VIENNA—Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday that the United States and Iran may fail to reach a final nuclear agreement despite the talks being extended past their June 30 deadline so that the sides could hash out remaining differences over the scope and scale of the Islamic Republic’s contested nuclear program.
Western observers suggested the statement from Kerry was designed to provide cover for the administration if a deal with wide-ranging concessions to Iran is struck.
Kerry told reporters in a brief press conference Sunday afternoon that he is prepared to leave town without a deal that has been viewed as the Obama administration’s biggest foreign policy priority.
“I want to be absolutely clear with everybody: We are not yet where we need to be on several of the most difficult issues,” Kerry said. “And the truth is that while I completely agree with Foreign Minister [Javad] Zarif that we have never been closer, at this point, this negotiation could go either way.”
“If hard choices get made in the next couple of days and made quickly, we could get an agreement this week. But if they are not made, we will not,” Kerry said.
Critics of the administration were not impressed by Kerry’s tough stance.
Asked by the Washington Free Beacon about Kerry’s remarks, one Western observer present in Vienna visibly rolled his eyes and said, “If the State Department thinks they’re fooling anybody, they are literally the only ones who think that.”
U.S. officials and diplomats have been quiet in public, declining to brief reporters on record about the status of the talks and what a final deal could look like.
If a deal is not reached by July 7, it is expected that the world powers and Iran will not make one.
“If we don’t get a deal, if we don’t have a deal, if there’s absolute intransigence, if there’s an unwillingness to move on the things that are important, President Obama has always said we’ll be prepared to walk away,” Kerry said.
The secretary also defended a virtual news blackout that has left reporters with very little insight into the status of the critical talks.
“In the coming hours and days we’re going to go as hard as we can. We are not going to be negotiating in the press,” Kerry said. “We’ll be negotiating privately and quietly. And when the time is right, we will all have more to say.”
Asked if he thinks a deal in attainable in the announced time period, Kerry demurred.
“Right now we’re aiming to try to finish this in the timeframe that we’ve set out,” he said. “That’s our goal and we’re going to put every bit of pressure possible on it to try to do so.”
Shortly after Kerry’s remarks, he walked back into another meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif.
Iranian officials also remained quiet over the weekend, but have hinted that disagreements remain over the future scope of Iran’s nuclear program and the timetable in which international sanctions will be removed.
Wire reports have claimed in recent days that the United States and Iran are close to sorting out the sanctions issue, which has remained one of the most contested issues in the talks.
U.S. lawmakers and other critics have expressed repeated concerns that Iran will pocket billions of dollars in sanctions relief while doing little to stop its most controversial nuclear work.
Meanwhile, Iran announced on Sunday that Russia had agreed to supply it with a range of naval equipment.
“Talks between the Iranian delegation and the Russian side were held at the International Maritime Defense Show (IMDS) in St. Petersburg on Saturday. They spoke about boosting bilateral military-technical cooperation, including on deliveries of a wide range of naval equipment and armaments,” an Iranian military official was quoted as saying in the country’s state-run press.
(The views expressed in this post are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
Napoleon sometimes claimed to be a Muslim. Obama often claims to be a Christian. Napoleon sought, and Obama seeks, power and glory through pretense.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon’s life and history are summarized at Wikipedia. He supported the French Revolution and was appointed General of the Army of Italy at the age of twenty-five. Three years later, he commanded an expedition against Egypt. This post compares his and Obama’s religious and political efforts to gain the confidence of Muslims. The lengthy quotations provided in this section of the post are from Worlds at War – the 2,500 year struggle between East and West, 2008, by Anthony Pagden.
While en route to conquer Egypt, Napoleon had his “Orientalists” compose a “Proclamation to the Egyptians.”
It is worth taking a closer look at this document for it summarizes not only the French hopes for the ‘Orient’, but also the ultimate failure of both sides to come to any approximate understanding of each other. It began with a familiar Muslim invocation: ‘In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. There is no God but God. He has no son nor has he any associate in His Dominion’, which was intended to indicate clearly that the French were not Christians. It then went on to assure the Egyptian people that Napoleon Bonaparte, commander of the French army, and ‘on behalf of the French Republic which is based upon the foundations of Liberty and Equality’, had not come to Egypt, as the Mamluks had put it about, ‘like the Crusaders’ in order to destroy the power of Islam. Nothing, Napoleon assured his readers, could be further from the truth. Tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring to you your rights from the oppressors, that I, more than the Mam-luks, serve God— may He be praised and Exalted— and revere his prophet Muhammad and the glorious Qur’an … And tell them also that all people are equal in the eyes of God and that the circumstances which distinguish one from another are reason, virtue and knowledge. 578 Having thus done his best to conflate the principle of human rights— in a language in which there exists no obvious translation for the word ‘right’ 579— with what the Orientalists had persuaded him were the basic tenets of Islam, the man whom Victor Hugo would later describe as the ‘Muhammad of the West’ continued,
O ye Qadis [judges], Shaykhs and Imams; O ye Sharbajiyya [cavalry officers] and men of circumstance tell the nation that the French are also faithful Muslims and in confirmation of this they invaded Rome and destroyed there the Holy See, which was always exhorting the Christians to make war on Islam. And then they went to the island of Malta from where they expelled the knights who claimed that God the Exalted required them to fight the Muslims. 580 [Emphasis added.]
It is hard to say how much Napoleon believed in all this. One of his generals later told a friend in Toulouse that ‘we tricked the Egyptians with our feigned love of their religion, in which Bonaparte and we no more believe in than we do in that of the late pope’. 582 But Napoleon’s personal beliefs were largely beside the point. The point was policy. Napoleon had always practised religious toleration because he knew that religious faiths could make deadly enemies. Toleration, however, was one thing; credence, even respect, was another. It is indeed highly unlikely that Napoleon had read much of the Qur’an he claimed to venerate. As he told Madame de Rémusant, the only holy book which would have been of any interest to him would have been one he had written himself. [Pagden, pp 326 – 327] [Emphasis added.]
Egyptians did not appreciate Napoleon’s Proclamation.
Just as most Muslims today have failed to be persuaded that Western social values can be made compatible with the Holy Law, the Shari’a, so too were the Egyptians who confronted Napoleon. We know something of how they reacted to Napoleon’s profession of love for Islam from the account of the first seven months of the occupation written by a member of the diwan— or Imperial Council— of Cairo named Abd-al Rahman al-Jabarti. Al-Jabarti was a well-read perceptive man who was not unimpressed by French skills and technology (he was particularly taken by the wheelbarrow) and ungrudgingly admired French courage and discipline on the battlefield, which he compared, glowingly, to that of the mujahedin, the Muslim warriors of the jihad. 585 But for all that he was a firm Muslim who could conceive of no good, no truth which did not emanate from the word of God as conveyed by the Prophet. He excoriated Napoleon’s declaration for its language, for its poor style, for the grammatical errors, and the ‘incoherent words and vulgar constructions’ with which it was strewn, and which often made nonsense out of what Napoleon had intended to convey— all of which was no tribute to the skills of Venture de Paradis or those of the French Arabists in the expedition. But al-Jabarti reserved his most searing criticism for what he repeatedly describes as French hypocrisy. The opening phrase of the declaration suggested to him not, as Napoleon had meant it to, a preference on the part of a tolerant nation for Islam; but rather that the French gave equal credence to all three religions— Islam, Christianity, and Judaism— which in effect meant that they had no belief in any. Toleration for a Muslim such as al-Jabarti was as meaningless as it would have been for any sincere believer. It was merely a way of condoning error. The years when some kind of rapprochement between Judaism and its two major heresies might have been possible were long since past. There could now be only one true faith, and any number of false ones. Napoleon could not claim to ‘revere’ the Prophet without also believing in his message. The same applied to the Qur’ an. You could not merely ‘respect’ the literal word of God. You had to accept it as the only law, not one among many. ‘This is a lie,’ thundered al-Jabarti; ‘To respect the Qur’an means to glorify it, and one glorifies only by believing in what it contains.’
Napoleon was clearly a liar. Worse he was also the agent of a society which was obviously committed to the elimination, not only of Islam, but of all belief, all religion. The invocation of the ‘Republic’, al-Jabarti explained to his Muslim readers, was a reference to the godless state which the French had set up for themselves after they had betrayed and then murdered their ‘Sultan’. By killing Louis XVI, the French had turned against the man they had taken, wrongly because their understanding of God was erroneous, but sincerely nevertheless, to be God’s representative on earth. In his place they had raised an abstraction, this ‘Republic’ in whose name Napoleon, who had come not in peace as he claimed but at the head of a conquering army, now professed to speak. Since for a Muslim there could be no secular state, no law which is not also God’s law, the French insistence that it was only ‘reason, virtue and knowledge’ which separated one man from another was clearly an absurdity. For ‘God’, declared al-Jabarti, ‘has made some superior to others as is testified by the dwellers in the Heavens and on the Earth.’ There are few things a believer, especially a believer in the fundamental sacredness of a script, dislikes more than a non-believer. To al-Jabarti the French seemed to be not would-be Muslims, but atheists. [Emphasis added.] [Id. at 329].
Obama
Napoleon, in his mix of religious and political doctrine, was a power-grubbing scoundrel and liar. How about Obama?
Obama has not claimed to be a Muslim and I don’t know what He is. To claim to be a Muslim would be politically inexpedient. However, He has proclaimed His respect and even reverence for Islam and for the “Holy” Qur’an.
overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.
Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance. . . . People in every country should be free to choose and live their faith based upon the persuasion of the mind and the heart and the soul. This tolerance is essential for religion to thrive, but it’s being challenged in many different ways. [Emphasis added.]
“Tolerance? Egyptian President al-Sisi is remarkable among Muslim leaders for his efforts to promote religious tolerance. Obama appears to despise him for supporting massive public protests against President Morsi and eventually becoming president. Morsi was a Muslim Brotherhood supporter and Obama appears to cherish the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization.
Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism — it is an important part of promoting peace.
And, as Obama tells us, the Islamic State and other such groups are not Islamic.
That sort of stuff didn’t work out well for Napoleon. Are Islamists more dedicated to religious tolerance now than in the days of Napoleon? It does not seem that they are. See, e.g., Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other Islamic nations.
The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. But to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated, or churches that are destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied.
He sought power and glory by opposing those who offend “slander” Islam, including the maker of the You Tube video on which He and others in His administration blamed “spontaneous” September 11, 2011 “demonstrations” at the U.S. Benghazi annex.
I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing to do with this video, and I believe its message must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity. It is an insult not only to Muslims, but to America as well — for as the city outside these walls makes clear, we are a country that has welcomed people of every race and every faith. We are home to Muslims who worship across our country. We not only respect the freedom of religion, we have laws that protect individuals from being harmed because of how they look or what they believe. We understand why people take offense to this video because millions of our citizens are among them.
I know there are some who ask why we don’t just ban such a video. And the answer is enshrined in our laws: Our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech.
Obama, who claims to want a peaceful “two state solution” for the Israelis and Palestinians, has said little if anything about the propensity of Israel’s “peace partner,” the Palestinian Authority, to slander Israel and Judaism on a daily basis while honoring those who murder Jews.
Obama’s romance with Islam
Daniel Greenfield recently wrote a Front Page Magazine article titled Barack Obama’s Unholy Alliance: A Romance With Islamism. Please read the whole thing; it’s long but well worth the time. Mr. Greenfield notes, in connection with the Benghazi attack,
When the killing in Benghazi was done, the Jihadists left behind the slogan “Allahu Akbar” or “Allah is Greater” scrawled on the walls of the American compound.[6] These were the same words that Obama had recited “with a first-rate accent” for the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof. Obama had called it [the Islamic call to prayer] “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth.”[7] On that too, the murderers of four Americans agreed with him.
Those who disagreed and were to be denied a future included Mark Basseley Youssef, a Coptic Christian, whose YouTube trailer for a movie critical of Islam was blamed by the administration for the attacks.
Two days after Obama’s UN speech, Youssef was arrested and held without bail. The order for his arrest came from the top. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had told Charles Woods, the father of murdered SEAL Tyrone Woods, “We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video.”
The ACLU, which had developed deep Islamist connections,[9] sent a letter to Hillary Clinton thanking her for her support of freedom of speech.[10]
The Supreme Court’s “Miracle Decision”[11] had thrown out a blasphemy ban for movies, but Obama’s new unofficial blasphemy ban targeted only those movies that offended Islam. The government had joined the terrorists in seeking to deny such movies and their creators a future.
At the United Nations, Obama had compared the filmmaker to the terrorists. He had used a Gandhi quote to assert that, “Intolerance is itself a form of violence.”[12] Americans who criticized Islam’s violent tendencies could be considered as bad as Muslim terrorists and if intolerance of Islam was a form of violence, then it could be criminalized and suppressed. That became the administration’s priority.
. . . .
At the National Prayer Breakfast, Obama attacked Christianity for the Crusades in the presence of the foreign minister of Sudan, a genocidal government whose Muslim Brotherhood leader had massacred so many Christians and others that he had been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.[20][21] And he told Christians that they were obligated to condemn insults to Islam.[22]
Women’s rights? Obama supports those that don’t offend Islam. Continuing with Mr Greenfield’s linked article,
In August 2013, Al-Wafd, a paper linked to one of Egypt’s more liberal parties which supports equal rights for women and Christians, accused Obama of having close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. [60]
A year earlier, Rose El-Youssef magazine, founded by an early Egyptian feminist, had compiled a list of six Muslim Brotherhood operatives in the administration.[61][62]
Beyond Huma Abedin, Hillary’s close confidante and aide, the list included; Arif Alikhan, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Policy Development; Mohammed Elibiary, a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council; Rashad Hussain, formerly the U.S. Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference and currently the Coordinator for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications; Salam al-Marayati, co-founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC); Imam Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and Eboo Patel, a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships.
These were the types of accusations that the media tended to dismissively associate with the right, but both Egyptian publications were on the other side of the spectrum.
Egyptian liberals were the ones brandishing placards of a bearded Kerry in Taliban clothes or a photoshopped Obama with a Salafist beard. The protesters Obama had supposedly sought to support by calling for Mubarak to step down were crowding the streets accusing him of backing terrorists.
What made the Egyptian liberals who had seen America as their ally in pursuing reform come to view it as an enemy? The angry Egyptian protesters were accusing Obama of supporting a dictator; the original sin of American foreign policy that his Cairo Speech and the Arab Spring had been built on rejecting.
The progressive critiques of American foreign policy insisted that we were hated for supporting dictators. Now their own man was actually hated for supporting a Muslim Brotherhood dictator.
By 2014, 85% of Egyptians disliked America. Only 10% still rated America favorably.[63] It was a shift from the heady days of the Arab Spring when America had slid into positive numbers for the first time.[64]
Obama had run for office promising to repair our image abroad. As a candidate, he had claimed that other countries believed that “America is part of what has gone wrong in our world.” And yet the true wrongness was present in that same speech when he urged, “a new dawn in the Middle East.”[65]
That dawn came with the light of burning churches at the hands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters. Under Obama, America really did become part of what had gone wrong by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a crime that Obama will not admit to and that the media will not report on.
The Muslim Brotherhood was born out of Egypt and yet Egyptian views of it are dismissed by the media. Despite the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s final orgy of brutality as President Mohammed Morsi clung to power, despite the burning churches and tortured protesters, it is still described as “moderate.”
Morsi, who had called on Egyptians to nurse their children on hatred of the Jews,[66]was a moderate. Sheikh Rachid al-Ghannouchi, the leader of Ennahda, the Tunisian flavor of the Muslim Brotherhood, who had called for the extermination of the Jews “male, female and children,”[67] was also a “moderate.” Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, went one better with a fatwa approving even the murder of unborn Jews.[68] Qaradawi was another moderate.[69] [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
Obama sits at the center of a web of intertwined progressive organizations. This web has infiltrated the government and it in turn has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Consider the case of Faiz Shakir, who went from the Harvard Islamic Society where he helped fundraise for a Muslim Brotherhood front group funneling money to Hamas, the local Muslim Brotherhood franchise, to Editor-in-Chief and Vice President at the Center for American Progress, heading up the nerve center of the left’s messaging apparatus, to a Senior Adviser to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and then Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.[73] The next step after that is the White House.
Time magazine described the Center for American Progress as Obama’s idea factory, crediting it with forming his talking points and his government.[74] In an administration powered by leftist activists, the integration between the Muslim Brotherhood and the left resulted in a pro-Brotherhood policy.
Egyptian liberals had expected that the administration’s withdrawal of support for Mubarak would benefit them, but the American left had become far closer to the Muslim Brotherhood than to them. Instead of aiding the left, it aided the Brotherhood. The Egyptian liberals were a world away while the Brotherhood’s activists sat in the left’s offices and spoke in the name of all the Muslims in America.
The [American] left had made common cause with the worst elements in the Muslim world. It formed alliances with Muslim Brotherhood groups, accepting them as the only valid representatives of Muslim communities while denouncing their critics, both Muslim and non-Muslim, as Islamophobes. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
When Obama declared to the UN that the future must not belong to those who criticize Islam’s brutality, bigotry and abuse of women, he was also defining whom it must belong to. If the future must not belong to those who slander Mohammed, it will instead belong to his followers and those who respect his moral authority enough to view him as being above criticism in image, video or word. [Emphasis added.]
With these words, Obama betrayed America’s heritage of freedom and announced the theft of its future. The treason of his unholy alliance with Islam not only betrays the Americans of the present, but deprives their descendants of the freedom to speak, write and believe according to their conscience.
Obama has placed the full weight of the government’s resources behind Islam. He has suppressed domestic dissent against Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood while aiding their international goals.
Is Osama Obama worse than Napoleon?
Napoleon represented a nation which, during the French Revolution, had become largely secular. Obama’s America, under His “leadership,” is becoming largely secular. Napoleon sought, and Obama seeks, each in his own way, to promote himself as deserving the approbation of Islam. Napoleon sought power and glory by lying. Obama does much the same, but He most often lies to the denizens of His America.
In the years immediately following the French Revolution, France was considered a great nation. When Obama took office, America was as well. Although some still celebrate America’s freedoms from tyranny on Independence Day, during the Reign of Obama she has become less free and large numbers of “His people” have become increasingly dependent. It’s time to put America back the way she was.
Postscript: I have read of no reported Independence Day incidents of workplace violencerandom violence Islamic terror attacks on Obama’s America. Might it be possible that Obama has convinced the (non-Islamic) Islamic State, et al, that, so long as He remains in power, terror attacks would interfere with His plans to promote Islam and otherwise to destroy the nation.
“If we deny any connection between terrorism and religion, then we are saying there is no problem in any of the mosques; that there is nothing in the religious texts that is capable of being twisted or misunderstood; that there are no religious leaders whipping up hatred of the West, no perverting of religious belief for political ends.” — Boris Johnson, Mayor of London.
“O Muslims, Islam was never for a day the religion of peace. Islam is the religion of war… Mohammed was ordered to wage war until Allah is worshipped alone… He himself left to fight and took part in dozens of battles. He never for a day grew tired of war. — Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State.
While Western politicians claim that the Islamic State is not Islamic, millions of Muslims around the world — referring to what is approved in the Islamic texts — believe that it is.
The BBC has rejected demands by British lawmakers to stop using the term “Islamic State” when referring to the jihadist group that is carving out a self-declared Caliphate in the Middle East.
Lord Hall of Birkenhead, the BBC’s director general, said that the proposed alternative, “Daesh,” is pejorative and using it would be unfair to the Islamic State, thereby casting doubt upon the BBC’s impartiality.
Prime Minister David Cameron recently joined the growing chorus of British politicians who argue that the name “Islamic State” is offensive to Muslims and should be banned from the English vocabulary.
During an interview with BBC Radio 4’s “Today” program on June 29 — just days after a jihadist with links to the Islamic State killed 38 people (including 30 Britons) at a beach resort in Tunisia — Cameron rebuked veteran presenter John Humphrys for referring to the Islamic State by its name.
When Humphrys asked Cameron whether he regarded the Islamic State to be an existential threat, Cameron said:
“I wish the BBC would stop calling it ‘Islamic State’ because it is not an Islamic state. What it is is an appalling, barbarous regime. It is a perversion of the religion of Islam, and, you know, many Muslims listening to this program will recoil every time they hear the words ‘Islamic State.'”
Humphrys responded by pointing out that the group calls itself the Islamic State (al-Dawlah al-Islamiyah, Arabic for Islamic State), but he added that perhaps the BBC could use a modifier such as “so-called” in front of that name.
Cameron replied: “‘So-called’ or ISIL [the acronym for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] is better.” He continued:
“But it is an existential threat, because what is happening here is the perversion of a great religion, and the creation of this poisonous death cult, that is seducing too many young minds, in Europe, in America, in the Middle East and elsewhere.
“And this is, I think, going to be the struggle of our generation. We have to fight it with everything that we can.”
Later that day in the House of Commons, Cameron repeated his position. Addressing Cameron, Scottish National Party MP Angus Robertson said that the English-speaking world should adopt Daesh, the Arabic name for the Islamic State, as the proper term.
Daesh, which translates as Islamic State of Iraq and Sham (Syria), is the Arabic equivalent to ISIL. Daesh sounds similar to the Arabic word “Daes,” which means “one who crushes something underfoot,” and “Dahes,” which means “one who sows discord.” As a result of this play on words, Daesh has become a derogatory name for the Islamic State, and its leaders have threatened to “cut the tongue” of anyone who uses the word in public.
“You are right to highlight the longer-term challenge of extremism and of radicalization. You have pointed out the importance of getting terminology right and not using the name ‘Islamic State.’ Will you join parliamentarians across this house, the US secretary of state and the French foreign minister in using the appropriate term?
“Do you agree the time has come in the English-speaking world to stop using Islamic State, ISIS or ISIL and instead we and our media should use Daesh — the commonly used phrase across the Middle East?”
Cameron replied:
“I agree with you in terms of the use of Islamic State. I think this is seen as particularly offensive to many Muslims who see, as I see, not a state but a barbaric regime of terrorism and oppression that takes delight in murder and oppressing women, and murdering people because they’re gay. I raised this with the BBC this morning.
“I personally think that using the term ‘ISIL’ or ‘so-called’ would be better than what they currently do. I don’t think we’ll move them all the way to Daesh so I think saying ISIL is probably better than Islamic State because it is neither in my view Islamic nor a state.”
Separately, more than 100 MPs signed a June 25 letter to the BBC’s director general calling on the broadcaster to begin using the term Daesh when referring to the Islamic State. The letter, which was drafted by Rehman Chishti, a Pakistani-born Conservative MP, stated:
“The use of the titles: Islamic State, ISIL and ISIS gives legitimacy to a terrorist organization that is not Islamic nor has it been recognized as a state and which a vast majority of Muslims around the world finds despicable and insulting to their peaceful religion.”
Scottish Nation Party MP Alex Salmond, in a June 29 newspaper column, wrote:
“We should start by understanding that in a propaganda war language is crucial.
“Any description of terrorists which confers on them the image that they are representing either a religion or a state must surely be wrong and an own goal of massive proportions. It is after all how they wish to refer to themselves.
“Daesh, sometimes spelled Daiish or Da’esh, is short for Dawlat al Islamiyah fi’al Iraq wa al Sham.
“Many Arabic-speaking media organizations refer to the group as such and there is an argument it is appropriately pejorative, deriving from a mixture of rough translations from the individual Arabic words.
“However, the real point of using Daesh is that it separates the terrorists from the religion they claim to represent and from the false dream of a new caliphate that they claim to pursue.
“It should become the official policy of the government and be followed by the broadcasting organizations.”
The BBC, which routinely refers to Muslims as “Asians” to comply with the politically correct norms of British multiculturalism, has held its ground. It said:
“No one listening to our reporting could be in any doubt what kind of organization this is. We call the group by the name it uses itself, and regularly review our approach. We also use additional descriptions to help make it clear we are referring to the group as they refer to themselves, such as ‘so-called Islamic State.'”
The presenter of the BBC’s “The World This Weekend” radio program, Mark Mardell, added:
“It seems to me, once we start passing comment on the accuracy of the names people call their organizations, we will constantly be expected to make value judgements. Is China really a ‘People’s Republic?’ After the Scottish referendum, is the UK only the ‘so-called United Kingdom?’ With the Greek debacle, there is not much sign of ‘European Union.'”
London Mayor Boris Johnson believes both viewpoints are valid. In a June 28 opinion article published by the Telegraph, he wrote:
“Rehman’s point is that if you call it Islamic State you are playing their game; you are dignifying their criminal and barbaric behavior; you are giving them a propaganda boost that they don’t deserve, especially in the eyes of some impressionable young Muslims. He wants us all to drop the terms, in favor of more derogatory names such as “Daesh” or “Faesh,” and his point deserves a wider hearing.
“But then there are others who would go much further, and strip out any reference to the words “Muslim” or “Islam” in the discussion of this kind of terrorism — and here I am afraid I disagree….
“Why do we seem to taint a whole religion by association with a violent minority? …
“Well, I am afraid there are two broad reasons why some such association is inevitable. The first is a simple point of language, and the need to use terms that everyone can readily grasp. It is very difficult to bleach out all reference to Islam or Muslim from discussion of this kind of terror, because we have to pinpoint what we are actually talking about. It turns out that there is virtually no word to describe an Islamically-inspired terrorist that is not in some way prejudicial, at least to Muslim ears.
“You can’t say “Salafist,” because there are many law-abiding and peaceful Salafists. You can’t say jihadi, because jihad — the idea of struggle — is a central concept of Islam, and doesn’t necessarily involve violence; indeed, you can be engaged in a jihad against your own moral weakness. The only word that seems to carry general support among Muslim leaders is Kharijite — which means a heretic — and which is not, to put it mildly, a word in general use among the British public.
“We can’t just call it “terrorism”, as some have suggested, because we need to distinguish it from any other type of terrorism — whether animal rights terrorists or Sendero Luminoso Marxists. We need to speak plainly, to call a spade a spade. We can’t censor the use of “Muslim” or “Islamic.”
“That just lets too many people off the hook. If we deny any connection between terrorism and religion, then we are saying there is no problem in any of the mosques; that there is nothing in the religious texts that is capable of being twisted or misunderstood; that there are no religious leaders whipping up hatred of the west, no perverting of religious belief for political ends.”
What does the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, have to say? In a May 2015 audio message, he summed it up this way:
“O Muslims, Islam was never for a day the religion of peace. Islam is the religion of war. Your Prophet (peace be upon him) was dispatched with the sword as a mercy to the creation. He was ordered to wage war until Allah is worshipped alone. He (peace be upon him) said to the polytheists of his people, ‘I came to you with slaughter.’ He fought both the Arabs and non-Arabs in all their various colors. He himself left to fight and took part in dozens of battles. He never for a day grew tired of war.
“So there is no excuse for any Muslim who is capable of performing hijrah [migration] to the Islamic State, or capable of carrying a weapon where he is, for Allah (the Blessed and Exalted) has commanded him with hijrah and jihad, and has made fighting obligatory upon him.”
Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron (L) says of the Islamic State, “Islam is a religion of peace. They are not Muslims, they are monsters.” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (R), leader of the Islamic State, say, “Islam was never for a day the religion of peace. Islam is the religion of war. Your Prophet (peace be upon him) was dispatched with the sword as a mercy to the creation.”
While Western politicians claim that the Islamic State is not Islamic, millions of Muslims around the world — referring to what is approved in the Islamic texts — believe that it is. While the former are performing politically correct linguistic gymnastics, the latter are planning their next religiously-inspired attacks against the West. A new twist on an old English adage: The sword is mightier than the pen.
In the annals of murderous deceit and provocative audacity, the video of Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif takes the cake. The video aims at zarif’s American counterparts and a wider American audience. The video is posted here with full text of Zarif’s message on YouTube. [Here’s the video, with text in a box beneath it. — DM)
Mr. Zarif advises: “Getting to yes requires the courage to compromise, the self-confidence to be flexible, the maturity to be reasonable, the wisdom to set aside illusions, and the audacity to break old habits.” Do check out the whole sickening production. It virtually defies belief. Mr. Zarif, where can I get the soundtrack?
Mr. Zarif, of course, speaks with a forked tongue about the qualities conducive to this particular agreement. He must be in some doubt on this point, but I’m confident that our own Supreme Leader has all the qualities necessary to enter into the deal in process with Iran.
The regime in Tehran has made its position clear. So has the White House. It will take a miracle — or a military strike — to prevent Iran from building nuclear bombs.
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The deadline for a nuclear deal between the P5+1 powers and Iran was extended on Tuesday, when too many bones of contention remained unresolved on June 30. The new date set by the parties to finalize the “framework for an agreement” reached in Lausanne three months ago is July 7.
This means that there are four days to go before the current talks in Vienna bear fruit in the form of an official document. If such a piece of paper is signed, two leaders will feel particularly vindicated: U.S. President Barack Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani — the former for playing out his fantasy of peace through diplomacy and the latter for delivering the goods to his boss, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The rest of the world, however, will be in mortal peril. And Israel will be forced to act fast.
The only sliver of a silver lining in this otherwise black cloud is that Islamists sometimes play their cards wrong. Buoyed by the weakness of the West in the face of their fanaticism, they often take their visions of grandeur to heights that even American and European appeasers cannot accept. So by next week, it is possible that the Iranian negotiators will overstep their counterparts’ bounds, and everyone will return to the country from whence they came with nothing but another date and venue to show for their efforts.
But because the stakes are nuclear weapons in the hands of a mullah-led regime bent on global hegemony — and working toward it through proxy terrorist organizations — one cannot count on the above scenario.
A number of recent statements are cause for concern.
On Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told reporters: “The negotiations are moving forward and we should be hopeful. Today is a good day.”
This was an abbreviated version of what his deputy, Abbas Araqchi, said the day before in a TV interview: “A positive atmosphere is ruling the negotiations, and the spirit for going forward exists in all delegations, but this doesn’t mean that all delegations, including us, are ready to reach an agreement at any price.”
Araqchi also defined a “good deal” as one that would honor Khamenei’s “red lines.”
These were spelled out in a June 23 speech by Khamenei (and included in a June 30 Middle East Media Research Institute report): “In contrast to what the Americans are insisting on, we do not accept long-term restrictions for 10 to 12 years.
“Research, development and construction will continue. … They say, ‘Don’t do anything for 12 years,’ but these are particularly violent words, and a gross mistake.
“The economic, financial and banking sanctions — whether related to the Security Council or the American Congress and administration — must be lifted immediately with the signing of the agreement. The remainder of the sanctions will also be lifted within a reasonable time frame. The Americans are presenting a complex, convoluted, bizarre, and stupefying formula for [removing the] sanctions, and it is unclear what will emerge from it, but we are clearly stating our demands.
“The lifting of the sanctions must not depend on Iran carrying out its obligations. Don’t say, ‘You carry out your obligations and then the IAEA will approve the lifting of the sanctions.’ We vehemently reject this. The lifting of the sanctions must take place simultaneously with Iran’s meeting of its obligations. We oppose the delay of the implementation of the opposite side’s obligations until the [release of] the IAEA report [verifying that Iran has met its obligations], because the IAEA has proven repeatedly that it is neither independent nor fair, and therefore we are pessimistic regarding it.
“They say, ‘The IAEA should receive guarantees.’ What an unreasonable statement. They will be secure only if they inspect every inch of Iran. We vehemently reject special inspections [that are not customary for any country except Iran], questioning of Iranian personnel, and inspection of military facilities.
“Everyone in Iran — including myself, the government, the Majlis [parliament], the judiciary, the security apparatuses, and the military, and all institutions — want a good nuclear agreement … that is in accordance with Iran’s interests.
“Although we wish the sanctions lifted, we see them as [having brought us] a particular kind of opportunity, because they made us pay more attention to domestic forces and domestic potential.”
A few days later, on June 29, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, gave an interview to The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
When asked whether Obama believes a deal will exact change in Iran’s behavior, Rhodes replied: “We believe that an agreement is necessary … even if Iran doesn’t change. … That said, we believe that a world in which there is a deal with Iran is much more likely to produce an evolution in Iranian behavior than a world in which there is no deal. In fact … if the notion is that Iran has been engaged in these destabilizing activities under the last several years when they’ve been under the pressure of sanctions, clearly sanctions are not acting as some deterrent against them doing destabilizing activities in the region. … [T]he point is … in a world of a deal, there is a greater possibility that you will see Iran evolve in a direction in which they are more engaged with the international community and less dependent upon the types of activities that they’ve been engaged in.”
The regime in Tehran has made its position clear. So has the White House. It will take a miracle — or a military strike — to prevent Iran from building nuclear bombs.
(As the scorpion said to the frog, “that’s just what scorpions do.” Like the frog, Obama and Kerry are anxious to give the scorpion a ride, but on our backs.– DM)
John Kerry outside the hotel where the Iranian nuclear talks are being held / AP
Wednesday’s disclosure by the IAEA sent the State Department rushing to downplay the Iranian violation.
Obama administration officials insisted that despite Iran’s failure to meet its obligations, negotiations were still on track and that Tehran would face no repercussions.
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VIENNA—Senior Obama administration officials are defending Iranian nuclear violations in the aftermath of a bombshell report published Wednesday by the United Nations indicating that Iran has failed to live up to its nuclear-related obligations, according to sources apprised of the situation.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) disclosed yesterday that Iran has failed to meet its commitments under the interim Joint Plan of Action to convert recently enriched uranium gas to powder.
While Iran has reduced the amount of enriched uranium gas in its stockpiles, it has failed to dispose of these materials in a way that satisfies the requirements of the nuclear accord struck with the United States and other powers in 2013.
Secretary of State John Kerry declared last summer that Iran would be forced to comply with such restrictions, and State Department officials were assuring reporters as recently as last month that the Iranians would meet their obligations.
Wednesday’s disclosure by the IAEA sent the State Department rushing to downplay the Iranian violation.
Obama administration officials insisted that despite Iran’s failure to meet its obligations, negotiations were still on track and that Tehran would face no repercussions.
One U.S. official who spoke with the Associated Press on Wednesday said that instead of converting its uranium gas into uranium dioxide powder as required, Iran had transformed it into another substance. The IAEA found that Iran had converted just 9 percent of the relevant stockpile into uranium dioxide.
The official went on to downplay concerns about Iran’s violation, claiming that Tehran was only having some “technical problems.”
The “technical problems by Iran had slowed the process but the United States was satisfied that Iran had met its commitments,” the AP reported the official as saying.
“Violations by Iran would complicate the Obama administration’s battle to persuade congressional opponents and other skeptics,” the AP continued.
David Albright, a nuclear expert and founder of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), warned that the United States is weakening its requirements on Tehran as a final deal gets closer.
“The choosing of a weaker condition that must be met is not a good precedent for interpreting more important provisions in a final deal,” Albright wrote in an analysis published late Wednesday.
While Iran was not in compliance with the oxidation requirement, the IAEA found that it did get rid of uranium gas that surpassed a self-imposed benchmark of 7,650 kg.
The IAEA’s disclosures are in contrast to comments made by Kerry last summer when he assured observers that Iran would live up to the interim agreement.
“Iran has committed to take further nuclear-related steps in the next four months” and “these include a continued cap on the amount of 5 percent enriched uranium hexafluoride and a commitment to convert any material over that amount into oxide,” Kerry said.
The Israel Project (TIP), which has sent officials to Vienna to track the deal, wrote in an email to reporters that the administration looked like it was “playing Tehran’s lawyer” in a bid to defuse potential fallout from the IAEA’s report.
This is not the first time that Iran has been caught by the IAEA cheating on past nuclear arrangements.
As negotiations between the sides slip past their June 30 deadline and stretch into July, Iranian officials have become more insistent that the United States consent to demands on a range of sticking points.
President Hassan Rouhani also threatened to fully restart Iran’s nuclear program if negotiators fail to live up to any final agreement.
One Western source present in Vienna said the administration is scrambling to ensure that nothing interferes with a final deal.
“Once again, the White House will go to any length needed to preserve the Obama-Iran deal, even if it means covering up Iran’s failure to convert all of the nuclear material as promised,” said the source.
“If they had admitted Iran failed to live up to the letter of the JPOA—as is the case—this one-week extension period of the JPOA would be totally invalidated and the talks would be over,” the source added. “Like they have for months, the administration continues to hide violations and is acting more like Iran’s advocate than the honest broker the American people deserve. “
Obama, Kerry, and negotiator Wendy Sherman have effectively become Iran’s lawyers. In doing so, they have applied the logic of “it depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is” to U.S. national security. All one has to do, however, is look at the thinly veiled threats and logical somersaults of Iran’s top leaders . . . to understand just what a capability Tehran is after.
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Where brinkmanship is in the blood of Iranian negotiators, careerism and obsession about legacy appears to be in the blood of their American counterparts. By playing good cop, bad cop with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, by quibbling over every understanding previously reached, and by increasingly threatening to walk away, the Iranians appear to be wringing the Americans dry. Obama and Kerry have voided their own red lines, and prepare to normalize an Iranian path to a bomb whenever the Iranian government makes a decision to pursue that option.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is part and parcel of Iran’s brinkmanship. According to the Islamic Republic News Agency in Persian, he declared: “…If they do not fulfill their commitments, the government will be ready to immediately reverse the path in a more severe way than they can ever dream of.”
If Iran’s program has always been peaceful—as repeated Iranian officials have maintained—then reverting to Iran’s previous behavior would mean what exactly? Threats from Rouhani, the supposed moderate, should get the attention of Congress.
Increasingly, Iran is tripping upon its own internal inconsistencies. First, there was Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s (as yet unseen) sacrosanct nuclear fatwa that forbids nuclear weaponry and yet the Iranian leadership refuses to come clean on past nuclear work for fear it would show nuclear weaponry work. There has also been Iran’s insistence that it seeks a completely indigenous program, yet it doesn’t possess enough natural uranium to fuel an expanded civilian energy program. Now, Rouhani has more or less threatened to build a nuclear bomb, the same threat made previously by Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and a number of clerical associates of Khamenei himself. On May 29, 2005, for example, Hojjat ol-Islam Gholam Reza Hasani, the Supreme Leader’s representative in the Iranian province of West Azerbaijan, declared possession of nuclear weapons to be one of Iran’s top goals. “An atom bomb …must be produced as well,” he said.
Obama, Kerry, and negotiator Wendy Sherman have effectively become Iran’s lawyers. In doing so, they have applied the logic of “it depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is” to U.S. national security. All one has to do, however, is look at the thinly veiled threats and logical somersaults of Iran’s top leaders, however, to understand just what a capability Tehran is after.
(To enforce the anti-BDS provisions of the legislation Obama just signed would be Islamophobic. Or something. — DM)
U.S. President Barack Obama Photo Credit: WhiteHouse.Gov screen capture
This week the United States officially put on notice its trade partners that it will not countenance boycotts or other economic warfare against Israel.
After signing the relevant trade legislation into law, however, the White House signaled to all its trade partners that they are still free to boycott goods made in the disputed territories, despite the clear language of the legislation the president signed.
This week the Trade Promotion Authority bill was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama.
The TPA is primarily focused on international trade between the U.S. and Europe. It also included a section which addresses trade between the U.S. and Israel.
That part of the legislation, the U.S.-Israel Trade and Commercial Enhancement Act, bans boycotts and other means of economic warfare against Israel or the “Israeli-controlled territories.” This amendment, introduced by Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill-6) with bi-partisan co-sponsorship, was unanimously adopted into the PTA in April.
The passage of the TPA, including the anti-BDS section, should sound a death knell for the BDS (Boycott of, Divestment from and Sanctions against Israel) Movement. It should.
However, as pro-Israel Americans and Israelis learned only a few weeks ago in the Jerusalem passport case (Zivotofsky v. Kerry), there are certain spheres of international decision making over which the president has exclusive, or at least primary and controlling, control. Obama claims that international trade is one of those areas, even though Article 1, Section 8, clause 3, expressly gives Congress the power to regulate foreign commerce.
So even though the TPA is intended to act as a strong deterrent to European and other countries to pass and enforce boycotts of Israeli products, the White House has already signaled that it will not extend its protection to any goods produced in the disputed territories.
The anti boycott of Israel language in the TPA is: “actions by states, nonmember states of the United Nations, international organizations or affiliated agencies of international organizations that are politically motivated and are intended to penalize or otherwise limit commercial relations specifically with Israel or persons doing business in Israel or in Israeli-controlled territories.” [emphasis added.]
In a statement which Matt Lee of the Associated Press attributed to State Dept. spokesperson John Kirby, the administration made clear that despite signing the TPA, the position of the White House remains, as it has been, that the U.S. opposes boycotts of the State of Israel, but it also opposes the presence of Jews in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria and the Golan Heights.
In the statement the administration argues that by “conflating Israel and ‘Israeli-controlled territories’ a provision of the Trade Promotion Authority legislation runs counter to longstanding U.S. policy towards the occupied territories, including with regard to settlement activity,” and says that every U.S. administration has opposed “settlement activity.”
It goes on to point out that the “U.S. government has never defended or supported Israeli settlements and activity associated with them and, by extension, does not pursue policies or activities that would legitimize them.”
The U.S. administration announced that it will not jeopardize the holy grail of the two-state solution by enforcing the U.S. law as written and which its leader signed. In the statement it claims that “both parties have long recognized that settlement activity and efforts to change facts on the ground undermine the goal of a two-state solution to the conflict and only make it harder to negotiate a sustainable and equitable peace deal in good faith.” It is on this basis, ostensibly to promote a peaceful solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, that this administration
Professor Eugene Kontorovich of the Northwestern University School of Law analyzes several other provisions of the U.S-Israel trade aspect of the TPA which have been largely overlooked. In particular, Kontorovich points out, U.S. courts cannot recognize or enforce the judgment of any foreign court “that doing business in or being based in the West Bank or Golan Heights violates international law or particular European rules.”
This may be the single most brazen lie he’s told since the glory days of “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” In fact, I might go one better than that. For sheer lack of believability, this may be the most transparent garbage he’s pushed at the public since he assured voters in 2008 that he had no choice as a deeply religious man but to oppose gay marriage because “God’s in the mix.” No one took him seriously then. No one’s taking him seriously on this either.
And by “no one,” I include former Obama administration staffers in that. Even Team Hopenchange is now worried about a gigantic Obama/Kerry sellout to Iran.
Over his 30-year political career, Kerry has long been knocked for delivering more talk than results. Achieving a nuclear deal he first began pursuing even before he became secretary of state could redefine his place in history.
And that, Republican critics, foreign officials, and even some ex-administration officials say, is a big problem. Kerry’s eagerness for a deal, they argue, risks that the Iranians will seduce him into a bad one.
“I don’t know how anyone who has observed Kerry over the past two years would think differently,” says a former administration official who worked on Iran issues.
He can’t stop Putin, he can’t get Israelis and Palestinians to the table, but he’s going to make rapprochement with Iran work one painstaking sellout at a time. Go read Stephen Hayes’s compendium at the Weekly Standard of how far the goalposts have moved, inch by inch, since the Obama White House first began laying down terms for a nuclear settlement with Iran several years ago. If they make a deal on nukes, it’s a fait accompli that Kerry will start prodding his new friend Javad Zarif to see what the terms of a “grand bargain” with Iran that formally restores diplomatic relations between the two countries might look like. (“Do it now or you’ll never have a chance under a Republican president,” Kerry might tell him.) Frankly, a nuclear sellout in which sanctions are lifted immediately and Iran gets to keep its military sites away from UN inspectors makes more sense with a grand bargain than without. If you’re going to bless the idea of Shiite fanatics having nuclear weapons, you’d better make nice with them.
Anyway, I hope O enjoys the little job approval bounce he’s getting this week while it lasts.
Exit question: If Obama’s prepared to walk away, why did he and Kerry extend the deadline for talks from today to July 7? Iran’s had month upon month to come around to our terms knowing full well that the deadline for a final deal was (supposedly) June 30. They refused to concede. So we’re giving them another chance. Why? You know why. A bad deal is better than no deal.
John Kerry AP
WarSclerotic 
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