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Iranian President Says Nuclear Deal a ‘Non-Committal Agreement’

August 29, 2015

Iranian President Says Nuclear Deal a ‘Non-Committal Agreement,’ The Jewish Press, Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu, August 29, 2015

(If Rouhani, backed by Khamenei, says the “deal” has no legally binding effect, that is Iran’s position. Why should the U.S. be “legally bound” by such an agreement? — DM)

rouhani-obamaPresidents Rouhani and Obama.

Iranian President Rouhani said Saturday the parliament should not vote on the nuclear deal so that it will not become a legal obligation.

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Iran has given U.S. Congressmen the perfect reason to oppose the nuclear deal by saying that the Iranian parliament should not make it a legal obligation for the Islamic Republic.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told a news conference Saturday that the deal is only a political understanding, and he urged parliament not to vote on it so that it does not become a legal obligation.

Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported Saturday:

President Hassan Rouhani underlined that Joint Comprehensive of Action (JCPOA) does not need the Majlis (Iranian parliament) approval for its implementation.

‘Under the Iranian Constitution, a treaty has to be submitted for approval or disapproval to the Parliament if it has been signed by the president or a representative of his,’ President Rouhani said, addressing a press conference in Tehran on Saturday.

‘That is not the case about the Iran-Group 5+1 nuclear agreement or the JCPOA,’ the Iranian president added.

Rouhani emphasized that parliamentary approval of the JCPOA would mean that he has to sign it, “an extra legal commitment that the administration has already avoided,” according to IRNA.

The Associated Press added that Rouhani said:

Why should we place an unnecessary legal restriction on the Iranian people?

President Barack Obama needs only four more Democratic senators to back the bill in order to prevent a veto-proof majority if Congress rejects the agreement.

If the agreement is approved, the United States will be obligated to honor it unless it can catch Iran cheating, a process that could involved months or even a year.

On the other side of the ocean, Rouhani has made it clear that the deal has no legal standing in Iran.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Iran scam, Iranian parliament, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, U.S. Congress
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Admiral James ‘Ace’ Lyons (Ret). on the Iran Nuke Deal

August 29, 2015

Admiral James ‘Ace’ Lyons (Ret). on the Iran Nuke Deal, The Daily Ledger via You Tube, August 27, 2015

 

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Kerry, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's affinity for Islam, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1
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Obama’s Politicized Intelligence

August 29, 2015

Obama’s Politicized Intelligence, Washington Free Beacon, , August 28, 2015

(Please see also, Pentagon Not Targeting Islamic State Training Camps. Is there anything that Obama has not distorted for political purposes? — DM)

“Analysts,” reports the Daily Beast, “have been pushed to portray the group as weaker than the analysts believe it actually is.” This sort of dishonesty helps no one—except a president whose primary concern is leaving office with his reputation for ending wars intact, and the military brass who wish to remain in his good graces.

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The anniversary of the U.S. war against the Islamic State passed with little notice. It was August 7 of last year that President Obama authorized the first airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq, a campaign he expanded a month later to include targets in Syria. So far this month, the president has delivered remarks on the Voting Rights Act, his deal with Iran, the budget, clean energy, and Hurricane Katrina. ISIS? Not a peep.

Obama’s quiet because the war is not going well. Despite the loss of Tikrit earlier this year, the Islamic State’s western boundary is stable, and its eastern boundary now encroaches on Damascus. The president’s air campaign is one of the most limited and desultory America has fought in decades—ranking last in daily averages of strike sorties and bombs dropped. In late July, when the Turks permitted America the use of their air bases to launch attacks on ISIS, a “senior administration official” told the New York Times that the decision was “a game changer.” In the ensuing days the number of airstrikes in Syria actually fell.

The growing number of U.S. advisers—there are now more than 3,300 American military personnel in Iraq—has been unable to repair the damage wrought on the Iraqi Army by sectarian and political purges after our 2011 withdrawal. Even as the administration brags about killing more than 10,000 ISIS terrorists, a number that strains credulity, the Caliphate has become more deeply entrenched in its territory, and inspires attacks abroad.

Meanwhile the congressional authorization that the president sought is dead. One of our most gifted generals predicts the conflict will last “10 to 20 years.” And now comes news that the Pentagon is investigating whether intelligence assessments of ISIS have been manipulated for political reasons. “Analysts,” reports the Daily Beast, “have been pushed to portray the group as weaker than the analysts believe it actually is.” This sort of dishonesty helps no one—except a president whose primary concern is leaving office with his reputation for ending wars intact, and the military brass who wish to remain in his good graces.

What’s especially galling about this allegation is that Obama and the Democratic Party have spent years spuriously accusing President Bush of lying the United States into war in 2003. Spend a moment thinking of what the news cycle would be if George W. were still our president and the Pentagon inspector general opened an investigation into whether the bureaucracy was sprucing up intelligence to make it politically palatable: The chorus of “Bush lied, people died” would be deafening, Congress would demand investigations, the national security leak machine would start humming, John Conyers would reconvene his mock impeachment hearing, and the entire controversy would be set against the backdrop of antiwar marches and publicized denunciations of militaristic policy. What have we instead? ABC’s Good Morning America mentioned the Pentagon investigation. No other broadcast network did.

It’s an unanticipated consequence of Barack Obama’s presidency: his immobilization of the antiwar legions, the way his election immediately neutered the zealots who, if a Republican were in office, would be marching against drone strikes and mass surveillance and war in Afghanistan and air war in Libya, Syria, Iraq and proxy war in Yemen. What does it say about the left that the most spirited attacks on Obama national security policy have come from the right: On drones, surveillance, and congressional authorization for war, you are far more likely to hear criticism from Ted Cruz or Rand Paul than from the politicians who rode into office denouncing Bush’s misadventure in Iraq. The protestors who flooded New York in 2004 and fell to the ground at the D.C. “Die-In” in 2007—they either support the president or are too busy with Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter to care.

Obama has thus been allowed to wage a war for more than a year not only without the authorization he called for but also without the accountability that pressure from his left would bring. He’s flying solo, and below him are an endless, inconclusive war, a terrorist state built on sharia law and sex slavery, rampant chemical weapons use, civilian casualties, and a refugee crisis that is causing social, economic, and political instability in Europe. The only thing missing from this picture is outrage—elite fury over the geopolitical and humanitarian results of the president’s evasive policy, of doing only the bare minimum necessary to convince people that you aren’t ignoring the problem.

There’s no outrage because the media, our bipartisan political establishment, and indeed the American people themselves are unwilling to face the scope of the challenge the Islamic State presents. To uproot it we would have to send U.S. ground forces to Iraq in large numbers, not just special forces operating in tandem with unrestricted air support. We would have to retake and hold ground lost in the years since we departed Iraq, and we would have to commit to remaining in Iraq and Syria for a long time. To deal a blow to radical Islam that would deter recruitment, stop the bandwagon effect, and secure America from attack by militants and their fellow-travelers would require a military and economic commitment the United States, and least of all our president, is simply not prepared to make.

Easier to perform the illusion of activity, of success and advance, so that all the boxes are checked, all our consciences placated. Easier to pretend that the problem of ISIS can be “contained” and that our new ally Iran can handle the situation in its emerging capacity as regional hegemon. Easier to go about our business, to spin or outright ignore the war our country has been waging in Iraq and Syria for more than a year. So much easier not to worry about what’s happening over there—until, that is, the enemy attacks us here.

Categories: Air strikes, Denial, Foreign policy, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Islamism, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, Terrorism, U.S. combat troops, U.S. politics
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Dividing the Arabs: America and Europe’s Double Game

August 29, 2015

Dividing the Arabs: America and Europe’s Double Game, The Gatestone Institute, Bassam Tawil, August 29, 2015

  • Iran is on its way in a few years to having nuclear weapons capability. The breakout time, according to President Obama, would effectively be “zero.” Iran could then make as many bombs as it would like, along with intercontinental ballistic missiles to delver them to major American cities, directly from Iran, from South America, or — making identification and retaliation impossible — from submarines submerged off the U.S. coast.
  • Obama with one hand allows Iran to glide to nuclear capability and encourage the Muslim Brotherhood and similar Islamist terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State in the Sinai Peninsula — while with the other hand, he claims to support Israel.
  • Qatar’s role is duplicitous. It plays host to U.S. military bases at the same time that it funds and supports ISIS.
  • Hamas, since last year’s war, has chosen to use its scant resources to rebuild its kidnapping tunnels and war capability, instead of developing businesses and turning the Gaza Strip into a magnificent Arab Riviera, as Dubai has become. Hamas’s failure does not come from a lack of resources; it comes from a deliberate choice of how to use them.
  • The Iranians, in opposing American policy, which is a tissue of amateur plans and plots, are flexible and exploit Islam’s taqiyya [dissimulation] — religious approval to lie in the cause of Allah and to further Islam. However, they are not even bothering with that, they are telling the truth: “Death to America; Death to Israel.”

The United States is playing a double game in the Middle East: empowering Shiite Iran, while at the same time enabling Sunni ISIS to overthrow the moderate Arab regimes, as if to stop Iran.

The Americans are well aware that the Sunni Arab countries around Iran will now have to arm themselves to the teeth, thereby gutting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

America, despite its power and the image it projects of working against ISIS in Iraq, does not touch ISIS in its real headquarters, Syria, where ISIS actually could actually be hurt. So nothing really changes, and both Iran and ISIS continue to strengthen.

Even as the members the UN Security Council, eager do business with Iran, voted to allow Iran to build nuclear weapons, the Iranians continue to fund Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip — all Iranian proxies — in order to split the Arab ranks.

In other words, the hypocritical Obama administration, in backing the Iranians, keeps trying to sabotage the Arabs and provoke dissension.

The U.S. “divide-and-conquer” policy can also be seen in America’s ongoing support for Turkey and Qatar, both loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey and Qatar, however, do nothing but foment incitement and support terrorist organizations. Both countries have totally abandoned the real existential interest of the Arab nation: its historic battle against Iran.

Qatar’s role is duplicitous. It plays host to U.S. military bases at the same time that it funds and supports ISIS, which is working against the West and against moderate Arab regimes.

The worst, however, is Turkey, which supports ISIS — the enemy of the West — despite Turkey being a member of NATO. Turkey also expends inordinate efforts at retaining its control of occupied Cyprus. Above all, its hypocrisy is scandalous. While it claims to care about the independence and human rights of the Palestinians, Turkey is really nothing but a radical Islamist country now denying independence and human rights to its own Kurdish citizens. At the same time, it supports Hamas and Iran in their effort to crush the unity of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the PLO as the only legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people.

Turkey, like many other nations, including the countries that negotiated with Iran, is just waiting for the sanctions to be lifted from Iran, so that its dubious military and economic relations with the Mullahs will finally be acceptable.

Turkey and Qatar have also divided the Sunni Islamic camp and fragmented the Arab ranks. Both countries give the Palestinians political support, the deluded hope of “return,” and funding that is used for rebuilding Hamas’s military capabilities and kidnapping tunnels.

It is both folly and underhandedness for the United States to provide these countries with even a tattered umbrella of military aid.

Not only the U.S. but Europe, which supports Iran, would like to see Hamas — a terrorist offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood — become stronger at the expense of the Palestinian people.

Europe would like to empower Hamas even further by handing it diplomatic and political support. There are rumors that the UN is planning to grant Hamas observer status in the General Assembly, as it did the Palestinian Authority.

We all know that the issue of Palestine could have been resolved long ago by establishing a demilitarized Palestinian state next to Israel, and giving the descendants of the original Palestinian refugees living in the Arab states full citizenship. But the manipulations employed by the Europeans and Americans deliberately perpetuate the Palestinian issue by using “good cop – bad cop” tactics. (Emphasis added. — DM)

Europe and the U.S. whitewash not only Hamas’s threats to Israel, but also, more importantly, its deadly subversion of Palestinian Authority. Both Europe and America totally disregard Hamas’s planned coup against PA leader Mahmoud Abbas last year, Hamas’s war crimes in the Gaza Strip, and the unspeakable treatment of its own people at home. Only one year ago, Hamas was murdering its own citizens extra-judicially, and ordering them to be cannon fodder for the benefit of international television crews.

Hamas, since then, has chosen to use its scant resources to rebuild its kidnapping tunnels and war capability, instead of to develop businesses and turn the Gaza Strip into a magnificent Arab Riviera, as Dubai has become. Hamas’s failure does not come from a lack of resources; it comes from a deliberate choice of how to use them.

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are now operating against Egypt and Israel not only from the Gaza Strip, but from the Sinai Peninsula as well. Thus, in addition to allowing Iran to sail to nuclear weapons capability, President Obama encourages the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State in the Sinai Peninsula with one hand, while with the other hand he claims to support Israel.

After all is said and done, if we Arabs had joined ranks — even temporarily and even with Israel — we could have long ago put a stop to Iran’s plans for expansion.

But because of our own shortsightedness, we waited too long and now the Iranians have established footholds in the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea, and are increasing their control of Arab states such as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

Iran is on its way in a few years to having nuclear weapons capability. The breakout time, according to President Obama, would effectively be “zero.” Iran could then make as many bombs as it would like, along with intercontinental ballistic missiles to delver them to the major cities of the “Great Satan,” the United States, directly from Iran, from South America, or — making identification and retaliation impossible — from submarines submerged off the U.S. coast.

The Iranians, in opposing American policy, which is a tissue of amateur plans and plots, are flexible and exploit Islam’s taqiyya [dissimulation] — religious approval to lie in the cause of Allah and to further Islam. However, they are not even bothering with that, they are telling the truth: “Death to America; Death to Israel.”

1225U.S. President Barack Obama (left). Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (right).

By this point, near the end of the process of Sunni Muslim self-destruction, a large part of the Arabs’ energy has been wasted on internal wars and the misallocation of resources to the barren, useless confrontation with Israel, even while many Arab states secretly collaborate with the Zionists.

All that will be left for the Arabs will be to continue to argue among themselves and with the Israelis about the Palestinian issue. We should instead stop the distractions and the wounds we are inflicting upon ourselves, and put the Palestinian problem behind us by granting equal rights and citizenship to Palestinians residing in Arab countries, in order to shift our focus totally, if belatedly, to the real battle: The Islamic Republic of Iran.

Categories: Arab nations, Arabs, Foreign policy, Hamas, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Islamism, Israel, Middle East, Obama, Obama and Israel, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace process, Sunni states
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Israel will Never be a Second Czechoslovakia

August 29, 2015

Israel will Never be a Second Czechoslovakia, American Thinker, Shoula Romano Horing, August 29, 2015

(Obama loves Israel to death. Or tries.

Obama first Jewish president

— DM)

Israel is not like the Czechoslovakia of 1938 and never will be. Israel is an independent military and nuclear power that intends to use its right of self-defense against Iran and its terrorist proxies whether “Emperor” Obama  likes it or not, or tries to stop it.

Obama and his army of Democratic followers in the Congress, progressive groups, and the media repeatedly state their main argument in favor of the agreement, which is that Israel is the only country in the world opposing the Iran nuclear deal. First,  It seems that President  Obama  and his supporters have not paid attention to a recent CNN poll taken on  August 20  that  found that 60 percent of Americans  disapprove of how Obama is handling the Iran deal, and  56 percent  believe that Congress should reject it.

Secondly, like any other self-respecting sovereign country, Israel is against any deal that threatens her own survival by an evil Jihadist Islamic state clearly intent on its annihilation, which is being imposed on her by world powers as a fait accompli.

It seems that Obama and his supporters are delusional, expecting that Israel will allow itself to become a second Czechoslovakia. They are outraged and shocked that Israel has not only refused to quietly accept this very bad deal but dares to fight the deal publicly, loudly, and proudly.

Like Czechoslovakia in 1938, Israel is a small democracy surrounded by hostile nations, and like Czechoslovakia, it was excluded from negotiations that led to a diplomatic deal that shapes its fate and threatens its survival. In 1938, the enlightened democracies in Europe decided to sacrifice Czechoslovakia for a comfortable, temporary solution. The Munich agreement was signed, when Britain and France believed that handing Czechoslovakia to Hitler was the only way to save the world from another war. It is regarded as the shameful culmination of the Allies refusal to confront Nazi aggression and gave Hitler what he wanted in exchange for his verbal promise of “peace in our time” as Neville Chamberlain called it.

In his biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Champion of Freedom, Conrad Black recalls the scene when the poor Czechoslovakian delegates were brought into the room to be informed of their nation’s fate as set out in the Munich Agreement. “No Czech answer was requested. They were handed a fait accompli. The Czechs wept, and Hubert Masarik (Czech diplomat attending the Munich conference) said, prophetically and justly: ‘They don’t know what they are doing to us or to themselves.… These poor, good men were the final players in a macabre and shameful Gothic tragedy.”

The Jewish state has for 67 years been mourning its beloved soldiers who have courageously died defending it from the evil regimes that surround her. However, it will never weep over a deal imposed on it by a morally bankrupt world. Those days of passivity were over when the enormity of the Holocaust was revealed. The Jewish state has been fighting for itself on its own since its independence.

Obama’s threats of a military attack on Iran when violations of the deal occur are not taken seriously by anyone and are a source of laughter for the Iranian regime. Israel does not need  the U.S. or any another party to save her but it does need for Obama and the world powers to move away from Israel’s path and let it do everything in its means to minimize the nuclear threat, and the more menacing conventional  threat resulting from the hundreds of  billions of dollars Iran and its terrorist proxies will get  from the deal.

For the last two years, Obama has been trying to tie Israeli hands and prevent it from practicing its right to self-defense against Iran. Dan Raviv from CBS News reported in March 2014, that the Obama’s administration has asked Israel to stop killing key scientists in the Iranian nuclear program while Obama has been negotiating. In an August interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon implicitly warned that the assassinations could be renewed by saying;” I am not responsible for the lives of Iranian scientists.’

But much worse, in Article 10 of the deal, Obama and world powers have agreed that they will assist Iran in thwarting attempts to undermine its nuclear program. The agreement stipulates that they, with the Iranians, will foster “cooperation through training  and workshops to strengthen Iran’s ability to protect against and respond to, nuclear security threats, including sabotage, as well as to enable effective  and sustainable nuclear security  and physical protection systems.”

Recent years have seen various mishaps befall the Iranian nuclear program, from powerful computer viruses to the death of the nuclear scientists, which world media outlets have often attributed to the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. According to an audio recording with former Defense Minister Ehud Barak leaked to an Israeli television channel on August 22, Israeli leaders planned to attack military targets in Iran in 2010, 2011, and 2012 but were held back due to the opinions of other government and military leaders.

It is quite disturbing that the U.S. as well as the U.K., Russia, China, France, and Germany will actively try to prevent covert actions against the Iranian nuclear program, as well as any potential military operation against Iran, making such options far more complicated and dangerous for a country like Israel. Congress should ask Obama whether he will order U.S. jets to shoot down Israeli jets intent on destroying an Iranian nuclear weapon facility.

The Congressional Democrats must not repeat the mistakes of the past and sacrifice the future for the present; The Democrats must not ignore Iranian aggression in the hopes of gaining an illusory peace. A vote for the deal is a vote for the beginning of the next war between Israel and Iran and its proxies. The Jewish people can never again remain passive in the face of genocidal enemies.

 

Categories: Czechoslovakia, Death to Israel, Denial, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Hitler, Iran / Israel War, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Israel, Jews, Munich, Nazis, Obama, Obama and Israel, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, U.S. Congress, U.S. politics
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Resolving the Syrian war is not the silver bullet for stopping ISIS

August 29, 2015

Resolving the Syrian war is not the silver bullet for stopping ISIS, DEBKAfile, August 29, 2015

(Please see also, Pentagon Not Targeting Islamic State Training Camps. — DM)

jISIS_mobile_defense_of_SVBIED_8.15ISIS “mobile defense SVBIED” in action in Iraq

President Obama may likewise offer King Salman all sorts of assistance for standing up to ISIS, but he will find no buyers in Riyadh for his failed policy of reliance on Saudi Arabia’s rival, Iran, for liquidating the Islamist threat looming against the oil kingdom from neighboring Iraq.  Neither is US aid much use for stemming the tide of pro-ISIS radicalism spreading among young Saudi men.

As matters stand today, therefore, the Islamic State faces no tangible threat – even if Iran does go ahead and achieve a nuclear bomb.

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The war to stop the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has entered a dark tunnel. And with it the bottomless conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Libya and Iraq. The search for a ray of light moves next week from Moscow to Washington, when Saudi King Salman Bin Abdulaziz makes his first visit as monarch for talks with President Barack Obama.

The three worried Arab rulers received in the Kremlin Tuesday, Aug. 25, by President Vladimir Putin could only talk in circles: Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi,is  embattled on three fronts, Sinai, his border with Libya and Cairo; Jordan’s King Abdullah II – is wedged between two wars; and UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has sent his army to fight the Yemen insurgency alongside Saudi Arabia.

For them, resolving the Syrian conflict looked like the silver bullet, the key to ending all their troubles. But whichever Russian or Iranian plans and ideas they considered for a way forward, they were all forced to come back to the same impasse. Even Putin and Obama can’t get around or ignore two solid facts:

1. In the year since the US built an international coalition for fighting ISIS, the brutal Islamists have not been cut down; they have instead been empowered to seize more turf outside their Iraqi and Syrian conquests, such big oil fields in Libya, an ascending threat to Egypt and big plans for Lebanon.

2. A major letdown has followed on the high hopes reposed in Iran. The nuclear deal negotiated with the six world powers – and the elevated regional status conferred on Iran – hinged closely on US expectations that Tehran would put up effective military resources for tackling ISIS.

But the Revolutionary Guards, the popular Syrian and Iraqi forces the Guards established,and  the Afghan and Pakistani Shiite militias they imported – none have proved a match for ISIS and jihadi tactics.

In Syria, ISIS stands fast, unthreatened in the terrain, towns and oil fields they have captured, in the past year – excepting only on fringe fronts, where they have been forced back by local Kurdish rebel fighters.

Hizballah is a big part of the disappointment. It was supposed to serve as a bulwark against ISIS invading eastern Lebanon from Syria. Instead, these Lebanese Shiite fighters, allies of Assad’s army, are bogged down in a bitter battle for the strategic Syrian town of Zabadani, after failing to breach Syrian rebel defenses in forays from the south, the north or the center.

The door is therefore open for the Islamist State to march into Hizballah’s strongholds in the Lebanese Beqaa valley and head north to the port of Tripoli for a foothold on the Mediterranean.

Whether Bashar Assad stays or goes, which might have made a difference at an early stage of the Syrian insurgency, is irrelevant now that his army and allied forces are in dire straits.

In Iraq, the forces fighting ISIS are equally stumped. The jihadis are in control of a deadly string of  strategic towns, Ramadi, Faluja, the refinery city of Baiji, Mosul, and most of the western province of Anbar, including Haditha which commands a key stretch of the Euphrates River.

Here, too, the Islamist terrorist army’s lines remain intact, unbroken either by the undercover Jordanian Special Forces campaign 200 km inside Anbar, albeit backed by US and Israeli military and intelligence assistance; by the “popular mobilization committees” set up by the Iranian general Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy of the Al Qods chief Qassem Soleimani, or less still by US-trained Iraqi army units.

This week, the impasse spurred two combatants into chilling escalations:

— Iran began shipping its solid propellant missile, Zelzal-3B (meaning “earthquake”), across the border into Iraq, in the hope that this powerful projectile, with a range of 250km , would give the Revolutionary Guards their doomsday weapon for tipping the scales against ISIS.

— The Islamists, for their part, embraced a new tactic, known in the west as “SVBIED mobile defense.” Scores of armed vehicles are packed tight with hundreds of tons of explosives and loosed against military convoys on the move and static enemy positions and bases.

This tactic quickly proved itself by killing the 10th Iraqi Division’s chief, deputy and its command staff, as well as the deputy chief of Iraqi forces in Anbar.

In Moscow last week, Putin offered his three Middle East guests Russian nuclear reactors, arms, joint pacts for fighting terror and assorted ideas for the future of Bashar Assad. But he too had no practical proposals for bringing the Islamic State down.

President Obama may likewise offer King Salman all sorts of assistance for standing up to ISIS, but he will find no buyers in Riyadh for his failed policy of reliance on Saudi Arabia’s rival, Iran, for liquidating the Islamist threat looming against the oil kingdom from neighboring Iraq.  Neither is US aid much use for stemming the tide of pro-ISIS radicalism spreading among young Saudi men.

As matters stand today, therefore, the Islamic State faces no tangible threat – even if Iran does go ahead and achieve a nuclear bomb.

Categories: Assad, Egypt, Foreign policy, Hezbollah, Iran, Iran - Syria war, Iranian proxies, Iraq war, Islamic State, Libya, Middle East, Obama's legacy, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Siani, Sunni states, Syria war
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Pentagon Not Targeting Islamic State Training Camps

August 29, 2015

Pentagon Not Targeting Islamic State Training Camps No airstrikes against 60 camps producing 1,000 fighters monthly

BY:
August 28, 2015 4:40 pm

Source: Pentagon Not Targeting Islamic State Training Camps | Washington Free Beacon

The Pentagon has not conducted airstrikes against an estimated 60 Islamic State (IS) training camps that are supplying thousands of fighters each month to the terror group, according to defense and intelligence officials.

The camps are spread throughout Islamic State-controlled areas of Iraq and Syria and are off limits in the U.S.-led international bombing campaign because of concerns about collateral damage, said officials familiar with planning and execution of the yearlong bombing campaign.

Additionally, the IS (also known as ISIS or ISIL) camps have been so successful that Islamic State leaders are considering expanding the camps to Libya and Yemen. Both states have become largely ungoverned areas in recent years.

The failure to target the training camps with U.S. and allied airstrikes is raising questions among some defense and intelligence officials about the commitment of President Obama and his senior aides to the current anti-IS strategy of degrading and ultimately destroying the terror group.

“If we know the location of these camps, and the president wants to destroy ISIS, why are the camps still functioning?” one official critical of the policy asked.

The camps are regarded by U.S. intelligence analysts as a key element in the terror group’s successes in holding and taking new territory. The main benefit of the training camps is that they are providing a continuous supply of new fighters.

IS training camps

An additional worry of intelligence analysts is that some of the foreign fighters being trained in the camps will eventually return to their home countries in Europe and North America to carry out terror attacks.

A White House spokesman declined to comment on the failure to bomb the terror camps and referred questions to the Pentagon.

Pentagon spokesman Maj. Roger M. Cabiness declined to say why no training camps have been bombed. “I am not going to be able to go into detail about our targeting process,” he said.

Cabiness said the U.S.-led coalition has “hit ISIL [an alternative abbreviation for the Islamic State] with more than 6,000 airstrikes.”

“The coalition has also taken out thousands of fighting positions, tanks, vehicles, bomb factories, and training camps,” he said. “We have also stuck their leadership, including most recently on Aug. 18 when a U.S. military airstrike removed Fadhil Ahmad al-Hayali, also known as Hajji Mutazz, the second in command of the terrorist group, from the battlefield.”

Efforts also are being taken to disrupt IS finances and “make it more difficult for the group to attract new foreign fighters,” Cabiness said in an email.

A Central Command spokesman also declined to provide details of what he said were “operational engagements” against IS training camps.

“Once a target is identified as performing a hostile act, or is part of an obvious hostile force, a training camp for example, we prosecute that target in accordance with the coalition rules of engagement and the law of armed conflict,” the spokesman said.

According to the defense and intelligence officials, one reason the training camps have been off limits is that political leaders in the White House and Pentagon fear hitting them will cause collateral damage. Some of the camps are located near civilian facilities and there are concerns that casualties will inspire more jihadists to join the group.

However, military officials have argued that unless the training camps are knocked out, IS will continue to gain ground and recruit and train more fighters for its operations.

Disclosure that the IS training camps are effectively off limits to the bombing campaign comes as intelligence officials in the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and U.S. Central Command, which is in charge of the conflict, have alleged that senior U.S. officials skewed intelligence reports indicating the U.S. strategy against IS is not working or has been less effective than officials have claimed in public.

The Islamic State controls large parts of Syria and Iraq and has attracted tens of thousands of jihadists in both countries and from abroad. The exact number of fighters is not known but intelligence estimates have indicated the numbers have increased over the past year.

The military campaign, known as Operation Inherent Resolve, appears to be floundering despite a yearlong campaign of airstrikes and military training programs aimed to bolstering Iraqi military forces.

A review of Central Command reports on airstrikes since last year reveals that no attacks were carried out against training camps.

Targets instead included Islamic State vehicles, buildings, tactical units, arms caches, fighting positions, snipers, excavators, mortar and machine gun positions, bunkers, and bomb factories.

The risk-averse nature of the airstrike campaign was highlighted last month by Brig. Gen. Thomas Weidley, chief of staff for what the military calls Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve.

“The coalition continues to use air power responsibly,” Weidley said July 1. “Highly precise deliveries, detailed weaponeering, in-depth target development, collateral damage mitigation, and maximized effects on Daesh, are characteristics of coalition airstrike operation in Iraq and Syria.”

Daesh is another name for the Islamic State.

“The coalition targeting process minimizes collateral damage and maximizes precise effects on Daesh,” Weidley said earlier. “Air crews are making smart decisions and applying tactical patience every day.”

Other coalition spokesman have indicated that targeting has been limited to reaction strikes against operational groups of IS fighters. “When Daesh terrorists expose themselves and their equipment, we will strike them,” Col. Wayne Marotto said May 27.

The military website Long War Journal published a map showing 52 IS training camps and noted that some may no longer be operating because of the U.S.-led bombing campaign.

According the map, among the locations in Iraq and Syria where IS is operating training camps are Mosul, Raqqah, Nenewa, Kobane, Aleppo, Fallujah, and Baiji.

The group MEMRI obtained a video of an IS training camp in Nenewa Province, Iraq, dated Oct. 1, 2014.

The video shows a desert outpost with tan tents and around 100 fighters who take part in hand-to-hand combat exercises, weapons training, and religious indoctrination.

Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, an analyst with the Middle East Forum, in June translated details of IS training purportedly obtained from a manual produced by a pro-IS operative in Mosul named Omar Fawaz.

Among those involved in ideological training for IS jihadists in Iraq is Bahraini cleric Turki Binali, who wrote an unofficial biography of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Al-Tamimi stated in a blog post June 24.

According to a document thought to be written by Fawaz, training differs for native Iraqis and Syrians as opposed to foreign fighters, who generally are less experienced militarily than the regional trainees.

The document also reveals IS plans to export military manpower abroad, including Libya.

“Sessions for the muhajireen [foreign fighters] brothers last 90 days or more, and at the highest level deal with organization, determination, and intelligence operation, including training on heavy weaponry in addition to comprehensive Sharia sessions and multiple tests,” according to a translation of the document. “Sessions for the Ansar from the people of Iraq and al-Sham range between 30 to 50 days.”

The process begins with an application form and questionnaire regarding education, skills, viewpoints, and whether their backgrounds can be verified.

The training then includes physical fitness, martial arts practice, weapons training, and ideological indoctrination.

After a week of training, jihadists with special abilities are selected and placed in units. The units include special forces, air defense, sniper units, a “caliphate army,” an “army of adversity,” and administrative units for those capable of using electronic devices and accounting.

“The rest are distributed in fronts and camps after the end of the military camp training according to where they are needed,” the report said, noting that all graduates are tested in Sharia at the conclusion of their training.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that the Pentagon inspector general is investigating allegations that military officials doctored intelligence reports in an attempt to present more optimistic accounts of the U.S. military’s efforts in the conflict.

The probe was triggered by a DIA analyst who stated that Central Command officials were improperly rewriting intelligence assessments prepared for policy makers, including President Obama.

The Daily Beast reported Wednesday that senior military and intelligence officials inappropriately pressured U.S. terrorism analysts to alter estimates of the strength of the Islamic State to portray the group as weaker.

Central Command, on its website, stated that in the year since the Iraq operation began on Aug. 7, 2014, a total of 6,419 air strikes were carried out.
Targets damaged or destroyed include 119 tanks, 340 Humvees, 510 staging areas, 3,262 buildings, 2,577 fighting positions, 196 oil infrastructure targets, and 3,680 “other” targets not further identified.

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Iran official: We will never end fight against Israel

August 29, 2015

Iran official: We will never end fight against Israel In third successive denial of softened stance, Khamenei aide says fighting ‘illegal Zionist regime’ is ‘immutable policy’ By Times of Israel staff August 29, 2015, 2:47 pm

Source: Iran official: We will never end fight against Israel | The Times of Israel

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, right, welcomes British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond at the start of their meeting in his office, in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Aug. 24, 2015. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, right, welcomes British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond at the start of their meeting in his office, in Tehran, Iran, Monday, Aug. 24, 2015. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

An aide to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday dismissed remarks by British Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond that Tehran has changed its stance on Israel, insisting that fighting the “illegal Zionist regime” is an ongoing policy of the Islamic Republic, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

“[The] fight against the illegal Zionist regime is one of the immutable policies of Iran, which has always been maintained,” Seyed Mahmoud Nabavi said.

Hammond was in Iran on Sunday and Monday for the reopening of the British embassy in Tehran, and said that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani had indicated a “more nuanced approach” to Israel’s existence. Hammond said Khamenei’s “revolutionary sloganizing” should be distinguished from “what Iran actually does in the conduct of its foreign policy.”

Nabavi said Hammond’s comments were “incorrect since one of the driving goals of the Islamic Revolution has been campaign against the arrogant powers,” according to Fars.

“We haven’t recognized the Zionist regime since the beginning of the Islamic Revolution and such a policy will continue,” Nabavi said.

This is the third time this week that a senior Iranian official has repudiated Hammond’s claims of a shift in stance on Israel. The Iranian Foreign Ministry also dismissed the remarks, saying that Israel “had no place in diplomatic talks between Tehran and London,” Fars reported.

“We have rejected such media hype (before) and during Mr. Hammond’s trip to Iran, we just discussed potentials of bilateral relations, fighting extremism and terrorism, etc.,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marziyeh Afkham told reporters in Tehran on Wednesday.

“There were no talks on the Zionist regime and the report that Iran has changed its position is denied,” she said.

On Tuesday, Hussein Sheikholeslam, a foreign affairs adviser to parliament speaker Ali Larijani, said that Israel “should be annihilated,” and that the thawing relations with the West would not translate into a shift in Tehran’s position on the Jewish state.

Sheikholeslam told Iranian media that contrary to remarks by Hammond, “Our positions against the usurper Zionist regime have not changed at all; Israel should be annihilated and this is our ultimate slogan.”

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Trump, Cruz join forces to try to sink Obama’s Iran deal

August 29, 2015

Will rally on Capitol Hill to defeat ‘catastrophic’ agreement

Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas

WASHINGTON – While other Republican presidential candidates are taking swipes at front-runner Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is instead joining forces with him to try to stop President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

Cruz invited Trump to join a Capitol Hill rally and Trump accepted, telling people at an event in South Carolina, it will be “essentially a protest against a totally incompetent deal we’re making with Iran.”

Cruz tweeted that he was glad Trump had accepted the invitation.

A statement from Catherine Frazier, national press secretary for the Cruz presidential campaign, said:

“Sen. Cruz has invited Donald Trump to join him on the Capitol grounds for a rally to call on members of Congress to defeat the catastrophic deal that the Obama administration has struck with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The event will be sponsored by Tea Party Patriots, Center for Security Policy, and the Zionist Organization of America. We are thankful for all their hard work on this effort and will have more details on time, date, and location as they are finalized.”

The Tea Party Patriots have since announced the rally will be on Wednesday, Sept. 9, on the West Lawn of the Capitol.

“This deal does not prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons; it virtually guarantees it. Congress must reject this terrible deal,” said Jenny Beth Martin, the CEO and co-founder of Tea Party Patriots.

Donald Trump in Mobile, Alabama

While some of the other GOP candidates, notably Jeb Bush, have attacked Trump and become ensnared in a war of words, Cruz has refrained. The senator has said he agrees with Trump on many key issues.

Trump joked Thursday he wouldn’t “hit” Cruz who has been “so nice.” But Trump kiddingly added, “I may have to if he starts getting really close.”

Cruz and Trump met earlier this summer in New York but did not reveal what they discussed.

Obama’s Iran deal has been blasted by critics as dangerously unrealistic.

Even top Democrats have come out against it.

Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Bob Menendez, D-N.J., both plan to vote for an upcoming Senate bill disapproving of the deal.

J.B. Pritzker, a lifelong Democrat who chaired Hillary’s 2008 campaign, wrote last week:

“Regrettably, the Iran deal fails to meet these goals and raises the prospects for war … By legitimizing Iran’s nuclear program, removing the pressure of economic sanctions and allowing it to obtain conventional weapons and ballistic missiles, this agreement makes the prospect for war more likely, not less.”

President Bill Clinton’s CIA director, James Woolsey, also wrote last week:

“Congress must stop President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. The most important reason — Iran can threaten the existence of the United States by making an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack using a single nuclear weapon.”

WND has worked extensively with one of the groups sponsoring the anti-Iran deal rally, the Center for Security Policy.

Middle East analyst Clare Lopez of the Center for Security Policy

Clare Lopez, the group’s vice president, is one of the top experts on Iran.

She told WND the Cruz and Trump rally is “a great development, because these two are among the sharpest, best-informed of the entire candidate lineup,” and that the duo “speak out forthrightly about what they believe.”

“To see them taking a public stance against this disaster of a deal is important and encouraging,” concluded Lopez.

Earlier this week, she told WND she concurred with the detailed assessment recently published by John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., that only a military strike can now stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

And Lopez told WND she agreed that such a strike “does not necessarily mean all-out war.”

While she also agreed with Bolton that stopping President Obama’s nuclear deal will not prevent Iran from getting the bomb, Lopez still stressed the importance of having Congress reject the agreement.

She insisted it’s worth voting down the deal as an expression of the will of the American people and their recognition that it is a bad deal, and because there seems to be some indication that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei will make his own decision, up or down, based on the vote in Congress.

“As Iranian experts have explained to me, and as (Iran expert and former Harvard professor) Daniel Pipes has also written, there is strong opposition to this deal inside the Iranian regime itself. And the embarrassment before the world should Congress indeed vote it down would be unbearable to the supreme leader,” said Lopez.

She said that means Khamenei “cannot get out in front. Nor is the Majlis (the Iranian parliament) likely to vote on it before Congress. This makes Congress’s vote even more important than many may realize.”

Lopez was an instructor for military intelligence and special forces students; has been a consultant, intelligence analyst and researcher within the defense sector; has published two books on Iran; and has an analytical acumen honed by 20 years as a CIA field operative.

She appeared as a speaker at a “Stop Iran Rally” recently in Cleveland and another rally in Santa Barbara, California, on Sunday.

National Security Adviser Susan RIce, Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama

“Absolutely insane,” was the succinct reaction from Lopez to WND on the revelations last week of details in the secret side deals in Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran.

The Associated Press had confirmed a pair of stunning details in the agreement:

  • A secret side deal  lets Iran decide which sites to inspect.
  • The side deal also lets Iran do the inspections at a key site.

AP reported it had reviewed a document outlining the side deal between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA.

In a nutshell, the secret side deal would:

  • Let Iran use its own inspectors to investigate the Parchin site where experts suspect it has been developing nuclear arms.
  • Let Iran provide the IAEA its own photos and and videos of suspect locations, while, “taking into account military concerns.”
  • AP said that wording suggests international inspectors will be barred from sites Iran declares have “military concerns.”
  • AP said the wording also suggests the IAEA won’t get photo or video information from areas Iran says are off limits because they have military significance.
  • While the document says the IAEA “will ensure the technical authenticity” of Iran’s inspection, it does not say how.

“Never before did the IAEA simply allow a party suspected of violations to inspect themselves,” a stunned Lopez told WND.

There is apparently more than one side deal.

AP reported the document is labeled “separate arrangement II,” which indicates there is at least one more confidential agreement between the IAEA and Iran.

AP said the document it reviewed is a draft, but “one official familiar with its contents said it doesn’t differ substantially from the final version.”

The IAEA chief told Republican senators two weeks ago that he could not let them see the side deal.

“Enough,” responded Cruz.

“Enough of the concessions, capitulations and backroom deals that make up President Obama’s catastrophic nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The most recent revelation that Iran will be selecting its own inspectors to verify the nature of its nuclear program is made all the more egregious by the fact that as the single largest contributor to the IAEA (support that is mandated in the deal) United States taxpayers will be paying for a farce that is a direct threat to their own security.”

Cruz concluded, “This is not a partisan issue. It is not about President Obama’s political legacy. It is about the future of our country, and that of our allies. We have to stop this disastrous deal.”

Iran nuclear deal negotiators

Lopez rhetorically asked WND: “Why do inspections at all at sites deemed ‘suspect’ if those suspected of doing something that violates the deal are going to be trusted, essentially, with inspecting themselves?

“Was there ever anything more absurd?” she wondered incredulously.

“That’s not how the IAEA inspects any other country with a nuclear program. When (former Libyan leader Moammar) Gadhafi gave up his weapons of mass destruction program, the various agency inspectors were given access everywhere to verify that he’d genuinely given up.

“When South Africa terminated its nuclear weapons program under IAEA supervision, the government welcomed the inspectors and gave them access to wherever they needed to go. It’s attitude was one of cooperation and transparency. That’s not how Saddam Hussein behaved, and it’s not how Iran’s regime is behaving now,” she concluded.

Critics of the Iran deal say it is based on trust of the Iranian regime while the administration claimed on Wednesday “the IAEA has separately developed the most robust inspection regime ever peacefully negotiated.”

AP reported, “The agreement in question diverges from normal procedures by allowing Tehran to employ its own experts and equipment in the search for evidence of activities it has consistently denied – trying to develop nuclear weapons.”

The deputy IAEA director general in charge of the Iran probe from 2005 to 2010 told AP he could think of no similar concession with any other country.

Satellite image of Parchin nuclear facility

Secretary of State John Kerry said in April that, under the deal, Iran would allow the IAEA to inspect anywhere it wants. He would later deny saying that, while testifying under oath to Congress.

After the deal was concluded, Kerry told senators on July 23 he “never uttered the words anywhere, anytime” regarding inspections of Iran’s facilities, and claimed “it was never part of negotiations.”

That’s not what the Obama administration said in April, and it directly contradicted what Deputy National Security adviser Ben Rhodes promised back then, when he said the International Atomic Energy Agency would have immediate access to any Iranian nuclear site.

Rhodes has since flip-flopped and directly contradicted himself.

On April 6, he said, “Under this deal, you will have anywhere, anytime, 24/7 access as it relates to the nuclear facilities that Iran has.”

On July 14, he said, “We never sought in this negotiation the capacity for so-called anytime, anywhere” inspections.

Parchin is just one of the sites where Iran has not permitted IAEA inspectors to go.

Iran has denied any nuclear weapons work was done at Parchin but has never allowed access to the site. The IEAE suspects Iran experimented on nuclear detonators at Parchin, based on U.S., Israeli and other intelligence.

Work at Parchin stopped more than decade ago, but the IAEA has cited satellite image evidence of apparent attempts to clean the site.

Lopez told WND in April that if “you read between the lines” of its report back in November 2011, it was clear that even the IAEA believed Iran had been working on a nuclear warhead as well as the explosive triggers for initiating the implosion sequence.

She also said, “All the evidence suggests Iran already has nuclear warheads.”

Worse yet, she said the Obama administration almost certainly knows that.

“IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) reporting over recent years indicates at a minimum they strongly suspect that Iran already has built nuclear warheads. It’s certainly known that Iran has long range ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles.)”

Lopez added, “They’ve had the information how to build a warhead for a long time. They’ve had expert assistance from, at a minimum, North Korea and Pakistan.”

“They’re documented by the IAEA as having engaged in activities related to warhead development. There are satellite images from Parchin of what are believed to be ‘containers’ in which warhead triggers were tested. And Iranian officials have been reported present in North Korea during nuclear tests.”

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2015/08/trump-cruz-join-forces-to-try-to-sink-obamas-iran-deal/#Sab8UVJE8vcsQuc6.99

Source: Trump, Cruz join forces to try to sink Obama’s Iran deal

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