WarSclerotic

Iran willing to extend nuclear talks past deadline | The Times of Israel.

Tehran ‘will not be bound by schedule’ if accord is not finalized by June 30, negotiator says

TEHRAN, Iran — Talks between Iran and world powers aimed at finalizing a deal over Tehran’s nuclear program could go beyond a June 30 deadline, a senior Iranian negotiator said Wednesday.

“We are not at the point where we can say that negotiations will be completed quickly — they will continue until the deadline and could continue beyond that,” Abbas Araqchi was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.

Araqchi has been attending a fresh round of talks between Iranian representatives and officials from the P5+1 group — Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States plus Germany — which got under way in Vienna on Tuesday.

The two sides signed a framework agreement on April 2 and aim to seal a final deal by the end of next month to prevent Iran from developing an atomic bomb, in exchange for an easing of crippling economic sanctions.

“We are not bound by the schedule. We are trying to have a good agreement with all the details meeting our expectations,” Araqchi said, describing the efforts to draw up a final text as “hard work.”

Iranian media quoted deputy oil minister Amirhossein Zamani-Nia as saying on Monday that 20 pages of the text had been written “but there are still disagreements and 30 percent of the work remains to be done.”

A similar report last week quoting an Iranian foreign ministry spokeswoman noted that a diplomatic timetable should not get in the way of a “good agreement.”

Israel has warned that the deal in its current form is insufficient and may still enable Iran to to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran insists its nuclear project will be used for peaceful purposes only.

Mazal tov, Herman Wouk, on your 100th birthday! – This Day in Jewish History – – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

And thanks for the books, starting with ‘Aurora Dawn,’ part of which was penned aboard a U.S. Navy ship during WWII.

Wouk at the 2010 LA Times Festival of Books. Photo by Mark Coggins/Wikimedia Commons

May 27, 1915, is the birthdate of writer Herman Wouk, which means that Wouk – author of “The Caine Mutiny” and “Marjorie Morningstar,” among more than a dozen other novels – is 100 years old today.

Wouk may not be a writer whose work is studied at universities, but he has been phenomenally successful among readers. Not a few people in the 1970s and 1980s learned what they knew about the history of World War II from his two mammoth novels on the subject, “The Winds of War” (1971) and “War and Remembrance” (1978), and from the two TV miniseries based on them. He also has been the rare popular novelist who has always been proud and open about his identity as an observant Jew, and is consistent in advocating a morality of patriotism, discipline and chastity.

Herman Wouk is the son of the former Esther Levine and Abraham Isaac Wouk, both of them Minsk-born Jews who arrived in the United States early in the 20th century. At about the time of Herman’s bar mitzvah, his maternal grandfather, a rabbi, arrived from Russia and took charge of his Jewish education – a development that eventually led to a period during which the grandson rejected the traditional life.

Wouk graduated from Townsend Harris High School in the Bronx, then attended Columbia University, where he studied philosophy and literature. In his free time, he edited the college humor magazine, The Jester, and wrote student musicals.

It was at the time of his graduation, in 1934, that Wouk declared, “To hell with that noise [Judaism]. I’m going to be a funnyman.” For two years, he wrote gags for David Freedman’s firm The Joke Factory, before being hired by the comic radio host Fred Allen for a well-paying writer’s job.

By the time the U.S. entered World War II, in 1941, Wouk had been drawn back to Orthodoxy, so that when he enlisted in the Navy, and was sent to sea, it was as a kashrut-observing midshipman.

He served on two destroyer-minesweepers in the Pacific, the U.S.S. Zane and the U.S.S. Southard, and even though both featured pork as a prominent ingredient on the menu, Wouk still would look back on his years in the Navy as “the great experience of my life.”

Toward the end of his service, Wouk met Betty Brown, an Idaho-born, non-Jewish civilian employee in the Navy. The two fell in love. Betty underwent conversion, taking on the additional, traditional Hebrew name of “Sarah,” and they married shortly after his return to the U.S., at the end of 1945.

Betty Sarah Wouk served as her husband’s literary agent until her death, in 2011. The couple had three children, one of whom died in a swimming accident at age five.

Writing at sea

Wouk began writing his first novel while still at sea, and sent some early chapters to his college philosophy professor, Irwin Edman. Edman read part of it out loud to an editor at Simon & Schuster, and Wouk was offered a contract for his first book.

That book was “Aurora Dawn,” which, after publication in 1947, became a main selection of the Book of the Month Club. Five years later, Wouk’s third book, “The Caine Mutiny,” won him the Pulitzer Prize. The novel, about a World War II naval ship whose senior officers depose their mentally unstable skipper – Captain Queeg – and then stand trial for the mutiny, was later adapted for both stage and screen.

Lesser known Wouk books include nonfiction works about his religious faith, “This Is My God” (1959), and much more recently, “The Language God Talks” (2010) – an attempt to reconcile science and religious doctrine.

Wouk’s last novel, the epistolary “The Lawgiver,” also dealt with Judaism, in the form of a story about an ultra-Orthodox-raised woman, Margolit Solovei, who becomes the writer-director of a Hollywood movie about Moses. A writer named Herman Wouk even makes a cameo appearance, when the studio brings him in as a consultant on the film’s biblical protagonist.

Earlier this month, Simon & Schuster announced that in December, it would be publishing Wouk’s memoir – his first – “Sailor and Fiddler: Reflections of a 100-Year-Old Author.”

Happy birthday, Herman Wouk!

What’s Left.

By Tabitha Korol — Bio and Archives  May 26, 2015

If we add together the Islamists in our midst, the remorseless willfully blind, and the ignorant by indoctrination, I fear for what’s left

U.S. Intelligence: Iran Sending More Fighters to Yemen

IRGC Quds Force, Hezbollah back pro-Iran rebels

BY: Bill Gertz Follow @BillGertz
May 27, 2015 5:00 am

via U.S. Intelligence: Iran Sending More Fighters to Yemen | Washington Free Beacon.

Iran has dispatched additional paramilitary forces to Yemen to aid pro-Tehran rebels seeking to take control of the strategic southern Arabian state, according to recent U.S. intelligence reports.

The Iranian leadership earlier this month ordered militants from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force, along with Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, to Yemen, where Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab states are seeking to defeat an insurgency led by Houthi rebels that currently control large parts of the country.

The influx of Iranian forces was outlined in several classified intelligence reports circulated within government over the past two weeks, said U.S. officials familiar with the reports.

A State Department official said the Sunni Arabs in nearby states are opposing the Houthis and seeking to prevent Iran from establishing a foothold on the peninsula.

Estimates put the number of both Iranian and Iraqi Shi’ite forces helping the Houthis in Yemen at around 5,000 people. The number of Lebanese Hezbollah members in Yemen is not known.

On Sunday, Quds Force Deputy Commander, Brig. Gen. Esmail Ghani was quoted as confirming the fact that the IRGC is training Yemenis.

“Each one who is with us comes under the banner of the Islamic Republic and this is our strength,” Ghani said, according to Iran’s Mashregh News, an outlet run by the IRGC. “The defenders of Yemen have been trained under the banner of the Islamic Republic and the enemies cannot deal with Yemeni fighters.”

According to several officials, the ultimate goal of the Iranians in Yemen is to control the Red Sea chokepoint of the Bab-el-Mandeb.

“The Iranians’ ultimate target is the strait [Bab-el-Mandeb] and the House of Saud is the other target,” one official said.

The Bab-el-Mandeb is a strategic chokepoint that could be used by Iran to block oil shipments and U.S. warship movements from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf. Iran already can threaten the region’s other strategic chokepoint, the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.

Control over the Bab-el-Mandeb would give Tehran additional regional power to control oil and other passage to and from the region.

A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the Iranians in Yemen. State Department spokesmen did not return emails seeking comment.

The Obama administration is seeking to conclude a nuclear agreement with Iran by the end of June, and is keeping quiet about the Iranian push to control Yemen.

Middle East specialists, however, said the influx of Iranian and Hezbollah fighters is a troubling indicator of a growing Iranian threat to the region.

“It would effectively put the Quds force on the Saudi border and potentially give Iran a naval and air presence near the Bab-el-Mandeb, and the exit from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean—a key trade route for petroleum and all trade and U.S. naval movements through the Suez Canal,” said Anthony Cordesman, with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Cordesman said if the intelligence reports are confirmed, “it is the first real sign that Iran is playing a major role in Yemen.”

The Iranians appear to be targeting both the Riyadh government and strategic Bab-el-Mandeb strait, he said.

Iranian forces in Yemen “could also lead to far more serious tensions between Sunni and Shiite throughout the region,” Cordesman said.

“A struggle where Iran takes real chances to help Yemen’s Houthi and Shi’ite population could deeply divide a country the CIA estimates is 35 percent Shiite and 65 percent Sunni, and increase Sunni and Shiite tensions throughout the entire region,” he said.

Michael Rubin, with the American Enterprise Institute, said Iran is following the Soviet practice of using proxies to advance regional interests.

“There’s no excuse for ignorance; this is right out of Iran’s playbook,” Rubin said. “It’s Tehran’s equivalent of the Brezhnev Doctrine: Once an Iranian proxy takes territory, Iran will use its full array of power to make sure it keeps it.”

Rubin said Iran may not have sparked the Yemen crisis, “but no one can accuse Tehran of letting a good sectarian crisis go to waste.”

Former CIA Middle East specialist Bruce Riedel also said the influx of Iranians would assist the Houthis.

“Small numbers of Hezbollah and IRGC advisers have been in Yemen for the last several years,” Riedel said. “The Houthis very much admire the Hezbollah organization for its successes in fighting the Israelis and have tried to use Hezbollah as a model for their own development. Together the two are a force multiplier for the Houthis.”

On Monday, Yemeni forces opposing the Houthis took control of a southern province held by Houthis and forces loyal to former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was ousted from power in 2012 following mass protests, the London-based Arabic newspaper Alsharq Al-Awsat reported.

The re-taking of the southern province capped a months-long offensive by Saudi-backed tribal forces loyal to President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

The pro-Iran Houthis took control of the Yemeni capital of Sanaa last year and conducted a coup in February.

Saudi Arabia has been conducting air strikes against Houthis in Yemen since March 26 as part of Operation Decisive Storm, a Saudi-led aerial bombing campaign. Most of the air raids have been carried out by Saudi warplanes, but United Arab Emirates bomber jets also have taken part.

Saudi-backed forces now control Yemen’s airspace and most ports, according to reports from the region.

Shahin Gobadi, a spokesman for the Paris-based Iranian opposition group Mojahedin Organization of Iran, said the Quds Force oversees Iranian policy toward Yemen.

Quds Force commanders are assisting the Houthis in conducting military operations and have set up communications with the Quds commanders.

The Quds Force also has dispatched additional Hezbollah fighters and commanders.

“As the war and conflict has intensified, the presence of Iranian forces—non-Arabs and those who do not speak Arabic—has become more difficult in Yemen,” Gobadi said. “As such, Tehran has intensified dispatching more forces from Hezbollah to Yemen. Given the current circumstances, they have more room to maneuver and function.”

Houthi military plans and operation are “completely under the supervision and control of the Quds Force,” Gobadi added.

IRGC Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the Quds Force commander, directs several special committees to back the Houthis, according to Gobadi. Some 50 tons of Iranian weapons and other aid was sent from Mehrabad airport in Tehran to Sanaa last march March in four shipments, Gobadi said, noting the shipments were disguised as humanitarian aid from the Iranian Red Crescent.

A Gulf intelligence official told the BBC in early May that the intervention against the Houthis by several Gulf states revealed some of Yemen’s estimated 300 Scud short-range missiles under Houthi control had been moved to locations near the Saudi border.

As a result, Saudi and Gulf Arab allies took action to oppose what they viewed as an Iranian threat to the peninsula.