The red alert for the incoming rocket from Gaza which exploded in the Eshkol District Friday morning, Dec. 19, may well be the harbinger of more to come. In parts of Beersheba too the dull thumps of explosions were heard on Thursday.
According to DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources, Hamas has once again fallen under Tehran’s sway after patching up their quarrel.
Iran lost no time in directing the Palestinian terrorist group to revoke the ceasefire it accepted in June for halting Israel’s summer operation in the Gaza Strip and revive low-key rocket fire. An apparently “anonymous” organization will take responsibility – in reality it will be Hamas’ military wing.
Israel’s security authorities are aware of this ominous turn of events, but prefer to keep it quiet for the time being.
Hamas is reverting to its old terrorist ways, DEBKA reports, after not only spurning, but omitting to send a reply, to a Saudi package which Riyadh believed would be too generous to resist. The Saudis offered to put up the funds for Hamas’ entire annual budget, including military spending, as well as covering the full cost of rebuilding the Gaza Strip after the ravages of the summer war.
There were two conditions:
1. The Palestinian extremists must throw their unreserved support behind Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and henceforth synchronize its operations with Cairo – i.e. desert its traditional allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood.
2. They must totally sever their military, political and financial ties with Iran. In token of this action, Hamas’ political chief Khaled Meshaal must call off his impending trip to Tehran, scheduled to mark the public announcement of the organization’s reconciliation with Iran and its leading ally, Syrian President Beshar Assad.
Instead of any sort of direct response to Riyadh’s offer, Hamas opted to use its 27th anniversary celebrations on Sunday Dec. 14, for a display of loyalty to Iran by 2,000 marching Izz e-din al-Qassam fighters. Every detail of the event was cleared in advanced by Tehran and broadcast live over all of Iran’s TV channels – an unprecedented honor.
As we first reported last week, a high-powered Hamas delegation visited Tehran on Dec. 9 to draft with Iranian officials the text of the Hamas reconciliation accord with Assad and map out future operations.
The most prominent members were Meshaal’s right hand, Muhammed Nasser; two members of the Hamas overseas military branch, Maher Abdullah and Jemal Ismail; and Lebanese agent, Osama Hamdan.
One item on this accord provided for the gradual resumption of rocket attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip.
Hours after the first rocket was launched Friday, Hamas staged its first ever parade on Temple Mount, Jerusalem, marching around the golden Dome of the Rock, and shouting calls to revive the Palestinian rocket offensive against Israeli locations. They were clad uniformly in green with jihadi headbands and hoisted Hamas banners aloft.
Hamas’ riotous demonstration of defiance contrasted sharply with the calm observed in Friday worship at Al Aqsa in the last three weeks.
Tehran is now considered one of the main defenders of the country and Iraqi politicians regularly praise its help and give it cover for its operations. It has also garnered popular support as well amongst some Iraqis.
This will all go a long way to make sure that Iran maintains its power within the country after the war is over.
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In November 2014 an Iranian jet was filmed carrying out a bombing mission in Iraq’s Diyala province. Iran was already known to have mobilized its militia allies, sent in advisers and military equipment, and brought in Lebanon’s Hezbollah to help Baghdad.
General Qasim Suleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, is all over social media with pictures showing him providing leadership to Iraqi forces.
Sending in air support seemed like the next natural step for Iran’s strategy in Iraq.
Iranian planes supported an Iraqi military operation to retake two villages from the Islamic State (ISF) in Diyala. In the middle of November Iraqi Security Forces, militias, and the peshmerga started a campaign to retake Jalawla and Sadiya in northeast Diyala, which was completed on November 23.
During that period Al Jazeera filmed an Iranian F-4 Phantom jet flying over the area. According to an Iranian military expert, Tehran was carrying out air missions there from November 18-23 using F-5 and F-4 jets as well as UAVs.
The planes were said to be flying out of Kermanshah air base in Iran. An Iranian politician was quoted in the Los Angeles Times saying that Tehran considered the Sadiya and Jalawla area a buffer zone because it is close to the border, thus explaining Iranian intervention there.
This was the first hard evidence that Iran had committed air assets to the fight in Iraq. But they had been there for some time and still continue to operate.
Iranian air power was supposedly part of a security agreement between Iraq and Iran. After the fall of Mosul Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki allegedly signed a deal with Tehran to provide military assistance to the Iraqi forces, including through air assets.
By the end of June there were the first reports of Iranian drones based out of Baghdad flying over Iraq to collect intelligence. In July several Su-25 fighter-bombers were delivered to Iraq from Russia. But that included planes from Iran as well.
That same month an Iranian Revolutionary Guards pilot named Shojat Almdari was killed in the Samarra area of Salahaddin. He was probably acting as a forward air controller for air strikes there.
Iranians were carrying out many of these missions and flying the Su-25s as well. In November an Iraqi pilot told the Guardian that Iranians were regularly manning Iraqi air force planes and helicopters in combat and supply missions.
He said they were operating out of Rasheed air base in Baghdad. There were more reports of bombing and close air support missions on November 29 and 30 and December 1 and 2 in Iraq. Iranians are supposedly in the air in Salahaddin and flying in support of ongoing ISF and militia operations there.
Finally, Iran is providing training to Iraqi pilots on Su-25s, and MiG-23s and 29s at the Kermanshah air base. The Iraqi Air Force is undermanned and lacks fighter jets and trained pilots. Given that situation and all the other military support Iran has already given it was no surprise that it would send in some of its air power as well to help Baghdad.
Only now is the extent of this support becoming public. But Iran should have been expected this to happen.
Iran has a two-fold strategy in Iraq. First, it wants to provide military assistance to make sure that the Islamic State is turned back and eventually defeated. It also wants to expand its influence within the Iraqi state through the military and bureaucracy.
It is currently achieving both of these goals. Tehran is now considered one of the main defenders of the country and Iraqi politicians regularly praise its help and give it cover for its operations. It has also garnered popular support as well amongst some Iraqis.
This will all go a long way to make sure that Iran maintains its power within the country after the war is over.
President Obama’s goal is not so much to fulfill his campaign promise about the nuclear threat as it is to launch a new détente with the Iran. This is a crucial point since it not only makes him more reluctant to stick to Western demands about nuclear issues but makes it impossible for him to contemplate abandoning the negotiations.
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For the first time since the Iran nuclear talks were extended for the second time last month, the United States and its allies will meet again with Tehran’s negotiators in Vienna on Wednesday. To listen to public statements from the Obama administration, the allied team will be there to insist on a deal that will prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. But the same factors that have tilted these negotiations in Iran’s direction throughout the process still seem to be pushing the outcome toward an agreement that will be touted as a desperately needed foreign-policy triumph for the administration. With both the French becoming more vocal about their dissatisfaction with America’s leadership in the talks and the Islamist regime making no secret of their unwillingness to make more concessions, the question facing the negotiators is not so much whether a deal is possible, but whether the U.S. is able to resist the temptation to continue giving ground to the Iranians in order to get a deal at virtually any price.
As the next round of talks begins, observers need to think back to the allies’ position prior to the signing of the interim deal to understand just how far the U.S. has retreated from its current perilous position. In 2012 when he was running for reelection, President Obama vowed during his foreign-policy debate with Mitt Romney that any deal must end Iran’s nuclear program. The allies were similarly united behind a position that Iran had no right to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel under any circumstances and that its plutonium plant at Arak must be dismantled.
Since then, the U.S. has accepted the notion that Iran has the right to a nuclear program and that its infrastructure will remain largely in place no matter what the terms of an agreement might say. It has also tacitly recognized Iran’s right to enrichment while claiming that the low levels permitted freeze its progress toward a bomb even though everyone knows these restrictions can easily be reversed. The U.S. has also given every indication it will allow Iran to keep its centrifuges as well as showing no sign that it will press Tehran to give up its plutonium option or stop producing ballistic missiles whose only purpose would be to deliver nuclear warheads. Even worse, the administration seems to be giving up any effort to find out just how much progress the Iranians have made toward weaponizing their nuclear project or to force them to admit International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to get the answers to this vital question.
Based on the experience of the last year and a half of talking with Obama’s envoys, Iran’s negotiators know they only have to stand their ground and it’s only a matter of time until the Americans give in to their demands one by one until they get terms that will let them become a nuclear threshold power as well as lifting the economic sanctions that continue to cripple Iran’s economy.
That the Iranian people are clamoring for an end to the sanctions is clear. As the New York Timesreported on Friday, anticipation of the collapse of the restrictions is the talk of Tehran. The eagerness of their would-be European trading partners is just as vocal. In theory, this desire to reconnect Iran to the global economy ought to give the U.S. the leverage to make the Iranians give up their nuclear ambitions. On top of that, the collapse of the price of oil should have Iran even more desperate and the position of the allies even stronger.
But the Iranians know whom they are dealing with. As has become increasingly clear in the last year in which the talks went into two overtime periods despite administration promises that the talks would be finite in length, President Obama’s goal is not so much to fulfill his campaign promise about the nuclear threat as it is to launch a new détente with the Iran. This is a crucial point since it not only makes him more reluctant to stick to Western demands about nuclear issues but makes it impossible for him to contemplate abandoning the negotiations. That means that the Iranians know the president isn’t even thinking, as he should be, of ratcheting up the economic pressure with tougher sanctions, or of making the Islamists fear the possibility that the U.S. would ever use force to ensure the threat is eliminated.
Under these conditions the chances of the U.S. negotiating a deal that could actually stop Iran from ever getting a bomb are slim and none. Instead, the only question remains how far the Iranians are willing to press the president to bend to their will in order to let him declare a victory and welcome this terrorist-sponsoring regime moving closer to regional hegemony as well as a nuclear weapon.
Rather than the renewed diplomacy being a signal for congressional critics from both parties of the president’s policy to pipe down, the new talks should encourage them to work harder to pass the sanctions the president claims he doesn’t need. Unless they act, the path to appeasement of Iran seems to be clear.
Former ambassador Michael Oren provided a little reminder that the issue isn’t Netanyahu and that Obama’s radical politics would put him at odds with any Israeli government.
This is an administration which makes the racist claim that Jews living in Jerusalem are “settlers”, which funds terrorists and takes their side against Israel.
Michael Oren was the consummate diplomat. He was dignified, thoughtful, articulate, knowledgeable and tactful.
In a dialogue at The Plaza here last week at the annual Scholar-Statesman dinner of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Oren said that “this administration [in Washington] has a worldview that is not in accord with any Israeli government,” not just the current one.
Describing the Obama administration as “ideological” on the Mideast, with the president’s 2009 outreach-to-the-Arab-world Cairo speech as its source, Oren said the White House views east Jerusalem communities like Gilo, for example, as not necessarily part of the Jewish state, a position he said no Israeli government would accept.
(Gilo is over the Green Line but part of the Jerusalem municipality, with a largely Jewish population.)
After the March 17 elections, Israel’s next government “likely will move to the right,” Oren predicted, “and America may be going a different way.”
Though he said the U.S.-Israel relationship is crucial — “we [Washington and Jerusalem] have no choice but to be allies” — he asserted on several occasions that “Israel has to take responsibility for itself.”
Asked by moderator Robert Satloff, the executive director of the Washington Institute, about the West’s negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, Oren first noted that Israel’s “margin for error is exactly zero” on this issue, given Iran’s longstanding threat to destroy the Jewish state.
Then, his voice rising, he said that if you believe that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is indeed the moderate he claims to be, if you believe that Iran has reversed its policy of being the world’s leading exporter of terror, if you believe that its leaders have changed their long pattern of lying about the nuclear program, and if you believe the West is capable of and willing to respond militarily to prevent the production of a nuclear bomb, then yes, you should support the U.S. effort to reach an agreement with Iran.
“But if your children and grandchildren’s’ lives depended on it, you may reach a different conclusion,” he asserted, adding: “We [the Jewish people] have not come back after 2,000 years to disappear.”
And it goes without saying, that if you believe that you’ve chosen to completely ignore everything happening in the world.
I am not Oren’s biggest fan and what he is saying is simply common sense. Obama isn’t just at odds with Netanyahu or with Israel. He’s at odds with the remaining US allies in the Middle East. If Obama is at odds with Muslim allies of the US because he supports Muslim terrorists like the Muslim Brotherhood, it goes without saying that his relationship with Israel will be toxic.
America, according to Friedman and the Israel Lobby professors should also ignore Israeli concerns and push forward with a nuclear deal with Iran. A successful negotiation, even one which leaves Iran with nuclear breakout capability in a few months, is certain to change Iran’s pattern of international behavior, as it becomes a regular member of the “community of nations” and gets back to enjoying more robust economic relations with many other nations. Iranian aid to Hezbollah, Hamas, Assad in Syria, Yemeni Shiite rebel groups, Iraqi Shiites, all of these aggressive efforts will soften or go away once Iran becomes America’s latest and greatest strategic partner.
Friedman has been one of the great lap dogs for the Obama administration, and his loyalty cost the president very little.
A touch of realism would be welcome in the White House at this point. But it won’t happen because the self-styled realists are wearing the blinkers, and think they know all there is to know.
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Professor Stephen Walt of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago like to call themselves foreign policy realists. Realists are, in their minds, people who can assess international situations without any ideological blinders or bias. Walt and Mearsheimer co-authored “The Israel Lobby,” originally as a lengthy article in the London Review of Books in 2006, and then as a much longer book version in 2007. In both the article and book, the professors argued that America’s very tight relationship with Israel was strategically unsound for the United States. The authors claimed that the closeness between the two countries was a product of the behavior of the Congress of the United States, which they believe had been unduly influenced by the political power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other supporters of the Jewish state, such as evangelical Christians.
In less academic, and blunter terms, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman welcomed Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to his address to a joint session of Congress in 2011, writing that the applause for Netanyahu reflected the fact that the Congress was “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”
Of course, Friedman had been out ahead of Walt and Mearsheimer, with a similar themed comment in a column in The New York Times in February 5, 2004:
”Israel’s prime minister has had George Bush under house arrest in the Oval Office. Mr. Sharon has Mr. Arafat surrounded by tanks, and Mr. Bush surrounded by Jewish and Christian pro-Israel lobbyists, by a vice president, Dick Cheney, who’s ready to do whatever Mr. Sharon dictates, and by political handlers telling the president not to put any pressure on Israel in an election year all conspiring to make sure the president does nothing.”
Friedman styles himself as an “eminence grise,” sitting high up in New York Times land, a platform from where he can speak as an equal with the likes of academic intellectuals such as Mearsheimer and Walt, but also foreign leaders too numerous to name, and American presidents, all of whom understand the significance of receiving a favorable column from Tom Friedman. As a presumably great strategic thinker and realist like Walt and Mearsheimer, Friedman has come to the same conclusions as the professors on where America’s strategic interests lie in the Middle East. America must challenge Israel and force a two-state solution with the Palestinians. This is in Israel’s interests as well, of course, since the absence of peace creates so much ill will for both Israel and its ally America among other nations in the region and around the world. Friedman always claims he has Israel’s real interests at heart, while their elected government digs deeper holes. Clearly, if Israel were only to be more forthcoming, the deal with the Palestinians could finally get done this time (next time, some time, whenever…).
America, according to Friedman and the Israel Lobby professors should also ignore Israeli concerns and push forward with a nuclear deal with Iran. A successful negotiation, even one which leaves Iran with nuclear breakout capability in a few months, is certain to change Iran’s pattern of international behavior, as it becomes a regular member of the “community of nations” and gets back to enjoying more robust economic relations with many other nations. Iranian aid to Hezbollah, Hamas, Assad in Syria, Yemeni Shiite rebel groups, Iraqi Shiites, all of these aggressive efforts will soften or go away once Iran becomes America’s latest and greatest strategic partner.
Friedman has been one of the great lap dogs for the Obama administration, and his loyalty cost the president very little. In his case, the president revealed that he reads Friedman’s columns, and then followed it up by inviting Friedman into the Oval Office to offer up his invaluable insights. With all that respect and notoriety, nothing could possibly stop the love coming from the Times columnist for everything Obama. Friedman’s latest service to President Barack Obama was to trash the critics of the president’s Iran policy:
”Never have I seen Israel and America’s core Arab allies working more in concert to stymie a major foreign policy initiative of a sitting U.S. president, and never have I seen more lawmakers — Democrats and Republicans — more willing to take Israel’s side against their own president’s. I’m certain this comes less from any careful consideration of the facts and more from a growing tendency by many American lawmakers to do whatever the Israel lobby asks them to do in order to garner Jewish votes and campaign donations. “
Friedman and Walt and Mearsheimer are locked into an old and predictable thesis that America’s real strategic interest in the region is securing its oil supplies, and cozying up with the oil-rich nations of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. Improving relations with Iran fosters a new climate where American is not so isolated as a result of its support for Israel. And if Israel and the Palestinians make peace, there will be a warm glow everywhere, improving the atmospherics to address other regional issues.
There is however a new realism which has overtaken some of those countries who have been patronized by the American realists for decades. For years, many oil rich nations subsidized the efforts of Islamists in schools, universities, mosques, and in politics. They believed they had bought them off to a large extent in their own countries, but could tip the scales against Israel by aiding Hamas and could satisfy the aggressive demands for Islamist expansion in other places.
The new realism, demonstrated most prominently by Egypt, but also by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, all Sunni Arab states, is that Iran, in particular a nuclear Iran, will become more assertive, not less, and represents the biggest threat to their own regimes. Sunni Islamists are also a threat to stability — witness Iraq, Libya, Syria, the Sinai in Egypt. Increasingly, Turkey and Qatar are now grouped with Iran as advancing an agenda that is unhelpful to the Saudis, Egypt, and the UAE. Saudi Arabia and Egypt will not vote with Israel at the United Nations, and they will continue to sign onto the usual collection of resolutions condemning Israeli human rights violations against the Palestinians. But it is Egypt that has gone to war with jihadists in Sinai, and effectively shut its border with Gaza. Egyptian soldiers and civilians are being murdered by Hamas and other allies of the Muslim Brotherhood. Defeating this threat is as important to Egypt, as defeating Hamas is for Israel.
”But the alliance that emerged this summer between Israel and Egypt, with the participation of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, is also a highly significant strategic development. For the first time, a major regional power is basing its strategic posture on its understanding that the threats against itself and against Israel stem from the same sources and as a consequence, that the war against Israel is a war against it.
“Israelis have argued this case for years to their Arab neighbors as well as to the Americans and other Western states. But for multiple reasons, no one has ever been willing to accept this basic, obvious reality.
“As a consequence, everyone from the Americans to the Europeans to the Saudis long supported policies that empower jihadist forces against Israel.
“[Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah] Sissi is the first major leader to break with this consensus, as a result of actions Hamas took before and since his rise to power. He has brought Saudi Arabia and the UAE along on his intellectual journey.
“Sissi’s reassessment of the relationship between the war against Israel and the war against Egypt has had a profound impact on regional realities generally and on Israel’s strategic posture specifically.
”From Israel’s perspective, this is a watershed event.
“The government must take every possible action, in economic and military spheres, to ensure that Sissi benefits from his actions.”
Of course, the Obama administration seemed enthralled with the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt, and both threatened and for a time carried out an aid suspension when Sissi and his supporters engineered the overthrow. There have been rumors, denied of course, that the White House has entertained similar notions for Israel due to its ”unconstructive” policy on settlement construction. More likely, the administration may be trying to intervene in a none too subtle fashion with the upcoming Israeli elections, to signal how much better relations would be between Israel and America if only Netanyahu were gone. If that is the White House strategy, it is not, to use a word, realistic. Most Israelis expect nothing but the back of the hand from Obama at this point, and Obama’s blessing will not enhance the candidates of the Left in the election.
A touch of realism would be welcome in the White House at this point. But it won’t happen because the self-styled realists are wearing the blinkers, and think they know all there is to know.
Obama does not want Americans to be free — to think for ourselves, to have our First and Second Amendment and other constitutional rights or to reject any aspect of His radical transformation of our country and others into nations of which He, in His twisted way, can be proud. Part II of this multipart series deals with Obama’s foreign policy.
When el Presidente Chávez took office in 1999, he began only slowly to implement his “reforms.” To a casual observer, few changes were apparent in Venezuela between 1997 when my wife and I first arrived and late 2001 when we left, probably never to return. We had a few concerns about the future of the country under Chávez but they were low on our list of reasons not to buy land and build our home in the state of Merida, up in the Andes. Mainly, we wanted to continue sailing and Merida is inconveniently far from an ocean.
Chávez’ initiatives increased dramatically in number and in magnitude only when he was well into his seemingly endless terms in office. Maybe he had heard the story of the frog put into a pleasantly warm but slowly heating pot of water. The frog failed to realize until too late that he was being boiled for dinner. By then the frog had become unable to jump out of the pot.
President Obama, flush with victory and perhaps not having heard the frog story, turned up the heat quickly at first. As a result, starting in January of last year, President Obama’s dinner was delayed by an uncooperative House of Representatives. The frog survived for a while longer. If reelected and given a compliant Congress, he seems likely to turn up the heat. We are the frog.
The situation has worsened since I wrote that article in January of 2012, not the least in Obama’s foreign policies. His then already rapid pace has accelerated and the consequences of His actions have become more “transformational.” In no particular order, He has done His utmost to enhance racial divisions, to conduct His own “war on women,” to engorge the welfare state, to import many illegal aliens, to punish His enemies and reward His friends and to conceal His intentions and actions and otherwise to deceive the public. He has also continued to militarize Federal, State and local law enforcement entities and others well beyond their legitimate needs to the detriment of those who obey the law. His transformational depredations have also infested His foreign policies and actions. In particular, He has tried to punish His, rather than America’s, enemies and to reward His, rather than America’s, friends. Despite all of this He remains — although decreasingly — popular with His admirers.
The United States has slashed its defense budget to historic lows. It sends the message abroad that friendship with America brings few rewards while hostility toward the U.S. has even fewer consequences. The bedrock American relationships with staunch allies such as Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan and Israel are fading. Instead, we court new belligerents that don’t like the United States, such as Turkey and Iran. ]Emphasis added.]
Radical Islam is spreading in the same sort of way that postwar communism once swamped postcolonial Asia, Africa and Latin America. But this time there are only weak responses from the democratic, free-market West. Westerners despair over which is worse — theocratic Iran, the Islamic State or Bashar Assad’s Syria — and seem paralyzed over where exactly the violence will spread next and when it will reach them. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
In the late 1930s, it was pathetic that countries with strong militaries such as France and Britain appeased fascist leader Benito Mussolini and allowed his far weaker Italian forces to do as they pleased by invading Ethiopia. Similarly, Iranian negotiators are attempting to dictate terms of a weak Iran to a strong United States in talks about Iran’s supposedly inherent right to produce weapons-grade uranium — a process that Iran had earlier bragged would lead to the production of a bomb. [Emphasis added.]
The ancient ingredients of war are all on the horizon. An old postwar order crumbles amid American indifference. Hopes for true democracy in post-Soviet Russia, newly capitalist China or ascendant Turkey long ago were dashed. Tribalism, fundamentalism and terrorism are the norms in the Middle East as the nation-state disappears. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
What is scary in these unstable times is that a powerful United States either thinks that it is weak or believes that its past oversight of the postwar order was either wrong or too costly — or that after Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, America is no longer a force for positive change. [Emphasis added.]
A large war is looming, one that will be far more costly than the preventative vigilance that might have stopped it.
Islam
Islam is on the march for greater power and against other religions, including Christianity and Judaism. In the Islamic view, Allah is the only true God and Mohamed is His messenger. According to Wikipedia,
Islam teaches that everyone is Muslim at birth[30][31] because every child that is born has a natural inclination to goodness and to worship the one true God alone. . . . [Emphasis added.]
Muhammad commanded: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Bukhari 9.84.57). This is still the position of all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, both Sunni and Shi’ite. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most renowned and prominent Muslim cleric in the world, has stated: “The Muslim jurists are unanimous that apostates must be punished, yet they differ as to determining the kind of punishment to be inflicted upon them. The majority of them, including the four main schools of jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi`i, and Hanbali) as well as the other four schools of jurisprudence (the four Shiite schools of Az-Zaidiyyah, Al-Ithna-`ashriyyah, Al-Ja`fariyyah, and Az-Zaheriyyah) agree that apostates must be executed.” There is only disagreement over whether the law applies only to men, or to women also – some authorities hold that apostate women should not be killed, but only imprisoned in their houses until death.
In some but not all cases, it may be possible to escape death by paying, in perpetuity, substantial fines which many simply cannot afford.
Here is a video of Ayan Hirsi Ali‘s September 15, 2014 remarks at a Yale Buckley Foundation symposium. They deal with the clash of civilizations. If you want to skip the introductory formalities, go directly to 03:45. Her remarks begin at 10:33.
Obama, like Ayan Hirsi Ali, was raised as a Muslim child. As she matured and began to think for herself, she found the realities of Islam increasingly hateful. Obama continues to find Islam good and to consider it the “religion of peace. Why?
At a dinner in Washington, Biden attempted to correct her perspective on relationship between the Islamic State and Islam, saying, “ISIS had nothing to do with Islam.” When she pushed back, Biden said, “Let me tell you one or two things about Islam…” [Emphasis added.]
“I politely left the conversation at that,” Hirsi Ali said. “I wasn’t used to arguing with vice presidents.”
Consistently, Obama’s “solution” and that of many other multiculturalists: declare the Islamic State, et al, (but not Islam itself, of course) non-Islamic.
Why Uruguay? It’s one of several South American countries run by Marxist terrorists.
Uruguayan President Jose Mujica, a former Marxist terrorist, already offered to take in Syrian refugees and a number of the freed Gitmo Jihadists are Syrians who trained under the future leader of what would become ISIS. If they stay on in Uruguay, they can try to finish the job of killing the Syrian refugees resettled there. If they don’t, they can just join ISIS and kill Christian and Yazidi refugees back in Syria.
It’s a win-win situation for ISIS and Marxist terrorists; less so for their victims.
Most of the Guantanamo detainees freed by Obama were rated as presenting a high risk to America and our allies. They include a bomb maker, a trained suicide bomber, a document forger and a terrorist who had received training in everything up to RPGs and mortars.
Outgoing Uruguayan President José Mujica has made clear that Uruguay would not hold or restrict the six Guantanamo detainees who were recently resettled in his country.
“The first day that they want to leave, they can leave,” said Mujica in a Spanish-language interview with state television TNU. [Emphasis added.]
Please see also this article at The Long War Journal for additional information on the released terrorists. It also observes that
In its final recommendations, issued in January 2010, President Obama’s Guantanamo Review Task Force recommended that all six be transferred “to a country outside the United States that will implement appropriate security measures.” [Emphasis added.]
Right. Was it an humanitarian gesture from Obama? An early Christmas present for the Islamic state and related peace loving Islamic terrorists?
Iran and Nukes
The Israel versus Iran context provides glaring examples of Obama’s predilection for punishing His, rather than America’s, enemies while rewarding His, rather than America’s, friends. As I observed here, Iran is well known as a major sponsor of Islamic terrorism. It is also remarkable for its failure to provide even the most basic human rights.
It has been reported that Iran executed more than four hundred people during the first half of 2014. That’s more than two per day.
Despite Iran’s state anti-Semitism, the recent arrest of U.S. journalists, and the continued oppression of women, the Obama administration has been attempting a rapprochement with the Iranian regime. Fending off Iran hawks in Congress and the D.C. punditocracy, the administration has argued for a policy of constructive engagement, pursuing diplomacy over military action to halt Iran’s nuclear program. The execution of two gay men, while it may not be surprising, certainly doesn’t make that “engagement” any easier.
Iran’s abysmal human rights record and support for Islamic terrorism appear to be of little if any relevance to Obama and the P5+1 negotiators as they pursue a deal with Iran. As noted here, Iran is already at least a nascent nuclear power and, due to Obama’s twisted world view and His desire for a legacy consistent with it, the P5+1 nuclear negotiations gave, and will likely continue to give, Iran substantial advantages. Iran continues to use those advantages, as P5+1 continues to give Iran all that it demands while receiving little if anything in return. The recent seven month extension highlights this strategy.
[W]hat is clear is that the Islamic Republic, particularly the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior cadre of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), have gained considerable amount of geopolitical, geostrategic and economic advantages from this offer by the Obama administration. The Supreme Leader’s strategies to buy time, regain full recovery in the economy, pursue his regional hegemonic and ideological ambitions, and reinitiate his government’s nuclear program have been fulfilled. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
[T]he extension of nuclear talks offered to the Islamic Republic is not going to alter Iran’s stand on its nuclear program. Iran will continue holding the position that their demands for the following issues to be met: maintaining a specific number (tens of thousands of) fast-spinning centrifuge machines, Tehran should have the capacity to produce nuclear fuel in the future, and maintain specific level of enriching uranium. In the next few months, the Islamic Republic is not going to give up its capacity to produce plutonium which can be utilized for weapons at its heavy water reactor in the city of Arak. Iran is less likely to provide more evidence proving that it did not carry out secret tests on the development of atomic weapons in Parchin or other military complexes. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency recently pointed out that the Islamic Republic continues to deny the IAEA access to sensitive military site which are suspected to be used for nuclear activities. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
After the extension of the nuclear talks, President Rouhani pointed out on state television that “I promise the Iranian nation that those centrifuges will never stop working.” The extension not only will not alter the Islamic Republic’s position on its nuclear program, but will give the ruling clerics the opportunity to be further empowered, making them more determined to pursue their regional hegemonic ambitions. [Emphasis added.]
Alireza Forghani, a former provincial governor (and pro-nuclear radical) who now serves as strategist at a think tank aligned with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in his blog that Iran is pursuing a tactic of “elongation” in the talks, which “never are supposed to be brought to a successful conclusion.” He backs a policy of nuclear weapons being the Islamic Republic’s “definite right” and looks forward to a time when the United States faces “a nuclear Iran who not only has nuclear power, but also is equipped with nuclear weapons.” [Emphasis added.]
In a previous post headlined “Iran Needs a War,” Forghani cautioned that “American politicians should know that their next war with the Islamic Revolution of Iran, the war which guarantees Iranian Muslims survival, will be an utter destruction.” He also denounced “the childish behavior of Obama” regarding the negotiations and said that “nuclear weapons capabilities are essential in order to prevent U.S. freedom of action” and that Iran needed the capability to mount a “rapid response at the level of the atom bomb.” [ Emphasis added.]
The Obama administration is trying to portray the failure to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran as just part of the ebb and flow of the diplomatic process. But the signals coming from Tehran indicate that arms control negotiations are just another tool in Iran’s drive to achieve nuclear capability. [Emphasis added.]
Iran contends that the Obama Administration continues to lie about Iranian concessions, which Iran denies having made. Due to the overall credibility deficit of the Obama administration, I consider Iran more credible on the matter.
Iran over the weekend pushed back against key claims made by the administration to lawmakers and the press about further concessions agreed to by Iran following the last round of talk in Vienna regarding the country’s contested nuclear program.
In talking points disseminated to congressional offices since the extension in talks was announced, the administration has claimed that the terms of the agreement—which will prolong talks through July 2015—included “significant concessions” by Tehran, according to the Associated Press. [Emphasis added.]
However, Iran says that this is a lie and that no new concessions have been agreed upon.
Islam and Israel
Islam, the Religion of Peace Death and Subjugation, is not the root of all evil, but it engages in and promotes far more than its fair share of the worst types. Obama assists it in its depredations. Here’s a video of a Muslim preacher at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem speaking with great warmth heat about Jews.
The words of that “preacher-teacher,” as Ayan Hirsi Ali would probably characterize him, and those of like-minded Islamists, have gained many devout followers among Palestinians. According to this article,
An overwhelming majority of Palestinian Arabs support the recent spate of terrorist attacks against Israelis, an opinion poll released Tuesday finds, according to The Associated Press (AP).
. . . .
The poll found 86 percent of respondents believe the Al-Aqsa mosque is in “grave danger” from Israel. It said 80 percent supported individual attacks by Arabs who have stabbed Israelis or rammed cars into crowded train stations. [Emphasis added.]
Islamists have been regularly clashing with Israeli police on the Temple Mount and escalated a campaign of harassment against Jewish visitors, who are already under severe restrictions due to Muslim pressure. The violence reached a peak with the recent attempted murder of prominent Jewish Temple Mount activist Yehuda Glick.
Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has blamed Israel for the ongoing tensions in Jerusalem.
The Iranian regime has launched a nationwide social media campaign called, “We Love Fighting Israel,” which encourages Iranian children, teens, and Internet users to photograph themselves alongside messages of hate for the Jewish state.
. . . .
Thousands of Iranians are reported to have already joined the electronic movement following comments by Khamenei’s outlining Iran’s goal of destroying the Jewish state.
“Our people love fighting against the Zionists and the Islamic Republic has proved this as well,” [Supreme Leader] Khamenei was quoted as saying in a recent speech by the country’s state-run media. “By Allah’s Favor and Grace, we have passed through the barrier of denominational discord.” [Emphasis and bracketed insert added.]
. . . .
The anti-Israel campaign now “has gone viral on the web,” according to Iran’s state-controlled Mehr News Agency, “getting more and more boost from individuals who post photos reading similar sentences, [and] sharing the #Fightingthezionists hash tag.”
In 1975, after repeated attempts to kick Israel out of the U.N., the General Assembly succumbed to the pressure exerted by the Arab countries and determined that Zionism is racism. The decision was the cornerstone of the institutionalized factory of discrimination against Israel at the United Nations. The U.N. waited 16 long years before retracting its “Zionism is racism” decision. The protocols have been updated, but even with no official reminder, the stain remains on the walls of the general assembly hall and the stench is still in the U.N.’s corridors today. [Emphasis added.]
Of the 193 states that belong to the U.N., only 87 are democracies — less than half. The countries that are taking advantage of the democratic process at the United Nations are the same ones that suppress any spark of democracy within their borders. Although the U.N. uses a parliamentary mechanism, many of the hands raised to vote are the hands of brutal dictators. [Emphasis added.]
The U.N. has gone from being a stage for courageous statecraft to a theater of the absurd: The General Assembly allows wild Palestinian incitement, the Security Council has Venezuela and Malaysia managing peacekeeping forces, and then there is the Human Rights Council, in which the guardians of humanity are regimes without a shred of humanity, regimes that invent blood libels against Israel while in Syria, a tyrant slaughters hundreds of thousands of his own people. [Emphasis added.]
The UN created a unique organization, UNRWA, to handle refugees from Palestine/Israel while every other global refugee is managed in an under-funded, undermanned separate agency. The UN compounds the abuse by only allowing descendants of UNRWA to receive aid, while denying descendants of the rest of the world’s refugees any support.
. . . .
The UN only condemned the nationalist movement of Israelis as “racism” while ignoring nationalism of other countries
The UN censured Israel when the Israeli Prime Minister visited the holiest spot for Jews during regular visiting hours, but didn’t say a word while some countries were slaughtering thousands of people.
Unlike the UN believer in the cartoon, Obama remains unwilling to learn about the bases of, let alone to consider, other perceptions.
A senior official of the United Nation Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), also known to some as the United Nations Rocket Warehousing Agency), recently called for a boycott of the Jerusalem Post for publishing an editorial
by Palestinian human rights activist Bassam Eid that called for an audit of all allocated funds to UNRWA and the dismissal of its Hamas-affiliated employees. (“Proud Palestinians must lead the fight to reform UNRWA,” Dec. 1, 2014.)
And Obama often relies on the U.N. to tell Him how and where to “lead.”
For Obama and European leaders, Israel is reducible to the peace process. And the Israeli left depends on the support of foreign governments for its network of foreign funded non-profit organizations. The Israeli left can’t let go of its exploding version of ObamaCare [the peace process] because the left is becoming a foreign organization with limited domestic support. Its electorate isn’t in Israel; it’s in Brussels. [Emphasis and bracketed insert added.]
The Israeli left is short on ideas, both foreign and domestic, and its last remaining card is Obama.
Escalating a crisis in relations has been the traditional way for US administrations to force Israeli governments out of office. Bill Clinton did it to Netanyahu and as Israeli elections appear on the horizon Obama would love to do it all over again.
There’s only one problem.
The United States is popular in Israel, but Obama isn’t. Obama’s spats with Netanyahu ended up making the Israeli leader more popular. The plan was for Obama to gaslight Israelis by maintaining a positive image in Israel while lashing out at the Jewish State so that the blame would fall on Netanyahu. [Emphasis added.]
Obama considers Prime Minister Netanyahu the principal impediment to realization of His fantasy of Palestinian peace through creation of a Palestinian state. “Peace” with the Palestinians will not bring peace to Israel — aside from Islamic peace through death. Yet it seems that Obama is meddling in Israeli politics to get Prime Minister Netanyahu removed from office. Obama recently met with Netanyahu’s Israeli opponents:
The White House is still working on a detailed plan of action, but has lost no time in setting up appointments for the president to receive heads of the parties sworn to overthrow Netanyahu – among others, ex-minister Lapid, opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog of Labor and Tzipi Livni (The Movement), who was fired this week as Justice Minister along with Lapid. [Emphasis added.]
They will be accorded attractive photo-ops with Obama and joint communiqués designed to signify to the Israeli voter that the US president would favor their election to the future government and the country as a whole would gain tangibly from a different government to the incumbent one. [Emphasis added.]
This White House campaign would be accompanied by leaks from Washington for putting Netanyahu and his policies in a derogatory light. Messages to this effect were transmitted to a number of serving political figures as an incentive to jump the Likud-led ship to opposition ranks. The US administration has begun hinting that it may emulate the Europeans by turning the screws on Israel as punishment for the prime minister’s signature policy of developing West Bank and Jerusalem development construction. [Emphasis added.]
Conclusions
Should we, who claim to be civilized and therefore to support democracy with freedom — including freedom of religion but not freedom to engage in genocidal religious wars — respect and emphasize with the Islamic views of the “preacher-teacher” in the video embedded above and of Iran’s Supreme Leader that the Jews who infest the Earth must be hated and killed? Does Hillary Clinton’s sympathy and empathy meme apply only to our enemies? Does she consider the preacher-teacher, the Supreme Leader and their ilk to be our friends or enemies?
Rather than be troubled by the nature of Islam, Obama heartily approves of it. As far as the Middle East is concerned, He is troubled principally by Israel’s refusal to commit national suicide by bowing to His every demand which, in His apparent view, should bring peace to the entire region. If Israel fails to do as He demands, it must suffer the fate of a rabid dog so that its infection cannot spread.
Obama has been a disaster as a world leader and, when He has actually tried to lead He has done so, often in conjunction with the U.N., to deprive many of their freedoms while enhancing the abilities of others, particularly devotees of Islam, to trash even more of those freedoms. If, as seems increasingly likely, the P5+1 negotiations as eventually concluded permit Iran to get (or keep) nukes and the means to use them, the world will be a much less safe place for all.
If Obama succeeds, Iran will see to it that Israel is not the only nation to suffer the consequences of His actions.
(If Mr. Carter fails to change his views on Iran, or at least stop talking about them, how long will he last as Obama’s Secretary of Defense? — DM)
Ashton Carter / AP
President Barack Obama’s nominee for secretary of defense Ashton Carter has a very strong position on nuclear non-proliferation issues, the Tower reports.
Some of those positions stand in contrast with those of the Obama administration.
Politico on Tuesday described him as a “leading member of a clique of defense intellectuals long concerned with the possibility of a nuclear terrorist attack” and suggested he “could be more consequential when it comes to Obama’s plans for dealing with Iran’s nuclear program.”
Two months before President Obama’s 2008 election, Carter argued, in a paper coauthored with diplomatic heavyweights including former Special Middle East Coordinator Dennis Ross and Nonproliferation Policy Education Center Executive Director Henry Sokolski, that “Iran’s nuclear development may pose the most significant strategic threat to the United States during the next Administration.” The Times of Israel covered Carter’s nomination, noting that he was a “vocal proponent of stronger action to stymie nuclear proliferation.” Carter had visited the Jewish state in 2013, and was quoted as telling a group of Israeli soldiers that “protecting America means protecting Israel, and that’s why we’re here in the first place.”
The Jerusalem Post reported on Friday that as part of the Pentagon’s Defense Advisory Acquisition Group, Carter played an “instrumental” role in the transfer of F-35 fighter jets from the U.S. to Israel. Israel recently placed a preliminary order to purchase 25 more of the state of the art fighters. Speaking Friday to reporters at the State Department press briefing about U.S.-Israel ties, Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf reaffirmed the closeness of the relationship, calling ties between the countries “incredibly close, essential” and “unshakable” and noting that it is “arguably the closest military-to-military relationship” the countries have ever had.
[T]he State Department never conducts lessons-learned exercises to determine why previous episodes of diplomacy have failed.
Kerry is like a gambler who has lost everything, but figures if only he is given one more round at the craps table, he can win big. American national security, however, is nothing with which to gamble. Especially when a gambler is desperate, the house will always win. In this case, however, the house is not Washington, but rather Tehran.
**********
As Jonathan Tobin notes, Colum Lynch’s Foreign Policy bombshell report about Iran’s covert efforts to buy equipment for its Arak plant, a facility which could produce plutonium for a nuclear bomb, raises questions about the logic of the Obama administration, and the recent comments by both Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry with regard to the wisdom of extending nuclear talks with Iran.
If Lynch’s report is true—and it appears very much to be so—then there are two possibilities as to what happened vis-à-vis American diplomacy. The first is that Iranian diplomats were always insincere in pursuit of a nuclear resolution, and lied outright to Kerry, Undersecretary Wendy Sherman, Clinton, Biden-aide Jake Sullivan, and other officials who have championed the drive for nuclear talks with the current Iranian administration. That possibility is troubling enough, but the second scenario is as troubling, and that is that Iranian diplomats were perfectly sincere, but that the regime simply couldn’t care less what its diplomats said and pursued its own goals irrespective of any commitments they made.
A key theme of my recent book exploring the history of U.S. diplomacy with rogue regimes (of which Iran is the marquee example) is that the State Department never conducts lessons-learned exercises to determine why previous episodes of diplomacy have failed. One example they might consider is the pre-Iraq War negotiations with Iran: Immediately prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, National Security Council official Zalmay Khalilzad along with Ambassador Ryan Crocker met with Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s UN ambassador (and its current foreign minister) in secret talks in Geneva. Almost simultaneously, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw met with Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi. Both talks solicited the same Iranian pledge: Iranian officials would not interfere with coalition forces in Iraq, and Iran would not insert its own personnel or militias into Iraq.
In hindsight, the Iranians there, too, lied. Soon after Saddam’s fall, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) infiltrated 2,000 fighters, militiamen, and Qods Force personnel into Iraq replete with radio transmitters, money, pamphlets, and supplies. The source for that statement? Iranian journalists. Those most enthusiastic for rapprochement, however, are now placing their hopes in the same Mr. Zarif, the man who a decade ago either lied shamelessly or bluffed about the power he did have to control the behavior of the IRGC and influence the supreme leader. Then again, there is a reason why, before he became vice president, Joe Biden was Tehran’s favorite senator.
Kerry is like a gambler who has lost everything, but figures if only he is given one more round at the craps table, he can win big. American national security, however, is nothing with which to gamble. Especially when a gambler is desperate, the house will always win. In this case, however, the house is not Washington, but rather Tehran.
(But the humanitarian, peace-loving Islamic Republic of Iran, where sanity, good will toward all and freedom flourish, needs nukes to take its rightful place in our multicultural International Community. Right? — DM)
Ali Khamenei / AP
The Iranian regime has launched a nationwide social media campaign called, “We Love Fighting Israel,” which encourages Iranian children, teens, and Internet users to photograph themselves alongside messages of hate for the Jewish state.
The movement has sprouted online in the last few days across social media sites such as Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms as a result of a recent call by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rallying the nation to take on Israel.
The campaign drew outrage from opponents of Iran’s hardline regime and calls for sites such as Instagram to shut it down for violating policies against hate speech.
Thousands of Iranians are reported to have already joined the electronic movement following comments by Khamenei’s outlining Iran’s goal of destroying the Jewish state.
“Our people love fighting against the Zionists and the Islamic Republic has proved this as well,” Khamenei was quoted as saying in a recent speech by the country’s state-run media. “By Allah’s Favor and Grace, we have passed through the barrier of denominational discord.”
These remarks inspired Iranian social media users to take to the Internet and launch the “We Love Fighting Israel” movement. The campaign even has spawned its own hashtag on Twitter, “#FightingtheZionists.”
The anti-Israel campaign now “has gone viral on the web,” according to Iran’s state-controlled Mehr News Agency, “getting more and more boost from individuals who post photos reading similar sentences, [and] sharing the #Fightingthezionists hash tag.”
More than 300 pictures have already been posted to an Instagram account titled, “FightingTheZionists.” The account, which had some 3,000 followers as of Tuesday evening, links to Khamenei’s personal Instagram account.
Users post pictures with messages declaring, “We love fighting against Israel,” “I love to fight Israel,” “We are lovers of fighting Israel,” and “I love fighting against Zionists,” among other similar messages.
One picture in particular has caught the eye of Iran critics on the web and prompted a harsh response to the anti-Israel campaign.
The photo shows a young child decked out in military gear and holding a sign that translates from Farsi as, “I love fighting against Zionists.”
Captioned alongside the photo is an English language message that reads: “Our people love fighting against the Zionists and the Islamic Republic has proved this as well, Ayatollah Khamenei.”
It is not the only photo to depict young children as participating in the campaign to fight Israel.
The photos posted on the Instagram page depict “several groups of people including war veterans, students, journalists, and people from all walks of life joining the campaign,” according to Mehr News.
The American nonprofit group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), which works to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, expressed disgust at the campaign on its Twitter account.
UANI lashed out at the Iranian regime for promoting “vile hate” and the “indoctrination of hate children.”
Additionally, Matan Shamir, UANI’s director of research, called on social media sites to immediately take steps to remove the Iranian campaign.
“The Iranian regime’s brazen exploitation and indoctrination of innocent children to hate and commit violence is utterly deplorable,” Shamir said. “Instagram and its parent company Facebook must enforce their own guidelines prohibiting hate speech and incitement to violence, and remove such propaganda immediately.”
Shamir went on to criticize Iran for its own domestic human rights abuses, such as preventing average citizens from accessing the Internet.
“It is intolerable that while the regime blocks its own citizens from accessing many popular social media platforms, it uses them to advance its own crude and hateful ideology,” he said.
(The Iran Scam continues to plod along and along as Iran gets what it demands. — DM)
The nuclear extension definitely lacks any clear key terms upon which prospective nuclear talks would be anchored or that give any idea how a final nuclear deal could be reached.
But what is clear is that the Islamic Republic, particularly the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior cadre of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), have gained considerable amount of geopolitical, geostrategic and economic advantages from this offer by the Obama administration. The Supreme Leader’s strategies to buy time, regain full recovery in the economy, pursue his regional hegemonic and ideological ambitions, and reinitiate his government’s nuclear program have been fulfilled.
[T]he extension of nuclear talks offered to the Islamic Republic is not going to alter Iran’s stand on its nuclear program.
The extension not only will not alter the Islamic Republic’s position on its nuclear program, but will give the ruling clerics the opportunity to be further empowered, making them more determined to pursue their regional hegemonic ambitions.
******************
While the Obama administration formerly stated that extending the nuclear talks is out of equation, nevertheless, President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry raised the option of an extension a day before the November 24th deadline. Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, definitely welcomed the idea.
After over a year of negotiations, which have traveled across the globe from Vienna, to Oman, and to New York, the negotiators (the Islamic Republic and the P5+1: China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) planned to extend the nuclear talks for another seven months in order to finalize the preliminary deal reached last year in Geneva. Accordingly, the nuclear negotiations will continue through the end of June.
The obscure objectives are to achieve a “headline” agreement by March 1st and seal the complete technical details of the headline agreement by July 1st. Details and nuances of the nuclear talks, with regards to agreements and gaps, have yet to be released, but some diplomats stated the repeatedly-heard phrase that “progress has been made.”
The nuclear extension definitely lacks any clear key terms upon which prospective nuclear talks would be anchored or that give any idea how a final nuclear deal could be reached.
But what is clear is that the Islamic Republic, particularly the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior cadre of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), have gained considerable amount of geopolitical, geostrategic and economic advantages from this offer by the Obama administration. The Supreme Leader’s strategies to buy time, regain full recovery in the economy, pursue his regional hegemonic and ideological ambitions, and reinitiate his government’s nuclear program have been fulfilled.
Based on the extension offered by the Obama administration, the Islamic Republic will continue receiving $700million per month in frozen assets during the extended seven month period. Secondly, Iran will further consolidate its economy through increased sales in oil, particularly to Asian countries, heighten business deals with some Western companies, regain the value of its currency, and enjoy the removed sanctions on some of its industries. As a result, Iran will attempt to address the economic challenges which were threatening the hold on power of the ruling politicians.
From the economic perspective, the $700 million in sanctions relief will boost Iran’s economy as it is an equivalence of approximately 350,000 more oil barrels a day, based on the current market price.
The Islamic Republic exports roughly one million barrels of crude oil in a day. The sanctions relief would be equivalent to a 30 percent increase in oil sale. In the next few months, Tehran will attempt to push for additional sanctions relief as well as ratchet up its economic deals, such export of gas and other goods, to some European and Eastern countries including France, Germany, Russia, Japan, and China.
Some European countries’ exports to Iran have already ratcheted up due to the prospects of the nuclear negotiations. Tehran Times, the Islamic Republic’s state newspaper, stated that Germany was Iran’s leading trade partner “The European country (Germany) exported €207 million of goods to Iran in June 2014, an 88 percent rise compared to June 2013.” Nevertheless, Tehran needs the complete lifting of economic sanctions in order to gain the optimal potentials of its economy and gain full recovery.
Third, the extension of the nuclear negotiations will ensure to the Iranian leaders that the international community, specifically the West, will not make efforts in further isolating Iran and pressuring it economically or politically.
In addition, the extension of nuclear talks offered to the Islamic Republic is not going to alter Iran’s stand on its nuclear program. Iran will continue holding the position that their demands for the following issues to be met: maintaining a specific number (tens of thousands of) fast-spinning centrifuge machines, Tehran should have the capacity to produce nuclear fuel in the future, and maintain specific level of enriching uranium. In the next few months, the Islamic Republic is not going to give up its capacity to produce plutonium which can be utilized for weapons at its heavy water reactor in the city of Arak. Iran is less likely to provide more evidence proving that it did not carry out secret tests on the development of atomic weapons in Parchin or other military complexes. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency recently pointed out that the Islamic Republic continues to deny the IAEA access to sensitive military site which are suspected to be used for nuclear activities.
Finally, the Islamic Republic’s antagonistic stance towards the United States and the West will remain the same as well. This week, while Khamenei officially granted his blessing to Rouhani to continue with the game of nuclear negotiations, he also called the West “arrogant.” Earlier, he published a “9-step plan” to eliminate Israel. After the extension of the nuclear talks, President Rouhani pointed out on state television that “I promise the Iranian nation that those centrifuges will never stop working.” The extension not only will not alter the Islamic Republic’s position on its nuclear program, but will give the ruling clerics the opportunity to be further empowered, making them more determined to pursue their regional hegemonic ambitions.
Hamas flexes its muscles on Temple Mt., Jerusalem
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