WarSclerotic

Israel Hayom | The US has its own set of interests.

Boaz Bismuth

Israel Hayom | French twist.

Clifford D. May

Well into last weekend, it looked as though Iran was going to win the latest round of negotiations — by a knockout, not on points.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had flown to Geneva to sign a deal that would have stuffed tens of billions of dollars into the pockets of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, easing the economic pressure that had brought Iran to the negotiating table in the first place. The funds would have been turned over with no restrictions. Khamenei could have used them to further Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program — the program that negotiations were meant to stop.

In exchange, Iran’s rulers would not have been required even to begin to dismantle their nuclear weapons programs. There would be no end to centrifuge manufacturing, no halt to the plutonium weapons track, no “intrusive” international inspections.

Then, at the eleventh hour, came an unexpected twist: French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius announced that Paris could not go along with what he called — with admirably undiplomatic candor — a “sucker’s deal.”

Immediately and predictably, Fabius and the French came under fire. One “Western diplomat close to the negotiations” blasted the French demurral as “nothing more than an attempt by Fabius to insert himself into relevance late in the negotiations.” It’s worth noting that first, the Western diplomat did not address the substance of Fabius’ objections, and second, the Western diplomat did not have the courage to allow the his name to accompany his ad hominem attack.

Others accused the French of currying favor with the Saudis in an attempt to win lucrative contracts. In truth, the Saudis are concerned: They see clearly that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose an existential threat to them, to the Emiratis, the Qataris, the Kuwaitis, the Azerbaijanis and, of course, the Israelis.

The fact that France has some of the world’s foremost experts on both Iran and nuclear proliferation, combined with the possibility that the French, over the past century, have learned a thing or two about the dangers of appeasement, seems not to occur to those whose goal is to cut a deal with Iran — with the merits of that deal a secondary consideration.

Khamenei himself chimed in, tweeting that French officials were “hostile toward the Iranian nation.” Soon after that came what might be interpreted as a warning: “A wise man, particularly a wise politician, should never have the motivation to turn a neutral entity into an enemy.”

It is instructive to recall that a few days earlier Khamenei had, in effect, acknowledged that the deal being finalized would be a victory for Iran and a defeat for those on the other side of the table. He tweeted a photo of the Iranian delegation sitting at that table with this comment: “No one should consider our negotiating team as compromisers. These are the children of revolution.”

In other words, the Iranian side had not compromised — all the concessions were being offered by the U.S. and its European partners. And by refusing to give an inch, Khamenei’s negotiators were demonstrating their revolutionary credentials.

Americans have deluded themselves about the Iranian revolution from the start. I was working as a reporter in Iran in 1979 when, following the fall of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini began to construct what he called an Islamic republic. Most diplomats and journalists were all too eager to jump to the comforting conclusion that Khomeini was a moderate. More than that: William Sullivan, the U.S. ambassador in Tehran, called Khomeini a “Gandhi-like figure.” James Bill, an adviser to President Jimmy Carter, called the dour cleric a man of “impeccable integrity and honesty.” Andrew Young, Carter’s ambassador to the U.N., predicted that “Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint.”

Then, as now, abundant evidence contradicting such rosy assessments was willfully ignored. Among other things, Khomeini had always been implacably anti-American. “The U.S.A. is the foremost enemy of Islam,” he said in 1979. “It is a terrorist state by nature that has set fire to everything everywhere.”

Khomeini’s heirs — those “children of revolution” — have not mellowed. In 1995, Hasan Rouhani, now Iran’s president — invariably described in the major media as a moderate — said the “beautiful cry of ‘Death to America’ unites our nation.” Earlier this year, he doubled down: “Saying ‘Death to America’ is easy. We need to express ‘Death to America’ with action.” A few nuclear weapons could be helpful in that regard, don’t you think?

Rouhani is an experienced negotiator who, in a memoir published two years ago, explained that his strategy was to play off the U.S. against its European allies, to create “gaps in the Western front.” Skilled Iranian diplomats, he wrote, can prevent “consensus between America and other world powers — especially Europe, Russia, and China — over Iran.” That accomplished, it would be possible to “stand up against the conspiracies of America.”

The U.S. also has experienced negotiators, but their record is nothing to write home about. In particular, under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, American diplomats spent years talking with the despotic regime that rules North Korea in an effort to prevent it from becoming nuclear-armed. Over and over, concessions were made, aid was extended, agreements were signed, and progress was announced.

And then, in 2006, the North Koreans tested a nuclear weapon for the first time — demonstrating that they had not really compromised at all and were still very much children of their own anti-Western revolution. A second nuclear test was conducted in 2009. The U.S. strongly objected and vowed that North Korea would “pay a price for its actions.” But that was only bluster and bluff. On Feb. 12, North Korea conducted a third nuclear test. Pyongyang is today developing missiles capable of delivering its nuclear weapons to all those regarded as enemies.

Khamenei and Rouhani no doubt look at this history and say to each other: If the North Koreans can sit down with the Americans, play their very weak cards and walk away with the pot, surely we can do no worse. Khamenei and Rouhani were almost proved right — and they might still be. A new round of talks is scheduled to begin on Nov. 20. Between now and then, those favoring appeasement of Iran will almost certainly be negotiating with the French — in a more muscular fashion, I fear, than they have with Iran’s “children of revolution.”

Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on national security.

Israel Hayom | Are Iran sanctions a ‘march to war’?.

Elliot Abrams

White House spokesman Jay Carney this week called any effort to adopt additional sanctions against Iran “a march to war.” Here, from The Cable, is the quote: “It is important to understand that if pursuing a resolution diplomatically is disallowed or ruled out, what options, then, do we and our allies have to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon? The American people do not want a march to war.”

This escalation of rhetoric is irresponsible and near hysterical (to borrow a word from a New York Times editorial, which applied it to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu).

Additional sanctions are, in my view and that of a wide range of Democrats and Republicans, a good idea. Sanctions brought Iran to the table, a conclusion with which the Obama administration appears to agree. Additional sanctions are not a terrible idea, a bad policy, or a sure road to ending negotiations. Iran has in the past stretched out negotiations, as President Hasan Rouhani himself has claimed, to gain time to build its nuclear weapons program. Additional sanctions would make that tactic costly for Iran, and by causing more economic damage give Iran an even greater incentive to show the flexibility needed to reach a deal.

The administration has an argument, one it makes poorly, that additional sanctions imposed now would lead to the doom of all negotiating efforts and cause Iran to walk away from the table. That may be true but it is illogical and requires some argumentation. What Carney said is closer to slander than to argumentation: that those who seek additional sanctions — for example, New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez — are leading to war and presumably seek that goal.

I hope the effect of this comment by the White House is to stiffen the spines of those in Congress who are calling for more sanctions. And to lead the White House to change its rhetoric, and henceforth engage in serious debate.

From “Pressure Points” by Elliott Abrams. Reprinted with permission from the Council on Foreign Relations.

Israel Hayom | Nothing to lose, everything to destroy.

David M. Weinberg

The main problem with the emerging Geneva accord between the P5+1 countries and Iran is that the agreement will effectively legitimize Iran’s nuclear threshold status.

Until now, Iran has been considered by the world an illegal and illicit nuclear threshold nation. But by allowing Iran to keep its centrifuges and its heavy water reactor, even for what is supposedly to be a temporary period, the Obama administration is signaling that it is coming to terms with Tehran’s nuclear weapon threshold position.

It is simply “not realistic” to expect that the Iranians will completely give up and destroy their capabilities to enrich uranium and manufacture plutonium, The New York Times editorial board and other pro-Obama voices are now lecturing us. And since this is the case, America has to cut a compromise deal with the Iranians, says The Times, since “the alternative is war,” and Obama’s America has no stamina for that.

Besides, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman tells us, America has other interests — more important interests — at stake, like ending the U.S.-Iran cold war. That trumps the curtailing of Iran’s nuclear weapons capability.

In other words, Obama is seeking to cut a grand civilizational bargain with the nuclearized Iranians, to mend fences with them, and not to block Iran’s incipient weaponization or to crush the fanatical regime.

This position completely ignores the existential threat to Israel and the significant threat to the West posed by a resurgent, emboldened, un-isolated, nuclear Iran. It reflects a groundswell of opinion in liberal, academic Washington circles — of which I have been warning for more than a year — that views Iran as a rational actor and a potential partner for America.

To counter this warped and woolly thinking, Professor Steven R. David, one of America’s most respected international relations scholars, this week published a comprehensive study through the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, titled “Armed and Dangerous: Why a Rational, Nuclear Iran Is an Unacceptable Risk to Israel.”

David argues that for a whole host of reasons, there is a real possibility that an Iran armed with nuclear weapons would use them, even if its leaders are as rational as the leaders of the U.S. and the USSR were during the Cold War.

“There are a range of circumstances in which it is all too easy to see how an Iranian leadership — rational, cost-calculating, reasonable and prudent as it may be — would still present a very real possibility of using its nuclear weapons against Israel in the face of credible threats of retaliation. Most important (and often ignored) is how deterrence could unravel if Iran’s leaders, armed with nuclear arms, faced the prospect of imminent overthrow,” David said.

“It is easy to imagine a situation in which, following massive domestic unrest, the Iranian leadership found itself on the brink of being toppled from within. Facing the end of their rule, and possibly their lives, Iranian leaders, fully rational but with nothing to lose, might choose to lash out against Israel in a parting shot for posterity.”

David is vice dean for undergraduate education at Johns Hopkins University and former chairman of the university’s political science department, its international studies program, and its Jewish studies program. In the best tradition of rigorous academic scholarship, he compares how other leaders, especially those with access to weapons of mass destruction, have acted in the face of threats to their rule.

“Studying Fidel Castro during the Cuban missile crisis, Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War, and Bashar al-Assad’s current stand in Syria, can open our eyes to the seemingly irrational behavior that can occur when powerful people who are used to having their way begin to believe their days are numbered,” David said.

“The Iranian leadership is close to meeting all the requirements for unleashing disaster: waning power, unbridled hatred, and capability. Should the Iranian regime teeter on the brink of oblivion, all that would stop it from carrying out its murderous threats against Israel and perhaps the United States is lack of capability. When you add this to the real dangers of unauthorized launchings, accidents and miscalculations, and consider the region — where distances are short, tempers hot, and disputes plentiful — the possibilities of nuclear war become unacceptably high.”

David writes that new Iranian President Hasan Rouhani’s softer tone changes nothing “unless and until Iran matches Rouhani’s rhetoric with actions that deprive Iran of the capability of producing nuclear weapons.” At the moment, “the threat of a nuclear armed Iran behaving recklessly remains.”

Israel has few attractive policy choices, according to David.

“Regional disarmament is an utopian fantasy, diplomacy shows few signs of yielding results after ten years of trying, economic sanctions have yet to bring Iran to its knees, and a military strike promises only to leave Iran with the ability to make more nuclear weapons later while unleashing catastrophic consequences in its wake. Coping with a nuclear Iran is hardly better. Israel is unable to bring about a favorable regime change, defense offers limited protection against a determined nuclear attack, while preemption or an effort to disarm the Iranians are not likely to be fully successful leaving Israel open to horrific Iranian retaliation.”

In such a dire situation, what is Israel to do? His conclusion: “Israel must be prepared to launch a military strike to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, because in the not-too-distant future, Israel may confront a nuclear armed Iran whose leaders find themselves with nothing to lose and everything to destroy.”

Hassan Rouhani; a smiling, venomous snake! | Jerusalem Post – Blogs.

Earl Cox

A wolf in sheep’s clothing is the most often used description of Rouhani, the president of Iran. Left out somewhere in that description are words depicting him as a smiling, venomous snake.  

His objectives are the lifting of sanctions which are crippling Iran as well as the continuation of Iran’s uranium enrichment program – and not for strictly peaceful purposes.  Iran’s enrichment ambitions are clearly aimed toward creating nuclear weaponry which will undoubtedly be used against Israel and others.

Let us not forget that Rouhani is not his own boss.  He is working at the behest of the real ruler of Iran, the Ayatollah Khamenei. Hassan Rouhani is only his mouthpiece.  Rouhani has been a part of the Iranian regime for a long time.  Khamenei took 700 candidates, eliminated 99 percent of them which left 1 percent.  The Iranian people chose what they thought was the lesser of the evils of that 1 percent which turned out to be Rouhani.

If we fail to learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.  A look at Rouhani’s history in negotiations reveals a man who will do anything to achieve his goals.  Back in May in a video clip on Iranian state television, Rouhani and the regime utterly flouted a 2003 agreement with the IAEA in which Iran promised to suspend all uranium enrichment and certain other nuclear activities.   Apparently agitated that people might actually think he was bowing to the West; a smiling Rouhani called it a lie.  He proceeded to detail how Iran had flagrantly breached the October 2003 “Tehran Declaration” which he said was supposed to outline how everything should be suspended.  Rouhani said, “We did not let that happen. That is how we completed the nuclear enrichment program.”  In Rouhani’s book in 2011 he said, “While we were talking to the Europeans in Tehran, we were installing equipment in Isfahan.”

Iran’s Isfahan facility is an indispensable part of their nuclear weapons program.  This is where uranium ore called yellowcake is converted into an enrichable form.  Rouhani boasted, “By creating a calm environment we were able to complete the work in Isfahan.”  He also claimed credit for the development of a heavy-water reactor in Arak in 2004 and in the winter of that year the number of centrifuges reached 3,000.  Rouhani’s boast, “By creating a calm environment we were able to complete work,” tells it all.  Clearly, lying and deception are tools Rouhani and the entire Iranian regime readily and unashamedly use in their diplomatic negotiations.  Remember, what Iran and other Islamic countries say in their native tongues to their own media and people is often the exact opposite of what they say to Western media and the whole of the English speaking world.

A calm environment – that is exactly what he is trying to achieve now.  In his address to the UN on September 24, Rouhani said,”Iran poses absolutely no threat to the world or the region,” and offered “to engage immediately in time-bound and result-oriented talks” over the nuclear program, “to build mutual confidence and removal of mutual uncertainties with full transparency.”  Sound familiar?  Sounds like the first talks in 2003; a slow, steady and calm environment to buy time to continue their nuclear activities.  Also one of the first things he asked for in recent Geneva talks was a lifting of the sanctions.

Rouhanni claims that what they are building is for nuclear energy only.  Many countries around the world have nuclear energy programs without enrichment capabilities.  Rouhanni wants enrichment capability because that is the way to get to nuclear bombs.  They also want a heavy water reactor to go through the plutonium route to the bomb.  Countries that want civilian nuclear energy do not have heavy water reactors for plutonium and do not have centrifuges for enrichment.

President Barack Obama is salivating at the prospect of an agreement with Iran to stop their march toward the nuclear bomb.  He is eager to show himself as a “strong leader” after the debacle of Syria which painted him as a weak and waffling leader on the world stage.  He bases his belief that this can be accomplished because of the ascent of the “moderate” Rouhani.  Mr. Obama, it is hoped that you will do your homework on the “moderate, calming, smiling, lying” Rouhani.  Certainly evidence is mounting that Rouhani is a master of deception when it comes to dealing with western nuclear demands, and is proud of his skill in saying one thing and doing another.

The Obama administration is facing an unexpected hurdle in its new nuclear talks with Iran.  A sizeable bloc of Democratic lawmakers has made it clear that they would break with the White House and fight any effort to lift the current sanctions on Tehran.  A wide array of powerful Democrats, including the top members of both the Senate and House Foreign Affairs Committees, strongly oppose lifting any of the existing sanctions on Iran unless Tehran offers to go far beyond anything Zarif has talked about in Geneva. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, has also promised to do everything in its power to keep the punitive measures in place.  One might add that not only Democrats, but also Republicans, are standing strong against any efforts to lift the sanctions.

Iran must agree to give up enrichment capabilities, the heavy water reactor to go through the plutonium route to the bomb, fuel cycle capability and the destruction of the underground, heavily fortified nuclear plant at Qom.  This underground facility is largely impervious to air strikes or the monitoring of any dismantling of its centrifuges. There must be an agreement for regular, in-person and on-site monitoring of all dismantling promises and all disposal actions. But remember, even if Rouhani signs off on all of this, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, could veto the deal.

The entire world is not playing by the same rule book.  Those countries which value freedom and democracy also value honesty and integrity.  The same is not true for the Islamic world.  The Koran allows Islamic believers to lie to the “infidels” if it furthers their cause therefore it is impossible to negotiate with Islamists and expect a satisfactory outcome.  Surely the US and others participating in the Geneva talks know the second round is surely doomed to fail no matter what words are spoken by Rouhani.

Russia fears fighters waging jihad in Syria could bring terror to Caucasus | JPost | Israel News.

By REUTERS

11/14/2013 10:28

Analysts say Islamist fighters could try to strike during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia’s Sochi.

NOVOSASITLI – A scrawny 15-year-old this summer became the first from his deeply religious Muslim village in Russia’s southern Dagestan province to die fighting alongside rebels in Syria.

Some regard him as a martyr for joining the rebels in the fight against Syrian President Bashar Assad who is supported by Russia.

Moscow now fears that hundreds of Russian-born militants it says are fighting in Syria will return experienced in warfare to join an insurgency in Dagestan and its other North Caucasus provinces by militants fighting for an Islamic state.

Violence in the region claims lives almost daily. Fifteen men from Novosasitli alone have died in shootouts with Russian forces in the last four years, locals say.

Analysts say fighters could also try to strike during the 2014 Winter Olympics in February in nearby Sochi. President Vladimir Putin, who has staked his reputation on the Games, has said militants returning from Syria pose “a very real” threat and signed off on a law this month to jail any who come home.

“The militant groups did not come out of nowhere, and they will not vanish into thin air,” Putin said on Sept 23.

In Novosasitli, where walls are tagged with graffiti supporting rebels fighting for an Islamic state, villagers say at least eight out of 2,000 inhabitants have gone to Syria.

“There are whole brigades of our boys there,” village council member Akhmed Khaibulayev said.

Three of them were arrested by Russian forces on their way home via a land route crossing the border from Azerbaijan back into Dagestan, he said, but five have returned, underscoring the ease with which Russians travel to and from Syria.

“They are at home now, waiting for when the security forces come for them,” Khaibulayev said.

Anxious parents try to hold back their sons.

“A father knows his son. I told him to leave his passport with me. When he refused, I took it away,” a man dressed in a beige tunic and skullcap said, asking not to be named for fear of reprisal by Russian security forces.

Despite his warnings, his 23-year-old son, whom he boasts knew the Koran by heart, left two months ago for the battlefield. “I don’t know if he will come back,” he said.

A photograph, sent by fighters, of the scarred, skinny corpse of the local 15-year-old killed there is still being passed around the village. Stones are placed over his eyelids.

In the comment thread under a photo of the smooth-chinned youth on a Facebook page he is called a hero and a martyr.

“He went to Syria because he couldn’t stand that Assad and his army were killing children,” said a villager, who locals said also fought in Syria and who refused to be named.

The boy had studied in Egypt before joining other Russian-born militants in Syria, and his family only learned he had gone to fight there after his death, locals said.

His father, who lost an arm in Syria when he went to see his son’s grave, was briefly detained by security forces in August when he returned home. He refused to speak to Reuters.

HOLY WAR

The sons of Novosasitli grew up playing “cops and insurgents” in the streets. Russian rule is tenuous with residents describing police as the enemy, the state as corrupt and say they manage their own affairs under Sharia law.

Some have had relatives, classmates or neighbors join Islamist insurgency in Russia, rooted in separatist wars in neighboring Chechnya.

The militants adhere to Salafism, an ultra-conservative branch of Sunni Islam. They do not have the support of all Salafis – some disapprove of their racketeering ways or do not view their attacks on police and officials as a lawful jihad.

The battle raging in Syria is different. It is widely seen in the majority Sunni Muslim region as a “true” holy war against Assad’s Alawite-dominated government.

But voicing that support for Syrian rebels in Russia is dangerous. A popular young imam who had raised funds to help Syrian refugees has fled to Turkey after coming under pressure from law enforcement. Media with links to police claimed he was inciting youths to join the conflict.

The doors of a newly built, emerald-domed madrasa he ran in Novosasitli now stand shut, empty of students.

“There’s no obligation for Muslims to go from here to Syria,” says Abdurakhim Magomedov, 71, a Salafi scholar in Novosasitli. “But if someone wants to go, no one can stop him.”

THREAT TO OLYMPICS?

The flow of Russians from the North Caucasus going to Syria increased this year, officials and locals say, as pleas for help from rebels grew more acute following a poison gas attack in the suburbs of Damascus.

In June, Russia’s FSB security service said 200 Russians were fighting with al-Qaida affiliated groups in Syria. By September, it said as many as 400 Russians were there.

“They will come back, and that poses a huge threat,” FSB deputy director Sergei Smirnov, said on Sept. 20.

Russian estimates of the number of fighters may not be accurate, experts say, because of the large numbers of its citizens studying abroad or who have emigrated to Europe, Jordan, Turkey and elsewhere.

Some gained skill and experience, highly-valued by the Syrian rebels, in fighting the separatist wars in Chechnya in 1994-96 and 1999-2000, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Experts say the number of Russians in Syria may be higher.

Russia’s protection of Assad, with weapons supplies and diplomatic backing, has also left many angry at Putin.

“Muslims the world over revile Putin for his support of Assad,” said Dzhabrail Magomedov, one of some two dozen in Novosasitli, who studied at a religious school in Damascus.

This summer the Chechen-born Caucasus insurgent leader Doku Umarov urged fighters to use “maximum force” to sabotage the Olympics. His cry was echoed by fighters in Syria, who called on Muslims in the North Caucasus to wage jihad at home rather than joining them.

Russia has a history of recent militant attacks. Suicide bombings in the past two years killed dozens at a Moscow airport and subway. More than 380 people, mainly school children, were killed in the siege of a primary school in Beslan in 2004.

“For such a jihad, one, two people is enough,” a Russian-speaking rebel says in a YouTube address from Syria dated July 30, flanked by seven camouflage-clad fighters armed with heavy machine guns and a grenade launcher.

Security is tight around Olympic host city Sochi, which abuts the North Caucasus region.

“Do you know where Sochi is? We have enough of our own rebels there,” said Sergey Goncharov, a former deputy head of the FSB’s elite Alfa counter-insurgency unit. “If they now get reinforcement from Syria, our security services will be hard put to prevent them from ruining the Olympics.”

An amendment to Russia’s anti-terrorism law, submitted by Putin and rushed through parliament after a deadly bus bombing killed six people in southern Russia on Oct. 21, makes those who fight abroad criminally accountable at home.

Under the law, training “with the aim of carrying out terrorist activity” is punishable by 10 years in jail and being part of an armed group abroad “whose aims are contrary to Russian interests” by six years in jail.

‘OUR MUSLIM BROTHERS’

Since Putin rose to power 13 years ago and crushed a Chechen separatist revolt, he has said he would not allow the Caucasus provinces to split from Russia.

But the nationalist cause that inspired Chechens to revolt after collapse of the Soviet Union has mutated into an Islamic one that spread to nearby Caucasus mountain lands.

Defeated in Chechnya, rebels now launch near-daily attacks in Ingushetia, Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria. Today, the ranks of fighters are filled by youths disillusioned by police brutality, joblessness, corruption and the perceived persecution of religious conservatives.

Empathy for fellow Sunni Muslims caught in the bloodshed in Syria is especially sharp among Chechens, who see in it echoes of their own suffering in two wars for secession from Russia.

“They also killed our mothers, brothers and grandparents,” said Akhmed, a 21-year-old Chechen, in the village of Berdykel, near the provincial capital, Grozny. “We want to help. They are our Muslim brothers.”

In response, Chechen authorities have banned wakes for anyone killed in Syria, and Muslim clerics speak out in mosques and schools, casting the war as a political struggle not a religious one. A local government minister was fired when one of his family left for Syria, a source who knew of the incident said.

Chechen-language TV aired the apology of a 26-year-old, who said he had made a mistake fighting to Syria and doubted the war was a true jihad because of infighting among the rebels.

“I got scared that I would die not on the right path, so I came back,” he said, head bowed before Kremlin-backed Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

At his yellow-gated home in Berdykel, a relative said his family no longer let him live at home. “It’s very painful for us,” said a young male relative.

Hello Iran, Goodbye America – Op-Eds – Israel National News.

We can repeal Obamacare, but not a nuclear Iran once it is created. If Jewish leadership and American citizens do not stand up now there will be nothing left in America worth fighting for. It is not only Israel at stake.

The approach employed by those in America to neutralize the Iranian threat would be laughable if it were not so tragic. Our Pro-Zionist Jewish organizations have been all too willing to let Israel lead the free world to stop Iran, when in fact it is America’s mission as the leader of the free world to end the Iranian threat.

These organizations’ initial reaction to Ahmadinejad’s threat to wipe Israel off the face of the earth was beyond shameful. Every Jew in America had a moral obligation to demand the immediate destruction of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure but no such campaign ever materialized.

I kept hearing the words ‘Stop Iran’ at rallies, in speech after speech, where we were told that we had to stop Iran from becoming a terrorist state armed with nuclear weapons in order to prevent Israel’s destruction. What did the prominent speakers mean by, ‘Stop,’ in the phrase, ‘Stop Iran Now’? I heard nothing from them about America taking military action.

Due to the tragic lack of oversight by our leadership, the Jewish community has been relegated to a never-ending reactive posture in dealing with President Obama’s foreign policy, which allows for the creation of a nuclear Iran.

In addition to this debacle, the counter offensive employed by America to stop Iran has been economic sanctions. This has not stopped the mullahs. They are willing to sacrifice everything in order to attain their nuclear goal.

Congress’ failure to demand that President Obama set a military deadline that would have required Iran to dismantle its nuclear sites, combined with Obama’s reluctance to do so, created a vacuum in the Middle East that has been filled by Russia, America’s rival and Iran’s most ardent supporter.

The question remains: who is addressing the Iranian threat now that Obama has transferred so much power to Putin? It is suicide to allow a Communist to be a determining figure in shaping America’s future..

There is nothing left to analyze. Can intellectualism and academic discussion can cure the problems facing America and Israel? Can one talk down a bully or murderer? We must act now or be prepared to live with an Iran armed with nuclear weapons.

Recently President Obama relinquished the power bestowed on him by the most powerful nation on earth, the use of military force to persuade an enemy to relent.This occurred when President Obama agreed to end the threat of a military strike against Syria by allowing Putin to broker a deal to put the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons exclusively under the auspices of the United Nations’ P5+1.

Soon afterward, Putin claimed that an opportunity had arisen to have a positive exchange with Iran concerning their nuclear ambitions.

Following this, President Obama called the president of Iran to open up a dialogue. Who will protect America from foreign enemies since Obama has approved of Putin’s Iran/United Nations world peace scam? In this new world order any legitimate demands for the immediate destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities and ending the two-state solution  will be sucked into the black hole of this unholy coalition, where victory for global tyranny can be the only possible outcome.

Why we are now surprised that Iran’s objectives are almost secured? Four years ago during a BBC interview President Obama said that Iran has a right to nuclear power – provided its uses are peaceful. That should have raised a red flag. One must wonder: how could President Obama not know that the plans of an anti-Semitic theocracy are never peaceful.

President Obama’s path to allow Iran to have nuclear power is akin to offering Zyklon B gas to Hitler as long as he promised not to gas the Jews. How could Obama’s initiative be otherwise? His actions belie his intent.

United Nations inspectors will monitor Iran’s nuclear power plants.

Obama has outsourced his responsibility to protect our republic; his intention to allow Iran the use of nuclear power in exchange for their promise not to create nuclear weapons is nothing other than an act of containment designed to fail. This has been proven by the fact that Obama’s plan to secure this outlandish objective is to have United Nations inspectors monitor Iran’s nuclear power plants.

Yet Obama, sounding like a Reagan acolyte said, “My view is that if you have both a credible threat of force, combined with a rigorous diplomatic effort, that, in fact, you can strike a deal.”

But Reagan would have never struck a deal with a fascist.  Obama, in the name of peace, has tried to convince us we can, and in doing so puts all Americans in harm’s way. When he suggests giving Rouhani a chance, I say, ‘To do what?  Create a nuclear terrorist state?

Why would we even consider offering Iranian President Hassan Rouhani nuclear power when his mandate from the mullahs includes the destruction of Israel and the downfall of America? Like the Oslo Accords, any agreement made with those who condone or embrace terrorism is not worth the paper it is written on.

The kabuki dance continues. Iran is running out the clock.

Obama’s commitment to honoring terrorists as viable partners for peace was demonstrated when Netanyahu asked him to maintain the sanctions on Iran during the negotiations because Iran’s intentions were not peaceful. Although President Obama claimed he had no such intentions, a week later a senior U.S. diplomat urged Congress to delay the legislation on tough new Iranian sanctions until after the negotiations for fear of undermining the talks.

Then Obama asked the Jewish leadership in America to stop pushing for stronger sanctions against Iran. Does President Obama want the Jewish leadership to oppose Netanyahu’s request for tougher sanctions while he negotiates for the annihilation of the Jewish state?

One must wonder how much ground Obama is willing to concede to Iran and Russia in order to reach a deal. While Iran initially rebuffed Obama’s demand to halt the production of enrichment of uranium at 20%, the United States proposed a short-term nuclear agreement which would allow Tehran to continue enriching uranium at low levels with the promise of less stringent sanctions. Thank G-d  France refused. Now another meeting is set for later this month The Kabuki dance contiunes. Iran is running out the clock

However, this matters little now that a reliable report has been published that states, Iran might be a month away from having the ability to assemble a nuclear warhead: demanding stronger sanctions or further dialogue to stop Iran spells disaster. All negotiations must cease immediately.

Pressure must be put on Congress to end all negotiations and demand President Obama give Iran an ultimatum. Yet Congress foolishly continues to believe that stronger sanctions alone will force Iran to capitulate  Americans cannot retreat any further, there is no other choice but to declare that they will no longer support  any policy that allows for a nuclear Iran.

We can repeal Obamacare, but not a nuclear Iran once it is created

While we are still being overwhelmed on the domestic front by the disaster that is Obamacare, it still can be repealed. A failed state is guaranteed if we do not overcome the damage done by Obama’s foreign policy and its threat to our union.

America is facing a watershed event – Iranian madmen armed with nuclear devices. Someone must awaken the citizens of America to fact that the security and prosperity of our nation is not just a domestic affair. While we continue to battle Obama’s draconian domestic policies, our politicians are oblivious to the reality that the greatest threat to our nation, our economy, and the future of America is a global threat and its epicenter is Iran.

The pressure we must put on President Obama to successfully overcome the fatal effects of his foreign policy must be even more relentless than the campaign launched against Obamacare, failure is not an option.

If Iran gains nuclear capabilities the world will become ground zero, because the greatest enemy of freedom will have tested and broken America’s resolve. Who then will be left to prevent the globalization of tyranny if America’s identity as the advocate of freedom were to be vanquished? This is why we must never let America be decimated by a foreign policy that would give victory to Iran and Islam over America and its Constitution.

America is Nathan Hale country

America is in trouble because our politicians have forgotten that America is Nathan Hale country. Before the British hung Nathan Hale he calmly stated, “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” His determination to never again be subjected to tyranny surpassed his concerns for his own life. His stance exemplifies the spirit of the American Revolution, and that of all American patriots who have been willing to lay down their lives to fight against tyranny.

Then how is it possible that in Nathan Hale’s country we would compromise with those who are willing to extinguish the light of liberty? Americans are here to rid the world of tyrannical enterprises, not prop them up and make them our partners in peace. We stand with the constitution and its covenant of freedom, if not we stand for nothing at all. All those who would stand back and let others fight America’s fight are not cut from the same cloth as those who secured our freedoms.
Senators and Congressmen, our pro-Zionist Jewish and Christian leadership – are you ready to support Israel and defend  your Constitution? America is under an imminent threat.  We do not give the red carpet treatment to those who have vowed to kill us. Giving Iran endless opportunities to reach their goal is nothing less than an act of surrender.

Hello America, Good Bye Iran  

It is time to fire a proverbial shot across the bow of Obama’s sinking ship. If we do not stand up now there will be nothing left in America worth fighting for.

Remember it is always darkest before the dawn. Despite the fact that the naysayers keep insisting that America is a lost cause, we now have President Obama on the ropes. With Obamacare in shambles and his foreign policy about to implode, we must not miss the opportunity.

If our congressional leaders do not confront President Obama‘s failure to protect our nation from an imminent threat, we the people will suffer the consequences. Israel is planning to lobby the U.S. Congress to prevent a deal with Iran. Naftali Bennett, Israeli’s Minister of the Economy, is going to petition Congress to stop the proposed American-Iranian deal because it would seriously put Israel’s security in jeopardy.

Yet it is well known that petitions to Congress rarely yield good results, they usually end up as nonbinding agreements. We must demand our Congressional leaders call for the immediate dismantling of Iran’s nuclear sites, or an ultimatum will be issued and military action will follow. Petitioning Congress will end in failure.. We must not embrace such a campaign, too much is at stake.

The campaign we must launch must be like a tidal wave; we must overwhelm Congress and force them to act on our behalf. President Obama himself gave us key to victory when he said, “political leaders will never take risks if the people do not push them to take some risks. You must create the change that you want to see. Ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things.”

The question ordinary Americans must be asked to consider is why we should fund a government that uses our hard-earned money to support activities that will lead to the destruction of our nation. If such an idea gains momentum, Congress’s only option will to be to act on our behalf, but we have to start the ball rolling first and the following are proven strategies:

1- We have enough pro-Zionist Jewish and Christian organizations to unleash an army of millions to call Congress to demand that immediate military action against Iran be taken.

2-We can march on Washington and stage a sit in until our demands are met..

3- We can even withhold our taxes until our demands are met; we the people hold the purse strings, not Congress or the President.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Israel Matzav: Told to ignore Israel, Senators ignore Kerry instead.

One thing for which Israelis ought to be grateful is that the Obama administration’s malicious intent toward us is only outdone by their incompetence.

On Wednesday, US Secretary of State John FN Kerry appeared at a closed-door session before the Senate Banking Committee to brief them on Iran. What came out of the session was that Kerry told the Senators to ignore Israel and slow down the sanctions like the Obama administration wants. The Senators were singularly unimpressed.

“It was an emotional appeal,” Sen. Bob Corker told reporters after the briefing. “I have to tell you, I was very disappointed in the presentation.”
Corker said that senators were given no details of the interim deal being formulated in negotiations between Iran and world powers in Geneva this month. Secretary of State John Kerry briefed the committee, along with Vice President Joe Biden and the State Department’s lead Iran negotiator Wendy Sherman.

“I am stunned that in a classified setting when you’re trying to talk to the very folks that would be originating legislation relative to sanctions, to have such a lack of specificity — I feel I may get that over the next 24 hours in another setting, but it was solely an emotional appeal,” Corker said.

Sen. Mark Kirk was even more forceful in criticizing the officials’ presentation, calling it “very unconvincing.”

“It was fairly anti-Israeli,” Kirk said to reporters after the briefing. “I was supposed to disbelieve everything the Israelis had just told me, and I think the Israelis probably have a pretty good intelligence service.” He said the Israelis had told him that the “total changes proposed set back the program by 24 days.”

A Senate aide familiar with the meeting said that “every time anybody would say anything about ‘what would the Israelis say,’ they’d get cut off and Kerry would say, ‘You have to ignore what they’re telling you, stop listening to the Israelis on this.’”

“They had no details,” the aide said. “They had no ability to verify anything, to describe anything, to answer basic questions.”

Kirk also criticized Sherman, whose “record on North Korea is a total failure and embarrassment to her service.” Sherman was part of the U.S. negotiating team that focused on North Korea in the 1990s.

“Wendy wants you to forget her service on North Korea,” Kirk said. “You shouldn’t allow her.”

Sherman is a total incompetent who is in way over her head. In fact, one has to wonder whether the real reason that Kerry rushed to Geneva last weekend was because the administration has no confidence in Sherman, who is nothing but a hack. Here’s Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week.

In 1988, the former social worker ran the Washington office of the Dukakis campaign and worked at the Democratic National Committee. That was the year the Massachusetts governorcarried 111 electoral votes to George H.W. Bush’s 426. In the mid-1990s, Ms. Sherman was briefly the CEO of something called the Fannie Mae Foundation, supposedly a charity that was shut down a decade later for what the Washington Post called “using tax-exempt contributions to advance corporate interests.”

From there it was on to the State Department, where she served as a point person in nuclear negotiations with North Korea and met with Kim Jong Il himself. The late dictator, she testified, was “witty and humorous,” “a conceptual thinker,” “a quick problem-solver,” “smart, engaged, knowledgeable, self-confident.” Also a movie buff who loved Michael Jordan highlight videos. A regular guy!

Later Ms. Sherman was to be found working for her former boss as the No. 2 at the Albright-Stonebridge Group before taking the No. 3 spot at the State Department. Ethics scolds might describe the arc of her career as a revolving door between misspending taxpayer dollars in government and mooching off them in the private sector. But it’s mainly an example of failing up—the Washingtonian phenomenon of promotion to ever-higher positions of authority and prestige irrespective of past performance.

This administration in particular is stuffed with fail-uppers—the president, the vice president, the secretary of state and the national security adviser, to name a few—and every now and then it shows. Like, for instance, when people for whom the test of real-world results has never meant very much meet people for whom that test means everything.

But Kirk had even more to say.

“Today is the day I witnessed the future of nuclear war in the Middle East,” Kirk said, also comparing the administration to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who signed away the Sudetenland to Hitler’s Germany in 1938. “How do you define an Iranian moderate? An Iranian who is out of bullets and out of money.”

The Democrats mostly had no comment about the meeting. But among those who were said to be unconvinced by Kerry is Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a member of the Senate Banking Committee.

We could be a lot worse. The administration in Washington could be competently anti-Israel. Fortunately, these guys are the gang who couldn’t shoot straight.

Republican Senators Slam Administration’s Briefing On Iran.

“I was very disappointed,” Sen. Bob Corker said. Sen Mark Kirk. said today is the day he witnessed “the future of nuclear war in the Middle East.”

posted on November 13, 2013 at 6:13pm EST

Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with Sen. Joe Manchin as they arrive on Capitol Hill before Kerry briefs members of the Senate Banking Committee on Iran. Larry Downing / Reuters

WASHINGTON — Republican senators sharply criticized the administration’s closed-door presentation to the Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday, an appeal that was designed to convince them to hold off on a new round of sanctions against Iran. The committee chairman said he was left “undecided.”

“It was an emotional appeal,” Sen. Bob Corker told reporters after the briefing. “I have to tell you, I was very disappointed in the presentation.”

Corker said that senators were given no details of the interim deal being formulated in negotiations between Iran and world powers in Geneva this month. Secretary of State John Kerry briefed the committee, along with Vice President Joe Biden and the State Department’s lead Iran negotiator Wendy Sherman.

“I am stunned that in a classified setting when you’re trying to talk to the very folks that would be originating legislation relative to sanctions, to have such a lack of specificity — I feel I may get that over the next 24 hours in another setting, but it was solely an emotional appeal,” Corker said.

Sen. Mark Kirk was even more forceful in criticizing the officials’ presentation, calling it “very unconvincing.”

“It was fairly anti-Israeli,” Kirk said to reporters after the briefing. “I was supposed to disbelieve everything the Israelis had just told me, and I think the Israelis probably have a pretty good intelligence service.” He said the Israelis had told him that the “total changes proposed set back the program by 24 days.”

A Senate aide familiar with the meeting said that “every time anybody would say anything about ‘what would the Israelis say,’ they’d get cut off and Kerry would say, ‘You have to ignore what they’re telling you, stop listening to the Israelis on this.’”

“They had no details,” the aide said. “They had no ability to verify anything, to describe anything, to answer basic questions.”

Kirk also criticized Sherman, whose “record on North Korea is a total failure and embarrassment to her service.” Sherman was part of the U.S. negotiating team that focused on North Korea in the 1990s.

“Wendy wants you to forget her service on North Korea,” Kirk said. “You shouldn’t allow her.”

“Today is the day I witnessed the future of nuclear war in the Middle East,” Kirk said, also comparing the administration to Neville Chamberlain, the British prime minister who signed away the Sudetenland to Hitler’s Germany in 1938. “How do you define an Iranian moderate? An Iranian who is out of bullets and out of money.”

Kirk said that he supports multiple avenues for increasing sanctions, including an amendment on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which is supposed to come to a vote later this month.

In an interview with BuzzFeed earlier on Wednesday, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin said he didn’t know when the vote on NDAA would come and hoped it would not include an amendment on sanctions.

“Hopefully it won’t happen on NDAA,” Levin said. “Hopefully it’ll be a separate vote on a bill coming out of the Banking Committee.”

Democrats coming out of the meeting were tight-lipped, with Sen. Joe Manchin the only one who said anything further than “no comment.”

“I have trust and faith in Secretary Kerry’s ability and his intentions in making sure we find the path” to keeping Iran from going nuclear, Manchin said. He would not comment on whether he supported additional legislation.

Sen. Tim Johnson, the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, would not answer reporters’ questions about the status of the bill except to say that he was still “undecided” about its future.

Before entering the meeting, Kerry stopped to tell reporters that new sanctions risked “breaking faith” with the Iranians.

“The risk is that if Congress were to unilaterally move to raise sanctions, it could break faith in those negotiations and actually stop them and break them apart,” Kerry said.

Why is France harder on Iran than the US? | The Times of Israel.

It isn’t sympathy for Israel or an aversion to fight that’s directing Paris diplomacy, but rather its own foreign policy interests

By Ron Kampeas and Cnaan Liphshiz November 14, 2013, 7:53 am

Conservatives scoffed that even the conflict-averse French had outflanked President Obama. Leftists accused Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, of doing Israel’s bidding.

The reality typically is more nuanced.

France’s posture in the talks between Iran and the major powers — Russia, Britain, the United States, China and Germany along with France — is not the result of its sympathy for Israel or its supposed aversion to confrontation, experts say.

Rather it is the product of a complicated matrix of French interests stemming from the country’s centuries-old role in the region, longtime distrust of Iranian theocracy and a postwar insistence on forging its own foreign policies.

Fabius was the first to announce Sunday morning that two days of intensive talks last week in Geneva had ended without a resolution. The announcement came after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had cut short a trip to the Middle East at week’s end to participate personally in the talks, fueling speculation that the parties were on the verge of a resolution.

“The Geneva meeting allowed us to advance, but we were not able to conclude because there are still some questions to be addressed,” Fabius said.

Talks are due to resume on Nov. 20.

The questions reportedly were raised mostly by France. They focused mainly on Iran’s refusal to immediately suspend construction of a heavy water reactor that could produce plutonium used as fuel for a nuclear weapon.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the leading international voice opposing the emerging outlines of a deal, said the break precipitated by the French presented an opportunity for Kerry to reconsider his push for an agreement.

“Israel is united in opposition to the deal being offered to Iran,” Netanyahu told the Knesset on Monday. “We are speaking in a clear and unequivocal voice. The time that was achieved over the weekend must be utilized to achieve a much better deal. The target date for this deal is the date on which a good deal will be achieved that will deny Iran a military nuclear capability.”

Israel’s objections have to do with reports, confirmed to JTA by a diplomat from one of the negotiating countries, that the major powers were ready to set aside U.N. Security Council resolutions requiring Iran to suspend all enrichment activities and allow some continued uranium enrichment, albeit at levels well below weaponization.

Netanyahu, backed by a number of leading congressional lawmakers, believes that allowing Iran any enrichment capacity would give it cover to advance its suspected weapons program.

Kerry, already bruised by the teetering Israeli-Palestinian talks and furious with Netanyahu over announcements of new settlement building, suggested Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the Israeli leader did not know what he was talking about.

“I’m not sure that the prime minister, who I have great respect for, knows exactly what the amount or the terms are going to be because we haven’t arrived at them all yet,” Kerry said. “That’s what we’re negotiating. And it is not a partial deal. Let me make that crystal clear, as I have to the prime minister directly. It is a first step in an effort that will lock the program in where it is today — in fact, set it back — while one negotiates the full deal.”

Though the United States might be expected to be more solicitous of Israeli security concerns, France’s hard line is rooted in the country’s hostility toward Iran, said Heather Hurlburt, a senior adviser at the National Security Network, a Washington think tank.

In the 1980s, the Islamic Republic conducted an assassination campaign against Iranian dissidents who had sought refuge in France, a history that generates significant rancor even today.

The killings not only hit French national pride — France for centuries has seen itself as a safe haven for dissidents — but were all the more galling because France had protected Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini when he was in exile.

“The Iranians have assassinated a fair amount of people on French soil,” Hurlburt said. “There’s a degree of hostility Americans forget about.”

Also salient are French ties to a number of nations in the region, particularly Syria and Lebanon. The French were among the Western nations pressing hardest to stop the Iran-backed Syrian government’s slaughter of civilians in the country’s grinding civil war — an intervention averted by a deal, brokered by Russia and the United States, to have Syria relinquish its chemical weapons capability.

“For France, this was a rare opportunity for score settling with Iran, but also with the United States for humiliatingly pulling the plug on France’s plans to strike in Syria,” said Afshin Ellian, an Iran-born lecturer on international public law at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

France also has jealously guarded its independence in foreign policy, a legacy of the postwar leadership of Charles de Gaulle, who removed all French forces from the NATO command in 1966 even though France was a founding member of the alliance. France returned to full membership only in 1999.

“Total independence on nuclear issues is part of the DNA of French policy-making,” Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, a former secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, told JTA. “I think this is the underlying reason that France is more resolute than the U.S. and Germany in its conviction to prevent a nuclear Iran.”

Several analysts also have suggested that France has its eye on a major arms deal it is negotiating with Saudi Arabia, a country nearly as adamant as Israel that Iran must not achieve nuclear capability.

“The hidden player is Saudi Arabia, which is very familiar with Iranian deceit and would do anything to keep Iran from having nuclear arms,” Guy Bechor, a lecturer on Middle Eastern studies at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, wrote on his website. “Saudi Arabia triggered the French move in exchange for its signature on massive weapons contracts from France.”
Both Hurlburt and the diplomat said that France’s recalcitrance has its uses, though for different reasons. The diplomat, who was not authorized to discuss the negotiations and thus asked to remain anonymous, suggested the breakdown gives all the parties a breather to fully consider the proposals. Hurlburt said it helps take the heat off the United States and Israel.
“In some ways it may be very convenient that France was willing to go out and be hard line,” Hurlburt said. “It’s useful politically for Fabius for France to play the bad cop.