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Column One: Obama’s enemies list

August 6, 2015

Column One: Obama’s enemies list, Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick, August 6, 2015

ShowImage (8)US President Barack Obama at the Rose Garden of the White House. (photo credit:OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO / PETE SOUZA)

[T]he real question lawmakers need to ask is whether the deal is good for America. Is Obama right or wrong that only partisan zealots and disloyal Zionists could oppose his great diplomatic achievement? To determine the answer to that question, you need to do is ask another one. Does his deal make America safer or less safe? The best way to answer that question is to consider all the ways Iran threatens America today, and ask whether the agreement has no impact on those threats, or whether it mitigates or aggravates them.

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In President Barack Obama’s defense of his nuclear deal with Iran Wednesday, he said there are only two types of people who will oppose his deal – Republican partisans and Israel- firsters – that is, traitors.

At American University, Obama castigated Republican lawmakers as the moral equivalent of Iranian jihadists saying, “Those [Iranian] hard-liners chanting ‘Death to America’ who have been most opposed to the deal… are making common cause with the Republican Caucus.”

He then turned his attention to Israel.

Obama explained that whether or not you believe the deal endangers Israel boils down to whom you trust more – him or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And, he explained, he can be trusted to protect Israel better than Netanyahu can because “[I] have been a stalwart friend of Israel throughout my career.”

The truth is that it shouldn’t much matter to US lawmakers whether Obama or Netanyahu has it right about Israel. Israel isn’t a party to the deal and isn’t bound by it. If Israel decides it needs to act on its own, it will.

The US, on the other side, will be bound by the deal if Congress fails to kill it next month.

So the real question lawmakers need to ask is whether the deal is good for America. Is Obama right or wrong that only partisan zealots and disloyal Zionists could oppose his great diplomatic achievement? To determine the answer to that question, you need to do is ask another one. Does his deal make America safer or less safe? The best way to answer that question is to consider all the ways Iran threatens America today, and ask whether the agreement has no impact on those threats, or whether it mitigates or aggravates them.

Today Iran is harming America directly in multiple ways.

The most graphic way Iran is harming America today is by holding four Americans hostage. Iran’s decision not to release them over the course of negotiations indicates that at a minimum, the deal hasn’t helped them.

It doesn’t take much consideration to recognize that the hostages in Iran are much worse off today than they were before Obama concluded the deal on July 14.

The US had much more leverage to force the Iranians to release the hostages before it signed the deal than it does now. Now, not only do the Iranians have no reason to release the hostages, they have every reason to take more hostages.

Then there is Iranian-sponsored terrorism against the US.

In 2011, the FBI foiled an Iranian plot to murder the Saudi ambassador in Washington and bomb the Saudi and Israeli embassies in the US capital.

One of the terrorists set to participate in the attack allegedly penetrated US territory through the Mexican border.

The terrorist threat to the US emanating from Iran’s terrorist infrastructure in Latin America will rise steeply as a consequence of the nuclear deal.

As The Wall Street Journal’s Mary Anastasia O’Grady wrote last month, the sanctions relief the deal provides to Iran will enable it to massively expand its already formidable operations in the US’s backyard. Over the past two decades, Iran and Hezbollah have built up major presences in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Bolivia.

Iran’s presence in Latin America also constitutes a strategic threat to US national security. Today Iran can use its bases of operations in Latin America to launch an electromagnetic pulse attack on the US from a ballistic missile, a satellite or even a merchant ship.

The US military is taking active steps to survive such an attack, which would destroy the US’s power grid. Among other things, it is returning the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to its former home in Cheyenne Mountain outside Colorado Springs.

But Obama has ignored the findings of the congressional EMP Commission and has failed to harden the US electronic grid to protect it from such attacks.

The economic and human devastation that would be caused by the destruction of the US electric grid is almost inconceivable. And now with the cash infusion that will come Iran’s way from Obama’s nuclear deal, it will be free to expand on its EMP capabilities in profound ways.

Through its naval aggression in the Strait of Hormuz Iran threatens the global economy. While the US was negotiating the nuclear deal with Iran, the Revolutionary Guards unlawfully interdicted – that is hijacked – the Marshall Islands-flagged Maersk Tigris and held its crew hostage for weeks.

Iran’s assault on the Tigris came just days after the US-flagged Maersk Kensington was surrounded and followed by Revolutionary Guards ships until it fled the strait.

A rational take-home message the Iranians can draw from the nuclear deal is that piracy pays.

Their naval aggression in the Strait of Hormuz was not met by American military force, but by American strategic collapse at Vienna.

This is doubly true when America’s listless response to Iran’s plan to use its Houthi proxy’s takeover of Yemen to control the Bab el-Mandab strait is taken into consideration. With the Bab el-Mandab, Iran will control all maritime traffic from the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. Rather than confront this clear and present danger to the global economy, America abandoned all its redlines in the nuclear talks.

Then there is Iran’s partnership 20-year partnership with al-Qaida.

The 9/11 Commission found in its report that four of the 9/11 terrorists transited Iran before traveling to the US. As former Defense Intelligence Agency director Lt.-Gen. (ret.) Mike Flynn told Fox News in the spring, Iranian cooperation with al-Qaida remains deep and strategic.

When the US Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, they seized hard drives containing more than a million documents related to al-Qaida operations. All but a few dozen remain classified.

According to Flynn and other US intelligence officials who spoke to The Weekly Standard, the documents expose Iran’s vast collaboration with al-Qaida.

The agreement Obama concluded with the mullahs gives a tailwind to Iran. Iran’s empowerment will undoubtedly be used to expand its use of al-Qaida terrorists as proxies in their joint war against the US.

Then there is Iran’s ballistic missile program.

The UN Security Council resolution passed two weeks ago cancels the UN-imposed embargoes on conventional arms and ballistic missile acquisitions by Iran. Since the nuclear deal facilities Iranian development of advanced nuclear technologies that will enable the mullahs to build nuclear weapons freely when the deal expires, the Security Council resolution means that by the time the deal expires, Iran will have the nuclear warheads and the intercontinental ballistic missiles required to carry out a nuclear attack on the US.

Obama said Wednesday that if Congress votes down his nuclear deal, “we will lose… America’s credibility as a leader of diplomacy. America’s credibility,” he explained, “is the anchor of the international system.”

Unfortunately, Obama got it backwards. It is the deal that destroys America’s credibility and so upends the international system which has rested on that credibility for the past 70 years.

The White House’s dangerous suppression of seized al-Qaida-Iran documents, like its listless response to Iran’s maritime aggression, its indifference to Iran’s massive presence in Latin America, its lackluster response to Iran’s terrorist activities in Latin America, and its belittlement of the importance of the regime’s stated goal to destroy America – not to mention its complete collapse on all its previous redlines over the course of the negotiations – are all signs of the disastrous toll the nuclear deal has already taken on America’s credibility, and indeed on US national security.

To defend a policy that empowers Iran, the administration has no choice but to serve as Iran’s agent. The deal destroys America’s credibility in fighting terrorism. By legitimizing and enriching the most prolific state sponsor of terrorism, the US has made a mockery of its claimed commitment to the fight.

The deal destroys the US’s credibility as an ally.

By serving as apologists for its worst enemy, the US has shown its allies that they cannot trust American security guarantees. How can Israel or Saudi Arabia trust America to defend them when it is endangering itself? The deal destroys 70 years of US nonproliferation efforts. By enabling Iran to become a nuclear power, the US has made a mockery of the very notion of nonproliferation and caused a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

The damage caused by the deal is already being felt. For instance, Europe, Russia and China are already beating a path to the ayatollahs’ doorstep to sign commercial and military deals with the regime.

But if Congress defeats the deal, it can mitigate the damage. By killing the deal, Congress will demonstrate that the American people are not ready to go down in defeat. They can show that the US remains committed to its own defense and the rebuilding of its strategic credibility worldwide.

In his meeting with Jewish leaders Tuesday, Obama acknowledged that his claim – repeated yet again Wednesday – that the only alternative to the deal is war, is a lie.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Greg Rosenbaum, chairman of the National Democratic Jewish Council, which is allied with the White House, said that Obama rejected the notion that war will break out if Congress rejects the deal with veto-overriding majorities in both houses.

According to Rosenbaum, Obama claimed that if Congress rejects his nuclear deal, eventually the US will have to carry out air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities in order to prevent them from enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels.

“But,” he quoted Obama as saying, “the result of such a strike won’t be war with Iran.”

Rather, Obama said, Iran will respond to a US strike primarily by ratcheting up its terrorist attacks against Israel.

“I can assure,” Obama told the Jewish leaders, “that Israel will bear the brunt of the asymmetrical responses that Iran will have to a military strike on its nuclear facilities.”

What is notable here is that despite the fact that it will pay the heaviest price for a congressional defeat of the Iran deal, Israel is united in its opposition to the deal. This speaks volume about the gravity with which the Israeli public views the threats the agreement unleashed.

But again, Israel is not the only country that is imperiled by the nuclear deal. And Israelis are not the only ones who need to worry.

Obama wishes to convince the public that the deal’s opponents are either partisan extremists or traitors who care about Israel more than they care about America. But neither claim is true. The main reason Americans should oppose the deal is that it endangers America. And as a consequence, Americans who oppose the deal are neither partisans nor turncoats.

They are patriots.

Categories: Al Qaeda, Defense of Israel, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Freedom of the seas, Iran / Israel War, Iran scam, Iranian EMPs, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Iranian Threats, Islamic jihad, Islamic supremacy, Israel, Khamenei, Latin America, Lies, Muslim Brotherhood, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, Obama's motivations, P5+1, Treason, U.S. Congress
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Speaking of the Iran deal (13)

August 6, 2015

Speaking of the Iran deal (13), Power Line,  Scott Johnson, August 6, 2015

(Did anyone tell Obama about Iran’s sanitation efforts before his August 5th address on the Iran “deal?” The linked Bloomberg View article is available here at Warsclerotic. — DM)

The U.S. intelligence community has informed Congress of evidence that Iran was sanitizing its suspected nuclear military site at Parchin, in broad daylight, days after agreeing to a nuclear deal with world powers…

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Omri Ceren writes to comment on the Bloomberg View story reporting that President Obama’s friends in Iran are destroying evidence at the Parchin site in broad daylight. Omni comments by email:

The Obama administration has spent the last two years assuring lawmakers and reporters that any deal with Iran would have to include the Iranians allowing IAEA inspectors robust access to the Parchin military base. The Iranians used the facility to conduct hydrodynamic experiments relevant to the detonation of nuclear warheads, and the IAEA needs to resolve the nature of the work and figure out how far they got in order to set up a reliable verification regime.

The requirement was never, ever up for debate: Sherman in 2013: the JPOA requires Iran to “address past and present practices… including Parchin” [a]; Sherman in 2014: “as part of any comprehensive agreement… we expect, indeed, Parchin to be resolved” [b]; Harf in 2015: “we would find it… very difficult to imagine a JCPA that did not require such [inspector] access at Parchin” [c]; etc.

Then two weeks ago Sen. Risch revealed in an open Foreign Relations Committee hearing that U.S. negotiators had collapsed on the demand, and that the Iranians would be allowed to collect their own samples instead of the IAEA collecting the evidence. Sen. Menendez followed up with “chain of custody means nothing if at the very beginning what you’re given is chosen and derived by the perpetrator” [d]. Kerry responded by declaring that the information was classified, but the AP ran down and confirmed the story out of Vienna [e].

Now the punchline: Bloomberg View revealed this afternoon that the Iranians have spent the last few weeks busily trying to sanitize Parchin. So the administration blessed a deal in which they trusted the Iranians to provide evidence from Parchin, and the Iranians turned around and started destroying evidence at Parchin.

The U.S. intelligence community has informed Congress of evidence that Iran was sanitizing its suspected nuclear military site at Parchin, in broad daylight, days after agreeing to a nuclear deal with world powers… Intelligence officials and lawmakers who have seen the new evidence, which is still classified, told us that satellite imagery picked up by U.S. government assets in mid- and late July showed that Iran had moved bulldozers and other heavy machinery to the Parchin site and that the U.S. intelligence community concluded with high confidence that the Iranian government was working to clean up the site ahead of planned inspections by the IAEA…

Several senior lawmakers, including Democrats, are concerned that Iran will be able to collect its own soil samples at Parchin with only limited supervision, a practice several lawmakers have compared to giving suspected drug users the benefit of the doubt to submit specimens unsupervised. Iran’s sanitization of the site further complicates that verification.

A few hours after the Bloomberg View article The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) published one of its Imagery Briefs with photos showing the new destruction. ISIS assessed “the renewed activity occurring after the signing of the JCPOA raises obvious concerns that Iran is conducting further sanitization efforts to defeat IAEA verification… this renewed activity may be a last ditch effort to try to ensure that no incriminating evidence will be found” [f].

In the last few weeks, some skeptics of the deal have suggested that the JCPOA’s flaws are becoming borderline-comical (or at least they would be if the deal wasn’t such a catastrophe). Revelations like this are the reason why: the White House is telling Congress that Iran can be trusted to turn over evidence from Parchin while the intelligence community is telling Congress that Iran is destroying evidence at Parchin.

[a] http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-113shrg87828/html/CHRG-113shrg87828.htm
[b] http://www.shearman.com/~/media/Files/Services/Iran-Sanctions/US-Resources/Joint-Plan-of-Action/4-Feb-2014–Transcript-of-Senate-Foreign-Relations-Committee-Hearing-on-the-Iran-Nuclear-Negotiations-Panel-1.pdf
[c] http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2015/04/240324.htm
[d] https://youtu.be/N4TK8hOLrNA?t=9m44s
[e] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/e1ccf648e18a4788ac94861a3bc1b966/officials-iran-may-take-own-samples-alleged-nuclear-site
[f] http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/Renewed_Activity_at_Parchin_August_4_2015_FINAL.pdf

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Ideology, Iran - secret deal, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian nukes, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, U.S. Congress
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Obama Puts Fear Before Facts on Iran

August 6, 2015

Obama Puts Fear Before Facts on Iran, Bloomberg View, The Editors, August 5, 2015

(Please see also, Iran Already Sanitizing Nuclear Site, Intel Warns. — DM)

The pact is not a treaty: A future president and Congress might overturn it, arguing that it was sealed without proper consideration. And history often looks with disgust at causes built on fear, especially if they go awry. Obama wouldn’t want to face the kind of scorn he heaped on George W. Bush today.

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President Barack Obama took to the airwaves today, aiming to sell Congress and the American people on the wisdom of his nuclear deal with Iran. He had a case to make but chose not to make it. He decided instead to cast legitimate criticism of his pact as ignorant warmongering. 

A few examples:

“We have achieved a detailed arrangement that permanently prohibits Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” Actually, the deal’s restrictions end abruptly after 15 years, with some of the constraints on uranium enrichment fading away after just 10. Late in the speech, Obama made the case that much can change in a decade and that the West could be in a stronger position then to continue to block Iran’s nuclear desires. But the temporary nature of the deal remained disguised.

“Many of the same people who argued for the war in Iraq are now making the case against the Iran nuclear deal.” Certainly the Iraq war was sold on spurious grounds and had tragic results. Certainly Republicans and Democrats alike were far too credulous in accepting the Bush administration’s rationale. But these facts have absolutely nothing to do with this agreement.

“Before the ink was even dry on this deal, before Congress even read it, a majority of Republicans declared their virulent opposition.” That’s true, but ignores that opponents had plenty of time to study the draft agreement reached last spring. The real problem is that Congress still hasn’t read the entire accord, its side agreements and the inspections plan negotiated by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Even Secretary of State John Kerry says there are aspects of the deal he has never seen.

“If there is a reason for inspecting a suspicious undeclared site anywhere in Iran, inspectors will get that access even if Iran objects. This access can be with as little as 24 hours’ notice.” The key words here are “as little as.” Iran can draw that process out for as long as 24 days if it so chooses. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif says some military sites will remain off-limits to IAEA personnel.

“If, as has also been suggested, we tried to maintain unilateral sanctions, beefen them up … we’d have to cut off countries like China from the American financial system. And since they happen to be major purchasers of our debt, such actions could trigger severe disruptions in our own economy, and, by way, raise questions internationally about the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency.” Rejection by Congress could cause the sanctions regime to fray. Lawmakers should weigh this. The idea that it might cripple the U.S. economy is absurd.

“I’ve had to make a lot of tough calls as president, but whether or not this deal is good for American security is not one of those calls, it’s not even close.” Maybe this deal is the best chance to delay the mullahs’ race to the bomb and keep the Middle East out of a nuclear arms race. But the case is anything but open-and-shut. It’s hard to see what the president gains from denying this.

Well, perhaps one thing: Obama may hope that denigrating those who disagree with him will rally Democrats in Congress to support a veto of any measure of disapproval. Tactics aside, it would be far better to win this fight fairly. The pact is not a treaty: A future president and Congress might overturn it, arguing that it was sealed without proper consideration. And history often looks with disgust at causes built on fear, especially if they go awry. Obama wouldn’t want to face the kind of scorn he heaped on George W. Bush today.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran - secret deal, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, U.S. Congress
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Cartoons of the day

August 6, 2015

H/t Freedom is just another word

 

wanted

deal

Categories: Foreign policy, Humor, IAEA, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1
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Iranian negotiator discusses talks with Moniz

August 6, 2015

Iranian negotiator discusses talks with Moniz, Al Monitor, Arash Karami, August 5, 2015

(A sweet deal between good friends. — DM)

REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Salehi said that he was asked to join the nuclear talks when the discussions on the Natanz enrichment facility reached a dead end. Salehi said he would only join the talks if Moniz, his American counterpart, did as well. According to Salehi, this was approved by Undersecretary Wendy Sherman and Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, which he described as “the communications link between America and Iran.”

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One of the most popular American negotiators in Iranian social media was US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor emeritus and former director of the MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment joined the nuclear talks between Iran and five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) to discuss the technical aspects of the nuclear deal with the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi.

In an interview with an Iranian newspaper, Salehi spoke about the negotiations and his relationship with Moniz. Just as Moniz was picked to lead the technical negotiations due to his nuclear expertise, Salehi, an MIT graduate, is one of the few individuals to have held important positions for three consecutive administrations — a sign that he has the trust of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Salehi first denied accusations that former hard-line nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili was not a serious negotiator. Salehi was Iran’s foreign minister at the time and said that when he was at the meetings with the Supreme National Security Council, Jalili’s negotiating positions were in line with the country’s positions and that “he did not go rogue.”

According to Salehi, the reason for the deadlock during that time was the differences among the P5+1. Specifically, the EU3 (France, United Kingdom and Germany) saw their positions and interests separate from the E3 (US, Russia and China). He said that even when European Union Chief Catherine Ashton reached a point of agreement with Iran on one issue, one country would oppose it and throw everything off. This is why Iran agreed to bilateral talks with the United States in Oman.

Salehi said that he was asked to join the nuclear talks when the discussions on the Natanz enrichment facility reached a dead end. Salehi said he would only join the talks if Moniz, his American counterpart, did as well. According to Salehi, this was approved by Undersecretary Wendy Sherman and Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, which he described as “the communications link between America and Iran.”

Salehi said he and Moniz did not know each other well when they were at MIT, but when they first met during the talks, “there was a feeling that he has known me for years.” Salehi added, “A number of my classmates are now Mr. Moniz’s experts.”

According to Salehi, Moniz entering the talks was important because Salehi expressed that he had been sent with “full authority” to sign off on all technical issues in the nuclear negotiations and Moniz had told him that he had the same authority. He added, “If the negotiations did not take place with the Americans, the reality is that it would not have reached a conclusion. No [other] country was ready to sit with us and negotiate for 16 days with their foreign minister and all of its experts.”

Salehi said that one of the more difficult times negotiating with Moniz was after they reached an agreement on a particular issue. Moniz would take it to the other members of P5+1, who would then make their own requests.

It was also reported that Moniz had given Salehi a gift for the birth of his granddaughter — clothes and a toy embossed with MIT logos. Salehi said that he had also brought gifts for Moniz — Iranian honey and trail mix of Iranian nuts.

 

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Ernest Moniz, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran - secret deal, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Parchin, Wendy Sherman
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A New Age of Theory

August 6, 2015

http://www.jewishmediaresources.com/1768/a-new-age-of-theory, August 7, 2015

The recently signed p5+1 nuclear deal with Iran is based on another beautiful theory: The nicer the United States is to the Iranian mullahs, the more she caves into their demands and acknowledges their valid reasons for hating America, the more they will seek to be like us and want to be good citizens of the world. President Obama has literally bet the fate of the world on that conjecture.

The theory that the Iranian theocracy will be transformed by kindness betrays another failure of progressive theorists from the French Revolution to the present: They view religion as “irrational,” and cannot fathom that anyone else takes its claims seriously. That Iran’s Islamic Revolution really seeks world conquest for Islam is too absurd to countenance as an explanation of regime behavior.

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Alexis de Tocqueville’s explanation of the descent of the French Revolution into the Terror, in The Old Regime and the Revolution, emphasized the outsized role that men of letters played in French political discourse prior to the Revolution. These writers, as described by de Tocqueville, had a decided preference for “general and abstract theories of government” and a tendency “to trust in them blindly.” Since they dwelt at “an almost infinite distance from practice . . . no experience tempered the ardors of their natures; nothing warned them of the obstacles that existing facts might place before them.”

With the passage of time, “they . . . became much bolder in their innovations, fonder of general ideas and systems, more contemptuous of old wisdom, and still more confident of their individual reason. . . ,” writes de Tocqueville.

We live in another such age of theory, writes Alain Finkelkraut. Take for example the lunatic claim that Jews are committing genocide against the Palestinians. Under Israeli rule of the West Bank from 1967 to 1992, life expectancy leaped by 50% — from 48 to 72; infant mortality dropped by 75%; seven universities were built where none had existed, and Palestinian illiteracy was reduced to a fraction of that in neighboring Egypt and Syria; and the West Bank, as of 1992, had the fourth fastest growing economy in the world. If that be genocide, it was genocide of a decidedly peculiar sort.

But, explains Finkelkraut, Europeans have theory according to which Jews are uniquely capable of genocide today. And in an age of theory, a beautiful theory trumps a thousand unruly facts. What’s the theory? Because Jews were the victims of the Holocaust, not its perpetrators, they never learned of the danger of turning one’s fellow human beings into the dehumanized “Other.” From which it follows that Jews dehumanize Palestinians and are committing genocide against them. Never mind the facts.

The recently signed p5+1 nuclear deal with Iran is based on another beautiful theory: The nicer the United States is to the Iranian mullahs, the more she caves into their demands and acknowledges their valid reasons for hating America, the more they will seek to be like us and want to be good citizens of the world. President Obama has literally bet the fate of the world on that conjecture.

Neither tens of thousands chanting “Death to America” nor Supreme Leader Khameini’s insistence that Iran will continue to fight American arrogance even after the deal because hatred of America is the very raison d’etre of the regime register with supporters of the theory.

The theory that the Iranian theocracy will be transformed by kindness betrays another failure of progressive theorists from the French Revolution to the present: They view religion as “irrational,” and cannot fathom that anyone else takes its claims seriously. That Iran’s Islamic Revolution really seeks world conquest for Islam is too absurd to countenance as an explanation of regime behavior.

Another Obama theory holds that even rabid anti-Semites, like the Iranian mullahs, will not act upon their hatreds to the harm of their “rational” interests. But history proves the opposite: The Nazis diverted vital war material in an effort to wipe out Hungarian Jewry in Auschwitz.

The attachment to theory over empirical evidence is evidenced in the way that Left policy prescriptions remain constant despite their repeated failures. What Walter Russell Mead calls the Blue Model of governance – high taxes, high regulation, and generous public union pensions – is failing everywhere. From mid-size California cities to Detroit, Chicago, and most recently, Puerto Rico, it has led to literal bankruptcy.

A vicious cycle sets in of higher taxes to pay pensions based on fantastical assumptions followed by the flight of business and jobs to lower tax states followed by yet higher taxes on those remaining to compensate for the lost business and jobs. Eventually, Blue Model cities and states experience the highest income inequality, as the population divides between extremely high earners, on the one hand, and the menial workers who serve them and welfare recipients, on the other.

The Obama administration has now set out to increase Muslim immigration, despite Europe’s dystopian experience, which has left it poised to become an extension of the Maghreb by the end the century, with an increasingly radicalized and unassimilated Muslim population taking over.

The theories of the Left are unmoored from reality because they have less to do with seeking to make life better than with the emotional reaffirmation they offer their proponents. Every Democratic candidate, for instance, will call for universal pre-school education, despite 50 years of evidence that Head Start early intervention has no lasting impact.

Similarly, every Democratic candidate will advocate heavy government investment in abundant, renewable “green” energy – such as ethanol, the production of which actually creates more pollution than it saves – even though “green energy” consistently proves to be economically unviable and a drag on economic productivity in the form of higher energy costs. Billions of dollars of taxpayer money, however, will inevitably find their way into the pockets of “green energy” crony capitalists.

The attraction of “renewables” is primarily the feeling of moral virtue they confer on proponents. And the same is true of Head Start and calls for a $15/and hour minimum wage, which would only ensure that orders at McDonald’s will be taken by a machine and not by some striving high-school kid eager to earn money for college or a poor, single-mother with no marketable skills. Estimates of the American jobs likely lost if the minimum wage were to rise to $15/hour range from 3,000,000 to 6,000,000, most of them to low-wage earners. But how deliciously virtuous must legislators feel enacting minimum wage laws.

THOSE WHO PREFER THEORY over history and facts do not just produce bad policy: They are subject to a profoundly illiberal, even totalitarian, temptation. That was De Tocqueville’s subject. Their theory of government is that “smart” people – i.e., theoreticians like themselves — ought to run the show. A corollary is that all smart people will reach similar “rational” conclusions, and that those who don’t are either fools or evil. Not surprisingly, when human beings and reality fail to conform to their theories, they turn ornery. Think Pol Pot.

Hostility to free markets and a profound ambivalence towards representative democracy are part and parcel of the preference for abstractions. The former are too irrational and chaotic. Markets give equal value to the desires of the not-so-bright. Central planning, by contrast, is much more rational, or so it seems, until one considers its unbroken record of failure. Just think of resource rich Venezuela, where years of socialist rule have made both food and toilet paper scarce.

Similarly the flaw of representative democracy is that fools and geniuses alike have one vote. The preferred form of municipal government for early American Progressives was unelected city managers, above the fray of partisan politics. And those same early Progressives created the modern administrative state, whose rule-making by unelected bureaucratic “experts,” has become virtually indistinguishable from the law-making power conferred exclusively upon Congress by the Constitution.

Self-styled progressive Barack Obama is perfectly comfortable ruling by executive decree and through administrative agencies, like the Environmental Protection Agency, which seeks to impose by rule-making what could never pass in Congress.

Obama’s progressive ancestor, President Woodrow Wilson, famously declared the U.S. Constitution, with its federal system and checks and balances between the three branches, to be an outmoded document for the modern age, and called for a much more powerful unitary executive.

Progressive thinkers have little patience for the rules of procedure of representative democracy or its allocation of decision-making authority. Only results matter and that the smart people make the decisions – be they judges, agency bureaucrats, or the president himself. Neither Court President Aharon Barak in his heyday nor Justice Anthony Kennedy more recently showed the slightest concern over whom appointed them philosopher-king to determine the nature of human dignity.

The assumption that those who disagree are either stupid or evil undercuts the fundamental democratic value of tolerance. On issues like anthropogenic climate change, modern progressive are ever eager to declare the debate over, and even advocate criminal penalties for global warming deniers. (This at a time when many climate scientists are forecasting a mini-Ice Age based on lower solar activity.)

Anyone who follows nutrition and health reports knows how wildly fluctuating the best scientific advice is. How much more unlikely is the discussion to be over in the vastly more complex area of climate, involving up to twenty different scientific disciplines and in which controlled experiments are impossible.

Not by accident are the most progressive institutions in American society – the universities – those with the most restrictive speech codes designed to regulate various and sundry “micro-aggressions” in speech.

The Orwellian argument of the late Brandeis philosopher Herbert Marcuse that “new and rigid restrictions” on certain teachings that protect the oppressive status quo are required for true freedom of thought to flourish only represents the outer limit of where the preference for abstractions over human reality can lead.

Categories: Death to America, Denial, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Domestic policy, Foreign policy, Ideology, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian Threats, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Khamenei, Leftists, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, Obama's motivations, P5+1, Religion
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Iran Already Sanitizing Nuclear Site, Intel Warns

August 5, 2015

Iran Already Sanitizing Nuclear Site, Intel Warns, Bloomberg View, &  August 5, 2015

The U.S. intelligence community has informed Congress of evidence that Iran was sanitizing its suspected nuclear military site at Parchin, in broad daylight, days after agreeing to a nuclear deal with world powers.

For senior lawmakers in both parties, the evidence calls into question Iran’s intention to fully account for the possible military dimensions of its current and past nuclear development. The International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran have a side agreement meant to resolve past suspicions about the Parchin site, and lawmakers’ concerns about it has already become a flashpoint because they do not have access to its text.

Intelligence officials and lawmakers who have seen the new evidence, which is still classified, told us that satellite imagery picked up by U.S. government assets in mid- and late July showed that Iran had moved bulldozers and other heavy machinery to the Parchin site and that the U.S. intelligence community concluded with high confidence that the Iranian government was working to clean up the site ahead of planned inspections by the IAEA.

The intelligence community shared its findings with lawmakers and some Congressional staff late last week, four people who have seen the evidence told us. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence briefed lawmakers about the evidence Monday, three U.S. senators said.

“I am familiar with it,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr told us Tuesday. “I think it’s up to the administration to draw their conclusions. Hopefully this is something they will speak on, since it is in many ways verified by commercial imagery. And their actions seem to be against the grain of the agreement.”

Burr said Iran’s activities at Parchin complicate the work of the IAEA inspectors who are set to examine the site in the coming months. IAEA’s director general, Yukiya Amano, was in Washington on Wednesday to brief lawmakers behind closed doors about the side agreements.

“They are certainly not going to see the site that existed. Whether that’s a site that can be determined what it did, only the technical experts can do that,” Burr said. “I think it’s a huge concern.”

A senior intelligence official, when asked about the satellite imagery, told us the IAEA was also familiar with what he called “sanitization efforts” since the deal was reached in Vienna, but that the U.S. government and its allies had confidence that the IAEA had the technical means to detect past nuclear work anyway.

Another administration official explained that this was in part because any trace amounts of enriched uranium could not be fully removed between now and Oct. 15, the deadline for Iran to grant access and answer remaining questions from the IAEA about Parchin.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker told us Tuesday that while Iran’s activity at Parchin last month isn’t technically a violation of the agreement it signed with the U.S. and other powers, it does call into question Iran’s intention to be forthright about the possible military dimensions of its nuclear program.

“The intel briefing was troubling to me … some of the things that are happening, especially happening in such a blatant way,” he said. “Iran is going to know that we know.” He added the new information gave him “a lot of concerns” about Iran coming clean on military dimensions of its nuclear work.

According to the overall nuclear agreement, sanctions relief for Iran can come only after the IAEA and Iran resolve their outstanding concerns about possible military dimensions of past and current work. But the agreement does not specify how the issue must be resolved, only that it be resolved to the IAEA’s satisfaction.

Several senior lawmakers, including Democrats, are concerned that Iran will be able to collect its own soil samples at Parchin with only limited supervision, a practice several lawmakers have compared to giving suspected drug users the benefit of the doubt to submit specimens unsupervised. Iran’s sanitization of the site further complicates that verification.

Democratic Senator Chris Coons, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, told us Tuesday that this area is part of why he is undecided on supporting the Iran deal.

“I have concerns about the vigorous efforts by Iran to sanitize Parchin,” he said. “I’ve gotten some reassurance about how difficult it is for them to effectively conceal what we know to have been their illicit nuclear weapons developments there.”

Coons said he was most concerned about the integrity of the IAEA inspection process going forward and not as concerned about figuring out what happened in the site in the past: “We know what the Iranians did at Parchin.”

David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security, obtained a commercially available image of the Parchin site taken by satellites on July 26 that shows renewed activity at the Parchin site. He told us there are two new large vehicles, alterations ongoing to roofs of two of the buildings and new structures near two of the buildings.

“You have to worry that this could be an attempt by Iran to defeat the sampling, that it’s Iran’s last-ditch effort to eradicate evidence there,” he said. “The day is coming when they are going to have to let the IAEA into Parchin, so they may be desperate to finish sanitizing the site.”

The facility, outside of Tehran, first came to the attention of the international community in 2004 when news reports surfaced that it was being used to test explosives for a nuclear warhead.

A 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Assessment concluded that Iran halted this kind of work in 2003. Between 2005 and today, Iran has allowed IAEA inspectors access to Parchin — a vast complex with dozens of buildings — on only five occasions. In 2012, Abright’s group reported on satellite imagery that it said showed efforts to clean up evidence of an explosives testing chamber there.

Representative Ed Royce, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that Amano had told him in recent conversations that the IAEA had “thousands of pages of documentations on tests to weaponize a nuclear device.” Royce added, “For a long time, they have been altering sites.”

The IAEA has documented this as well. The agency’s report from May 29 this year said there was  satellite imagery of vehicles, equipment and “probable construction materials” at Parchin. The report said, “The activities that have taken place at this location since February 2012 are likely to have undermined the Agency’s ability to conduct effective verification.”

Secretary of State John Kerry has said that the U.S. government has “absolute knowledge” about what Iran has done in the past. Ahead of the vote on the agreement next month, many lawmakers don’t share Kerry’s confidence. Iran would seem to have its doubts as well, since it’s still trying to cover its tracks.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Intelligence community, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Parchin, U.S. Congress
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Obama negotiator says she didn’t see final Iran ‘side deals’

August 5, 2015

Obama negotiator says she didn’t see final Iran ‘side deals,’ The Hill, Kristina Wong, August 5, 2015

(Were the secret agreements on which Kerry, et al, were “fully briefed” and hence know “exactly” what they say also “rough drafts?” Unlike Ms. Sherman, Kerry testified that he had not seen the secret agreement(s).– DM)

shermanwendy_052715gettyGetty Images

[L]ater in the hearing, she walked back her comments about not seeing the final arrangements. 

“I was shown documents that I believed to be the final documents, but whether there were any further discussions…” she added before being cut off by another question by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). Later, she said responded, “I have” when asked whether she saw the final versions of the deals.

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The only Obama administration official to view confidential “side deals” between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) admitted Wednesday she and her team have only seen rough drafts.

“I didn’t see the final documents. I saw the provisional documents, as did my experts,” said Wendy Sherman, a lead U.S. negotiator for the deal, at a Senate Banking Committee hearing.  

Sherman, undersecretary of State for political affairs, said she was only allowed to see the confidential deals “in the middle of the negotiation” when the IAEA “wanted to go over with some of our experts the technical details.” 

She maintained the deals — which focus on with Iran’s prior work on a bomb and access to Iran’s Parchin military site — are still confidential and can’t be submitted to Congress.

Sherman said the U.S. did not protest to the confidentiality of the agreements, despite the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act demanding all related agreements, because the administration wanted the IAEA to respect the confidentiality of their agreements with the U.S.

“We want to protect U.S. confidentiality … this is a safeguards protocol. The IAEA protects our confidential understandings … between the United States and the IAEA,” she said.

However, later in the hearing, she walked back her comments about not seeing the final arrangements.

“I was shown documents that I believed to be the final documents, but whether there were any further discussions…” she added before being cut off by another question by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.). Later, she said responded, “I have” when asked whether she saw the final versions of the deals.

She also argued they could not be submitted to Congress because the administration does not have the deals, and that the Senate had “every single document” the administration has.

Sherman emphasized she would brief Senators later Wednesday afternoon in a classified session on everything she knows about the deal.

A similar briefing for House lawmakers last week did not assuage concerns for Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday calling on the administration to submit the deals.

She also noted that IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano was meeting with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee later in the afternoon.

Although she said the U.S. did not ask or pressure Amano to conduct the briefing, she suggested it was a gesture beyond what the IAEA is obligated to do.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Dog and Pony Show, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran - secret deal, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Parchin, U.S. Congress, Wendy Sherman
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Iran’s deputy FM brands nuclear program ‘big loss’ economically

August 5, 2015

Iran’s deputy FM brands nuclear program ‘big loss’ economically, Times of Israel, August 4, 2015

(Please see also, The Iranian Nuke Deal Depends on This One Myth. — DM)

Iran deputy foreign ministerDeputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi speaking in Tehran, Iran, on October 22, 2013. (AFP/Atta Kenare)

Due to the pressure from above, . . .  the original report was removed by the national broadcasting service, which stated that the publication of Araqchi’s statements was a “misunderstanding.”

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Iran’s deputy foreign minister and senior nuclear negotiator has called the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program “a big loss” economically, but necessary to defend the country’s honor.

In a leaked off-the-record meeting with journalists Saturday, Abbas Araqchi stressed that “if we want to calculate the expenses of the production materials, we cannot even think about it.” But, he said, “we paid this price so we protect our honor, independence and progress, and do not surrender to others’ bullying.”

Yet, he explained, “If we value our nuclear program based only on the economic calculations, it is a big loss.”

Meeting with the country’s news chiefs under the direction of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Araqchi said the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s public diplomacy and media relations have so far been unable to sell the agreement to the Iranian people and “the national broadcasting [service] has to help so the people do not feel frustrated with the agreement.”

During the meeting, which was leaked by the Iranian media soon after, the deputy foreign minister suggested that the Iranian parliament should only review the agreement reached in Vienna, and not present it for ratification.

Araqchi stressed that Iran should declare its final position on the deal as soon as possible, “so that should Congress reject the agreement, the burden of rejection and the failure of the talks would fall on the United States.”

1234The Iranian Parliament (CC-BY Parmida76/Flickr)

“If the [Iranian] National Security Council approves the Vienna nuclear agreement and the leader of the Islamic Republic signs it, then this resolution becomes law,” he added.

With regards to the implications of the agreement on Iranian support for Hezbollah in Lebanon, Araqchi explained that, “we said during the talks that we cannot not provide weapons to Hezbollah, and we are not willing to sacrifice them [Hezbollah] for our nuclear program. Therefore, if you want to keep the weapon sanctions as part of the agreement, we will continue with our efforts. We discussed this matter for a while.”

The Western powers eventually agreed to separate that resolution from the agreement, Araqchi said.

This is in direct contrast to remarks by US officials, who claimed Tuesday that Iran’s support for terror groups was never considered for inclusion in the nuclear deal.

The Iranian minister told journalists that he took seriously previous American threats of a possible military action. “It might be that people do not know the details, however, our IRGC and military friends know that every night in 2007-8 we were concerned that we would wake up in the morning and Iran would be surrounded by all necessary means for an attack against it.”

Iranian military personnel had shown the country’s negotiating team maps of bases where potential foreign attack planes had been identified. “The attack on Iran was a matter of the political will of Mr. Obama,” Araqchi said. “Despite everything, we still continued to object and did not compromise.”

He said that the West tightened the economic sanctions as much as they could and they reached a level where their continuation would lead to a “confrontation.”

“They tried 10 years of economic sanctions and military threats,” he explained, “and it was our strength and capabilities that brought them to the negotiation table.”

Austria-Iran-Nuclear_Horo-e1401748045152-305x172Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria, June 2, 2014. (AP/Ronald Zak)

Araqchi admitted that the regime had made some mistakes, and that those “mistakes in the past, made-up documentations and excuses were turned into claims against us.” He cited the example of International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano, who Araqchi said submitted a 60-paragraph report that included Iran’s use of detonators with multiple timers.

Iran, Araqchi said, has “to be careful with the information that we provide them… It is not that we are dealing only with the IAEA and these spies, but we are dealing with all countries that have nuclear programs. There are formulas and methods that prevent us from providing excess information to the IAEA inspectors. We did not know this in the past and provided information that we should not have done.”

Against national interest and security

The content of this supposedly off the record briefing was published a day later on the website of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting and picked up almost immediately by various other news sites inside Iran.

Due to the pressure from above, however, the original report was removed by the national broadcasting service, which stated that the publication of Araqchi’s statements was a “misunderstanding.”

Some believe that radical elements within the national broadcasting authority, who oppose the nuclear deal, leaked the briefing in order to undermine the reformist government’s achievements.

Araqchi called the leak “immoral” and “unprofessional,” saying it went “against national interest and security.”

The leak apparently occurred just days after the Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance issued confidential instructions to the media, warning them to avoid publications that could question “the achievements of the nuclear talks,” or would “indicate contradictions among the views of the high-ranking officials.”

On the day of leak, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said during an interview on live Iranian television that the achievements of the nuclear talks exceeded his initial expectations.

Categories: IAEA, Iran scam, Iranian media, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, P5+1, U.S. Congress
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Kerry says sinking of Iran deal would be ‘ultimate screwing of ayatollah’

August 5, 2015

Kerry says sinking of Iran deal would be ‘ultimate screwing of ayatollah,’ Jerusalem Post, August 5, 2015

(It’s as pro-Israel as the Obama administration gets. Please see also, Daniel Greenfield’s comments here. — DM)

ShowImage (6)
US Secretary of State John Kerry speaks in Singapore. (photo credit:STATE DEPARTMENT)

The secretary rejected Israel’s criticism of the nuclear agreement, saying that the deal “is as pro-Israel” as it gets.

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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told The Atlantic on Wednesday that if Congress were to shoot down the Iran nuclear agreement, it would be “the ultimate screwing” of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Kerry made the remarks in an interview with The Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg.

The secretary rejected Israel’s criticism of the nuclear agreement, saying that the deal “is as pro-Israel” as it gets.

Reneging on the nuclear agreement, which has the support of the major world powers, would constitute a setback for Washington and justify anti-American animus in Iran.

“The ayatollah constantly believed that we are untrustworthy, that you can’t negotiate with us, that we will screw them,” Kerry said. “[Having Congress vote down the nuclear pact] will be the ultimate screwing.”

“The United States Congress will prove the ayatollah’s suspicion, and there’s no way he’s ever coming back. He will not come back to negotiate. Out of dignity, out of a suspicion that you can’t trust America. America is not going to negotiate in good faith. It didn’t negotiate in good faith now, would be his point.”

Kerry also commented on the vociferous opposition to the deal expressed by Israel, which the secretary referred to as “visceral” and “emotional.” He was adamant that the agreement was positive for Israel’s geopolitical standing.

“I’ve gone through this backwards and forwards a hundred times and I’m telling you, this deal is as pro-Israel, as pro-Israel’s security, as it gets,” Kerry said. “And I believe that just saying no to this is, in fact, reckless.”

Kerry said that he was “sensitive” to Israeli concerns over Iran’s long-term aims, but he rejected arguments made by Jerusalem that the Islamic Republic was planning its annihilation.

“I haven’t seen anything that says to me [that Iran will implement its vow of wiping Israel off the map],” the secretary said. “They’ve got 80,000 rockets in Hezbollah pointed at Israel, and any number of choices could have been made. They didn’t make the bomb when they had enough material for 10 to 12. They’ve signed on to an agreement where they say they’ll never try and make one and we have a mechanism in place where we can prove that. So I don’t want to get locked into that debate. I think it’s a waste of time here.”

“I operate on the presumption that Iran is a fundamental danger, that they are engaged in negative activities throughout the region, that they’re destabilizing places, and that they consider Israel a fundamental enemy at this moment in time,” Kerry said. “Everything we have done here [with the nuclear agreement] is not to overlook anything or to diminish any of that; it is to build a bulwark, build an antidote.”

The secretary said that the nuclear deal is even more imperative if Israel’s fears that Iran is plotting its destruction are true, since the agreement neutralizes Tehran’s nuclear program.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Iranian Threats, Israel, Jews, Kerry, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Rocket attack
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