There is almost zero chance that any deal struck will actually stop Iran from pursuing what it sees as its destiny to become a nuclear power, and I don’t mean the kind that makes electricity.
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There is a deadline looming in the talks with Iran about their nuclear power weapons program.
US and Iranian negotiators are preparing to enter the intense endgame in the Iran nuclear deal talks, amid mixed assessments of prospects for completing the deal by the self-imposed Nov. 24 deadline, just under a month away.“This is the time to finish the job,” lead US negotiator Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman told the Maxwell School of Public Affairs on Oct. 23 in rare public remarks about the sensitive Iran nuclear negotiations.
There is almost zero chance that any deal struck will actually stop Iran from pursuing what it sees as its destiny to become a nuclear power, and I don’t mean the kind that makes electricity. Our President is currently stuck with only the giant fail of ObamaCare as his legacy, so he really, really wants a deal that he can put on the shelf with his Nobel. That makes him a grave danger to give away the farm. The only upside is that the Iranians are just bullheaded enough to walk away without taking all his lunch money. Bottom line is in the high stakes poker game going on, we have a guy who doesn’t even understand the game.
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. He is completing a book on the international challenges America faces in the 21st century.
Yesterday afternoon a young woman stood by the side of a road holding up a sign. It read “Gush Etzion.” Those two words summon up spittle-flecked rants about Zionist settlements from the anti-Israel left.
Dalia caught a ride to a bus stop on the way home from her job as a children’s occupational therapist. Her next stop was a shift at Yad Sarah, a volunteer organization for the elderly and disabled. But before that could happen, a Muslim attacker did what songs, cartoons and posters distributed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas encouraging “Car Jihad” had been telling him to do.
With the 26-year-old woman on the ground, the courageous Islamic Jihadist stabbed her as she lay dying. Then shouting Allahu Akbar, he began slashing at an unarmed man who had stopped to help. When the unarmed man fighting him off with his bare hands proved too much for the knife-wielding Jihadist, the killer fled, was wounded and taken into custody.
Dalia’s father, a volunteer with Magen David Adom, Israel’s Red Cross, heard that there had been an attack. He did what countless Israeli fathers and mothers began doing right after they heard the news.
He called his daughter. There was no answer.
Despite being only in her twenties, Dalia knew what was coming. This wasn’t her killer’s first act of terrorism and it wasn’t her first time as a victim of Islamic terrorism.
When she was seventeen years old, Dalia was attacked by a knife-wielding terrorist in the same place. But the terrorist didn’t have a van and there were armed men at the scene.
“I stood on February 28, 2006 at Gush Etzion Junction when a terrorist came and began to stab those standing at a hitchhiking station,” she would later write.
She described terrorists for whom prison life is “like a hotel”, who watch television, take courses and contact their lawyers. “Those who stab Jews have their rights and privileges. The injustice cries out to Heaven.”
“Punish and expel those who threaten us,” Dalia wrote, “no matter the cost to them. They must pay the price for their terror. That is the only way the terrorism will end.”
As you read this, Dalia Lemkos will have already been buried. Her parents and her five brothers and sisters will have cried over her grave. Her killer will receive the best possible care in an Israeli hospital. The Palestinian Authority will use the foreign aid it receives from the United States and the EU to pay him a salary for life. If he gets out, he will be entitled to everything from special housing to free medical care paid for by you, by me and by all of us.
Stabbing a young woman in the neck while she lay in the street made him a hero of Palestine. He has become a model of Muslim manhood, little boys in UNRWA schools will be taught about his great deed and encouraged to follow in his footsteps. And they will, just as he had followed the example of those great Muslim heroes who had murdered Jewish women and children in Hebron before he was born.
The educational system staffed by Hamas supporters and paid for by foreign aid does its work well. Some countries turn out future doctors and scientists. The Palestinian Authority turns out heroes who can nerve themselves up to take on a 26-year-old Jewish woman as long as they have a few thousand pounds of van or at least a butcher knife on their side. Not to mention Allah and the Koran.
Dalia’s killer may remain behind bars where Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch will complain that his smartphone isn’t fast enough, that his Coca Cola isn’t fizzy enough and that the clothes he shops for remotely with his family using the money that the Palestinian Authority pays to the families of its heroes don’t fit him correctly. But it’s also possible that he will be set free.
He was before.
Dalia’s killer had been in jail for terrorism before he was released. Releasing terrorists is how Israel demonstrates its goodwill toward terrorists.
This year, Obama forced Israel to free over a hundred convicted terrorists as a “gesture” just to get the Palestinian Authority terrorists to discuss continuing talks with Israel. Israel was being pressured into releasing terrorists in exchange for an opportunity to negotiate resuming negotiations.
But Secretary of State John Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that it was Israel’s fault because it “didn’t release the Palestinian prisoners on the day they were supposed to be freed.”
The next time that Obama and Kerry force Israel to release terrorists for the opportunity to negotiate the possibility of negotiating with terrorists, Dalia’s killer may be shouting “Allahu Akbar” all over again.
Dalia’s own voice has been silenced. She will be buried in her native town of Tekoa where her body will rest unless the left and their Islamic partners succeed in forcing the expulsion of the thousand Jews of Tekoa, the living in the houses and the dead from the cemetery.
The State Department, which rejects the existence of the living and dead Jews of Tekoa and wants them gone, responded to Dalia’s murder by urging both sides to show restraint.
The AP’s Matt Lee asked State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki whether she meant that Israelis should show restraint by standing still and allowing themselves to be stabbed.
“If you’re standing at a bus stop or something and someone runs a car into you or comes up and stabs you, I don’t know how to, I mean, those people aren’t, don’t need to exercise restraint, do they?”
Psaki laughed and refused to address the question. But it’s a question that ought to be addressed.
Israel is constantly ordered to show restraint. But when does restraint begin? Is it when a Muslim terrorist is running you over with a van and sinking his knife into your neck? Or is it only when you contemplate doing something about the men who sent him and will continue sending more like him?
Israel is generously allowed to fight back once the knife is at its neck. But once it breaks free, then it’s told to show restraint. Taking out the terrorist networks that send out men like this would be disproportionate. Refusing to release the killer of Dalia would show that Israel doesn’t want peace.
Critics of Israel like Jeffrey Goldberg insist that its situation is not “sustainable”. And that’s true. Struggling with an attacker who has a knife at your throat is not sustainable. Either he cuts your throat or you cut his throat. If you keep trying to negotiate with him, then eventually he will kill you.
Dalia survived her first attack. She didn’t survive her second attack.
There are only so many second chances when someone wants to kill you. And if you are a non-Muslim in the Muslim world, then someone always wants to kill you.
The price of restraint is death. Negotiating with your killers lets them trade up from a knife to a van, from a stone to a rocket, from an outpost in Lebanon to fortresses within range of your major cities.
Dalia tried to warn Israelis. She tried to warn the world. Now her voice speaks from the grave. It is the voice of the dead. It is the voice of truth.
“They must pay the price for their terror. That is the only way the terrorism will end.”
PA president says Palestinians will never give up demand to make Jerusalem their capital; says Muslims and Christians will never accept Israeli claims.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday accused Israel of dragging the region into a religious war and vowed that the Palestinians would never agree to Jewish prayer on the Muslim-controlled Temple Mount.
“Israel’s leaders are making a huge mistake if they think they can now establish facts on the ground and divide prayer times at the al-Aqsa Mosque as they did at the Cave of the Patriarchs,” he said in a fiery speech in Ramallah to mark the tenth anniversary of Yasser Arafat’s death. “By doing these things they are leading the region and the world into a devastating religious war.”
Mahmoud Abbas: We will protect our holy places (Photo: EPA)
Speaking after weeks of clashes between Israeli security forces and Arab residents of East Jerusalem, as well as a series of terror attacks in Jerusalem, Abbas also repeated the Palestinian pledge to make East Jerusalem the capital of a Palestinian state.
“The Muslim and Christian world will never accept Israeli claims that Jerusalem is theirs,” he said. “Jerusalem is our capital and we will never give this up; Jerusalem that was occupied in 1967 is our Jerusalem. We will safeguard and protect our holy places.”
The Palestinian leader also blasted “the daily incursions and attacks from the settlers and the leaders of the Israeli occupation army.”
He went on to praised the Muslims who are continually present at the Temple Mount to ensure that visitors to the site, which Jews believe was the location of the first and second temples and now houses the al-Aqsa Mosque, do not pray there.
“They ask us who are these guardians? They sit at al-Aqsa and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to pray and to protect. And if (the Israelis) attack them, it is their right to defend themselves the holy places. Keep the extremist settlers away from the al-Aqsa mosque and our holy places. Don’t let the our holy sites be contaminated, Keep them from us and we will stay away from them.”
Now that we can clearly see the Third Intifada blowing in from all directions, with full and active incitement ascribed to Abbas and his business-suited PLO, it’s time to allow Israelis to protect themselves better.
Despite the common sight of guns carried openly by off-duty soldiers and security volunteers, gun licensing for ordinary civilians is strictly controlled in Israel. But in just the last 48 hours it’s become clear that every Israeli in any location is a legitimate target, with the highest risk of attack being on motor vehicles especially travelling at night.
It’s absurd that in today’s peaceful America the right of private citizens to bear arms is sacrosanct whilst in Israel, already walled-in against terrorists, private firearm licenses are so strictly rationed.
Of course there have to be background checks and mental-health restrictions just as in the US and other countries. But the status of Israeli citizens above almost all others is that they already have a responsible and disciplined attitude to firearms by dint of their mandatory army service and training.
I doubt if any adult using Israel’s roads in the current inflamed situation would not feel a lot safer with a handgun in their glove-box. The government should allow all citizens this security and the ability to protect themselves from attack or hijacking.
We trust our citizens as soldiers and we must trust them equally in civilian life.
Yes there will be some hothead shootings, no doubt, and penalties should be very tough. But the risk of such incidents does not justify leaving all good citizens at the mercy of Abbas’s thugs.
Security personnel at the site where a Palestinian man stabbed a soldier in Tel Aviv in a terror attack on November 10, 2014. (photo credit: Flash90)
An IDF soldier stabbed by a Palestinian terrorist at a Tel Aviv train station died of his wounds Monday night after doctors spent hours trying to save his life.
Almog Shiloni, 20, died of multiple wounds to his stomach and chest, an official from Sheba Hospital at Tel Hashomer said.
“After resuscitation efforts that began in the field and continued for hours in the hospital the stabbing victim who arrived earlier to the hospital was declared dead,” a spokesperson said.
When Shiloni was first brought into hospital following the attack he had no pulse although doctors were able to restart his heart.
Shiloni was critically wounded after being stabbed multiple times in a terror attack at Tel Aviv’s Hahagana train station on Monday afternoon
His death marks the second fatality in separate terror incidents Monday. After the Tel Aviv attack, a 26-year-old woman was stabbed to death while at a bus stop outside the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut south of Jerusalem.
His family was by his bedside throughout the day as doctors worked to improve his condition, Ynet reported.
His girlfriend, identified only as Navi, said she was talking with him on the phone when she heard the device drop, according to the news site.
“I shouted to him for 10 minutes and he didn’t answer me,” she said. “I heard someone in the background shouting that there was a person unconscious and that they are at the Hahaganah station.”
Navi, who was studying nearby, ran to the station and arrived in time to see Almog still there lying in a pool of blood as emergency teams tried to resuscitate him.
“It was a terrible sight,” she said. “At that moment I fainted.”
Shiloni’s twin brother Sahar told Ynet how their mother had contacted him after hearing of the Tel Aviv attack and told him to call Almog.
“We tried to contact him,” he said. “I called my mother at 11.40 and she burst in tear, and then I understood. we have been here ever since, at Tel Hashomer.”
The brothers had celebrated their 20th birthday just a month ago.
Police confirmed the Tel Aviv attack was a politically motivated terrorist attack.
The US condemned the attack, but also demanded clarifications from Israel regarding the shooting death of an Arab man in the town of Kafr Kanna during a confrontation with police Saturday.
The attacker was in police custody. Initial reports identified the suspect as an 18-year-old Palestinian man from Nablus who had illegally entered Israeli territory. Channel 2 named the stabber as Nur al-Din Abu Hashiyeh.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack, though a Hamas spokesperson welcomed it and said it was in response to the Kafr Kanna killing.
The death in the Arab town has sparked days of unrest in Arab towns across the country, with protesters burning tires and clashing with police in Jerusalem, Kafr Kanna and other hotspots.
( The horror of what is going to happen in the world… It’s hard for me to think about it. Bibi… Find a way to stop it. NOBODY ELSE will. God give you the strength… – JW )
Op-ed: An arrangement that depends on verifying Iranian good behavior and taking speedy counteraction in the inevitable event of bad behavior is simply not workable — and both sides know it
It’s almost over. It really doesn’t much matter if a triumphant US Secretary of State John Kerry announces in the next few hours or days that a dramatic accord has been reached with Iran to regulate its nuclear program, or if it is decided to extend the negotiations beyond the November 24 deadline to finalize that deal. We know where the negotiations are heading. We know that the conclusion is dire.
The P5+1 countries, their approach to talks with the ayatollahs determined by the Obama administration, have insistently behaved like the Three Wise Monkeys. Iran pours its energies into mastering the technology for nuclear weapons. From its “supreme leader” on down it makes crystal clear its hegemonic regional ambitions, its contempt for the West, and its aim to bring about the demise of Israel. And the US-led international community willfully closes its eyes and ears to the dangers, wishing them away.
Ultimately, the failure is rooted in President Barack Obama’s desire to heal relations with America’s enemies in this part of the world. But what the administration would like to have perceived as a new generosity of spirit emanating from Washington, a desire to conquer past animosities, to build new bridges, to play fair, is regarded in this brutal region, by the purveyors of that brutality, as weakness.
The P5+1 negotiators aim to avoid humiliating Iran, so they choose not to insist on IAEA inspectors gaining access to the Parchin facility where they would find evidence of Iran’s years of efforts at nuclear weaponization. And thus Iran can publicly maintain the fiction that it does not seek, and has not been seeking, the bomb.
The P5+1 negotiators back away from the earlier goal of using the economic pressure of sanctions in order to force Iran into a strategic U-turn — to dismantle the facilities and equipment that have brought it so far along the road to nuclear weapons — and instead now work for an accord that would, in theory, keep Iran some 6 to 18 months from the ability to produce the fissile material for a bomb. This very framework is a tacit admission that Iran, if left unchecked, would push full speed ahead to the nuclear weapons it risibly claims not to seek. But the negotiators prefer not to acknowledge this logistical flaw at the heart of their approach.
The P5+1 negotiators would have us believe that a better deal is simply not possible — not the best negotiating strategy. When you tell the world that a better deal is out of reach, you can be dead certain that the Iranians are listening, and are not going to agree to a better deal.
The negotiators work for an accord that would keep Iran months from the ability to produce the fissile material for a bomb. This very framework is a tacit admission that Iran, if left unchecked, would push full-speed ahead to the nuclear weapons it risibly claims not to seek. But the P5+1 team prefers not to acknowledge this logistical flaw at the heart of its approach
The P5+1 negotiators would have us believe that there was insufficient international resolve to force Iran into the corner, that the sanctions regime was not sustainable, that an imperfect deal is far better than no deal at all, that Iran’s nuclear scientists have the knowhow now and nothing can change that. Lousy arguments, one and all.
Statecraft in the face of an extraordinarily dangerous regime required mustering the international resolve to reverse Tehran’s drive for the bomb; it required maintaining the unity of purpose to ensure sanctions were kept in place and ratcheted up as required; it required making plain that there would be no deal at all unless the necessary terms were reached, with the combined threat of more sanctions and a military readiness to underpin that stance; and it required the dismissal of ridiculous, extraneous, defeatist arguments such as the one that holds that the Iranians have the knowhow anyway.
Syria’s scientists, as Emily Landau, an expert on nuclear proliferation at Tel Aviv University’s INSS think tank, points out, did not suddenly lose the knowhow to build chemical weapons when international pressure forced President Bashar Assad into giving up his chemical weapons capabilities last year. They still have the knowhow, but their leadership no longer risks having them utilize it.
If only the Iranians had been forced into a similar capitulation. Having the knowhow is not the issue. It’s attaining the bomb. That’s what is irreversible — terrifyingly so in the case of Iran.
Let nobody kid themselves. Whether the deal now taking shape ostensibly keeps Iran six months or eighteen months from the bomb makes no significant difference. An arrangement that depends on verifying Iranian good behavior and taking speedy counteraction in the event of bad behavior is simply not workable — and both sides know it.
Iran can be relied upon to breach the terms of the deal — just as it breached the interim agreement, says Landau, by pouring gas into its IR5 centrifuges. It can then be relied upon to dispute that it has breached the terms — just as it did this week in the case of the IR5s. The international community would then have to determine whether a breach has occurred, decide whether it merits a response, agree on what kind of response, and take action. That’s the same international community that has failed to utilize the sanctions regime to reverse the program in the first place, up against the same resolute Iranian regime. Really, forget about it.
The prospect of regime change in Iran will have diminished still further. The region’s more moderate states will know themselves more vulnerable. Tehran will be hugely emboldened
“The United States,” says Landau (who spoke to me at length for this article), “has been acting as though it is engaged in a confidence-building effort, showing the other side that it can be trusted, that ‘we can reach a common goal.’ But there is no common goal. Iran does not want a deal that would require it to back away from its nuclear program. It wants a deal that allows it to become a threshold state that can go for the bomb at a time of its choosing.
“Once the goal became merely to restrain Iran, to keep it months away from a nuclear weapons capability rather than forcing a strategic U-turn,” she says, “the game was lost.”
Whether in the next few hours or days, or a few weeks from now, then, we can brace for handshakes, embraces and brief bonhomie; for an Iran whose smooth-talking foreign minister hails vindication while his supreme leader spouts poison; for a United States that claims success, talks of having capped and regulated the Iranians, and seeks to press on toward some kind of rapprochement despite every indication that Iran seeks nothing of the sort.
The prospect of regime change in Iran will have diminished still further. The region’s more moderate states will know themselves more vulnerable. Tehran will be hugely emboldened.
And what of Israel? Directly endangered by Iran, and rightly reluctant to resort to the military intervention that the United States should have credibly threatened, Israel cannot afford to adopt the Three Wise Monkeys approach. We see the evil all too clearly. While the international community celebrates a Pyrrhic victory, protecting this country, never anything less than immensely challenging, will have become significantly more complex.
(Interesting to say the least. I’m reminded of the saying, ‘Money talks, bullshit walks.’ In this case there’s a lot of talk, but is anyone listening?-LS)
WASHINGTON — Major Democratic donor Haim Saban said on Sunday that if he were running Israel he would “bomb the living daylights” out of Iran if the current nuclear negotiations produce a bad deal for Israel.
Speaking at a conference of the Israeli American Council at the Washington Hilton opposite Republican casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, Saban said that if he were in the shoes of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the event of a deal with Iran that he judged to be dangerous with Israel, “I would bomb the living daylights out of these sons of bitches.”
Saban, a major Obama donor in 2012 and Hillary Clinton supporter in 2008, also expressed deep skepticism of Obama’s policy towards Iran.
“At the moment we could have increased the sanctions, we decreased them, and that was a mistake in my view,” he said.
He said that he hopes Sen. Lindsey Graham’s proposed bill to vote yes or no on the potential Iran deal will pass, and that “We should have taken some steps to show that we, the United States, mean business.” The military option, he said, needs to be “a real option and not lip service.”
If he were Netanyahu in the event of a bad Iran deal, “First of all I’d come to the full realization we’re screwed maybe.”
Saban said he believes Obama will be a “foreign policy president” in the last two years of his time in office because the new Republican congress will make it hard for him to get things done domestically.
Adelson was one of the biggest donors to the Republican side during the midterm elections this year; it was reported that he was planning to spend up to $100 million during the cycle.
In a rare joint public appearance, Adelson and Saban discussed the peace process, the Iranian nuclear negotiations, the Boycott, Divestment Sanctions movement, and joked (or seemed to joke) about buying the New York Times together to produce more positive journalism about Israel. They are two of the most influential donors in American politics; Adelson is a major funder of Republican causes and candidates, and Saban, an Israeli-American, was once the top donor to the Democratic Party. Adelson and Saban are both backing the Israeli American Council, which hosted the event.
The two seemed to share a rapport and agreed on many issues, though Adelson presented a harder line on the peace process, saying that the “so-called Palestinians” are an “invented people” and that Israel should build a “big wall” to separate itself from them.
“It is not about granting a Palestinian state,” Saban said, in defense of the two-state solution. “It’s about securing the future of a democratic Israel.”
“You are committing demographic suicide,” Adelson argued. “Israel can no longer live if you say we want to live as a democracy.”
They weighed in on the BDS movement, which says it wants to end the occupation by getting individuals and institutions to boycott Israeli goods and divest from Israeli companies. Saban said he is working with the Israeli foreign ministry to work on a plan to counter BDS, and Adelson said he’s had conversations with the Israeli American Council about “forming a consortium of pro-Israel and pro-Jewish community organizations that can together man a battle group to fight against BDS.”
They lamented what they view as an anti-Israel bias in the American media, and talked about how easy it would be to buy major newspapers together. Both already have influence with specific news organizations; Adelson owns the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom, and Saban is chairman of Spanish-language television station Univision.
“I wish that Jeff Bezos didn’t buy the Washington Post because it would have been nice for you and I to have bought it, Sheldon,” Saban said. “Two hundred and fifty million? Bupkis! He stole it.”
“Why don’t you and I go after the New York Times?” Adelson said. “There’s only one way to buy it. Money.”
Ali Khamenei / AP
ran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei published early Sunday a 9-step plan to “eliminate” Israel, prompting Israel’s prime minister to file a formal complaint with Western negotiators involved in nuclear talks with Tehran.
Khamenei’s official Twitter account on Sunday tweeted out the 9-step plan explaining “the proper way of eliminating Israel.”
“Why should & how can #Israel be eliminated? Ayatollah Khamenei’s answer to 9 key questions,” Khamenei tweeted, along with a graphic illustrating the plan to annihilate Israel.
“The only means of bringing Israeli crimes to an end is the elimination of this regime,” Khamenei wrote. “And of course the elimination of Israel does not mean the massacre of the Jewish people in the region. The Islamic Republic has proposed a practical and logical mechanism for this to international communities.”
Khamenei accuses “the fake Zionist regime” of committing acts of “infanticide, homicide, violence, and iron fist while boasts about it blatantly [sic].”
Israel’s enemies must commit to “armed resistance” until Israel is eliminated, Khamenei says.
“Up until the day when this homicidal and infanticidal [sic] regime is eliminated through a referendum, powerful confrontation and resolute and armed resistance is the cure of this ruinous regime,” the supreme leader writes. “The only means of confronting a regime which commits crimes beyond one’s thought and imagination is a resolute and armed confrontation.”
Khamenei also reiterates his call for the West Bank to be armed like Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Khamenei’s plan is another example of Iran’s extremism.
Khamenei is “publicly calling for the annihilation of Israel as he is negotiating a nuclear deal,” Netanyahu said in videotaped remarks.
“There is no moderation in Iran,” said Netanyahu, who sent a letter to the P5+1 negotiators outlining Khamenei’s extremist rhetoric. “It is unrepentant, unreformed.”
Khamenei “calls for Israel’s eradication, promotes international terrorism … and [Iran] continues to deceive the international community about its nuclear weapons program,” Netanyahu said. “I call on the P5+1—don’t rush into a deal that will let Iran rush to the bomb.”
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.
His most recent book, Democracy’s Dangers and Discontents Hoover Institution Press, is now available for purchase.
The news that President Obama has sent a secret letter to Iranian leader Ayatollah Khamenei––apparently promising concessions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for help in defeating ISIS–– is a depressing reminder of how after nearly 40 years our leaders have not understood the Iranian Revolution. During the hostage crisis of 1979, Jimmy Carter sent left-wing former Attorney General Ramsay Clark to Tehran with a letter anxiously assuring the Ayatollah Khomeini that America desired good relations “based upon equality, mutual respect and friendship.” Khomeini refused even to meet with the envoys.
Such obvious contempt for our “outreach” should have been illuminating, but the same mistakes have recurred over the past 4 decades. But Obama has been the most energetic suitor of the mullahs, sending 4 letters to Khamenei, none directly answered. In May of 2009 he sent a personal letter to Khamenei calling for “cooperation in regional and bilateral relations.” Khamenei’s answer in June was to initiate a brutal crackdown on Iranians protesting the rigged presidential election. Obama’s response was to remain silent about this oppression lest he irritate the thuggish mullahs, who blamed the protests on American “agents” anyway. Even Carter’s phrase “mutual respect” has been chanted like some diplomatic spell that will transform religious fanatics into good global citizens. In his notorious June 2009 Cairo “apology” speech, Obama assured Iran, “We are willing to move forward without preconditions on the basis of mutual respect.” This latest letter repeats the same empty phrase.
But our president is nothing if not persistent. In October of 2009, it was revealed that Iran had failed to disclose a uranium enrichment facility in Qom. Obama commented on this obvious proof of Iran’s true intentions, “We remain committed to serious, meaningful engagement with Iran,” and promised that the “offer stands” of “greater international integration if [Iran] lives up to its obligations.” Iran answered by increasing the pace of enrichment, helping the insurgents in Iraq kill our troops, and facilitating the movement and communications of al Qaeda with other jihadists.
Indeed, every concession and failure to respond forcefully to Iranian intransigence and aggression confirm its belief that Iran is strong and America weak. As Khamenei has said, “The reason why we are stronger is that [America] retreats step by step in all the arenas [in] which we and the Americans have confronted each other. But we do not retreat. Rather, we move forward. This is a sign of our superiority over the Americans.”
Given this long sorry history, how long will it take for our foreign policy geniuses to figure out that Iran’s theocrats don’t want better relations, or “mutual respect,” or “international integration,” or anything else from the infidel Great Satan and its Western minions, other than capitulation? The mullahs and their Republican Guard henchmen may lust for wealth and power as much as anyone, but the foundation of their behavior is a religious faith that promises Muslims power and dominance over those who refuse the call to convert to Islam and thus by definition are enemies of the faithful to be resisted and destroyed.
Given these spiritual imperatives, the material punishment of the regime through economic sanctions, particularly limited ones, is unlikely to have much effect. During the hostage crisis, mild sanctions and the threats of more serious ones were brushed away by Khomeini. The Economist at the time pointed out the obvious reason why: “The denial of material things is unlikely to have much effect on minds suffused with immaterial things.” Khomeini made this same point after the humiliating disaster of Carter’s half-hearted attempt to rescue the hostages in April 1980, when mullahs were televised worldwide poking their canes in the charred remains of 8 dead Americans. Speaking of the sandstorm that compromised the mission, Khomeini preached, “Those sand particles were divinely commissioned . . . Carter still has not comprehended what kind of people he is facing and what school of thought he is playing with. Our people is the people of blood and our school is the school of Jihad.”
With their eyes on Allah’s intentions for the faithful, the leaders of Iran see the acquisition of nuclear weapons as the most important means of achieving the global power and dominance their faith tells them they deserve as “the best of nations produced for mankind,” as the Koran says. Thus duplicitous diplomatic engagement and negotiation are tactics for buying time until the mullahs reach “nuclear latency,” the ability quickly to build a bomb. Every concession or offer of bribes from the West are seen not as an inducement to reciprocate in order to meet a mutually beneficial arrangement, but rather as signs of weakness and failure of nerve, evidence that the mullahs can win despite the power and wealth of the West. That’s because the Iranian leadership views international relations as resting not on cooperation or negotiation, but on raw power. As Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institute quotes from a hardline Iranian newspaper, “Our world is not a fair one and everyone gets as much power as he can, not for his power of reason or the adaptation of his request to the international laws, but by his bullying.” And the Iranians believe that their power politics serves the will of Allah.
Obama is not the first president who has completely failed to understand the true nature and motives of his adversary. FDR misunderstood “Uncle Joe” Stalin, and George Bush misread the eyes of Vladimir Putin. This mistake of diplomacy reflects the peculiar Western arrogant belief that the whole world is just like us and wants the same things we want––political freedom, leisure, material affluence, and peaceful relations with neighbors. Some Iranians may want those things too, but a critical mass wants obedience to Allah and his commands more. Obama’s endemic narcissism has made this flaw worse in his relations with the rest of the world, for he can’t believe that the leaders of other nations, many of them brutal realists indifferent to the opinions of the “international community,” aren’t as impressed as he is with his alleged brilliance and persuasive eloquence.
As a result we are on the brink of a dangerous realignment of the balance of power in the Middle East. Despite Iran’s continuing defiance of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, and its long record of lies and evasion, Obama allegedly has offered to raise the number of centrifuges enriching uranium from 4000 to 6000, bringing the mullahs closer to “nuclear latency”––in a regime that has officially been designated the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism; that has threatened genocide against Israel, our most important strategic asset in the region; and that for the last 40 years has stained its hands with American blood.
Rather than the ornament of his foreign policy legacy, as Obama hopes, his pursuit of a deal that will make Iran a nuclear power will be remembered as his Munich.
Obama intends to grant Royal amnesty for millions of illegals currently present in our nation, regardless of the adverse economic and social impacts and Republican warnings. I opined here on what He will likely do and on the unfortunately poor prospects for any Republican efforts to thwart it.
Remember “Leg Tingles?” The tingle has gone, at least temporarily
So much for deal making with the opposition.
However, Obama is anxious to have a deal — any deal — with Iran very soon.
Although He will not make a deal with His domestic enemies whose voters rejected Him and His policies on November 4th, Obama is apparently so infatuated with His need for a legacy that He continues to push for a nuke deal with Iran. Any deal will do, no matter how disastrous it will be. Obama’s protestations to the contrary are consistent with “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor,” “if you like your medical insurance policy you can keep it,” “My administration will be the most transparent in history” and a multitude of others.
A deal with Iran needs to be signed, sealed and delivered well before the next Congress convenes in January. Hence the importance of meeting the November 24th deadline or extending it for the minimum time needed for Iran to demand, and for Him to make, more concessions.
Iran continues to hang tough and Obama continues to seek accommodation from Iran so that He can have a legacy. Obama dispatched a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last month.
The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that, according to people briefed on the letter, Obama wrote to Khamenei in the middle of last month and stressed that any cooperation on dealing with the Islamic State, or ISIS, was tied to Iran striking a deal over its nuclear program. The U.S., Iran and other negotiators are facing a Nov. 24 deadline for such a deal. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
Asked about the reported letter, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest would not confirm the report.
“I’m not in a position to discuss private correspondence between the president and any world leader,” he said.
However, he said the U.S. policy toward Iran “remains unchanged.”
Actually, Khamenei did respond. On the 30th anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy, he said this, in a mocking tone which is even more apparent in the Persian version of this speech:
The new US President made some beautiful comments. He also repeatedly asked us in writing and orally to turn a new page and help him change the present situation. He asked us to cooperate with him to solve global issues. He went as far as that.
Now, Khamenei continued to say he gave Obama a chance, but Obama didn’t come around. Khamenei then gloated about the strength of the Islamic Republic, a perception which Obama’s groveling tone has bolstered:
I wonder why they do not learn a lesson from what has happened. I do not understand why they are not prepared to get to know our nation. Do they not know that this nation is the one that resisted and brought the two superpowers – that is, the Soviet Union and America – to their knees? When there were two superpowers in the world, they were opposed to one another in almost all areas except in their enmity towards the Islamic Republic. This enmity was the only thing these two superpowers had in common. Why do you not learn your lesson? Today you are not even as powerful as you used to be. The Islamic Republic is several times more powerful today than those days, and yet you are speaking with the same tone? That is arrogance – talking to a nation arrogantly and using threats to get what they want. They threaten us. And our nation says it will resist.
Khamenei then warned the United States not to put its hope in reformers, as Obama seems keen to do:
Just because a handful of naïve or malevolent individuals have confronted the Islamic Republic does not mean that they can roll out the red carpet for Americans in our country. These individuals either had ulterior motives or had naively misunderstood the events without having very bad intentions – I do not want to be judgmental about their malevolence. Americans should know that the nation is resisting firmly.
Despite the very substantial concessions which Obama has already granted, Khamenei’s remarks seem to amount to this: give me whatever else I demand or shove your legacy up your scrawny apostate ass.
Ali Akbar Velayati, longtime foreign policy adviser to Khamenei and a former Iranian foreign minister, may join the talks between US Secretary of State John Kerry, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and European Union negotiator Catherine Ashton, in a signal that the Supreme Leader may be preparing to sign off on a deal, sources told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
The meeting between Kerry, Zarif and Ashton is due to get underway Nov. 9 in Muscat, Oman, which hosted secret US-Iran talks that helped lead to reaching the interim Iran nuclear deal last year. Following the two-day US/Iran/EU trilateral meeting Nov. 9-10, negotiators from the rest of the P5+1 — the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany — are supposed to join the talks in Oman for a Nov. 11 meeting. Another, possibly final, round of P5+1 Iran talks is due to be held in Vienna from Nov. 18 to 24.
US, Iranian and Russian negotiators say there is still more work to be done, but are expressing increasing, albeit cautious, optimism that a deal is within reach.
The November 24, 2013 P5+1 Interim deal was and remains a scam
In January of this year, I wrote about Obama’s Iran Scam, structured from the beginning in Iran’s favor by legitimizing Iran’s Uranium enrichment and effectively eliminating consideration by the P5+1 negotiators of Iran’s past and continuing efforts to militarize nuclear weapons. The January 16, 2014 White House Summary of the arrangement states,
Iran committed in the Joint Plan of Action to provide increased and unprecedented transparency into its nuclear program, including through more frequent and intrusive inspections as well as expanded provision of information to the IAEA. [Emphasis added.]
Will Iran’s “unprecedented transparency” be similar to that which Obama claimed for His administration? Or the versions of transparency He delivered?
Continuing with the White House Summary,
The Iranian enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordow will now be subject to daily IAEA inspector access as set out in the Joint Plan of Action (as opposed to every few weeks). The IAEA and Iran are working to update procedures, which will permit IAEA inspectors to review surveillance information on a daily basis to shorten detection time for any Iranian non-compliance. In addition, these facilities will continue to be subjected to a variety of other physical inspections, including scheduled and unannounced inspections.
The Arak reactor and associated facilities will be subject to at least monthly IAEA inspections – an increase from the current inspection schedule permitting IAEA access approximately once every three months or longer.
Iran has also agreed to provide for the first time:
Long-sought design information on the Arak reactor;
Figures to verify that centrifuge production will be dedicated to the replacement of damaged machines; and
Information to enable managed access at centrifuge assembly workshops, centrifuge rotor production workshops and storage facilities, and uranium mines and mills.
These enhanced monitoring measures will enable the IAEA to provide monthly updates to the Joint Commission on the status of Iran’s implementation of its commitments and enable the international community to more quickly detect breakout or the diversion of materials to a secret program.
With respect to centrifuges, the U.S. has caved several times on the numbers and types that Iran can have and use and will very likely continue to do so. As of late September, The U.S.
is considering softening present demands that Iran gut its uranium enrichment program in favor of a new proposal that would allow Tehran to keep nearly half of the project intact while placing other constraints on its possible use as a path to nuclear weapons, diplomats told The Associated Press.
The U.S., which fears Tehran may enrich to weapons-grade level used to arm nuclear warheads, ideally wants no more than 1,500 centrifuges left operating. Iran insists it wants to use the technology only to make reactor fuel and for other peaceful purposes and insists it be allowed to run at least the present 9,400 machines.
The tentative new U.S. offer attempts to meet the Iranians close to half way on numbers, said two diplomats who demanded anonymity because their information is confidential. They said it envisages letting Iran keep up to 4,500 centrifuges but would reduce the stock of uranium gas fed into the machines to the point where it would take more than a year of enrichment to create enough material for a nuclear warhead. [Emphasis added.]
Iran has stepped up efforts to develop a process that could enrich uranium at a much quicker pace, thereby violating the interim nuclear agreement reached with world powers last year, according to the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, or ISIS.
“Iran may have violated [the interim deal] by starting to feed [natural uranium gas] into one of its advanced centrifuges, namely the IR-5 centrifuge,” ISIS wrote in an analysis of the confidential IAEA report issued Friday to member states, according to Reuters. “Under the interim deal, this centrifuge should not have been fed with [gas] as reported in this safeguards report.”
. . . .
Iran has also reportedly sped up its low-grade uranium enrichment over the past two months, growing its stockpile by 8% to 8.4 tons.
The issue of advanced enrichment is sensitive because Iran could potentially produce a nuclear weapon if it processes the material further, a main concern for the West.
Perhaps Obama’s willingness to cave is why, as noted above, “the Supreme Leader may be preparing to sign off on a deal.”
Moreover, as I noted here, here and here, the interim agreement and the White House Summary omit any mention of Iran’s military-nuclear sites, such as Parchin, where the IAEA had reason to think that there had been implosion testing in 2011 but was refused access to inspect. They also fail to mention
Development and construction of rocketry capable of delivering nuclear warheads; and
Development and testing of nuclear warheads.
If Iran’s continuing development of militarized nukes is of no consequence, what (besides a legacy for Obama) is the purpose of a deal? Might this happy language in the White House Summary be meaningless?
The Joint Plan of Action marks the first time in nearly a decade that the Islamic Republic of Iran has agreed to specific actions that stop the advance of its nuclear program, roll back key aspects of the program, and include unprecedented access for international inspectors. [Emphasis added.]
The farce continues apace. As the Daily Beast pointed out on November 7th,
Iran continues to refuse to disclose its nuclear activity, and experts do not anticipate the country will become more transparent in the future. That’s the assessment released Friday from the International Atomic Energy Agency. “The agency is not in a position to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities,” said the report, which was also pessimistic about the chance that Iran will be forthright with its nuclear activities in the future. [Emphasis added.]
Scott Johnson at Power Line posted an article on November 7th titled How to understand Obama’s Iran diplomacy. It’s a very good article, so please read the whole thing. He wrote, in the lead paragraph,
I think the easiest way to understand Obama’s diplomacy is this. Assume that Obama believes Iran should have nuclear weapons and would like to facilitate the mullahs’ nuclear weapons program. This assumption is the Occam’s Razor that clarifies what might otherwise be obscure. The assumption may not be correct, but it should prove a handy guide to coming attractions. [Emphasis added.]
Mr. Johnson may well be correct. Or perhaps Obama cares less about whether Iran gets (or keeps) nukes than He cares about securing a legacy. Either way, it’s bad for much of the Middle East and also for the United States.
Iran’s human rights record and support for terrorism
Nor was there any mention in the P5+1 interim deal, or the White House Summary, of Iran’s horrendous and worsening human rights record. According to an article titled Iran Amputating Limbs, Burning Political Opponents,
Iran executed a record-shattering 411 citizens in the first half of 2014 and a total of 852 people in the last 15 months, including at least eight juveniles, according to a new United Nations report that will be introduced to the organization’s General Assembly Tuesday.
In addition to a surge in state-sanctioned killings that a U.N. official referred to as “shocking,” Iran continues to torture imprisoned individuals using techniques such as amputation, electroshock, flogging, and burnings, according to the report, which details human rights in the Islamic Republic.
While Secretary of State Kerry has referred on occasion to Iran’s human rights record as “abysmal,” the Obama administration has done precious little to pressure Iran on this front. In fact, the rare tough talk of American diplomats has become outpaced by growing references to their blossoming friendship with Iranian regime officials. “It’s reached a level of we know each other well enough to make jokes,” a senior U.S. official recently gushed to reporters. [Emphasis added.]
What do they joke about? Obama? Human rights? Terror? Nukes? Israel?
What does our desperation to get a nuclear deal at all costs say to the modern-day Iranian Solzhenitsyns rotting in Evin prison? Or to the young social-media savvy generation who took to the streets in 2009 after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s fraudulent reelection? [Emphasis added.]
Rayhaneh Jabbari, executed by Iran
The interim deal as well as the White House Summary also suggest that P5+1 discussions will take no account of Iran’s already massive support for terrorism, for which it will have even more funds as sanctions continue to disappear.
Conclusions
For a major supporter of international terrorism, with a worsening human rights record that makes even that of North Korea seem relatively tame, to have and to be in a position to use nukes will be worse than merely shameful.
What will be Iran’s first nuclear target? Over the weekend the Supreme Leader repeated, for the nth time, his views on Israel:
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for the destruction of Israel over the weekend, stating that the “barbaric” Jewish state “has no cure but to be annihilated.
Will this, transformed from a simulation into reality, be part of Obama’s legacy?
Who will be next? The Great Satan, perhaps?
A good deal for Iran is also bad for the decreasingly free “free world” for a different reason: since the Obama Nation won’t stand up, effectively, for democracy with freedom — including even the most basic of human rights — who will? Formerly Great Britain?
Continuing and largely successful efforts to sanitize Islam through multicultural political correctness and its necessary ally, repression of what was once free speech, may well mean that no nation will do more than make bland and ineffective shows of standing for even the most basic of human rights.
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