WarSclerotic

US assures Gulf allies that Iran talks won’t undermine security – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Hagel addresses Middle East states ahead of new nuclear negotiations with Iran; promises that regional security most important issue.
Associated Press

JEDDAH – Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Wednesday promised US allies in the Persian Gulf that negotiations to contain Iran’s nuclear program will not weaken their security.

In remarks opening a conference with his Gulf counterparts, Hagel said Washington is hopeful of progress this week in the Iran deal-drafting talks in Vienna.

Chuck Hagel (Photo: AP)

“As negotiations progress, I want to assure you of two things,” Hagel told the Gulf Cooperation Council. “First, these negotiations will under no circumstances trade away regional security for concessions on Iran’s nuclear program.”

The Pentagon chief continued, “Second, while our strong preference is for a diplomatic solution, the United States will remain postured and prepared to ensure that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon – and that Iran abides by the terms of any potential agreement.”

Even if Tehran backs out of the nuclear negotiations, Hagel said, “The United States remains committed to our Gulf partners’ security.” He said there are about 35,000 U.S. troops in the Gulf region.

After his meeting with the Gulf ministers, Hagel said they all agreed on the need to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively peaceful.

“While we noted that Iran’s diplomatic engagement has been a positive development, we continue to share deep concerns about Iran’s destabilizing activities throughout the region, including its sponsorship of terrorism, its support for the Assad regime in Syria and its efforts to undermine the stability in GCC member nations,” Hagel said.

Hagel also addressed the ongoing civil war in Syria, describing it as a confluence of “violent extremism, fragile states and humanitarian emergencies.”

“The United States remains committed to working with your governments toward a negotiated, political solution that ends the violence and leads to a representative and responsive government,” he said.

After the meeting, Hagel said: “We pledged to deepen our cooperation in providing aid to the Syrian opposition. We agreed that our assistance must be complementary – and that it must be carefully directed to the moderate opposition.”

#BringBackOurGirls and the Left’s Empty Moral Outrage, Front Page Magazine, Bruce Thornton, May 14, 2014

(The nature of this beast should be obvious to most. It seems not to be. — DM)

[N]otice that not a word will be said about the misogynistic Islamic doctrines that justify this atrocity, even though a video has been released that claims all the girls have converted to Islam, and shows them dressed in full shari’a regalia. Sentimental Third Worldism and its domestic offspring, multiculturalism, are hypersensitive to the feelings of any and every religious faith except Christianity, which has been tainted by alleged Western crimes and intolerance. That’s why the media and this administration have ignored the slow-motion genocide against Christians in the Middle East.

Most important, outrage is determined by the political needs of an administration whose foreign policy has been an unmitigated disaster. The sentimental orgy over the schoolgirls distracts us from the disorder and violence that Obama and his foreign policy team have left in the wake of their misguided, ignorant, and ideologically corrupted actions and policies abroad. From Ukraine to the South China Sea, Iran to Latin America, our enemies are invigorated, our rivals heartened, our allies dispirited, and our security and interests compromised.

[T]he spectacle of the kidnapped schoolgirls provides a convenient distraction from all those failures, especially one of the worst – the bungling and political opportunism that resulted in the murder of four Americans, including a diplomat, in Benghazi.

The outrage over the kidnapping of nearly 300 schoolgirls by the Nigerian jihadist gang Boko Haram reeks of Western hypocrisy and moral idiocy. Boko Haram has for years been slaughtering Christians – up to 2500 this year alone – and burning churches in a classic Islamic jihad against infidels. These depredations apparently weren’t enough to get the group designated a terrorist organization by Hillary Clinton’s State Department. But this indifference to what under international law is a genocide has been indulged as well by our celebrities and the mainstream media, who rarely mention that the group is specifically targeting Christians, and before the girls were kidnapped displayed little interest in the suffering of those Christians. So why this sudden attention?

The recent burst of self-indulgent selfies tweeted by millions, including celebrities and the First Lady, and the sentimental news coverage all reflect the fashionable and selective obsessions of our political and cultural elite and those who ape their fashions. First there is the need to display what Alan Bloom called “conspicuous compassion” for distant misery and suffering. Especially fashionable are compassion and pity for people in the Third World, the display of what Pascal Bruckner called the “tears of the white man” shed for all those victims of Western crimes like colonialism, imperialism, and global capitalism. Like Veblen’s conspicuous consumption, photogenic public displays of compassion, “outrage,” and “concern” for global suffering function like a designer label, indicating one’s moral superiority and finely calibrated sensitivity to oppression and suffering. Of course, ignored in all this emotional bluster and self-indulgence is any understanding of why this atrocity is happening, or the motives and aims of the perpetrators, information that would be important if we were really serious about doing something about it other than morally preen for the cameras.

Next is the despicable selectivity about which victims deserve our outrage. Why haven’t the thousands of Nigerian Christians already slaughtered by Boko Haram been worthy of this same uproar as the kidnapped schoolgirls? Of course suffering children are always triggers of easy sentiment and emotion – “I want to reach out and save those kids,” Obama said at Steven Spielberg’s house, at the same time he pretty much implied he wasn’t about to actually do anything. But plenty of children have already been raped and killed by Boko Haram, and many more are dying in Syria, Sudan, Egypt, and numerous other venues. Maybe the fact that the Nigerian girls are destined to be slave-wives – as Robert Spencerpoints out, a practice legitimate under Islamic doctrine and law – fires up leftists, who are always ready to decry a “war on women” and privilege the travails of females over every other kind of oppression and suffering. People who think that a sorority girl who gets drunk at a party and has sex with an equally drunk fraternity brother has been the victim of “sexual assault” are not going to miss this opportunity to highlight the sexist “patriarchy” and the universal rottenness of men.

But notice that not a word will be said about the misogynistic Islamic doctrines that justify this atrocity, even though a video has been released that claims all the girls have converted to Islam, and shows them dressed in full shari’a regalia. Sentimental Third Worldism and its domestic offspring, multiculturalism, are hypersensitive to the feelings of any and every religious faith except Christianity, which has been tainted by alleged Western crimes and intolerance. That’s why the media and this administration have ignored the slow-motion genocide against Christians in the Middle East. People whose dudgeon reaches the stratosphere over some graffiti on a mosque or the word “crusade” have nothing to say, no outrage to publicize, no selfies to tweet, over the church-bombing, kidnapping and rape of girls and women, forced conversions, torture, and execution of Christians that have continually been taking place long before the Nigerian girls were kidnapped.

But that suffering doesn’t serve the left-wing multiculturalist narrative. After all, every orthodox multiculturalist knows that Christianity is the religion of Crusades and Inquisitions, violence and intolerance. It is Islam that is the religion of peace and ecumenical tolerance. Don’t think about the extensive documentation of theologized violence in Islamic doctrine and practice. Keep quiet about the genital mutilation, honor killings, sex segregation, and forced marriages inflicted on girls and women in Islamic countries. Don’t let an eloquent victim of such misogyny, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, be your commencement speaker, lest she speak truths hurtful to Muslims. Instead listen to the slick Muslim apologists and Western useful idiots who explain all that as the malign fantasies and slanderous distortions invented by “orientalist” shills for neo-colonial oppression and Zionist hegemony.

Most important, outrage is determined by the political needs of an administration whose foreign policy has been an unmitigated disaster. The sentimental orgy over the schoolgirls distracts us from the disorder and violence that Obama and his foreign policy team have left in the wake of their misguided, ignorant, and ideologically corrupted actions and policies abroad. From Ukraine to the South China Sea, Iran to Latin America, our enemies are invigorated, our rivals heartened, our allies dispirited, and our security and interests compromised.

All this failure is the consequence of Obama’s bad ideas about foreign policy: unilateral military action angers our allies and creates new enemies; diplomacy and apology will restore good will; negotiation with a committed enemy can make him change his mind and ignore his own interests; abstract idealism about democracy and human rights can substitute for grim calculations of zero-sum interests and tragic trade-offs; killing bin Laden and droning an endless parade of al Qaeda “number 2’s” will neutralize the organization; establishing a Palestinian nation will eliminate the Muslim grievance against the West that fuels jihadist terror. Worst of all, these debacles reflect the overweening narcissism of a foreign policy tyro ignorant of history and political philosophy, but supremely confident in the power of his personality and public relations, when in fact he has acted on the world stage like a pampered child in the company of hard men who despise him.

Finally, the spectacle of the kidnapped schoolgirls provides a convenient distraction from all those failures, especially one of the worst – the bungling and political opportunism that resulted in the murder of four Americans, including a diplomat, in Benghazi. This disaster began with Obama’s collusion in the removal of Libya’s Ghaddafi, who was behaving himself as far as our interests were concerned. Into the subsequent vacuum rushed any number of jihadist gangs, now armed with the weapons from Ghaddafi’s looted arsenals, and unrestrained by any government control. To hide this failure, our diplomatic mission was left short of military protection lest anyone wonder why this glorious triumph for human rights and democracy had left a failed state full of violent factions from whom our diplomats needed to be protected. And don’t forget the election-year narrative that al Qaeda was “on its heels” and “bin Laden is dead,” a fairy tale challenged by the well-coordinated, sophisticated military attack on September 11, 2012. Hence the spin about an obscure video, a despicable cover-up abetted by Hillary Clinton when she tried to sell it to the grieving parents standing next to their sons’ coffins.

No, better to put on an emotional show over the kidnapped school girls, a terrible event stripped of context and reduced to sentiment, a perfect occasion for displays of self-righteousness and sensitivity – especially when the House has inconveniently established a select committee to get to the truth about Benghazi and the administration’s cover-up. Just forget that none of the tweeting and “outrage” will do anything to get those girls back and punish the perpetrators. But they will distract us for a bit from one of the worst records of foreign policy failure in American history.

Believing Obama on Iran, Front Page Magazine, Caroline Glick, May 14, 2014

(The farce process must continue because President Obama likes processes. — DM)

Iran’s lack of transparency puts paid to the US’s claim that it can monitor all of Iran’s activities. It is far from clear that the US is even aware of all of Iran’s nuclear sites. So even if the US is capable of perfectly monitoring the known sites, it cannot know what it doesn’t know, and so may very well be monitoring the wrong sites.

And yet, despite US’s acknowledgment that Iran already has breakout capacity, and despite the UN’s conclusion that the Iranians are cheating on their international commitments and bypassing sanctions through smuggling activities, Brig. Gen. Eilam, who left the nuclear business 28 years ago, feels comfortable accusing Netanyahu of deliberately misleading the public and the world community.

What gives? It is hard to escape the feeling that there may be a connection between Eilam’s unhinged broadside against Netanyahu and the US’s assault on the credibility of Israel’s nuclear warnings.

[R]ather than condemn Iranian espionage and aggression, over the past week, Obama administration officials have launched a full court press against Israel.

Brig. Gen. (ret.) Uzi Eilam is an octogenarian who served as the director general of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission from 1976 until 1985.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Eilam’s interview was his absolute certainty in his judgment.

Eilam, who hasn’t had any inside knowledge of nuclear issues since 1985, would have us believe that he knows better than active duty Israeli intelligence chiefs and US intelligence directors about the status of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. He even thinks he knows better than the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Israel assesses that Iran already has sufficient quantities of enriched uranium to produce five atomic bombs. As Netanyahu has said, the interim nuclear deal the US and its allies signed with Iran last November only delays Iran’s bomb making capacity by six weeks.

In January, James Clapper, the director of US national intelligence, agreed with Israel’s assessment. In testimony before the Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence Clapper said that Iran is already a nuclear breakout state. In his words, “Tehran has made technical progress in a number of areas – including uranium enrichment, nuclear reactors and ballistic missiles – from which it could draw if it decided to build missile- deliverable nuclear weapons.”

Clapper argued that this doesn’t matter because the US’s monitoring capabilities are so trustworthy and advanced that Iran wouldn’t be able to put nuclear weapons together without the US noticing.

Unfortunately there is no reason to believe Clapper is right. Indeed, Netanyahu said as much to US National Security Advisor Susan Rice when she repeated Clapper’s claim during her visit to Israel last week.

And the UN agrees with Netanyahu.

In two reports released in recent days, UN officials have stated that Iran has developed an advanced capacity to hide its importation of components of its nuclear program. According to a Reuters report, this includes hiding titanium tubs in steel pipes and using its petrochemical industry as a cover to obtain valves and other items for its heavy-water nuclear reactor.

According to an AP report, the IAEA is also concerned because Iran is not cooperating with the watchdog group in revealing information about possible military applications of its nuclear program, or allowing the IAEA unfettered access to all nuclear sites.

Iran’s lack of transparency puts paid to the US’s claim that it can monitor all of Iran’s activities. It is far from clear that the US is even aware of all of Iran’s nuclear sites. So even if the US is capable of perfectly monitoring the known sites, it cannot know what it doesn’t know, and so may very well be monitoring the wrong sites.

And yet, despite US’s acknowledgment that Iran already has breakout capacity, and despite the UN’s conclusion that the Iranians are cheating on their international commitments and bypassing sanctions through smuggling activities, Brig. Gen. Eilam, who left the nuclear business 28 years ago, feels comfortable accusing Netanyahu of deliberately misleading the public and the world community.

What gives? It is hard to escape the feeling that there may be a connection between Eilam’s unhinged broadside against Netanyahu and the US’s assault on the credibility of Israel’s nuclear warnings.

On Sunday Iran’s dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei visited a Revolutionary Guards Corps base. There he was shown what the IRGC claims is a reverse-engineered clone of an advanced US espionage drone that Iran captured in 2011. According to Fox News, after the RAQ-170 Sentinel drone landed in Iran in 2011, the Pentagon presented US President Barack Obama with three different plans to destroy or retrieve the drone.

Obama rejected all of them because “he didn’t want to do anything that could be perceived as an act of war.”

During the same visit, to the IRGC base on Sunday, Khamenei told the commanders to begin mass producing ballistic missiles to use against the US.

In his words, the Americans “expect us to limit our missile program while they constantly threaten Iran with military action. So this is a stupid, idiotic expectation.

The Revolutionary Guards should definitely carry out their program and not be satisfied with the present level. They should mass produce. This is a main duty of all military officials.”

In other words, on Sunday, a declared enemy of the US, that the director of national intelligence acknowledges already has the independent capability to produce nuclear weapons, humiliated and threatened the US.

At a minimum Iran’s capture of the US drone indicates that the US capacity to monitor Iran’s nuclear capabilities is vulnerable and imperfect.

As for the ballistic missiles, they should be of utmost concern to the Europeans and the Americans. Iran doesn’t need ballistic missiles to attack Israel with nuclear weapons.

It can use artillery, not to mention a human being playing the role of Enola Gay.

But rather than condemn Iranian espionage and aggression, over the past week, Obama administration officials have launched a full court press against Israel.

In back-to-back articles in Newsweek, unnamed US former intelligence officials and congressional staffers presented an utterly false and deeply malicious portrait of alleged Israeli spying on the US. The reports were presumptively targeting Israel’s attempts to end State Department discrimination against Israeli tourists in the US and allow Israel to join the US visa waiver program.

But it is hard to ignore the timing of the unbridled, untrue and hysterical allegations of “rampant” Israeli spying.

The stories were released in the lead-up to this week’s newest round of nuclear talks between the US, the other permanent members of the Security Council and Germany, and Iran. Those talks were billed as a diplomatic means of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear arsenal. Indeed, after Rice’s meeting with Netanyahu last week the White House released a statement claiming that “the US delegation reaffirmed our commitment to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.”

But the terms of the deal that is being negotiated with Iran advance the opposite of its stated goal. The deal on the table will enable Iran to develop nuclear weapons, virtually unopposed, and allow Iran to develop delivery systems for its nuclear arsenal entirely unopposed.

Israeli officials have been outspoken in their opposition to the agreement and the terms the US and its partners are offering Iran. Over and over, Netanyahu and his colleagues warn that the terms will not prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The White House knows what it is doing, and it wants to continue on course. Consequently, for the administration to sell a deal that enables Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, it needs to discredit Israel among sufficient swaths of the general public to enable Obama to move forward with Iran against Israel.

In this context, the administration’s willingness to turn a blind eye to Iran’s brazen threats and acts of contempt while sending out anonymous sources to castigate Israel as a US enemy whose actions are hostile and antithetical to the US makes sense.

The malevolent slander of Israel’s actions and intentions is of course only the opening act in this new administration campaign to discredit Israel ahead of a nuclear deal with Iran. Speaking to The Washington Free Beacon, former Bush administration deputy national security advisor Elliott Abrams said he believes the administration will frame the issue “saying that it’s this deal or war.”

He’s doubtlessly correct. After all that what the administration did in November when it signed the interim deal and when it forced the Senate to mothball its sanctions bill against Iran.

The truth is that the choice isn’t between war and an agreement. It is between doing something to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power, or doing nothing to prevent that from happening. The administration has opted to do nothing. Unfortunately for the world, the price for doing nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons is exponentially higher – in the cost of lives that would otherwise be saved – than the price of doing something.

But hey, at least an 80-year-old who led Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission nearly 40 years ago is willing to take Obama at his word.

Would You Trust Ahmadinejad with Unrestricted Nukes? Commentary Magazine, Michael Rubin, May 14, 2014

Obama is undertaking a huge gamble: He is betting American national security and broader Middle Eastern security on the notion that somehow Rouhani is different than his record indicates and that he knows better than Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei what Rouhani’s true intentions are. That’s not a good bet to take, especially since it looks like Rouhani’s honeymoon is rapidly coming to an end, but Obama—like all second-term presidents—is willing to put on blinders in his quest for a legacy.

[I]n the Islamic Republic, the supreme leader calls the shots, not the president. Simply put, the president is about style, the supreme leader is about substance. The second assumption underlying Obama’s diplomacy is that Hassan Rouhani is the Iranian incarnation of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, someone with a hardline past but reform in his heart. At best, this is wishful thinking. It involves dismissing Rouhani’s record and all of his past statements.

The Obama administration’s deal-making with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is based on two assumptions, both of which are false. The first is that the president matters in Iran. The reality is that, in the Islamic Republic, the supreme leader calls the shots, not the president. Simply put, the president is about style, the supreme leader is about substance. The second assumption underlying Obama’s diplomacy is that Hassan Rouhani is the Iranian incarnation of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, someone with a hardline past but reform in his heart. At best, this is wishful thinking. It involves dismissing Rouhani’s record and all of his past statements.

Obama is undertaking a huge gamble: He is betting American national security and broader Middle Eastern security on the notion that somehow Rouhani is different than his record indicates and that he knows better than Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei what Rouhani’s true intentions are. That’s not a good bet to take, especially since it looks like Rouhani’s honeymoon is rapidly coming to an end, but Obama—like all second-term presidents—is willing to put on blinders in his quest for a legacy.

Obama is putting all of his eggs in Rouhani’s basket, but what happens if Rouhani is removed from the picture? The purpose of a nuclear deal with Iran—at least from the Iranian perspective—is to normalize Iran’s nuclear program. Iran’s de facto lobbyists in the United States are already arguing that after a short period of Iranian compliance with the deal, Iran should be free and clear from restrictions and, in effect, be treated as it had never cheated, never experimented with nuclear-weapons triggers, and never constructed secret nuclear facilities.

Within the Islamic Republic, there is not an inexorable march to reform. The birthrate in Iran today is only half of what is was in the 1980s, and so Iranian leaders figure that there will be fewer hot-headed young people in coming decades. As students start families, they become less willing to rock the boat. Hardliners figure their moment is yet to come. To read Rouhani’s election as the permanent victory of reform or democracy is to misunderstand Iran: There are no free elections inside the Islamic Republic. The Guardian Council selects candidates, and so sets the parameters of debate.

The supreme leader keeps power by insuring a rotation of factions. When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the presidency in 2005, he cleaned house of reformist President Mohammad Khatami’s followers. Likewise, when Rouhani won the presidency, the press cheered as he began his purge of Ahmadinejad’s supporters (never mind he simply replaced the pro-Ahmadinejad Revolutionary Guards veterans with intelligence ministry veterans, hardly the sign of sincere reform). It is reasonable to assume that the supreme leader will try to keep Rouhani’s minions from growing too powerful by orchestrating the revival of the Ahmadinejadniks.

And, indeed, that is what is happening according to the Iranian press. The Open Source Center has compiled a number of Iranian press reporters discussing Ahmadinejad’s rehabilitation. On April 3, for example, the hardline website Shafaf spoke about Ahmadinejad fielding a candidate in a by-election this coming fall. Ten days later, Mosalas Online hinted that Ahmadinejad was crafting a strategy to retake the Majlis. This is no idle talk. After all, Ahmadinejad’s pre-presidency claim to fame was organizing the rise of the conservatives in local elections. Entekhab has speculated that Ahmadinejad has his sights set on the 2017 election. Most importantly, the state-controlled Iranian press has begun publishing photographs of the supreme leader with Ahmadinejad (scroll to the third photo from the left). There is no better indication that Ahmadinejad is not so down and out as perhaps many American diplomats hope.

Perhaps Obama has put great faith in Rouhani, and is willing to take risks for a nuclear deal because of him. The question Obama won’t consider—but Congress should—is whether they would trust Ahmadinejad to again take the reins of a nuclear-capable Iran, albeit one with sanctions and controls removed thanks to Obama’s naive faith and misreading of the Iranian political system. Alas, that appears to be the situation in which Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry are putting the United States.

UN Figures It Out: Iran Might be Lying! The Jewish Press, Avi Tuchmayer, May 13, 2014

(Hope springs eternal . . . . — DM)

According to a confidential new report by a U.N. panel that compliance with international sanctions, Tehran appears to be using its petrochemical industry as a cover to smuggle forbidden items into the Islamic Republic for use in the nuclear program, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

Ahmadinejad in nuclear plant

The United Nations is considering the possibility that Iran just might have figured out how to avoid international sanctions in order to continue that country’s drive to develop nuclear weapons.

According to a confidential new report by a U.N. panel that compliance with international sanctions, Tehran appears to be using its petrochemical industry as a cover to smuggle forbidden items into the Islamic Republic for use in the nuclear program, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

According to Reuters, Iran has apparently slowed import of forbidden substances in recent months, but added that there might be a possibility of subterfuge, “rang(ing) from concealing titanium tubes inside steel pipes to using its petrochemical industry as a cover to obtain items for a heavy-water nuclear reactor.”

The report comes as the international community is preparing for a new round of talks aimed at politely asking Tehran to abandon its nuclear program. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has warned for nearly 20 years that Iran was marching towards nuclear weapons capabilities, but the international community has been slow to respond.

According to Reuters, Iranian duplicity includes a set of titanium tubes hidden inside a shipment of stainless steel pipes manufactured in and shipped from China.

The report recommends that governments exercise greater vigilance over freight-forwarding firms, which often appear as the ordering party on shipments of items destined for Iran. While such practices are not necessarily illegal, the panel says Tehran could use them to conceal final destinations or uses.

“In three cases inspected under the current mandate, names of freight forwarders were recorded on shipping documentation in the place of consignors or consignees,” the report said.

“The Panel notes that the International Freight Forwarders Association (FIATA) has issued a notice to its members warning about the increased use of counterfeit Bills of Lading in connection with shipments to and from Iran,” it added.

PETROCHEMICAL COVER

Another example of Iranian deception is efforts the Ayatollahs have made for the past two years to obtain German and Indian valves for the heavy-water reactor at Arak, a plant that has proven to be a major sticking point in Tehran’s nuclear negotiations. Reuters notes that one investigation refers to Iran’s  procurement of 1,767 valves for Modern Industries Technique Company (MITEC) from 2007 through 2011. According to the experts’ 2013 report, 1,163 valves appear to have reached the company.

If the Arak reactor goes online in its current form, it will yield significant amounts of weapons-grade plutonium, but the document merely explains how it would produce radioisotopes that could be used in “radiation processing, radiation therapy, radiography, scanning and tracer purposes and other peaceful applications of nuclear energy”.

Iran has warned for years that the Islamic Republic views “wiping Israel off the map” as s a strategic goal for the country. To that end, Iran has financed years of terror attacks against Israeli civilians via its financing of the Hamas terror gang. In addition, Iran is suspected in a string of terror attacks against Jews around the world, most notably the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires, Argentina that killed 85 people and wounded over 300.

In addition, Prime Minister Netanyahu has warned Western leaders that it is a mistake to pretend that Iran would refrain from attacking Western targets in Europe and North America if given the opportunity.

However, much of the international community has rejected Israel’s warnings. President Barack Obama has pledged repeatedly not to allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons “on (my) watch,” but also refused to respond to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s question about what his administration would consider a “red line” that would prompt an American military strike.

Other world leaders have criticised Israel for threatening to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, and some have even criticised economic sanctions as a method of causing Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

Notably, engagement with Iran is a potential economic bonanza for Western countries presumably for two reasons: Iranian oil, and the enormous potential that Western companies could tap by collaborating with building Iran’s nuclear facilities.

According to Reuters, several Western diplomats acknowledged that the UN report was supported by intelligence, said Iran’s Supreme National Security Council instructed Iranian banks and state firms to create “front companies” to help the Revolutionary Guards in evade the UN and other sanctions.

“The order, which was issued in April 2013, is reportedly intended to obscure the relationship of such companies to Khatam al-Anbiya and make the activities of the company appear innocent,” the report said.

Reuters also said that the directive to create front companies  remained in effect well after Iran’s new “pragmatist” President Hassan Rouhani took office last August.

Nine US-backed Syrian rebel militias advance on Quneitra, key to controlling Golan.

Small Golan town of al-Kahtaniyya falls to Syrian rebels

Nine Syrian rebel militias were advancing on the main Syrian Golan town Quneitra (pop: 20,000) Tuesday, May 13, to wrest it from the Syrian army, thereby removing one of its last points of access to the Israeli border. They have dubbed their offensive “Levant of the Prophet.

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and senior commanders visited the Golan Tuesday, May 13, to survey the rebel offensive. For the third day running, Israel has kept the Quneitra crossing into the Syrian sector closed as a military zone. The off-limits area includes parts of the enclave’s Rtes 98 and 91 and Kibbutz Ei Zivan.

“Syrian rebels have pushed the Assad’s military into a corner,” the defense minister commented. “To the east, we are seeing destruction and death, and sometimes, the injured come to us for medical treatment. To the West, we see the Golan Heights flourishing.”
debkafile’s military sources report that the nine militias, spearheaded by the Syrian Revolutionaries’ Front, have been moving north from the Jordanian-Israeli-Syrian border junction. Their first target is the capture of the Quneitra-Ein Zivan crossing as a direct bridge to Israel; its second force, to take Quneitra the town.

The rebel militiamen are taking care to hug the Israeli border fence on their way north, reckoning that the Syrian tanks and light artillery units scattered in the sector would not attack them for fear of shells or rockets straying across into Israel. This would prompt instant reprisals

And indeed, ranged opposite the Syrian forces, are IDF positions of the newly-created 210th territorial Bashan Division. They are armed with Tamuz (Spike) anti-tank missiles of two types: The Spike-SR which has a range of 1.5 km and Spike-MRs which can hit targets at a distance of 2.5 km. Both carry tandem warheads designed to destroy Syrian tanks or artillery by piercing their reactive armor with a hollow charge guided by electro-optical means.
The Israeli positions are under orders not to obstruct rebel movements, but rather take care of their wounded.
While Israeli has formally adopted a position of non-intervention in the more than three-year Syrian war, things are rather different in practice.

Israel allows the SFR to operate on its Golan threshold, because this rebel militia is unofficially backed by the United States, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, according to debkafile’s sources.

debkafile’s intelligence sources reveal that the commander of the Syrian rebel “Levant of the Prophet” operation is Col. Ziyad Hariri, who defected from the Syrian army after serving as an infantry brigade chief. The field commander is Capt. Abu Khaidar.
The operation’s overall commander is the SFR chief, Jamal Maarouf, who operates out of a command center in the Idlib province of northern Syria. But when there is danger, he withdraws across the border to South Turkey.

Maarouf is a pious Muslim who has three wives. He has gone to great lengths to enlist only native Syrians and no foreigners to the SRF and is flatly opposed to al Qaeda’s participation in the war on the Assad regime.

Our military and intelligence sources add that nothing is ever clear-cut in any aspect of the Syrian conflict – whether the state of combat, the identity of commanders or the makeup of the various fighting forces. Although it is presumed that there are no members of Jabhat a-Nusra, the Syrian affiliate of al Qaeda, in Maarouf’s militia, a certain number of radical Jordanian Salafis with apparent ties to al Qaeda seem to have infiltrated the militia.
The IDF is letting this go without response. Neither is it entirely clear up to what point this force is backed by American, Saudi and Jordanian intelligence agencies.
All that can be said with certainty is that if this rebel force, whatever its composition, succeeds in wresting Quneitra from the Syria army, Syrian and Hizballah loyalist forces will have lost their presence on the Syrian Golan and southern Syria up to the town of Deraa.

Should Bashar Assad or Hassan Nasrallah wish to attack Israel, they will have to go round to the north and strike from the Hermon range or the Shebaa farms in southern Lebanon.
Tuesday night, Syria filed a complaint with the UN accusing Israel of aiding the rebel war on the Syrian army in the Golan.

After overrunning the small Golan town of al-Kahtaniyya Monday, the rebels dropped flyers over Quneitra to advise inhabitants to leave their homes by Tuesday morning to escape the coming general offensive. Thousands of people were seen fleeing the town Tuesday, just ahead of the fighting.

President Obama, Boko Haram and Islamic terrorism, Dan Miller in Panama, May 13, 2014

Did He ever encounter a terrorist organization other than one named Al Qaeda with which, for political purposes, He failed to empathize?

(Updated. — DM)

President Obama and other members of His administration hold Israel to be an oppressor of Palestinian Muslims and hence bad and Palestinians to be oppressed Muslims and therefore good. On the same basis, the Muslim Brotherhood is held to be good, Egypt bad.

Boko Haram has been much in the news lately because it kidnapped substantially more than two hundred girls from a school in Nigeria.

The clear Islamic connection has been downplayed, when mentioned at all. So have the facts that the girls were Christians attending a Christian school.

Unless taken from their captors by force, a potentially dangerous exercise, the girls will either be sold into slavery (and/or worse) or held as hostages pending Nigeria’s release of captured Boko Haram terrorists.

How about Islamic honor killings?

Do they bother President Obama? He has shown great affinity for Tea Party Islamic terrorists other than those named Al Qaeda. Major Hasan, of Fort Hood fame, was initially claimed simply to have engaged in workplace violence (he still is) to avoid offending other adherents to the Religion of Peace. President Obama and other members of His administration hold Israel to be an oppressor of Palestinian Muslims and hence bad and Palestinians to be oppressed Muslims and therefore good. On the same basis, the Muslim Brotherhood is held to be good, Egypt bad.

According to an article titled Boko Haram and the failure of obama’s counter-terrorism strategy,

The heart of the problem is that President Barack Obama and many of his top counter-terrorism advisers see Islamic extremism from the leftist perspective of social movement theory.

. . . .

[T]errorism becomes “a mode of contention,” and terrorists are not to blame for their violence; “exogenous contingencies” are at fault. Sources in the Koran, Islamic jurisprudence, or even contemporary calls to jihad are not to blame; state policy is. Dr. Mohammed M. Hafez, an associate professor at the Naval Postgraduate School who also influenced U.S. policy, echoes this perspective in his book Why Muslims Rebel: [Emphasis added.]

Muslims rebel because of an ill-fated combination of institutional exclusion, on the one hand, and on the other, reactive and indiscriminate repression that threatens the organizational resources and personal lives of Islamists. Exclusionary and repressive political environments force Islamists to undergo a near universal process of radicalization.

Radical Islamists, therefore, bear no personal responsibility for their acts of terrorism or disruption. Rather, they are forced by a political environment that excludes or represses them to undergo an inevitable process of radicalization.

For the Obama administration, Islamist extremism (except for Al Qaeda) is not a categorical evil which stands opposed to America’s good; it is, rather, an extreme expression—among a range of expressions—of protest against legitimate grievances. Islamic radicals such as Boko Haram are not responsible for their actions; they are forced to radicalism by their circumstances. And it definitely has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam, not even a distorted version of Islam. [Emphasis added.]

An obvious problem is that one unwilling even to name Islam as an enemy, much less to consider it an enemy, is not willing to combat it. The Obama administration, rather than combat the Islamic enemy, desires to appease it and to fight against the oppression it holds to have caused any indiscretions which it may, understandably, have been forced to commit.

The Obama Administration prefers to show its great resolve and bravery by fighting with what it claims to be the most dangerous demon of all, climate change.

Even though President Obama continues to shrink the foreign policy aspects of the office to which He was twice elected, He is a good little President! Half right (little), methinks.

UPDATE:

A post at Commentary Magazine titled It’s About Christianity, Not the Girls includes interesting quotes from the Boko Haram leader, Abubakr Shekau. It introduces them by stating,

Commentators from across the political spectrum have chimed in on the horror of Boko Haram’s abduction of more than 300 school girls. And, certainly, the fact that the victims were young school girls has made a difference in the Western world’s interest in the story. But, while #BringBackOurGirls has become a trending hashtag, it may be missing the point.

Reading the speech of Boko Haram leader Abubakr Shekau, it is clear that for him, the target may have been the girls, but the motivation was not simply to prevent girls from receiving education or a desire to attack Western education more broadly, but rather to launch a much broader attack on Christianity. [Emphasis added.]

Here are some of the more interesting quotes:

My brethren in Islam, I am greeting you in the name of Allah like he instructed we should among Muslims. Allah is great and has given us privilege and temerity above all people. If we meet infidels, if we meet those that become infidels according to Allah, there is no any talk except hitting of the neck; I hope you chosen people of Allah are hearing. This is an instruction from Allah. It is not a distorted interpretation it is from Allah himself. This is from Allah on the need for us to break down infidels, practitioners of democracy, and constitutionalism, voodoo and those that are doing western education, in which they are practicing paganism. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

Selling the girls—or better yet converting them—is but one part of the plan:

I am selling the girls like Allah said until we soak the ground of Nigeria with infidels blood and so called Muslims contradicting Islam. After we have killed, killed, killed and get fatigue and wondering on what to do with smelling of their corpses, smelling of Obama, Bush, Putin and Jonathan worried us then we will open prison and be imprisoned the rest. Infidels have no value. It is [Nigerian President Goodluck] Jonathan’s daughter that I will imprison; nothing will stop this until you convert. If you turn to Islam then you will be saved. For me anyone that embraces Islam is my brother. [Emphasis added.]

. . . .

We are anti-Christians, and those that deviated from Islam, they are forming basis with prayers but infidels. All those with turbans looking for opportunities to smear us, they are all infidels. Betrayers and cheats like them. Like Israeli people, Rome, England– they are all Christians and homosexuals. People of Germany like Margret Thatcher. Ndume are all infidels.

. . . .

To the people of the world, everybody should know his status: it is either you are with us Mujahedeen or you are with the Christians… We know what is happening in this world, it is a Jihad war against Christians and Christianity. It is a war against western education, democracy and constitution. We have not started, next time we are going inside Abuja; we are going to refinery and town of Christians. Do you know me? I have no problem with Jonathan. This is what I know in Quran. This is a war against Christians and democracy and their constitution, Allah says we should finish them when we get them. [Emphasis added.]

Two questions: what do they think of Jews and is Abubakr Shekau unaware of President Obama’s fondness for Islam?