Archive for September 7, 2014
The Beast Obama enraged at Israel while he is calm with Russia, Hamas, and ISIS Sept 05, 2014
September 7, 2014Obama’s Islamic terrorism “strategy” and Islam
September 7, 2014Obama’s Islamic terrorism “strategy” and Islam, Dan Miller’s Blog, September 7, 2014
The “I” word — Islam — shall not be used other than respectfully, as in “the religion of peace.”
Do the Islamic State (IS) and its terrorist cohorts practice an “extremist” version of Islam? Does Obama know enough about Islam to decide?
Secretary Kerry (consistently with Obama’s position), said “The real face of Islam is a peaceful religion based on the dignity of all human beings:”
“America’s faith communities, including American Muslims, are sources of strength for all of us. They’re an essential part of our national fabric, and we are committed to deepening our partnerships with them. We’re making these efforts to unite religious communities a core mission here at the State Department.” [Emphasis added.]
Neither Kerry nor Obama understands “the real face of Islam,” only their fantasies concerning it. What could go wrong? Might a Cabinet level Department of Religious Truth and Enlightenment someday be established to further what has become “a core mission of the State Department?” Odd things sometimes happen.
Islam, as a political force and as a religion, seeks world domination through Koranic interpretations which, its proponents hope, potential converts will find appealing. Many do. If that is inadequate, the next steps include threats and violence. The Islamic State (IS) and its cohorts seek world domination to spread their religion worldwide. Of course they want power, to use for that purpose.
They also want it, perhaps at least incidentally, to garner increasing numbers of “infidel” sex slaves for their own enjoyment as encouraged by Islam as well as to motivate others to join their groups. Perhaps this is a variant on sexual jihad, which encourages women and girls to become sex companions for jihadists. Sex might seem an insignificant motivation, but consider for a moment the power of sex as a motivational tool in another context: in the West automobiles, appliances and other goods one would not rationally associate with sexual conquest are advertised by attractive models. It has apparently worked rather well, otherwise substantial advertising funds would not have been devoted to it.
Sex slavery is Islamic
Western civilization has often abetted Islamists in acquiring and keeping sex slaves.
Islamic sex slavery is a global problem.
As shocking as the Muslim-run sex ring in Rotherham, England may seem to some—1,400 British children as young as 11 plied with drugs before being passed around and sexually abused in cabs and kabob shops—the fact is that this phenomenon is immensely widespread. In the United Kingdom alone, it’s the fifth sex abuse ring led by Muslims to be uncovered.
Some years back in Australia, a group of “Lebanese Muslim youths” were responsible for a “series of brutal gang rapes” of “Anglo-Celtic teenage girls.” A few years later in the same country, four Muslim Pakistani brothers raped at least 18 Australian women, some as young as 13. Even in the United States, a gang of Somalis—Somalia being a Muslim nation where non-Muslims, primarily Christians, are ruthlessly persecuted—was responsible for abducting, buying, selling, raping and torturing young American girls as young as 12.
The question begs itself: If Muslim minorities have no fear of exploiting “infidel” women and children in non-Muslim countries—that is, where Muslims themselves are potentially vulnerable minorities—how are Muslims throughout the Islamic world, where they are dominant, treating their vulnerable, non-Muslim minorities? [Emphasis added.]
The answer is a centuries-long, continents-wide account of nonstop sexual predation. Boko Haram’s abduction and enslavement of nearly 300, mostly Christian, schoolgirls last April in Nigeria is but the tip of the iceberg. [Emphasis added.]
The difference between what happens in Nigeria and what happens in Western nations is based on what I call “Islam’s Rule of Numbers.” Wherever Muslims grow in numbers, Islamic phenomena intrinsic to the Muslim world—in this case, the sexual abuse of “infidel” children and teenagers—comes along with them. [Emphasis added.]
Thus in the United Kingdom, where Muslims make for a sizeable—and notable—minority, the systematic rape of “subhuman infidels” naturally takes place. But when caught, Muslim minorities, being under “infidel” authority, cry “Islamophobia” and feign innocence.
In Nigeria, however, which is roughly 50 percent Islamic, such “apologetics” are unnecessary. After seizing the nearly 300 schoolgirls, the leader of Boko Haram appeared on videotape boasting that “I abducted your girls. I will sell them on the market, by Allah…. There is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell.” [Emphasis added.]
Islam is not “peaceful”
Many apologists for Islam try to portray the IS and other terror groups as something other than Islamic. According to Andrew McCarthy in an article titled The Islamic State is Nothing New, they are wrong. Islamists who favor the IS, as well as those which claim to oppose it,
regard the West as the enemy to be conquered. Their differences are germane only to the extent that sharia fidelity, in addition to sheer brute force, will determine who comes out on top in their intramural warfare. As we have been observing here for years with respect to al-Qaeda and the Brotherhood, their disputes are mostly tactical; their splits on the finer points of Islamic-supremacist ideology bear only on how they regard each other. When it comes to the West, both see us as the enemy — and they put aside their differences to attack us. [Emphasis added.]
The same has also always been true of the ideological/doctrinal divide between Sunni and Shiite jihadists. For example, al-Qaeda has had cooperative and operational relations with Iran since the early 1990s. Iran collaborated with al-Qaeda in the 1996 Khobar Towers attack that killed 19 U.S. airmen; probably in the 9/11 attacks; certainly in the aftermath of 9/11; and in the Iraq and Afghan insurgencies. Al-Qaeda would not be what it is today without state sponsorship, particularly from Iran. The Islamic State might not exist at all. [Emphasis added.]
The point is that al-Qaeda has never been anything close to the totality of the jihadist threat. Nor, now, is the Islamic State. The challenge has always been Islamic supremacism: the ideology, the jihadists that are the point of the spear, and the state sponsors that enable jihadists to project power. The challenge cannot be met effectively by focusing on one element to the exclusion of others. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
I opined at the start of this piece that the threat to the United States is more dire now than it was before 9/11. How could it be otherwise? What jihadists need to attack the United States is safe haven and state sponsorship, which enable them to plan and train; financial and weapons resources; and lax immigration enforcement. On every one of those scores, the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and other violent Islamic supremacists are in a better position than they were circa 1998–2001. The Islamic State, to take the most prominent example, controls a country-size swath of territory; has seized riches and advanced weaponry during its rampage; has enjoyed support from several countries; and targets an America in which border security is a joke, no effort is made to police visa overstays, and the federal government has actually discouraged and prevented state and federal agents from enforcing immigration laws. [Emphasis added.]
The threat is worse, and worsening. But it is not confined to the Islamic State, and we cannot protect ourselves from it — cannot even grasp that it is a threat to us rather than simply to a faraway region — unless we understand the totality of it. [Emphasis added.]
Here is a one lour and six minute video of a recent Oxford University debate on whether Islam is peaceful. The keynote speaker supporting the proposition that Islam is peaceful appears to emulate Obama, although presenting his arguments more cogently. It is useful to watch the entire debate, because the “Islam is Peaceful” proponents use the types of arguments with which “Islamophobes” need to deal. One is that Islam is peaceful because it seeks peace through “justice.” In Islam, “justice” is to be achieved through Sharia law, brutally antithetical to Western concepts of justice. Judaism and Christianity have evolved over the centuries. Islam has not. Islam is as Islam does.
Based on which side made the most effective debating points, the “Islam is Peaceful” side won by subtle and not-so-subtle distortions.
An interesting point — that Islamists are superior to Non-Islamists — was not made during the debate by debater Mehdi Hasan, who argued in favor of the proposition that Islam is peaceful. He presumably omitted it because it would have lent force to the arguments of the opposing side. He articulates it in this short video.
Religious tolerance in Islam
Saudi Arabia, one of the allies of Obama’s America, conducts “interfaith outreach programs,” of sorts.
Arabic media reports indicate that Saudi authorities raided a house church in Khafji province, arresting 27 men, women and children. The raid was conducted by the Saudi Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, according to reports.
. . . .
The raid is another part of an ongoing harassment campaign directed at Christians at the exact same time that the Saudi Kingdom is making a major “interfaith outreach” push internationally. [Emphasis added.]
Sources of Islamist terror funding and other support
GENEVA — The State Department reiterated Iran’s status as a state sponsor of terrorism and as a destabilizing force in the region and also stood by a May report stating that Iran had increased its terrorist activity in a list of responses sent to Capitol Hill last month after the first round of Iran nuclear negotiations.
Turkey has become a principal financial hub for terrorists under the leadership of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose government has helped Iran skirt sanctions, supported jihadi groups in Syria, and provided financial backing to Hamas, according to a new report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).
Turkey, a key U.S. ally, “has turned a blind eye” to terror financing and is potentially on the verge of crossing the line to becoming an official state sponsor of terrorism, according to the Friday report, which cites the Erdogan government’s close ties to some of the world’s top terror organizations and operatives.
The report comes just a day after 84 U.S. lawmakers and former government officials urged President Barack Obama to confront Erdogan over his harsh repression of political opponents.
As Turkey’s support for terrorism expands, the Obama administration has remained silent out of fear of offending Erdogan, whom the White House considers a strategic asset, according to the report authored by FDD’s Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Treasury Department. [Emphasis added.]
Some international leaders have implicated Qatari officials—accusing them of financing the Islamic State (IS) terror group that is rampaging through Syria and Iraq and continuing to expand its self-proclaimed Sunni caliphate.
In late August, German aid development minister Gerd Mueller openly commented on IS’s funding: “Who is financing these troops? Hint: Qatar,” he said, after being forced to walk back the comments due to their lack of political correctness.
Even former Israeli President Shimon Peres—a 91-year-old left-wing dove—took notice of the Qataris, recently warning that they were becoming “the world’s largest funder of terror.”
In June, The Long War Journal’s Thomas Joscelyn said in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News:
Look no further than a series of official documents from the Obama administration about Qatar, and you will see that it is a major financial hub, fundraising for jihadist groups including the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and others. In April, in the State Department’s country reports on terrorism, they specifically worried about Qatar’s relationship with Islamist groups. They worried Qatar had enabled a very permissive environment for fundraising for jihadist groups. It’s obvious why the Taliban set up its political office in Doha and why the Taliban wanted these five to send off to Qatar. They know it’s a very permissive environment with Islamist sympathies. [Emphasis added.]
Qatar is also unapologetically supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood, a global organization founded by a stout Hitler admirer that seeks the same endgame as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State: a worldwide Sunni caliphate. [Emphasis added.]
Last week, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said that Qatar has been unloading millions to create chaos in the Middle East. Sisi said: “Qatar, Turkey and the international organization of the Brotherhood are currently establishing many companies, newspapers, and websites. They allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to spread chaos among the Arab nation, destabilizing Egypt and destroying the Egyptians.”
. . . .
Meanwhile, the United States continues its confusingly close relationship with the ruthless Emirs. [Emphasis added.]
The United States signed in July a massive $11 billion dollar arms deal with Qatar that included Apache Helicopters, Patriot missile defense systems, and Javelin MANPADS (Man-portable air-defense systems), capable of bringing down a commercial airliner.
In June, the United States negotiated an agreement with Qatar as an intermediary that freed five top Taliban commanders in exchange for Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl. When the Taliban officials touched down in Qatar, they were met with open arms and given heroes’ welcomes.
The Islamic State and it cohorts have a broad global reach.
A lengthy article at Long War Journal provides
a partial list of reported or suspected ISIS/Islamic State activity outside Iraq and Syria since Jan. 1, 2013. It does not include many reports that referred only to “an Islamist group”; authorities in a number of countries have been reluctant to specify the nature and extent of extremist activity within their borders. The list below, organized by continent and then alphabetically by country, is not exhaustive. Nonetheless, its extensiveness indicates the global reach of the IS, even if the reported activity does not consist of spectacular attacks.
The list is voluminous, but here’s one directly pertinent to the United States:
On Sept. 3, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said that over 100 US citizens are fighting in the ranks of the Islamic State; intelligence officials have estimated that the number is as high as 300. Hagel warned that the IS controls half of Iraq and half of Syria, and that “we better take them seriously.”
Survivors are likely to return to the United States to pursue their interests there.
The Obama strategy
Obama still views Islam as the benign religion of peace. Here are some reasons why He shouldn’t.
Islamists have a strategy, and it appears to have been successful thus far. What is Obama’s strategy? As to the IS and similar Islamic jihadists, Obama has not yet told the Congress what His plans (if any) are so that congressional approval can be given or withheld.
There’s widespread frustration in both chambers and both parties about President Obama’s admission that “we don’t have a strategy yet” to deal with ISIS in Iraq and Syria. But now the lack of strategy is actually protecting Obama from oversight because Congress can’t authorize or reject what it can’t understand.
In fact, the White House has been totally mum on how it plans to legally justify the air war in Iraq after the temporary authority granted to it in the War Powers Resolution expires. According to the 1973 law, the president must report to Congress when he uses U.S. military force in a hostile environment; Congress must then specifically authorize such action within 60 days or the president has to stop. The president can invoke a one-time, 30-day extension.
But, so far, there have been no substantial consultations with Congress about such an authorization. The White House declined to say whether it even cared if Congress acts or not.
When Obama meets with members of Congress on September 9th and makes a speech on September 10th — the eve of the 2001 and 2012 terrorist attacks — will He provide substantive information as to what He wants and intends? Or will He simply continue to utter His customary platitudes? What He says He intends to do, and what He claims to want, are unlikely to coincide.
President Coward:
Is Obama merely cowardly, or is He also charmingly devious?
Does Obama even have a strategy?
Even absent attacks inside the United States, the jihadists threaten us significantly. The attacks on the U.S. Mission and Annex in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, killed the ambassador and three other Americans. This was the first murder of an American ambassador in decades. Nearly one year later, in August 2013, the Obama administration was forced to shutter more than 20 diplomatic facilities after learning that al Qaeda was planning to attack one or more of them.
In the end, President Obama thinks that these types of attacks on American interests abroad are a fact of life. During a speech at National Defense University on May 23, 2013, Obama outlined his vision of the fight ahead. The president described “the current threat” as coming from “lethal yet less capable al Qaeda affiliates; threats to diplomatic facilities and businesses abroad; homegrown extremists.” Obama added, “This is the future of terrorism. We have to take these threats seriously, and do all that we can to confront them. But as we shape our response, we have to recognize that the scale of this threat closely resembles the types of attacks we faced before 9/11.”
Notably absent from Obama’s threat matrix was a jihadist group capturing a significant amount of territory in the heart of the Middle East. In fact, the president downplayed the threat posed by groups he described as “simply collections of local militias or extremists interested in seizing territory.” [Emphasis added.]
His own officials are now telling a different story. In a speech on September 3, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center explained that “the terrorist threat emanates from a broad geographic area, spanning South Asia across the Middle East, and much of North Africa.” Matthew Olsen warned that the terrorists “are now active in at least 11 insurgencies in the Islamic world.” He added that the threat from the Islamic State “extends beyond the region to the West,” and the group “has the potential to use its safe haven to plan and coordinate attacks in Europe and the U.S.” The Islamic State’s rivals in al Qaeda’s Jabhat al Nusrah have the same deadly potential: “In Syria, veteran al Qaeda fighters have traveled from Pakistan to take advantage of the permissive operating environment and access to foreign fighters. They are focused on plotting against the West.” [Emphasis added.]
The president hasn’t been thinking strategically about the jihadists’ territorial ambitions. Unfortunately, our enemies have been. The threat they pose to the United States has only grown. [Emphasis added.]
On August 28th, Obama apparently decided that it “is impossible to be the leader of the world’s top superpower and always just hope for the best.” Now, He wants a coalition including Arab and Muslim states to deal with the Islamic State, et al, by putting boots on the ground.
Obama is right in seeking to include Arab and Muslim states in his coalition. ISIS is undoubtedly a cancerous tumor, which threatens, first and foremost, the Arab world from which it grew. Arab states, however, are so factious, so suspicious, so afraid of the reaction in the streets — but primarily so untrusting of Obama (the Gulf States, namely Saudi Arabia) — that they will not rush to join his campaign. [Emphasis added.]
The president believes in the “strong forces” of the states in the region to do the job in the field: The Iraqi army is supposed to cooperate with the Iranian army and the Kurdish Peshmerga forces. Syrian President Bashar Assad quickly realized the opportunity and jumped all over it, offering his assistance, which Washington and Paris promptly rejected. In actuality though, the regimes in Syria and Iran are the first in line to feel the Sunni threat posed by ISIS. The Islamic State is providing the Shiites with a certificate of integrity. [Emphasis added.]
According to an article at PJ Media by Jonathan Spyer titled The Islamic State vs. the Islamic Republic,
Is the president just talking, and will the Islamic State be permitted to continue in existence, at least west of the Syria-Iraq border? Or is it possible that when the president refers to creating the right “regional” situation to allow for the defeat of “ISIL” he is referring to the one power that potentially could organize a ground attack on the Islamic State? That country is the sponsor and ally of the two governments that exist to the west and to the east of the boundaries of the Islamic State — that is, the Assad regime to its west and the Baghdad government to its east. [Emphasis added.]
The country in question is Iran, which has a clear interest in the destruction of the Islamic State. The IS domain, if it continues to exist, stands between Iran and its desire for a contiguous line of pro-Iranian entities between the Iraq-Iran border and the Mediterranean Sea. The problem is that an Iranian victory over IS would mean a general Iranian triumph in the Levant. That’s a bad outcome too. [Emphasis added.]
Iran has her own reasons for opposing the IS, and they do not coincide with those of Western civilization. Is Obama prepared let Iran get (or keep) “the bomb” in return for its “help” with the IS? His efforts during the P5 +1 Iran Scam suggest that as a real possibility. Please see also, Iran has not abandoned nuclear weapons ambitions.
Conclusions
Obama’s “strategy” appears to be that only in conjunction with the “international community,” particularly Islamic nations, can the IS and its cohorts be defeated or even contained. Apparently, the conclusion He asks us to draw is that He intends in that fashion to deal with the IS, et al. However, the “international community” has in its ranks few friends of Western freedom and many enemies, some of which actively support Islamic terror.
The “international community” is, at best, similar to a homeowners’ association, the members of which love to debate trivial matters while doing little or nothing of substance to advance the interests of the homeowners as a whole. In their defense, some of them do support pleasant golf courses.
The “international community” is larger and in most respects far worse than homeowners’ associations. It has powerful anti-freedom, anti-democracy and anti-civilization members demanding (and not infrequently forcing) others to acquiesce in their demands. As a group, they are by no means suitable partners for peace other than in the Islamist sense.
Kissinger calls for ‘all-out attack’ on Islamic State
September 7, 2014Kissinger calls for ‘all-out attack’ on Islamic State | The Times of Israel.
Ex-diplomat says under Obama’s leadership Americans ‘have made ourselves bystanders’ in the Middle East
Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger said Sunday the US must launch an “all-out attack” on Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria, and criticized President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, which he said demoted the US’s role in the Middle East.
In an interview with the Sunday Times (paywall), the 91-year-old ex-diplomat also addressed his role in the emigration of Soviet Jewry, and maintained he was unaware of President Nixon’s alleged anti-Semitism.
On the Islamic State, Kissinger castigated the US’s limited strikes and the ongoing discussion on whether to increase the attacks, and said: “There can’t be any debate any more about fighting them.”
“We should launch an all-out attack on them,” he said, in reference to the jihadists, whom he referred to as “an insult to our values and to our society.” However, while calling for a “very significant retaliation,” Kissinger added that such an operation should be “of limited duration as a punitive measure.”
Kissinger said the US strikes ought to be “very substantial — on most known targets — and I would not make any distinction between Syria and Iraq.”
“You can’t go through public agonies over what you will not do or what you will do, whether Syria is part of it, Syria’s not part of it.”
“In my view this should have happened already,” he said.
On Saturday, in an interview with NPR, Kissinger made a similar appeal for a US attack on the Islamists, but emphasized that Iran posed a more significant threat to the West than the Islamic State.
“I consider Iran a bigger problem than ISIS. ISIS is a group of adventurers with a very aggressive ideology. But they have to conquer more and more territory before they can become a strategic, permanent reality. I think a conflict with ISIS — important as it is — is more manageable than a confrontation with Iran,” he said.
Under Obama’s leadership, Kissinger said Sunday “we have made ourselves bystanders” in the Middle East — a position that should be reversed. He added, with regard to the US president’s stance on Russia, that Obama does not understand Russian President Vladimir Putin, and said: “I don’t know whether psychological understanding of others is what he will be known in history for.”
While the US cannot force its positions on others, Kissinger said, American intervention is nonetheless crucial in creating “a new order.”
“We don’t have the power to impose our preferences but without us, and without some leadership from us, the new order cannot be created,” he said.
During the interview, Kissinger also challenged those who maintained he did not care for human rights, and defended his position on the emigration of Soviet Jewry.
“When you have lived in a country as a discriminated minority, excluded from public places, all the aspects of segregation, and had many members of your family killed, it would be amazing if you disregarded human rights,” Kissinger declared.
“But fate placed me in a position where American security had to be my task. What you could say publicly was more limited than what you might do in other respects. We brought Jewish immigration from the Soviet Union up from 700 a year to nearly 40,000, but as a quiet diplomatic approach, not as a public confrontation with Moscow,” he said.
Kissinger was a staunch opponent of the vocal protests in the US to pressure the Soviet government to allow the emigration of its Jewish population throughout the 1970s and 1980s, opting instead for quiet diplomacy.
The German immigrant who narrowly escaped the Nazis said in 1973: “The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy. And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.” Kissinger later apologized for his remarks in a 2010 column in The Washington Post.
The former diplomat said he did not know Nixon to make disparaging remarks about Jews. “He certainly didn’t express it in the context of foreign policy and nor in his personal conduct towards me,” he said.
‘Iran has not abandoned nuclear weapons ambitions’
September 7, 2014Israel Hayom | ‘Iran has not abandoned nuclear weapons ambitions’.
Yuval Steinitz: IAEA report is clear evidence of Iran’s contrived nuclear antics. Iran’s conduct toward IAEA casts a heavy shadow on the possibility of reaching a satisfactory comprehensive agreement on the country’s nuclear program.
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A nuclear facility in Arak, Iran [Archive]
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Photo credit: AFP
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Iran has failed to address concerns about suspected atomic bomb research by an agreed deadline, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday, a setback to hopes for an end to an international standoff over Iran’s atomic activity.
The lack of movement in an inquiry by the International Atomic Energy Agency will disappoint the West and could further complicate efforts by six world powers to negotiate a resolution to the decade-old dispute with Iran over its nuclear ambitions.
An IAEA report obtained by Reuters showed that little substantive headway had so far been made in the U.N. agency’s long-running investigation into what it calls the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program.
Iran has implemented just three of five nuclear transparency steps that it was supposed to by Aug. 25 under a confidence-building deal it reached with the IAEA in November, according to the quarterly report.
Crucially, it has not provided information on the two issues that are part of the IAEA’s investigation: alleged experiments on explosives that could be used for an atomic device, and studies related to calculating nuclear explosive yields.
The report said Iran told the IAEA last week that most suspicions over its program were “mere allegations and do not merit consideration.”
A Vienna-based diplomat called that statement “worrying.”
The IAEA had also observed via satellite imagery “ongoing construction activity” at Iran’s Parchin military base, the report said. Western officials believe Iran once conducted explosive tests there of relevance in developing a nuclear weapon and has sought to “cleanse” it of evidence since then. Iran has long denied U.N. nuclear inspectors access to the base.
Iran dismisses suspicions that it seeks to develop nuclear weapons capability from its enrichment of uranium. It says the program is for peaceful energy purposes only.
For Israel, the report represented further proof that Iran has not abandoned its ambitions to develop nuclear weapons.
“This is clear evidence of Iran’s contrived nuclear antics,” International Relations, Intelligence and Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said. “Iran has not yet made a decision to open a new page with respect to its relations to the world.”
Steinitz will travel to the U.S. this week for discussions with American officials on the Iran nuclear issue. “Iran’s conduct toward the IAEA casts a heavy shadow on the possibility of reaching a satisfactory comprehensive agreement on its nuclear program,” Steinitz said.
Iran has been promising to cooperate with the IAEA since Hassan Rouhani was elected president last year.
Rouhani’s election raised hopes of a settlement of the dispute after years of tension and fears of a new Middle East war, and an interim accord was reached between Iran and the six powers in Geneva in November last year.
As part of the cooperation accord struck between the IAEA and Iran the same month to try and revive the stalled investigation, Iran agreed in May to carry out five specific steps by late August to help allay international concerns.
But so far, the report said, Iran had not implemented those dealing with the inquiry, adding that discussions on the two issues only began at an Aug. 31 meeting in Tehran.
The IAEA also said one member of its team had not received a visa by Iran for that visit, the third time it happened for this person, and that it was “important that any staff member identified by the agency … is able to participate in the agency’s technical activities in Iran.” It did not elaborate.
Western officials say Iran must address the IAEA’s concerns if there is to be any chance of success in the parallel diplomatic negotiations aimed at curbing the country’s nuclear work in exchange for a gradual ending of sanctions on Iran.
Iran and the United States, France, Germany, Britain, Russia and China failed to meet a July target date for reaching a comprehensive deal because of persistent wide differences over the permissible size of Iran’s uranium enrichment program.
They now face a new deadline of Nov. 24, with talks between the seven states due to resume in New York later this month.
Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, told a regular news briefing she could not comment on the substance of the report as it had yet to be officially released.
However, she said Washington looked at the Iran issue in “a comprehensive way,” while adding: “In general … we’ve continued to call on Iran to cooperate fully without delay in working with the IAEA. … It’s something we’re very concerned about.”
Western diplomats say the sides in the nuclear talks remain far apart on what a final deal should look like — especially over how many enrichment centrifuges Iran can operate. They say a successful outcome in the negotiations is far from guaranteed.
While the big powers’ diplomacy is focused on limiting Iran’s future production of enriched uranium, the IAEA has for years been investigating alleged research in the past that could be used to turn such fissile material into atomic bombs.
In 2011, the Vienna-based U.N. agency published a report that included intelligence indicating Iran had a nuclear weapons research programme that was halted in 2003 when it came under increased international pressure. The intelligence suggested some activities may later have resumed.
After years of what the West saw as Iranian stonewalling, Iran as a first step in May gave the IAEA information about why it was developing “bridgewire” detonators, which can be used to set off atomic explosive devices. Iran says they are for civilian use, and wants this topic in the investigation closed.
A senior diplomat familiar with the Iran file said the IAEA’s inquiry would not be an “endless process,” suggesting that it would at some point present an assessment to its 35-nation governing board based on the information it then has.
“I think it would not be realistic to assume that there is going to be a black and white solution to this. This is a very complicated issue,” the diplomat said.
Islamic State group training terrorists in Sinai
September 7, 2014Israel Hayom | Islamic State group training terrorists in Sinai.
Sinai terrorists Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, who have fired rockets into Israel, say ISIS is “teaching us how to carry out operations” • “Ansar and Islamic State definitely have ties but there are no Islamic State members in Egypt,” says security official.
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Thousands of Egyptians have joined Islamic State’s jihad in Iraq and Syria and authorities are concerned they could return home to fight the government [Illustrative]
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Photo credit: Reuters
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The Islamic State group is encroaching on Israel’s southern border: According to reports from Sinai, Islamic State operatives are training Islamist groups in Sinai that pose a direct threat to Israel and have fired rockets into Israel in the past.
Confirmation that Islamic State, currently the most successful of the region’s jihadist groups, is extending its influence to Egypt will sound alarm bells in Cairo, where the authorities are already facing a security challenge from homegrown militants.
A senior commander from the Sinai-based Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, which has killed hundreds of members of the Egyptian security forces over the last year, said Islamic State has provided instructions on how to operate more effectively.
“They teach us how to carry out operations. We communicate through the internet,” the commander, who asked to remain anonymous, told Reuters.
“They don’t give us weapons or fighters. But they teach us how to create secret cells, consisting of five people. Only one person has contact with other cells.”
Militant groups and the Egyptian state are old foes. Some of al-Qaida’s most notorious commanders, including its current leader Ayman al-Zawahri, are Egyptian.
One Egyptian president after another has crushed militant groups but they have always resurfaced.
The success of Islamic State in seizing large parts of Syria and Iraq has raised concerns in Egypt, where authorities are battling Ansar as well as militants who have capitalized on the chaos in post-Gadhafi Libya to set up over the border.
Islamic State became the first jihadist group to defeat an Arab army in a major operation after steamrolling through northern Iraq in June almost unopposed by the Iraqi military.
Unlike al-Qaida, which specializes in hit-and-run operations and suicide bombings, Islamic State acts like an army, seizing and holding territory, a new kind of challenge for Western-backed Arab states.
Army offensives have squeezed Ansar, forcing its members to flee to other parts of Egypt, the commander said. But it still poses a security threat.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has expressed concerns about militants over the Libyan frontier. Security officials say these groups are inspired by Islamic State, notorious for beheadings and mass executions, most recently of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff.
Sissi, who, as army chief, toppled Islamist President Mohammed Morsi last year after mass protests against his rule and then cracked down on his Muslim Brotherhood, has restored some political stability.
But militant groups still present a major challenge. Security officials say thousands of Egyptian militants have joined Islamic State’s jihad in Iraq and Syria and authorities are concerned they could return home to fight the government.
That would pile pressure on Egyptian security forces who have failed to end a campaign of bombings and shootings which killed hundreds of soldiers and police since Morsi’s fall.
Egyptian security officials say leaders of Islamic State and Ansar have established contacts. Meanwhile, militants based in Libya have also forged ties with Ansar, creating a complex web.
Ansar recently said it had beheaded four Egyptians, accusing them of providing Israel with intelligence for an airstrike that killed three of its fighters.
Four headless corpses were found in the Sinai Peninsula last month. It was the first time that any decapitations had been made public in Egypt, a strategic U.S. ally which has a peace treaty with Israel and controls the Suez Canal, a key global shipping route.
In a video on Twitter, armed men in black masks stood over the kneeling captives as one of the militants read out a statement. Minutes later, the four men had their heads cut off.
The Ansar commander, who said his group had contacted Islamic State for advice, described the beheadings as a clear message that anyone cooperating with the group’s enemies would face a similar fate. “The beheadings had a purpose,” he said.
The violence suggested a new level of radicalism in Egypt, where security crackdowns, political violence and street protests have hammered the economy since the Arab Spring uprising ousted President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
“Ansar and Islamic State definitely have ties but there are no Islamic State members in Egypt,” said a security official.
“There is definitely coordination between Ansar, the militants in Libya and Islamic State leaders.”
The security official said Egyptian authorities have handed airport officials lists of Egyptians who went abroad to wage jihad.
“There are some people who we know are coming back to carry out attacks so we arrest them. The same goes for others who come back to visit their families,” he said.
“There is a third type who comes back to recruit. We just watch him until the time is right to move in.”
The movement of Ansar militants from Sinai to towns and cities outside the peninsula could make it more difficult for intelligence agencies to track the group.
“We have trouble working in Sinai. It’s easier elsewhere,” said the Ansar commander, adding that fighters were benefiting from advice provided by Islamic State.
“They are teaching us how to attack security forces, the element of surprise,” he said. “They told us to plant bombs then wait 12 hours so that the man planting the device has enough time to escape from the town he is in.”
The commander said bombings not carried out by Ansar suggested new militant groups had appeared in Egypt, adding that there is a flow of militants both ways across the Libyan border.
“There are others operating in Egypt. We don’t know anything about them,” he said. “We have individuals who went to Libya. We lost contact.”
Asked about pressure from Egypt’s military, one of the biggest in the world, the commander said security offensives had created new enemies for the state.
“Every time one of us is killed, two or three others join. Usually relatives of those who are killed.”
ISIS flips the script
September 7, 2014Israel Hayom | ISIS flips the script.
Boaz Bismuth
U.S. President Barack Obama, at the beginning of his first term in office, asked that the United States erase the term “Islamic terror” from its lexicon.
Obama did not want to tie terrorism — which is a negative term — to Islam, so as not to offend the hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world within the framework of America’s appeasement policies in the wake of the George W. Bush era. Almost six years later, however, Obama, with no other choice, is amassing the broadest possible coalition to wage a military campaign against the Islamic State (ISIS).
During the recent NATO summit in Wales, the light bulb finally went on for Obama: For years he has managed to avoid problems and confrontations (Syria, Ukraine) and “lead from behind” (Libya), but he has apparently understood it is impossible to be the leader of the world’s top superpower and always just hope for the best.
On August 28, Obama added an unflattering addendum to his presidency, when he admitted to lacking, “as of now,” a strategy for battling ISIS. America, to say the least, did not enjoy hearing this while American journalists were being beheaded in the Middle East. One week later and the U.S. president has a strategy, even a coalition, with which to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the radical Sunni terrorist organization. It still doesn’t look perfect, but it is the start of something. His media advisors did a good job.
“We need strong partners on the ground to defeat ISIS,” declared Obama, who emphasized he would not put U.S. boots on the ground in Iraq. This is not the only restriction he has imposed on himself. The U.S. also does not intend to act in Syria, where ISIS controls at least seven provinces.
Obama is right in seeking to include Arab and Muslim states in his coalition. ISIS is undoubtedly a cancerous tumor, which threatens, first and foremost, the Arab world from which it grew. Arab states, however, are so factious, so suspicious, so afraid of the reaction in the streets — but primarily so untrusting of Obama (the Gulf States, namely Saudi Arabia) — that they will not rush to join his campaign.
The president believes in the “strong forces” of the states in the region to do the job in the field: The Iraqi army is supposed to cooperate with the Iranian army and the Kurdish Peshmerga forces. Syrian President Bashar Assad quickly realized the opportunity and jumped all over it, offering his assistance, which Washington and Paris promptly rejected. In actuality though, the regimes in Syria and Iran are the first in line to feel the Sunni threat posed by ISIS. The Islamic State is providing the Shiites with a certificate of integrity.
Turkey can also benefit. The country which first allowed terrorists to cross its borders into Iraq, today finds itself a member of NATO on the side of the good guys. ISIS has managed to completely turn the game on its head.
In the meantime, perhaps the light bulb has turned on for the Europeans, as well: The four French journalists abducted in Syria in June 2013 by ISIS operatives and released on April 20, identified Mehdi Nemmouche, the terrorist who perpetrated the deadly shooting attack at the Jewish Museum in Brussels last May, as one of their captors. They told reporters that when Nemmouche wasn’t singing, he was abusing and torturing his prisoners. We all remember what he did upon returning to Europe and there are thousands more like him in Syria and Iraq. One day they are expected to return. It is preferable for the Europeans — and for us — that they do not
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