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U.S. and West Victimize Christians Fleeing ISIS

September 6, 2015

U.S. and West Victimize Christians Fleeing ISIS, Gatestone Institute, Raymond Ibrahim, September 6, 2015

  • Western nations are not merely ignoring Muslim persecution of Christians in the Middle East, they are actively supporting it by sponsoring “moderate” rebels who in reality are as “radical” and anti-Western as the Islamic State.
  • “Why the federal government has failed to take steps to expedite such reunification in cases where family and religious leaders are willing to vouch for and help those seeking asylum here… remains an unfathomable mystery.” —East County Magazine, San Diego.
  • Such “unfathomable mysteries” are reminiscent of the U.S. State Department’s habit of inviting Muslim representatives but denying visas to Christian representatives. Since the start of 2015, 4,205 Muslims have been admitted into the U.S. from Iraq, but only 727 Christians. For every Christian granted asylum, the U.S. grants asylum to five or six Muslims — even though Christians, as persecuted “infidel” minorities, are in much greater need of sanctuary.
  • “Most European governments, especially those that are Christian explicitly or implicitly, are failing in their duty to look after their fellow Christians in their hour of need.” — Lord Weidenfeld.
  • When persecuted Christian minorities manage to flee the Islamic State and come to the West for asylum, they are imprisoned again. All the while, Muslims — in the Mideast and in the West — are being empowered and welcomed in the West with open arms.

Not only does the West facilitate the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, but in the West as well.

According to a recent NPR report, the U.S. supported “moderate” coalition fighting both Bashar Assad and the Islamic State in Syria “has extremists in its own ranks who have mistreated Christians and forced them out of their homes” — just as the Islamic State (IS) has done.

Christian minorities forced out of their homes who manage to reach Western nations — including the United States — sometimes encounter more trouble.

Despite having family members to sponsor them, a group of 20 Christians who fled the Islamic State in Iraq have been imprisoned indefinitely, some since February, at the Otay Detention Facility in San Diego, even though they have local family members and Christian leaders who vouch for them (a primary way that the majority of detained foreign nationals are released is to the supervision of American citizens who vouch for them).

Activists say that the men and women in detention have been held for too long, including by the U.S. government’s own standards. Some have been imprisoned for over seven months with no hearing date for release even set.

“They are being held without a real reason…. They’ve escaped hell. Let’s allow them to reunite with their families,” said Mark Arabo, a spokesman for the Chaldean community in San Diego.

The detainees include a woman who had escaped the clutches of IS, and who had pleaded to see her sickly mother. Her mother died before she could see her. “She had been begging to be let out to see her dying mother,” said a priest familiar with the case.

Discussing the ongoing plight of these Iraqi Christians, San Diego’s East County Magazine concluded: “Why the federal government has failed to take steps to expedite such reunification in cases where family and religious leaders are willing to vouch for and help those seeking asylum here, then, remains an unfathomable mystery.”

Such “unfathomable mysteries” are reminiscent of the U.S. State Department’s habit of inviting Muslim representatives but denying visas to Christian representatives. Since the start of 2015, 4,205 Muslims have been admitted into the U.S. from Iraq, but only 727 Christians. For every one Christian the U.S. grants asylum, it grants asylum to five or six Muslims — even though Christians, as persecuted “infidel” minorities, are in much greater need of sanctuary, not to mention more assimilating to American culture than Muslims.

Faith McDonnell, of the Institute on Religion & Democracy, said regarding the detainment of Iraqi Christians in San Diego:

This follows the disturbing pattern that we have seen from the State Department of ignoring the particular targeting of Christians by ISIS while giving preferential treatment for asylum to other groups with expedited processing — like Somalis, Iraqis, and Syrians, some of whom could very well be members of jihadist movements.

The same is happening in the United Kingdom. Church leaders accuse David Cameron of “turning his back” on Christians facing genocide in Syria and Iraq by failing to grant them refuge in the UK — even though thousands of Muslims have been allowed entry.

Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, signed a petition calling on the UK government to “welcome Christian refugees and give them priority as asylum seekers,” emphasizing that “Syrian and Iraqi Christians are being butchered, tortured and enslaved.”

Similarly, Lord Weidenfeld, 95, who fled Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938 with the help of British Quakers, said:

Why is it that the Poles and the Czechs are taking in Christian families and yet the British government stands idly by?

This mood of indifference is reminiscent of the worst phases of appeasement, and may have catastrophic consequences. Europe must awake and the Conservative British Government should be leading from the front.

Most European governments, especially those that are Christian explicitly or implicitly, are failing in their duty to look after their fellow Christians in their hour of need.

This is not necessarily true of east European nations. Along with countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia, Slovakia recently went so far as to say it will only accept Christians when it takes in Syrian refugees under an EU relocation scheme. The Slavic nation argues that “Muslims would not be accepted because they would not feel at home,” including because there are no mosques in Slovakia.

Meanwhile, many of those Christians who are granted asylum in Western countries arrive there only to be further persecuted by Muslim asylum seekers — indicating, once again, who does and who does not really need asylum; who does and who does not assimilate in Western culture.

Most recently in Sweden, two small families of Christian asylum seekers from Syria were recently harassed and abused by approximately 80 Muslim asylum seekers, also from Syria.

The Christians and Muslims — described by one Swedish newspaper as “fundamentalist Islamists” — resided in the same asylum house. Among other humiliations, the Muslims ordered the Christians not to wear their crosses around their necks and not to use the communal areas when in use by Muslims.

1224Asylum seekers in the Swedish city of Kalmar, where Christian refugees were forced to move out of public housing after being harassed and threatened by Muslims.

After continuous harassment and threats, these Christian refugees, who had managed to escape the Islamic State, left the Swedish asylum house “fearing for their own safety.” A spokesman for the government migration agency responsible for the center they had been staying in said:

“They dared not stay. The atmosphere became too intimidating. And they got no help… They chose themselves to organize new address and moved away without our participation because they felt a discomfort.”

Western nations are not merely ignoring Muslim persecution of Christians in the Middle East, they are actively supporting it by sponsoring “moderate” rebels who in reality are as “radical” and anti-Western as the Islamic State. And when these persecuted Christian minorities manage to flee the Islamic State and come to the West for asylum, they are imprisoned again. All the while, Muslims — in the Mideast and in the West — are being empowered and welcomed in the West with open arms.

Categories: Asylum seekers, Christians, Europe, Foreign policy, Human rights, Immigration, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic war on Christians, Islamism, Multiculturalism, Obama's America, Syria war
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Genocide, Islam and weaponized empathy

September 5, 2015

Genocide, Islam and weaponized empathy, The Declination, The study of a civilization in decline

(A powerful narrative. — DM)

But back to the central point, why, then, if America sheltered my family, must the West turn back the refugees of Syria, of Somalia, of Libya?

Because they bring the source of infection with them. Armenians had managed, through some strength I sometimes find difficult to fully grasp, to hang on to their European culture and Christian religion through millenia of conflict with Islam. They had stubbornly resisted assimilation into Islam and its ideals. These refugees, for all that my heart yearns to give them sanctuary and a place to escape to, nonetheless carry Islam with them.

Leftists, take your Weaponized Empathy elsewhere. We understand that the world is full of terrible things, of children dying, of women enslaved. But we have to find our resolve and protect our own.

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As some of my readers know, I am part Armenian by ancestry. It used to be a thing that didn’t enter into my daily thought process, for I am also partially of English descent and am fully American, in culture, language and appearance. Armenians can generally tell that I am of Armenian ancestry, but few others can. But as militant Islam made its presence felt, increasingly in recent years, that identity has resurfaced because of the connection my own family has to the affair.

Then I saw this photo of a drowned Syrian boy:

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Leftists would have you believe that us on the Right have no empathy. We wish to deny the endless migrations away from crisis areas in the Islamic world and that, they would tell us, is incompatible with human rights, dignity, empathy and so on.

My grandfather told me stories of Armenia (Armenians, then, lived throughout Anatolia), which he remembered only dimly. For he had been only a few years old when my family escaped, just ahead of the genocide in the dying Ottoman Empire. Mostly, he remembered it through the stories told in the Armenian exile community.

Entire villages were erased, all the inhabitants slaughtered, the buildings burnt to the ground, the movable wealth stolen and melted down. Nothing of them remained. In the days before the genocide, two dialects of the Armenian language existed, colloquially referred to as the Western, or Anatolian, dialect and the Eastern dialect. The Western dialect has mostly gone extinct, spoken only by a few elders in the diaspora. My grandfather could speak it, but my mother knew only a few words. Only the Eastern dialect survives. Half of Armenia ceased to exist.

These were hardy Christians who had survived on the edge of the Byzantine and Islamic worlds for centuries. They had fought alongside Greeks and Crusaders. They were among the earliest — perhaps the very first — nations to convert to Christianity. They spoke an ancient language, a variant of the Indo-European language set that appears distantly related to Greek, and unrelated to any other.

Islam nearly erased them.

Now that Christians in the Middle-East are approaching extinction, the new target is the insufficiently Muslim. The Yazidis with their syncretic half-Muslim religion, or the Kurds who elevate their own nationalism over their religion (a rarity in the Muslim world).

I feel for them. I really do. In fact, I cannot tell you how much it pains me to see these things. On my grandfather’s knee, I heard the stories of Armenian survivors. In particular, one woman stands out. She was a child when the Turks came for her family, but she was comely and pretty. Her parents and brothers were killed and she was sold as a slave for a wealthy Turk’s harem. Her story of survival and escape was terrifying to me as a child, and it instilled a sense of resolve where Islam was concerned that has not abated to this day.

Can you imagine this? Seeing your family slaughtered, and only surviving to be used as a sex slave by those who did the deed? Blacks in America lecture me about my White privilege, saying that their ancestors were slaves. Mine were slaves much more recently than theirs. Mine were slaughtered wholesale.

But back to the central point, why, then, if America sheltered my family, must the West turn back the refugees of Syria, of Somalia, of Libya?

Because they bring the source of infection with them. Armenians had managed, through some strength I sometimes find difficult to fully grasp, to hang on to their European culture and Christian religion through millenia of conflict with Islam. They had stubbornly resisted assimilation into Islam and its ideals. These refugees, for all that my heart yearns to give them sanctuary and a place to escape to, nonetheless carry Islam with them.

There are good Muslims in the world, and I want to make this clear. My own family lived only because an Ottoman official warned my great-grandfather that genocide was coming. This man, whose name I cannot remember — something that genuinely pains me, for my grandfather died when I was young and his stories are almost dream-like to me, now — paid for the ticket to America for my family, for English language lessons, and everything else needed to escape before it was too late.

I hope that I will meet this good and righteous man in the life to come. I hope God saw fit to accept him into His kingdom.

But Islam nonetheless is a contagion, even if some maintain a stubborn moral immunity to the infection. Where Islam goes, this violence will follow. You will never save all the little boys, you will never stop the slaughter. All you will do is bring it to your own shores.

And if there is something I know for certain, it is that my ancestors did not escape Islam only to see their descendants fight it again, once more in their own homes.

There were tears in my grandfather’s eyes, at times, as he recounted the things he knew. And I know what his reaction would be to this boy’s death. He would feel empathy and sadness, far more acutely than the moral busybodies of Progressive Leftism. But then he would turn off the TV and tell me the truth: that we could not help them without also dooming ourselves to the same.

So, Leftists, take your Weaponized Empathy elsewhere. We understand that the world is full of terrible things, of children dying, of women enslaved. But we have to find our resolve and protect our own.

For if we do not, it could be my son laying on that distant beach, and that I will not allow.

Categories: Armenians, Foreign policy, Immigration, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Islamic war on women, Islamism, Kurds, Ottoman Empire, Yazidis
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Iranian Regime Celebrates Its Victory In The Nuclear Agreement

September 4, 2015

Iranian Regime Celebrates Its Victory In The Nuclear Agreement, MEMRI, September 4, 2015

After Iran and the P5+1 announced the JCPOA on July 14, 2015, top Iranian officials, headed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said that the country was a superpower with standing equal to that of the U.S., and that this status would become even stronger because of the agreement. They boasted of Iran’s might and said that it had forced the superpowers to surrender to it and its demands.

Following are highlights from these statements:

Iranian Defense Minister: The Superpowers Surrendered To Iran And “Obeyed The Iranian Rights”

At an armed forces general command ceremony on August 30, 2015, Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan said: “Today, Iran has attained such status that the superpowers have surrendered to it, because of its majesty, its steadfastness, its resistance, and its unity. Despite their great pride, the regime of the arrogance [the West, led by the U.S.] sat humbly behind the negotiating table and obeyed the rights of the Iranian nation.”[1]

Leader Khamenei: “Those Who Levelled Sanctions Against Us Yesterday Are Dying Today – Because Iran Has Become The Region’s Foremost Military Power”

On August 24, 2015, the website of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei published a poster titled “The Iron Fist,” symbolizing Iran’s might following the agreement. The text on the poster states: “Those who levelled sanctions against us yesterday are dying today, because Iran has become the region’s foremost military power. The Islamic Republic of Iran has proven that it works diligently to defend itself. The entire nation unites as a solid fist, standing fast against the aggressors who lack all reason.” The poster features a fist adorned with Iranian flags breaking through clouds; the fist is made up of military equipment, including missiles, jets, ships, tanks, and so on.[2]

24758

IRGC Website Javan: “Iran Is Becoming A Power… Equal To America In The World”

On July 15, 2015 the Javan website, which is affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), claimed that Iran has become a superpower with standing equal to that of the U.S., and that this is why the U.S. agreed to conduct a dialogue with Iran in nuclear talks: “In his speech following the agreement between Iran and the P5+1, Obama stated: ‘This deal is also in line with a tradition of American leadership. It’s now more than 50 years since President Kennedy stood before the American people and said, “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.” He was speaking then about the need for discussions between the United States and the Soviet Union.’[3]

“This speech clearly shows the sunset of American power and that [the U.S.] has been downgraded from a superpower to an ordinary power. First, Obama considers diplomacy and negotiations to be America’s leadership tradition, while its record indicates that since it emerged in the international arena during World War I, it has chosen no path but military force. The wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the dozens of other crimes in Latin America show that America’s leadership tradition has never been diplomacy. Superpowers see themselves as too big to waste their time in negotiations and diplomacy with third-world or smaller countries. They are used to determining how others should behave by waving their finger, and fulfilling their interests by way of military assault. America’s diplomatic record includes several rounds of talks with the former Soviet Union. Therefore, we can say that from World War II to 1990, America’s leadership tradition championed diplomacy or negotiations only vis-à-vis powers of equal standing…

“Obama’s statements defending negotiating with Iran can lead to one of two conclusions: Either America views Iran and its deterrence as equal to those of the former Soviet Union… or America does not have the status it once did…

“What has happened now is that the U.S. Secretary of State [John Kerry] has abandoned all his duties and his life to negotiate with Iran – to haggle, to capitulate, to call on the Europeans to help in the talks, and he does not consider Iran to be like Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, and Iraq. So what really happened here?

“In his televised speech on April 5, 2015, following the Lausanne agreement, Obama said that of the three options – attack, sanctions, and negotiations – he saw no other option but negotiations, and even before that he said, ‘If I could have, I would have dismantled Iran’s entire nuclear [project].’ The other side of the ‘if I could have’ coin is ‘I can’t.’ How can we understand this ‘I can’t?’ After all, America has a military presence in 50 places around the globe, including in the Persian Gulf…

“America’s conduct in the absence of the Soviet Union shows that Iran is becoming a power that is second to, or even equal to America in the world. [Therefore,] America does not have the courage to attack it militarily or even to conduct bilateral talks [with it], so it is being helped by three European countries [France, Britain, and Germany].

“It is not unreasonable that America believes that our military capabilities do not surpass its own, but it fears [Iran’s] soft power, which is stronger than military bombardment… This soft power has two main avenues: an covenant between the nation and the Imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini]… and an alliance with the countries of the region [that is based on] emotion and faith. The Iraqi nation is an example of this alliance; there, America sacrificed 4,400 troops and ousted Saddam [Hussein], but the friends of the Islamic Revolution [of Iran] sat on Saddam’s throne and did not in any way allow [the Americans] to seize power there. This soft power cannot carry out a military assault, which is why the Islamic Revolution’s increasing might has caused America to transform itself, due to fear, from a stupid enemy into a relatively clever one.”[4]

Senior Khamenei Advisor In IRGC: Nuclear Agreement Will Improve Iran’s Status And Might

Yadollah Javani, senior advisor to Khamenei in the IRGC, wrote in the July 27, 2015 editorial of the IRGC weeklySobh-e Sadeq: “Will war break out between Iran and America? This cannot be decisively answered with a yes or no. But we can prove that in past years, the U.S. was incapable of carrying out, and could not work up the courage to carry out, a military assault on Iran. In the past decade, the Americans and Zionists have repeatedly threatened to attack Iran, but due to their deep concerns regarding the implications of a possible war against [Iran], they have not followed through with their threats… Therefore, American officials announced that Iran’s nuclear dossier would only be resolved by diplomatic means.

“After the [April 2, 2015] Lausanne statement, U.S. President Obama announced that war or increased sanctions would not subdue Iran or destroy its nuclear industry. Throughout all these years the Americans threatened to attack Iran militarily, but both they and others, including the Iranian nation, knew full well that this threat was mainly psychological warfare, and that America could not start another war in West Asia.

“With its record of empty military threats, the Americans once again began to boast about the issue of a military assault on Iran, after the conclusion of the Vienna talks and the signs of an emerging nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1. The military threat has come from Obama, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and other American officials in recent days; they have all stressed the option of military force against Iran in the future…

“So far the Americans have not attacked, because of Iran’s deterrence, which is steadily increasing. A decade ago, the Americans were stronger than they are today, and the Islamic Republic of Iran was weaker. In the past decade, the power of America and its allies in the region has eroded, while the power of the Islamic Republic and its allies has only increased. Therefore, the regional upheavals during the past decade have worked in Iran’s favor, and to the detriment of the U.S.. Thanks to the nuclear agreement, this process will not take a turn for the worse for Iran, but could only add special might to it.

“This is precisely the cause of the concern regarding the nuclear agreement that has been expressed by officials of the Zionist regime and of America’s other allies in the region, such as the Al-Saud regime. Therefore, the boasting by America, following the acknowledgement of a nuclear Iran by the agreement between Iran and the P5+1, comes from necessity, and reflects America’s attempt to maintain the façade of its status as a world superpower.

“However, the truth is that the time of this superpower has passed, and America must accept the facts of the new world. The world’s balance of power is shifting, and a new international political order is being shaped. [This new world order] includes the acknowledgement of a nuclear-fuel-cycle-Iran with decisive deterrent capabilities in the region by the world’s six main powers…”[5]

__________________

Endnotes:

[1] Tasnimnews.com (Iran), August 30, 2015.

[2] Farsi.khamenei.ir, August 24, 2015.

[3] Whitehouse.gov, July 14, 2015.

[4] Javan (Iran), July 15, 2015.

[5] Sobh-e Sadeq (Iran), July 27, 2015.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Iran, Iran military, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Iranian Threats, Israel, Kerry, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1
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What the axis of evil owes Obama

September 4, 2015

What the axis of evil owes Obama, Israel Hayom, Ruthie Blum, September 4, 2015

His presidency has been paved not with failures, but with a string of the most successfully orchestrated disasters in history. For this, the “axis of evil” Obama so stringently denies owes him a great debt of gratitude.

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On Wednesday, U.S. President Barack Obama fulfilled a lifelong dream he has spent nearly seven years in office trying to realize.

It is a very different dream from that of Martin Luther King Jr., whom Obama invokes whenever it feeds his own visions of a particular form of grandeur.

This is not to say that rising from modest means to becoming the head of the United States and, by extension, the leader of the free world, is not already about as grand as one can get. But it is America’s greatness — not Obama’s — that enabled him to make it to the White House in the first place.

His ability to pull it off a second time, in spite of a bad economy and the sweeping radicalization of the Middle East, is a measure of how well he had already implemented the methods of his mentor, “Rules for Radicals” author Saul Alinsky, of infiltrating the country’s institutions and destroying them from within.

Indeed, the previously imperfect, but still functional, systems he tackled to chip away at the fabric of society were health, education, welfare and, of course, the family unit. He even set back the very societal strides that allowed for the election of a black president, creating an environment in which race relations took a sharp turn for the worse.

All of this made America ripe for the picking of its enemies.

This is where Obama’s foreign policy comes into play. Like the chisel he took to domestic affairs, Obama strived to strip the United States of its global superpower status. The crowning moment of this endeavor took place in July in Vienna, when the tireless efforts of the U.S.-led P5+1 to persuade the Islamic Republic of Iran to sign an agreement Obama desperately wanted finally paid off.

According to the agreement, Iran will be able to continue to develop and hone its nuclear weapons program, unfettered by the financial constraints of economic sanctions, and increase the flow of funds to its strategically placed terrorist proxies the world over. In exchange, Russia and China, two laughable members of the P5+1, get to do dubious deals with the mullahs in Tehran; Europe, inundated with refugees from Muslim countries, gets phony guarantees about its short-term safety; and Obama gets to tell himself he has finally earned the Nobel Peace Prize he was awarded about five minutes into his presidency.

This week, he scored his ultimate coup — over Congress. Faced with a majority of the House and Senate opposing the deal, Obama announced that if it did not pass when put to a vote in September, he would exercise his presidential veto power and force it down the throats of the American people.

The only thing that could have prevented this from happening was a veto-override majority. Alas, one was not to be had. By Wednesday, the fate of the deal was sealed by the Obama camp.

Obama deserves full credit for this and the other disasters he has wreaked.<

Where Iran is concerned, one need only look back in time to the early months of Obama’s first term to grasp what he was up to then, and how it led to where we are today.

On June 12, 2009, a rigged election in Iran reinstated then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Though opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi clearly had come out ahead of the incumbent, the latter declared victory and hailed his reign as the “will of the people.”

Millions of Iranians took to the streets to protest the false claims on the part of the regime they had intended to replace with what they believed would be a more democratic one.

During these demonstrations, in the course of which Iranians begged the U.S. to help them, a young woman named Neda was gunned down, and the photo of her bullet-ridden body and haunted eyes became the key symbol of the Iranian people’s wish to be free of the repression the Islamic Revolution of 1979 had imposed on them.

Viewing these events from behind his desk in the Oval Office, Obama was “impartial.” He had entered the White House only five months earlier, pledging to overturn his predecessor’s policies. Among these was George W. Bush’s position on radical Muslim regimes and groups in general, and on Iran specifically.

Claiming that the only way to rid Iran of its nuclear and hegemonic ambitions would be by extending goodwill gestures to its leaders, Obama abandoned the term “axis of evil,” which Bush had coined to define state sponsors of terrorism, Iran being a prime example.

Convinced, as well, that the U.S. had become a pariah among nations for being a capitalist, imperialist bully, Obama set about to show the world that America was in no way superior to other countries and cultures.

His wife, Michelle, shared this dim view of her country. Her response to her husband’s electoral victories in a series of Democratic primaries was to say it was the first time in her adult life that she was proud to be an American.

It was neither ignorance nor oversight, then, which caused Obama to abandon the genuine freedom-seekers in Iran, and try to engage the vicious ayatollahs. It was part of his plan, born of a twisted ideology that America was to blame for the hatred it inspired among despots — so ridiculous a notion that it allows for ignoring the plight of truly terrorized populations, prey to the tyrannical oppression of their leaders.

It is also at the core of his appalling attitude towards Israel. As a traditional ally of the U.S., with shared values, it, too — in Obama’s eyes — is to blame for the enmity it arouses.

It is impossible to get into Obama’s head to determine whether he actually believes the nuclear pact he is signing with the devil is the lesser of all evils.

One thing is clear, however: His presidency has been paved not with failures, but with a string of the most successfully orchestrated disasters in history. For this, the “axis of evil” Obama so stringently denies owes him a great debt of gratitude.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Human rights, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Iranian Threats, Israel, Obama, Obama - rogue president, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's affinity for Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, U.S. Congress
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Iran Promises to ‘Set Fire’ to U.S. Interests

September 3, 2015

Iran Promises to ‘Set Fire’ to U.S. Interests, Washington Free Beacon, , September 3, 2015

(Despite a the “deal” that favors Iran on every point, Obama’s Iranian friends keep saying “death to America.” He does not seem to mind. Who are his real friends and enemies?

Obama's enemies

— DM)

(AP Photo/Office of the Supreme Leader)

A senior Iranian military official has vowed to “set fire” to all U.S. interests in the region and maintained that the Islamic Republic welcomes war with America, according to regional reports demonstrating that Tehran is still committed to fighting the United States in the wake of a recently inked nuclear accord.

“In threatening remarks,” a top Iranian commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) stated that Iran is prepared to “annihilate” U.S. and Israeli war forces should they “take the slightest military move against Iran,” according to Iran’s state-controlled Fars News Agency.

“We monitor their acts day and night and will take every opportunity to set fire to all their economic and political interests if they do a wrong deed,” Brigadier General Hossein Salami, the IRGC’s lieutenant commander, was quoted as saying in Tehran on Thursday.

In a direct threat to both the United States and Israel, Salami promised to “cut off enemies’ hands and fingers will then send its dust to the air,” according to the report.

These Iranian military officials were responding to multiple claims by U.S. officials that a military option against Tehran still remains on the table, despite the recently inked accord, which aims to constrain the Islamic Republic’s contested nuclear program.

In May, Salami said that Iran desires a war with the United States.

“We have prepared ourselves for the most dangerous scenarios and this is no big deal and is simple to digest for U.S.; we welcome war with the U.S. as we do believe that it will be the scene for our success to display the real potentials of our power,” he said at the time.

The comments came on the say day that the Iranian military unveiled a new missile defense system to track enemy threats.

“The system can detect and trace targets, take decisions for the operation of the missile systems, decide about the type of weapon systems needed, assess and foresee hostile targets, and field commanders can easily take a final decision with the data provided by the command and control system,” according to Fars.

Meanwhile, Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Thursday said that Iran is not open to negotiate with the United States on any other issue outside of the nuclear portfolio.

Khamenei “reiterated the complete ban on any negotiation between the Iranian officials and the Americans on other issues, and said there won’t be any other talks with the White House, except for the nuclear issue,” according to Fars.

“The U.S. positions are fully against the stances of the Islamic Republic,” Khamenei was quoted as saying in a wide-ranging speech.

Khamenei also called on the country’s leaders to attack U.S. critics of the deal.

“In the nuclear talks with are negotiating with the 5+1, but the U.S. administration is, in fact, the main party; but the U.S. officials speak very badly and a decision needs to be taken about the manner they speak,” Khamenei told the country’s powerful Assembly of Experts.

“Don’t say that the Americans are uttering these words to convince their internal rivals; of course, I believe that the internal disputes in the U.S. are real and they have differences and the reason for such a difference is clear to us, but what is officially said needs a response and if no response is given to them, the other side’s remarks will be entrenched,” Khamenei said.

Categories: Death to America, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian Threats, Islamic supremacy, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's affinity for Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1
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NATO Allies Making It Easier for Iran to Attack Israel?

September 3, 2015

NATO Allies Making It Easier for Iran to Attack Israel? The Gatestone Institute, Burak Bekdil, September 3, 2015

  • Iran did not go mad and threaten to hit all NATO installations in Turkey because it wanted 3.5 million Turkish citizens to die from the chemical warhead of a Syrian missile. It went mad and threatened because it viewed the defensive NATO assets in Turkey as a threat to its offensive missile capabilities.
  • Iran’s reaction to the NATO assets in Turkey revealed its intentions to attack. It could be a coincidence that the U.S. and Germany (most likely to be followed by Spain) have decided to withdraw their Patriot missile batteries and troops from Turkey shortly after agreeing to a nuclear deal with Iran. But if it is a coincidence, it is a very suspicious one. Why were Assad’s missiles a threat to Turkey two and a half years ago, but are not today?
  • Apparently, NATO allies believe, although the idea defies logic, that the nuclear deal with Iran will discourage the mullahs in Tehran from attacking Israel.

In early 2013, NATO supposedly came to its ally’s help: As Turkey was under threat from Syrian missiles — potentially with biological/chemical warheads — the alliance would build a mini anti-missile defense architecture on Turkish soil. Six U.S.-made Patriot missile batteries would be deployed in three Turkish cities and protect a vast area where about 3.5 million Turks lived.

The Patriot batteries that would protect Turkey from Syrian missiles belonged to the United States, Germany and the Netherlands. In early 2015, the Dutch mission ended and was replaced by Spanish Patriots. Recently, the German government said that it would withdraw its Patriot batteries and 250 troops at the beginning of 2016. Almost simultaneously, the U.S. government informed Turkey that its Patriot mission, expiring in October, would not be renewed. Washington cited “critical modernization upgrades” for the withdrawal.

Since the air defense system was stationed on Turkish soil, it unnerved Iran more than it did Syria. There is a story behind this. First, Patriot missiles cannot protect large swaths of land, but only designated friendly sites or installations in their vicinity. That the six batteries would protect Turkey’s entire south and 3.5 million people living there was a tall tale. They would instead protect a U.S.-owned, NATO-assigned radar deployed earlier in Kurecik, a Turkish town; and they would protect it not from Syrian missiles with chemical warheads, but from Iranian ballistic missiles.

1234 (1)U.S. Patriot missiles, deployed outside Gaziantep, Turkey in 2013. (Image source: U.S. Army Europe/Daniel Phelps)

Kurecik seemed to matter a lot to Iran. In November 2011, Iran threatened that it would target NATO’s missile defense shield in Turkey (“and then hit the next targets,” read Israel) if it were threatened. Shortly before the arrival of Patriots in Turkey, Iran’s army chief of staff warned NATO that stationing Patriot anti-missile batteries in Turkey was “setting the stage for world war.”

What was stationed in Kurecik was an early-warning missile detection and tracking radar system. Its mission is to provide U.S. naval assets in the Mediterranean with early warning and tracking information in case of an Iranian missile launch that might target an ally or a friendly country, including Israel. So, a six-battery Patriot shield to protect the NATO radar in Kurecik against possible Iranian aggression was necessary. And that explains why the Iranians went mad about Kurecik and openly threatened to hit it.

NATO and Turkish officials have always denied any link between the Patriot missiles and the NATO radar in Turkey. They have often pointed out that the Patriot batteries were stationed in the provinces of Adana, Kahramanmaras and Gaziantep, while Kurecik was in nearby Malatya province. But the Patriot is a road-mobile system: It can be dismantled easily and re-deployed in another area in a matter of hours (the road distance between Kurecik and Kahramanmaras is a mere 200 kilometers, or 124 miles).

Clearly, Iran did not go mad and threaten to hit all NATO installations in Turkey because it wanted 3.5 million Turkish citizens to die from the chemical warhead of a Syrian missile. It went mad and threatened because it viewed the defensive NATO assets in Turkey as a threat to its offensive missile capabilities, which the Patriots could potentially neutralize.

Why, otherwise, would a country feel “threatened” and threaten others with starting a “world war” just because a bunch of defensive systems are deployed in a neighboring country? Iran did so because it views the NATO radar in Turkey as an asset that could counter any missile attack on Israel; and the Patriots as hostile elements because they would protect that radar. In a way, Iran’s reaction to the NATO assets in Turkey revealed its intentions to attack.

It could be a total coincidence that the U.S. and Germany (most likely to be followed by Spain) have decided to pull their Patriot batteries and troops from Turkey shortly after agreeing to a nuclear deal with Iran. But if it is a coincidence, it is a very suspicious one. In theory, the Patriot systems were deployed in Turkey in order to protect the NATO ally from missile threats from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Right? Right.

Assad’s regime is still alive in Damascus and it has the same missile arsenal it had in 2013. Moreover, Turkey’s cold war with Assad’s Syria is worse than it was in 2013, with Ankara systematically supporting every opposition group and openly declaring that it is pushing for Assad’s downfall. Why were Assad’s missiles a threat to Turkey two and a half years ago, but are not today?

The Patriot missiles are leaving Turkey. They no longer will “protect Turkish soil.”

Apparently, NATO allies believe, although the idea defies logic, that the nuclear deal with Iran will discourage the mullahs in Tehran from attacking Israel.

It looks as if the potential target of NATO heavyweights’ decision is more a gesture to Iran than to Turkey.

Categories: Appeasement, Arab nations, Death to Israel, Foreign policy, Ideology, Iran / Israel War, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Israel, Middle East, Obama, Obama and Israel, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1
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Obama secures rubber stamp for Iran deal catastrophe

September 3, 2015

Obama secures rubber stamp for Iran deal catastrophe, Front Page Magazine, Joseph Klein, September 3, 2015

(Please see also, Use Our Senatorial Nuclear Option to Stop Iran’s Radioactive Nuclear Option. Make Senators vote yes or no on the “deal.”— DM)

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Democratic Senator Barbara Mikulski of Maryland has pushed President Obama’s nuclear appeasement deal with Iran over the top. With her decision to vote in favor of the deal, Obama now has the support of the 34 senators he needs to uphold his expected veto of a congressional resolution of disapproval. If enough craven Democrats back a planned filibuster to prevent a vote on the floor of the Senate, Obama will not even have to use his veto pen.

The nightmare of a financially secure nuclear armed Iran, legitimized by the Obama administration and its international partners, is about to envelop us.

Ironically, Obama warned in a speech he delivered on September 1st in Alaska that a potentially bleak future could lie ahead, in which “there’s not going to be a nation on this Earth that’s not impacted negatively.”

“People will suffer,” Obama said. “Economies will suffer. Entire nations will find themselves under severe, severe problems…more conflict.”

President Obama is right to be concerned about the future, but his stated reason for his concern is entirely misplaced. Obama was talking about climate change, which he considers to be a man-made disaster. In truth, Obama himself has created a far more imminent disaster with his nuclear deal.

In his climate change speech, Obama spoke about our “grandkids” who “deserve to live lives free from fear, and want, and peril.” He added that we need to prove “we care about them and their long-term futures, not just short-term political expediency.”

Obama, and the partisan loyalists who support him no matter what, are the ones letting down our grandkids. They are the ones who have sacrificed our grandkids’ long-term futures at the altar of short-term political expediency. The only long-term future that Obama is interested in is his own legacy.

By President Obama’s own admission, no later than 15 years from now – when my granddaughter will be just 18 years old – Iran will be in a position to develop enough enriched materials to produce nuclear bombs with virtually no “break-out” time. The deal’s major nuclear restrictions, such as they are, will have gone away, even assuming that Iran had not cheated in the meantime.

The deal’s inspection mechanism is a farce, including most notably, Iran’s self-inspection of its military site where it is suspected that nuclear weaponization research and development work was carried out. The military facility at Parchin is off-limits to onsite inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Yet the Obama administration continues to lie to the American people about how comprehensive the IAEA inspections will be. Secretary of State John Kerry tweeted this falsehood on September 2nd:  “With this #IranDeal, the IAEA can go wherever the evidence leads. No facility…will be off limits.”

The Iranian leaders also will get their hands soon on hundreds of billions of dollars. No doubt they will use some of their treasure trove from sanctions relief to fund their terrorist proxies all over the world. Obama admitted in his speech defending his deal last month at American University that monies from sanctions relief “will flow to activities we object to.” He acknowledged that “Iran supports terrorist organizations like Hezbollah. It supports proxy groups that threaten our interests and the interests of our allies – including proxy groups who killed our troops in Iraq. They try to destabilize our Gulf partners.”

Yet Obama tells the American people not to worry about such real-life risks. Instead, he diverts attention to his Chicken Little climate change hype that the sky will fall if we do not take urgent action now.

Much of the rest of the Iranians’ windfall from sanctions relief will go towards developing and acquiring, from North Korea, Russia and other sources, advanced military technology and long-range missiles.

Iran’s leaders have made it abundantly clear that they do not consider themselves bound by either the 5-year UN Security Council arms embargo or the 8-year missile embargo.  For example, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani declared: “We will buy, sell and develop any weapons we need and we will not ask for permission or abide by any [U.N.] resolution for that.”

Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan said last month that “We are considering the design, research, and production of [missiles] that are highly destructive, highly accurate, radar evasive, and tactical.”

Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh, commander of the aerospace division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said: “Some wrongly think Iran has suspended its ballistic missile programs in the last two years and has made a deal on its missile program.” To emphasize his point, the commander announced that Iran “will have a new ballistic missile test in the near future that will be a thorn in the eyes of our enemies.”

The head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, announced plans to expand the reach of Iran’s missiles.

The Iranian thugs are not limiting themselves to purely defensive weapons. “They (the US and the Zionists) should know that the Islamic Revolution will continue enhancing its preparedness until it overthrows Israel and liberates Palestine,” said Brigadier General Mohsen Kazzemeini, the IRGC’s top commander in the Tehran Province (as quoted by Iran’s Fars News Agency). “We will continue defending not just our own country, but also all the oppressed people of the world, especially those countries that are standing on the forefront of confrontation with the Zionists,” he added.

The Obama administration, which conceded as part of the nuclear deal to agree to unconditional term limits on the arms and missile embargoes, barely raised an eyebrow at Iran’s refusal to be bound by even these limited embargoes. In fact, Kerry went so far as to say that “they are not in material breach of the nuclear agreement for violating the arms piece of it.”

A sobering report was just released by the Iran Strategy Council, led by retired generals Chuck Wald (Commandant of Marine Corps) and James Conway (Deputy Commander of European Command). It warns of the deal’s likely dangers to America’s own national security and of the “cascading instability” it will produce in the Middle East region and beyond:

“The final agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), has potentially grave strategic implications that directly threaten to undermine the national security of the United States and our closest regional allies. By allowing Iran to become a nuclear threshold state and enabling it to become more powerful and expand its influence and destabilizing activities – across the Middle East and possibly directly threatening the U.S. homeland – the JCPOA will place the United States in far worse position to prevent a nuclear Iran.”

The report’s authors predict that the “nightmare scenarios of WMD and terrorism on the soil of the United States and its allies will become more probable.”

Nevertheless, the Obama administration is spiking the ball, exulting over its evident victory in keeping enough Democratic senators on board to protect Obama’s deal.

The White House tweeted: “If your house is on fire, would you refuse to put it out because there could be another fire in 15 years?”

The question should be: “If your house is flammable, would you hand your enemy a match?”

Kerry, who turned on his own fellow soldiers during the Vietnam War, tweeted: “I have had the privilege of serving our country in times of peace and in times of war—and peace is better.”

When Neville Chamberlain returned from Germany with his infamous Munich Pact in hand, he declared: “I believe it is peace for our time…Go home and get a nice quiet sleep.”

The long nightmare of World War II ensued shortly thereafter. Thanks to Barack Obama and John Kerry, we are entering the nightmare leading inevitably to an emboldened, well-funded Iran equipped with nuclear arms and the missiles to deliver them.

Categories: Climate change, Democrats, Denial, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran - secret deal, Iran scam, Iran UN arms embargo, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Israel, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's affinity for Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Republicans, U.S. Congress, U.S. Constitution
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Kerry Promises Israel, Saudis Money In Wake of Iran Nuclear Deal

September 2, 2015

Kerry Promises Israel, Saudis Money In Wake of Iran Nuclear Deal, Washington Free Beacon, , September 2, 2015

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry takes a drink during a news conference after the closed-door nuclear talks with Iran, in Vienna, Austria, Monday, Nov. 24, 2014. Facing still significant differences between the U.S. and Iran, negotiators gave up on last-minute efforts to get a nuclear deal by the Monday deadline and extended their talks for another seven months. The move gives both sides breathing space to work out an agreement but may be badly received by domestic sceptics, since it extends more than a decade of diplomatic efforts to curb Iran's nuclear prowess. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak)  (AP Photo/Ronald Zak)

“No amount of conventional weapons can neutralize the threat posed by the mullahs acquiring nuclear weapons,” the [congressional] source said. “This type of appeasement is a slap in the face to our closets allies and a wink-wink to the dictators in Tehran.”

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Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday moved to reassure Congress that Israel and America’s Gulf State allies would be fully taken care of in the wake of the Iran nuclear deal, which Kerry acknowledged would not stop Iran’s support for terrorism, according to a letter sent by the secretary of state to lawmakers.

Just moments after the White House secured enough votes to override a congressional veto of the Iran deal, a letter from Kerry appeared in the inboxes of congressional offices across Capitol Hill.

Kerry admits that, despite the deal, Iran will continue to back terrorist groups across the globe and promises to boost military support and funding to Israel and Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The letter comes in response to concerns among lawmakers, Israel, and other Gulf region allies that the nuclear accord will boost the Islamic Republic’s support for terrorism, while leaving traditional U.S. allies on the defense.

“Important questions have been raised concerning the need to increase security assistance to our allies and partners in the region and to enhance our efforts to counter Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region,” Kerry writes. “We share the concern expressed by many in Congress regarding Iran’s continued support for terrorist and proxy groups throughout the region, its propping up of the Assad regime in Syria, its efforts to undermine the stability of its regional neighbors, and the threat it poses to Israel.”

The Obama administration, Kerry claims, is under “no illusion that this behavior will change following implementation of the JCPOA,” or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

“The president has made clear that he views Israel’s security as sacrosanct, and he has ensured that the United States has backed up this message with concrete actions that have increased US military, intelligence, and security cooperation with Israel to their highest levels ever,” the letter states.

Kerry then goes on to outline the ways in which the Obama administration will enhance security cooperation with Israel and Gulf State allies.

Israel, for instance, will be the first country in the region to get a U.S.-made next-generation F-35 fighter aircraft in 2016.

An additional $3 billion in U.S. aid also will go to secure Israel’s missile defense programs, such as the Iron Dome system. The administration also stands ready “to enhance” funding to next-generation missile defense systems, such as Arrow-3 and David’s Sling.

The administration, Kerry writes, recently “offered Israel a $1.89 billion munitions resupply package that will replenish Israel’s inventories and will ensure its long-term continued access to sophisticated, state of the art precision guided munitions.”

The administration will additionally work to secure a new 10-year “Memorandum of Understanding” with the Jewish state that “would cement for the next decade our unprecedented levels of military assistance,” Kerry writes.

Kerry also proposes to collaborate with Israel on “tunnel detection and mapping technologies to provide Israel new capabilities to detect and destroy [terrorist] tunnels before the could be used to threaten Israeli civilians.”

President Barack Obama has further proposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the two governments “begin the process aimed a further strengthening our efforts to confront conventional and asymmetric threats.”

Gulf States, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), also will benefit from increased arms shipments and new security deals, according to Kerry.

The administration is “working to expedite the delivery of capabilities needed to deter and combat regional threats, including terrorism and Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region,” Kerry writes.

In July, for example, the administration notified Congress of new arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE “that will provide long-term strategic defense capabilities and support for their ongoing operations,” the letter states.

Another goal is to strengthen ballistic missile defense capabilities in the region. This goal, Kerry says, “is a strategic imperative and an essential component to deterring Iranian aggression against any GCC member state.”

One senior Congressional aide who received the letter said that it is a clear attempt by the administration to placate regional fears about the deal.

“Let’s not be fooled about what the letter represents. This desperate move to placate Israel and our Gulf partners is a tacit acknowledgment that Iran will expand its international terror regime thanks to the nuclear agreement,” the source said. “If this is such a good deal, why does the administration feel compelled to immediately offer arms packages as compensation to our regional allies?”

“No amount of conventional weapons can neutralize the threat posed by the mullahs acquiring nuclear weapons,” the source said. “This type of appeasement is a slap in the face to our closets allies and a wink-wink to the dictators in Tehran.”

Categories: Defense of Israel, Foreign policy, Iran military, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Israel, Kerry, Obama, Obama and Israel, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Congress, U.S. politics
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Mikulski pushes Obama’s Iran nuke deal over the top in Senate

September 2, 2015

Mikulski pushes Obama’s Iran nuke deal over the top in Senate, The Hill, Jordain Carney, September 2, 2015

(“Mikulski added that in the wake of the Iran deal, the United States must ‘reaffirm our commitment to the safety and security of Israel.'”  Commitments from Obama are, at best, ephemeral.  Israel can rely only in herself. — DM)

mikulskibarbara03022015getty_1

Mikulski was one of 11 remaining undecided Democrats. Opponents needed all 11 to buck Obama and vote against the deal if they were going to be able to block it in the Senate.

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Sen. Barbara Mikulski said on Wednesday that she will support President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, all but ensuring the agreement will survive an attack in the Senate.

“No deal is perfect, especially one negotiated with the Iranian regime,” the Maryland Democrat, who is retiring after her current term, said in a statement. “I have concluded that this Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is the best option available to block Iran from having a nuclear bomb. For these reasons, I will vote in favor of this deal.”

Mikulski’s decision hands President Obama a needed foreign policy win after a months-long lobbying effort by administration officials to shore up support for the agreement.

Democrats have rallied around the deal since leaving town in August, giving Obama the 34 senators he needs to back the agreement and uphold a veto of a potential resolution of disapproval.

Mikulski was one of 11 remaining undecided Democrats. Opponents needed all 11 to buck Obama and vote against the deal if they were going to be able to block it in the Senate.

She said that while reviewing the deal she focused on a handful of questions, including whether it blocks Iran from getting a nuclear bomb, what sanctions would be lifted and if a better alternative could be reached if Congress rejects the deal.

Republicans have argued that the Obama administration could force Iran back to the negotiating table, but Mikulski said on Wednesday that the two alternatives to the deal were either more sanctions against Iran or military action.

“Maintaining or stepping up sanctions will only work if the sanction coalition holds together. It’s unclear if the European Union, Russia, China, India and others would continue sanctions if Congress rejects this deal. At best, sanctions would be porous, or limited to unilateral sanctions by the U.S.,” she said, adding that the “military option is always on the table for the United States.”

Mikulski, as well as undecided Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), have been under intense pressure from opponents of the deal and pro-Israel advocates to reject the Iran nuclear agreement.

She tried to preempt some of their criticism on Wednesday, touting her support for Israel and noting that she considered how the deal would affect the country.

“I have been an unabashed and unwavering supporter of Israel. I have persistently supported the sanctions that brought Iran to the table,” she said. “With the horrors of the Holocaust in mind, I have been deeply committed to the need for a Jewish homeland, the State of Israel, and its inherent ability to defend itself.”

Mikulski added that in the wake of the Iran deal, the United States must “reaffirm our commitment to the safety and security of Israel.”

Categories: Defense of Israel, Democrats, Foreign policy, Iran scam, Israel, Obama, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Republicans, U.S. Congress
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The Fiction of Political Islam

September 2, 2015

The Fiction of Political Islam, The Gatestone Institute, Bassam Tawil, September 2, 2015

  • To this day, the Obama administration mourns the fall of Egypt’s Islamist President Morsi, and turns a cold shoulder to forward-looking President el-Sisi, who is (sometimes) trying to take Egypt into the 21st century and extricate Egypt from its economic and societal crisis.
  • Muslim Brotherhood terrorism against the Egyptian regime is a perfect example of how this “political movement” is in reality a terrorist movement whose objective is the violent overthrow of Egypt’s government. The White House, fully aware of the facts, continues hosting senior Muslim Brotherhood officials and shows them respect during consultations about the American Islamic community and U.S. policy in the Middle East.
  • Events in Sinai prove there is no such thing as “political Islam.” There is a radical Islamist leadership that represents itself to the gullible West as “moderate,” preaches violence from mosques, cloaks itself in ideological-religious tradition, and employs Islamist terrorists to attack civilians and Egyptian government targets.
  • It is hard not to conclude, looking at President Obama’s record (ignoring protesters of 2009 in Iran; “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone”; the dictatorial way the Iran deal is bypassing the democratic process) that in his heart-of-hearts, he is far more committed to supporting extremist Islamist regimes — whether the mullahs of Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood — than to supporting democracy, individual freedoms or human rights.
  • The Europeans are more aware of the situation but woke up too late. As hundreds of thousands of migrants from Muslim lands continue to pour over Europe’s open borders, there is little doubt that radical Islam is poised to take over the West. Islamic communities and terrorist cells continue to mushroom throughout the cities of Europe.
  • The world is beginning to understand that the catastrophes of the Middle East have nothing to do with the resolution of the Palestinian issue but are caused by the innate homicidal tendencies of the Arab rulers and the regional Islamist terrorist organizations.

Hamas is in trouble. Its relations with Egypt are going from bad to worse, and the influx of money, primarily from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the mosques in the Western world — where charity (zakat) was collected to finance anti-Israel terrorism — has dwindled to almost nothing. So has the flow of arms and explosives from Iran, Libya, Sudan and Lebanon. The resulted is the weakening of Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip, making it ever more difficult for Hamas to continue its ongoing subversion of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and its non-stop attempts to overthrow President Mahmoud Abbas to take over the West Bank and establish there the sort of Islamic emirate it established in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas’s military buildup was halted when the President Mohamed Morsi’s radical Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt was toppled and General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi was elected President. Morsi, it will be recalled, strangely received support from President Obama until he was ousted. The Obama administration supported him despite Morsi enabling for the flow of money and arms to Hamas in Gaza to continue unhampered through the tunnels in the Sinai Peninsula. The weapons were used not only to attack Israel, but also to sabotage peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians and, indirectly, to attack the Palestinian Authority.

The Islamist terrorism festivities ended when President el-Sisi clamped down on the Islamists in Egypt, destroyed the tunnels and sealed Egypt’s border with Gaza. Since el-Sisi has been president of Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood rule has ended and the tunnels have been destroyed. It is hard to fathom why, to this day, the Obama administration mourns the fall of the Islamist Morsi administration and turns a cold shoulder to forward-looking el-Sisi, who is (sometimes) trying to take Egypt into the 21st century and extricate Egypt from its economic and societal crisis.

Since el-Sisi has been in power, money and arms no longer flow through the tunnels into the Gaza Strip; instead they began to flow in the opposite direction, from the Gaza Strip into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Since the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliated terrorist organizations, Hamas among them, have not accepted defeat, there has been an increase in terrorist attacks targeting the Egyptian regime both inside the country proper and in the Sinai Peninsula. The terrorist campaign receives ongoing support from the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military-terrorist wing, and the ISIS-affiliated Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis. Both continuously attack the Egyptian police and army in the Sinai Peninsula, murder Egyptian officials and target Egyptian institutions.

The endless terrorist campaign in Egypt has proven yet again that the claim of a political Islam, separate from the terrorist organizations, is simply a lie. Muslim Brotherhood terrorism against the Egyptian regime is a perfect example of how the “political movement” tries to represent itself as dealing only with the da’wah [proselytizing], while in reality it is a terrorist movement whose objective is the violent overthrow of el-Sisi’s administration. The White House, fully aware of the facts, continues hosting senior Muslim Brotherhood officials and shows them respect during consultations about the American Islamic community and U.S. policy in the Middle East.

919 (1)While being hosted by the State Department on a visit to Washington in January 2015, Muslim Brotherhood judge Waleed Sharaby (left) flashed the organization’s four-finger “Rabia” sign. At right, ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi (from the Muslim Brotherhood) displays the Rabia sign.

The events in the Sinai Peninsula prove there is no such thing as “political Islam.” There is a radical Islamist leadership that represents itself to the gullible West as “moderate,” preaches violence from the mosques, cloaks itself in ideological-religious tradition, and employs a hard core of Islamist terrorists to carry out attacks on civilians and Egyptian administration targets.

In the meantime, the real victims are the Egyptians. The Muslim Brotherhood’s terrorism has paralyzed Egypt’s tourist industry, as foreigners fear to visit Egypt’s antiquities. And now there are terrorist threats to the New Suez Canal, a project initiated and carried out under the leadership of General Sisi to turn both banks of the two canals into an international logistics, commercial and industrial area.

The Islamists’ plans are clear. First, they want to leverage violence, murder and countless Egyptian army casualties into establishing an autonomous terrorist enclave in the Sinai Peninsula. Then they will try to overthrow the Egyptian government and reinstate an Islamist Muslim Brotherhood regime headed by Morsi. That is exactly what their offshoot, Hamas, did in the Gaza Strip when it liquidated Palestinian Authority officials and established an Islamic emirate. The writing on the wall is still illegible as far as the U.S. government is concerned. Or else the Obama administration is still in the thrall of extremist Islam and its Muslim Brotherhood leaders. The two main ones are Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has just called new elections so that he can try again to acquire enough seats in parliament to amend Turkey’s constitution to award himself a one-man Sultanate, an absolute dictatorship-for-life to go along with his new palace. The other is Mohamed Morsi, whom Obama apparently is still backing.

It is hard not to conclude, looking at the U.S. president’s record (ignoring the protesters of 2009 in Iran; “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone” and the dictatorial way the Iran deal has been short-circuited to bypass the democratic process) that in his heart-of-hearts, he is far more committed to supporting extremist Islamist regimes — whether the mullahs of Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood — than to supporting democracy, individual freedoms or human rights.

The Europeans are more aware of the situation but unfortunately woke up too late. As hundreds of thousands of migrants from Muslim lands continue to pour over Europe’s open borders, there is little doubt that radical Islam is poised to take over the West. Islamic communities and terrorist cells continue to mushroom and gather strength throughout the cities of Europe.

From the beginning of the wave of attacks in Egypt, senior Egyptian security officials threatened Hamas. Egypt warned Hamas to stop training, arming and sending its terrorists to collaborate with ISIS operatives in attacks against the Egyptian army. Hamas steadfastly denies any involvement, even as it continues collaborating with ISIS against Egypt.

As far as Hamas is concerned, destroying the Egyptian army is essential, because its continued actions along the Rafah border and in Sheikh Zuweid in the northern Sinai Peninsula prevent Hamas from acquiring money and stockpiling weapons to fight Israel, which weakens its subversion against Mahmoud Abbas and its plans to take over the West Bank.

Despite profuse denials, at the end of August 2015, four operatives from Hamas’s military-terrorist wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, were taken off a bus by armed Egyptians on the way from Rafah through the Sinai Peninsula to Cairo. Hamas immediately accused Israeli intelligence of responsibility and warned the Egyptian authorities that “the abduction of its operatives will not go unpunished.”

In response, Dina Ramez, a co-host on Egypt’s official TV station, called Hamas out on its lies and denials of its terrorist activities in the Sinai Peninsula against the Egyptian regime. She asked Hamas, “If you are not involved in terrorism, what were your senior Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades operatives doing in Sinai?” and called them “cockroaches.”

Sources in Hamas called her a “whore,” and called Egypt a loser country defeated by Israel, using a peace treaty to sell Palestine to the enemy. Was that really the way to thank Egypt for everything it has done for the Palestinians, sacrificing its army and soldiers for us? It is a sad situation for the Palestinians and for our leadership.

What have we Palestinians gained from Hamas’s military actions against Egypt? What have we gained from our solidarity with Islamist organizations fighting against Assad in Syria, or joining organizations such as the “Palestinian Liberation Army” fighting for Assad? Why are we killing each other in the Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp? Why do we refuse everything the Israelis offer us?

Anyone who remembers history remembers the ungrateful path trodden by the Palestinians against the Kingdom of Jordan, when our leaders, headed by Arafat, tried in 1970 to overthrow King Hussein, despite the refuge Jordan offered us during the catastrophes of the Nakba in 1948 and the Naksa in 1967. Then we did the same thing in Lebanon, to where we fled from Jordan. The PLO relocated its headquarters to Beirut, and went on to turn Lebanon into a terrorist country and the lives of the Lebanese into a nightmare. If the Israelis had not invaded Lebanon in 1982, and forced the PLO to relocate to Tunisia (where its behavior was also criminal), the Palestinians definitely would have destroyed Lebanon.

The Middle East is in chaos, and Palestinian factionalism and ingratitude continue to inflame the dissolution of the Arab states and the internal Palestinian division between Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

The world is beginning to understand that the catastrophes of the Middle East have nothing to do with the resolution of the Palestinian issue, but are caused by the innate homicidal tendencies of the Arab rulers and the regional Islamist terrorist organizations.

The only person left who believes the Israeli-Palestinian nonsense is President Barack Obama, even though he is witness to the murders, rapes, beheadings and the millions of refugees, next to which the Palestinian issue is an old, irrelevant and very tired joke.

Categories: Defense of Israel, Egypt, Foreign policy, Gaza, Hamas, Iranian proxies, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Morsi, Obama, Obama and Israel, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian heroes, Palestinians, Political Islam, Reform Islam, Siani, Sisi, Support for terrorism, West Bank
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