,or even NATO units.
He also asked Kerry to put forward ideas on the Jerusalem question and the shape of the Palestinian state’s borders.

RubinReports: Why are 104 Palestinian Terrorists Being Released? No Good Reason.

I just don’t get it and there is simply no proper motive for following—or needing to pursue—such a terrible policy.