WarSclerotic

UN nuclear watchdog: Iran’s uranium stockpile has declined for first time in 4 years | JPost | Israel News.

By REUTERS

02/20/2014 17:47

IAEA report indicates that Iran meeting its commitments under the Geneva nuclear agreement with western powers, has stopped uranium enrichment activity.

VIENNA – Iran’s stockpile of higher-enriched uranium has declined significantly for the first time in four years after it stopped such enrichment activity under a landmark nuclear deal with world powers, the UN atomic agency reported on Thursday.

The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also indicated that Iran was meeting its commitments under the Nov. 24 pact with the powers to curb its most proliferation-prone nuclear work in exchange for some easing of sanctions.

It was issued to member states just hours after Iran and the six big powers – the United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia – wound up a first round of negotiations in Vienna aimed at a final settlement of the decade-old dispute over Tehran’s nuclear program. The next round is slated for March 17.

UN nuclear inspectors are playing a critical role in monitoring that Iran is living up to its side of last year’s six-month accord, designed to buy time for the negotiations on a comprehensive agreement over atomic activity Tehran says is entirely peaceful but the West fears may have military aims.

Iran’s reserve of uranium refined to a 20 percent fissile concentration fell to 161 kg in February from about 196 kg in November, the IAEA report said. Iran suspended higher-grade enrichment under the November deal and has since converted some of the material into oxide and diluted some to a lower purity.

However, the stock of low-enriched – or 5 percent purity – uranium rose to 7,609 kg from 7,154 kg in November. This apparently resulted from a delay in constructing a plant to convert some of the material into a form less suitable for processing into high-enriched bomb material.

Iran’s holding of uranium – which Tehran says it needs to fuel a planned network of nuclear power plants – is closely watched in the West as it could provide weapons-suitable material if refined much further. Iran denies any such goal.

(Reporting by Fredrik Dahl; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Obama’s Foreign Policy: Enemy Action | FrontPage Magazine.

It’s often hard to determine whether a series of bad policies results from stupidity or malicious intent.

Occam’s razor suggests that the former is the more likely explanation, as conspiracies assume a high degree of intelligence, complex organization, and secrecy among a large number of people, qualities that usually are much less frequent than the simple stupidity, disorganization, and inability to keep a secret more typical of our species. Yet surveying the nearly 6 years of Obama’s disastrous foreign policy blunders, I’m starting to lean towards Goldfinger’s Chicago mob-wisdom: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, it’s enemy action.”

Obama’s ineptitude started with his general foreign policy philosophy. George Bush, so the narrative went, was a trigger-happy, unilateralist, blundering, “dead or alive” cowboy who rushed into an unnecessary war in Iraq after alienating our allies and insulting the Muslim world. Obama pledged to be different. As a Los Angeles Times editorial advised him in January 2009, “The Bush years, defined by ultimatums and unilateral actions around the world, must be brought to a swift close with a renewed emphasis on diplomacy, consultation and the forging of broad international coalitions.” Obama eagerly took this advice, reaching out not just to our allies, but also to sworn enemies like Syria, Venezuela, and Iran, and serially bowing to various potentates around the globe. He went on the apology tour, in which he confessed America’s “arrogant, dismissive, derisive” behavior and the “darker periods in our history.” And he followed up by initiating America’s retreat from international affairs, “leading from behind,” appeasing our enemies, and using rhetorical bluster as a substitute for coherent, forceful action. Here follow 3 of the many mistakes that suggest something other than inexperience and a lack of knowledge is driving Obama’s policies.

Russia

Remember the “reset” button Obama offered to Russia? In September 2009 he made a down payment on this policy by reversing George Bush’s plan to station a radar facility in the Czech Republic and 10 ground-based missile interceptors in Poland. Russia had complained about these defensive installations, even though they didn’t threaten Russian territory. So to appease the Russians, Obama abandoned Poland and the Czech Republic, who still live in the dark shadow of their more powerful former oppressors, while Russia’s Iranian clients were emboldened by their patron’s ability to make the superpower Americans back down. As George Marshall Fund fellow David J. Kramer prophesized at the time, Obama’s caving “to Russian pressure . . . will encourage leaders in Moscow to engage in more loud complaining and bully tactics (such as threatening Iskander missiles against the Poles and Czechs) because such behavior gets desired results.”

Obama followed up this blunder with the New START arms reduction treaty with Russia signed in 2010. This agreement didn’t include tactical nuclear weapons, leaving the Russians with a 10-1 advantage. Multiple warheads deployed on a missile were counted as one for purposes of the treaty, which meant that the Russians could exceed the 1550 limit. Numerous other problems plague this treaty, but the worst is the dependence on Russian honesty to comply with its terms. Yet as Keith B. Payne and Mark B. Schneider have written recently, for years Russia has serially violated the terms of every arms-control treaty it has signed, for obvious reasons: “These Russian actions demonstrate the importance the Kremlin attaches to its new nuclear-strike capabilities. They also show how little importance the Putin regime attaches to complying with agreements that interfere with those capabilities. Russia not only seems intent on creating new nuclear- and conventional-strike capabilities against U.S. allies and friends. It has made explicit threats against some of them in recent years.” Busy pushing the reset button, Obama has ignored all this cheating. Nor did Obama’s 2012 appeasing pledge to outgoing Russian President Dmitri Medvedev–– that after the election he would “have more flexibility” about the proposed European-based anti-missile defense system angering Russia––could convince Vladimir Putin to play ball with the U.S. on Iran and Syria. Obama’s groveling “reset” outreach has merely emboldened Russia to expand its influence and that of its satellites like Iran and Syria, at the expense of the interests and security of America and its allies.

Syria

Syria is another American enemy Obama thought his charm offensive could win over. To do so he had to ignore Syria’s long history of supporting terrorists outfits like Hezbollah, murdering its sectarian and political rivals, assassinating Lebanon’s anti-Syrian Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005, and facilitating the transit of jihadists–– during one period over 90% of foreign fighters–– into Iraq to kill Americans. Yet Obama sent diplomatic officials on 6 trips to Syria in an attempt to make strongman Bashar al Assad play nice. In return, in 2010 Assad hosted a cozy conference with Hezbollah terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah and the genocidal Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, where they discussed “a Middle East without Zionists and without colonialists.” Despite such rhetoric, even as the uprising against Assad was unfolding in March 2011, Secretary of State Clinton said, “There’s a different leader in Syria now. Many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.”

In response to the growing resistance against the “reformer” Assad, Obama once again relied on blustering rhetoric rather than timely action to bring down an enemy of the U.S. Sanctions and Executive Orders flew thick and fast, but no military aid was provided to Assad’s opponents, the moderates soon to be marginalized by foreign terrorists armed by Iran. As time passed, more Syrians died and more terrorists filtered into Syria, while Obama responded with toothless tough rhetoric, proclaiming, “For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.” Equally ineffective was Obama’s talk in 2012 of a “red line” and “game-changer” if Assad used chemical weapons. Assad, obviously undeterred by threats from the world’s greatest military power, proceeded to use chemical weapons. Obama threatened military action, only to back down on the excuse that he needed the permission of Congress. Instead, partnering with the Russian wolf his own weakness had empowered, he brokered a deal that in effect gave Assad a free hand to bomb cities and kill civilians at the price of promising to surrender his chemical stockpiles. The butcher Assad magically changed from a pariah who had to go, into a legitimate partner of the United States, one whose cooperation we depend on for implementing the agreement. Given such cover, he has continued to slaughter his enemies and provide invaluable battlefield experience to tens of thousands of terrorist fighters.

Of course, without the threat of military punishment for violating the terms of the agreement­­––punishment vetoed by new regional player Russia––the treaty is worthless. Sure enough, this month we learned that Assad is dragging his feet, missing a deadline for turning over his weapons, while surrendering so far just 5% of his stockpiles. And those are just the weapons he has acknowledged possessing. In response, Secretary of State John Kerry has blustered, “Bashar al-Assad is not, in our judgment, fully in compliance because of the timing and the delays that have taken place contrary to the [Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons]’s judgment that this could move faster. So the options are all the options that originally existed. No option has been taken off the table.” You can hear Assad, Rouhani, Nasrallah, and Putin rolling on the ground laughing their you-know-what’s off over that empty threat.

Iran

Now we come to the biggest piece of evidence for divining Obama’s motives, Iran. The Islamic Republic has been an inveterate enemy of this country since the revolution in 1979, with 35 years of American blood on its hands to prove it. Even today Iranian agents are facilitating with training and materiel the killing of Americans in Afghanistan. The regime is the biggest and most lethal state sponsor of terrorism, and proclaims proudly a genocidal, anti-Semitic ideology against Israel, our most loyal ally in the region. And it regularly reminds us that we are its enemy against whom it has repeatedly declared war, most recently in February when demonstrations celebrated the anniversary of the revolution with signs reading, “Hey, America!! Be angry with us and die due to your anger! Down with U.S.A.” At the same time, two Iranian warships crowded our maritime borders in the Atlantic, and state television broadcast a documentary simulating attacks on U.S. aircraft carriers.

Despite that long record of murder and hatred, when he first came into office, Obama made Iran a particular object of his diplomatic “outreach.” He “bent over backwards,” as he put it, “extending his hand” to the mullahs “without preconditions,” going so far as to keep silent in June 2009 as they brutally suppressed protests against the stolen presidential election. But the mullahs contemptuously dismissed all these overtures. In response, Obama issued a series of “deadlines” for Iran to come clean on its weapons programs, more bluster the regime ignored, while Obama assured them that “We remain committed to serious, meaningful engagement with Iran.” Just as with Russia and Syria, still more big talk about “all options are on the table” for preventing the mullahs from acquiring nuclear weapons has been scorned by the regime.

Doubling down on this failed policy, Obama along with the Europeans gambled that sanctions would bring Iran to its knees before it reached breakout capability for producing a weapon. Odds of success were questionable, but just as the sanctions appeared to be pushing the Iranian economy, and perhaps the regime, to collapse, in November of last year Obama entered into negotiations that resulted in a disastrous agreement that trades sanction relief for empty promises. This deal ensures that Iran will become a nuclear power, since the agreement allows Iran to continue to enrich uranium in violation of numerous U.N. Security Council Resolutions. Finally, in an act of criminal incoherence, Obama threatened to veto any Congressional legislation imposing meaningful economic punishment for future Iranian cheating and intransigence.

Given this “abject surrender,” as former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton called it, it’s no surprise that the Iranians are trumpeting the agreement as a victory: “In this agreement, the right of Iranian nation to enrich uranium was accepted by world powers,” the “moderate reformer” Iranian president Hassan Rouhani bragged. “With this agreement … the architecture of sanctions will begin to break down.” Iranian foreign minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, agreed: “None of the enrichment centers will be closed and Fordow and Natanz will continue their work and the Arak heavy water program will continue in its present form and no material (enriched uranium stockpiles) will be taken out of the country and all the enriched materials will remain inside the country. The current sanctions will move towards decrease, no sanctions will be imposed and Iran’s financial resources will return.” Memo to Mr. Obama: when the adversary loudly brags that the agreement benefits him, you’d better reexamine the terms of the deal.

As it stands today, the sanction regime is unraveling even as we speak, while the Iranians are within months of nuclear breakout capacity. Meanwhile the economic pain that was starting to change Iranian behavior is receding. According to the International Monetary Fund, Iran’s economy is projected to grow 2% in fiscal year 2014-15, compared to a 2% contraction this year. Inflation has dropped over 10 points since last year. Global businesses are flocking to Tehran to cut deals, while Obama blusters that “we will come down on [sanctions violators] like a ton of bricks.” Add that dull cliché to “red line,” “game-changer,” and the other empty threats that comprise the whole of Obama’s foreign policy.

These foreign policy blunders and numerous others––especially the loss of critical ally Egypt–– reflect ideological delusions that go beyond Obama. The notion that aggressors can be tamed and managed with diplomatic engagement has long been a convenient cover for a political unwillingness to take military action with all its dangers and risks. Crypto-pacifist Democrats are particularly fond of the magical thinking that international organizations, summits, “shuttle diplomacy,” conferences, and other photogenic confabs can substitute for force.

But progressive talk of “multilateralism” and “diplomatic engagement” hides something else: the Oliver Stone/Howard Zinn/Noam Chomsky/Richard Falk self-loathing narrative that the United States is a force of evil in the world, a neo-colonialist, neo-imperialist, predatory capitalist oppressor responsible for the misery and tyranny afflicting the globe. Given that America’s power is corrupt, we need a foreign policy of withdrawal, retreat, and apologetic humility, with our national sovereignty subjected to transnational institutions like the U.N., the International Court of Justice, and the European Court of Human Rights ––exactly the program that Obama has been working on for the last 5 years. Given the damage such policies are serially inflicting on our security and interests, it starts to make sense that inexperience or stupidity is not as cogent an explanation as enemy action.

Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, a Research Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and a Professor of Classics and Humanities at the California State University. He is the author of nine books and numerous essays on classical culture and its influence on Western Civilization.

Articles: Iran Has the Bomb.

American Thinker

By Peter Vincent Pry

Iran, Britain renew diplomatic ties, reopen embassies – Israel News, Ynetnews.

( The UK (which opposed the creation of the state of Israel) now has added to its karma being the first western state to normalize relations with THE rogue state of our hemisphere.  For SHAME ! – JW )

Ties were severed by London after students stormed its Tehran embassy in 2011.

AFP

TEHRAN – Iran and Britain officially resumed diplomatic relations on Thursday, severed by London after students stormed its Tehran embassy in 2011, a senior Iranian official said.

“From today relations between Iran and Britain are resumed at the non-resident charges d’affaires level,” Deputy Foreign Minister Majid Takht-Ravanchi told ISNA, adding that the countries’ flags were raised atop their embassies in Tehran and London.

The British Foreign Office confirmed the news.

Britain had ordered the closure of Iran’s embassy in London after shuttering its own in Tehran when hundreds of Islamist students stormed the compound in November 2011.

The students – protesting against Western sanctions over Tehran’s disputed nuclear program – ransacked the building as well as the ambassador’s residence in north Tehran.

Since then, the Swedish embassy in Tehran has represented Britain’s interests there, while the Omani embassy in London has done the same for Iran.

“By ending the job of countries’ interest sections, the charges d’affaires are now responsible for the bilateral relations,” said Takht-Ravanchi.

In November, the two countries had already named non-resident charges d’affaires, and Britain’s new envoy, Ajay Sharma, visited Iran in December.

There has been a thaw in ties between the Islamic republic and the international community since the June election of President Hassan Rouhani, a reputed moderate who has reached out to the West and steered his country into a landmark nuclear deal with major powers.

US expected to keep oil embargo even if Iran nuclear deal struck, Ynet News, February 20, 2014

(Are mixed signals been sent?  If so, why now and to whom? — DM)

American official says trade barriers erected after 1979 Islamic Revolution to remain in place, unilaterally, even if Iran achieves comprehensive deal with world powers.

A unilateral US oil embargo on Iran is expected to remain in place even if a long-term nuclear agreement between Tehran and six world powers is reached that includes an easing of international sanctions, a US official said on Thursday.

The embargo pre-dates the decade-long nuclear dispute with Iran. Washington cut off diplomatic ties with Tehran during a hostage crisis shortly following the 1979 Islamic Revolution and began imposing sanctions around the same time.

“The American domestic oil embargo is expected to remain in place even if a comprehensive agreement is reached,” the US official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Western diplomats say US companies would be unhappy about being left out if European Union and UN sanctions are lifted, allowing non-US firms to resume business with the Islamic Republic. Iranian officials say they would have no problem with American oil companies returning to Iran.

The US official spoke after Iran and the six powers – Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States – agreed on an agenda and schedule for talks aimed at ending the dispute over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Earlier, a senior US official said the United States would like to see sanctions lifted, but that cannot happen until an agreement on Iran’s nuclear project is reached. Another US official said those remarks referred only to sanctions imposed after the dispute over the nuclear program broke out in 2002.

Iranian parliament adds $3 bln to defense budget as a respond to US military option, Trend, February 20, 2014

(Let’s remove even more sanctions on peace-loving but impoverished Iran. We can rest secure in the hope that the funds will be used only for peaceful purposes such as providing more electricity, food and medicine for the peons of Iran. Right. — DM)

Iranian parliament has allocated an additional $3 billion to strengthen the country’s defense capacity for the next Iranian calendar year as a response to the U.S. officials’ statements that the military option against Iran is still on the table, head of the parliamentary Budget Commission Qolam Reza Mesbahi Moghaddam said, Iran’s Fars news agency reported on Feb. 20.

“We allocated some extra $3 billion to the country’s defense budget for next year in response to them and to show that Iran will continue to boost its defense power,” the MP underlined.

On Feb. 5, Iranian parliament allocated some $3 billion of surplus oil revenues to the armed forces and related organizations for the next Iranian calendar year 1393, which starts on March 21, 2014. The Iranian parliament approved generalities of the Iran’s national budget bill on Jan. 29 and now is studying and approving details of it.

The budgets of the Iranian army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have increased significantly in Iran’s next year budget bill. The army’s budget has increased by 50 percent and was set at 52 trillion rials (about $2.1 billion), and the IRGC’s budget has increased by 30 percent and was set at 44 trillion rials (about $1.8 billion), Mehr News Agency reported on Dec.10.

U.S. officials have repeatedly announced that the “military option” is still on the table, if the Islamic Republic continues to enrich uranium beyond the permitted levels.

Iranian senior commanders in recent weeks have responded to the U.S. officials` statements claiming that these statements are political bluff.

Iran’s Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan said last week that the successful test-fire of ballistic missiles which took place on Feb. 9, is a response to the U.S. officials’ statements that the military option against Iran is still on the table.

Iran says negotiation agenda agreed in nuclear talks with powers | JPost | Israel News.

By REUTERS

02/20/2014 08:38

Negotiators have been meeting since Tuesday to hammer out an agenda for talks on a final deal to the standoff over Tehran’s atomic activities.

Iran and six world powers have agreed on an agenda for negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program and will meet again next month in Vienna, a senior Iranian official said after two days of talks in the Austrian capital.

If confirmed, it would indicate an early step forward in the elusive search for a settlement of the decade-old dispute, even though the sides remain far apart on how to resolve it and both Iran and the United States have publicly stated it may not be possible to reach a final agreement.

Negotiators from Iran and the powers – the United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia – have been meeting since Tuesday in Vienna to hammer out an agenda for talks on a final deal to the standoff over Tehran’s atomic activities.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told the official IRNA news agency: “The involved parties have agreed on an agenda and a framework and the next round of talks will be in the second half of March in Vienna.”

A senior US state department official earlier said about the second day of talks on Wednesday: “Today’s discussions, which covered both process and substance, were constructive and useful.”

Officials from the six powers were not immediately available for comment on Araqchi’s statement to IRNA. His statement was also carried by Iran’s English-language Press TV state television on its web site.

The meeting was due to resume on Thursday morning, expected to be followed by a news conference by European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton – who is coordinating the talks on behalf of the powers – and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

The six powers want a long-term deal on the permissible scope of Iran’s nuclear work to lay to rest concerns that they could be put to developing atomic bombs. Tehran’s priority is a complete removal of damaging economic sanctions against it.

The negotiations will probably extend at least over several months and could help defuse many years of hostility between energy-exporting Iran and the West, ease the danger of a new war in the Middle East, transform the regional power balance and open up major business opportunities for Western firms.

The Arms Control Association, a US-based research and advocacy group, said that if a common understanding had been reached on the issues that needed to be addressed “it is an important step forward that makes it more likely the two sides can arrive at a realistic, comprehensive deal in the next 6-12 months.”

The powers have yet to spell out their precise demands of Iran. But Western officials have signaled they want Tehran to cap enrichment of uranium at a low fissile concentration, limit research and development of new nuclear equipment, decommission a substantial portion of its centrifuges used to refine uranium, and allow more intrusive UN nuclear inspections.

Such steps, they believe, would help extend the time Iran would need to make enough fissile material for a bomb and make such a move easier to detect before it became a fait accompli. Tehran says its program is peaceful and has no military aims.

Graham Allison, director of Harvard University’s Belfer Center, said the aim should be to deny Iran an “exercisable nuclear weapons option.”

“Our essential requirement is that the timeline between an Iranian decision to seek a bomb and success in building it is long enough, and an Iranian move in that direction is clear enough, that the United States or Israel has sufficient time to intervene to prevent Iran’s succeeding,” he said.

Highlighting wide differences over expectations, Araqchi was cited by Press TV on Tuesday as saying that any dismantling of Iranian nuclear installations would not be up for negotiation.

The talks could also stumble over the future of Iran’s facilities in Arak, an unfinished heavy-water reactor that Western states worry could yield plutonium for bombs, and the Fordow uranium enrichment plant, built deep underground to ward off any threat of air strikes.

During a decade of on-and-off dialogue with world powers, Iran has rejected Western allegations that it has been seeking the means to build nuclear weapons. It says it is enriching uranium only for electricity generation and medical purposes.

As part of a final deal, Iran expects the United States, the European Union and the United Nations to lift painful economic sanctions on the oil-dependent economy. But Western governments will be wary of giving up their leverage too soon.

The six powers hope to get a deal done by late July, when an interim accord struck in November expires.
That agreement, made possible by the election of relative moderate President Hassan Rouhani on a platform of relieving Iran’s international isolation by engaging constructively with its adversaries, obliged Tehran to suspend higher-level enrichment in return for some relief from economic sanctions.

▶ Netanyahu: We must prevent Iran from having the capacity to produce nuclear weapons – YouTube.

Israel Hayom | Rouhani: Iran hopes for ‘liberation’ of Jerusalem.

Iranian president says the Muslim world is hoping for a solution to “occupation” • EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton says world powers and Iran made a “good start” at nuclear talks in Vienna • Gallup poll: Only 12% of Americans view Iran favorably.

Obama’s Iran policy wins key point: Saudis drop its lead antagonist Prince Bandar.

Prince Bandar bin Sultan -architect of Saudi Syria, Iran strategies

The live wire of the Saudi royal house’s drive against President Barack Obama’s détente with Tehran has been dropped. Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia’s National Security Adviser and Intelligence Director, has not been seen for more than a month. He was reported by debkafile’s US and Saudi sources Wednesday, Feb. 19, to have been removed from the tight policy-making circle in Riyadh.
For Israel’s Binyamin Netanyahu, this counts significantly as the loss of the only other Middle East leader ready to publicly decry President Obama’s policies on Iran and Syria as promoting the negative forces in the region and damaging to America’s own interests.

As recently as Tuesday, Netanyahu declared: “I would like to tell the world today that Iran has changed neither its aggressive policy nor its brutal character… Iran continues to support the Assad regime which is slaughtering its own people.”
Prince Bandar was widely reported in the Middle East to be in secret ties with Israeli intelligence on Saudi and Israeli moves against Iran. Tehran claimed more than once that he had paid clandestine visits to Tel Aviv. Those ties, such as they were, may be presumed to have been discontinued following his removal.

There has been no official word from Riyadh disclosing any change in Bandar’s status. Our sources report that the prince, a long-serving ambassador to the United States, vanished off Saudi and Middle East radar screens in mid-January, shortly before he was scheduled to visit Washington to arrange President Obama’s forthcoming trip to Riyadh in the last week of March.
Bandar never arrived in Washington and no one in Riyadh was ready to answer questions about his whereabouts. US sources were more forthcoming – although less complimentary. In some reports he was dismissed as “hotheaded” or “erratic.”

The Saudi intelligence chief crossed the Americans by supplying weapons and money to Syrian rebels belonging to Islamist militias – though not al Qaeda. He was the driving force behind the formation of the Islamic Front coalition, which last month beat the Free Syrian Army backed by Washington into the ground.
Some Gulf sources say he is paying the price for the kingdom’s failure in Syria. Bandar promised King Abdullah thatg he would take care of getting rid of Bashar Assad. He not only fell down on this task, but he generated a clash between the Obama administration and the Saudi throne on the Syrian issue, say those sources.
The most striking evidence of his comedown came from his absence from the secret conclave held recently by Middle East intelligence chiefs to coordinate their positions on Syrian with Washington.
Instead of Prince Bandar, his seat was taken by his leading adversary on Syria, the Saudi Interior Minister, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef.

Prince Mohammed is a favorite at the White House and a close friend of Secretary of State John Kerry and CIA Director John Brennan.

The Saudi interior minister, by taking Bandar’s place at this important forum, may also be stepping into his shoes as intelligence chief – albeit without the formality of an official notice from Riyadh.