(This is from left-“leaning” Huffington Post. William Buckley, the CIA agent mentioned in the article, was not National Review’s William F. Buckley, Jr. The comments following the article are interesting.– DM)
President Obama seems determined to move forward on a nuclear agreement with the regime that tortured and murdered William Buckley. He should reflect on how this dedicated CIA agent must have felt, abandoned by his government and alone with his Iranian torturers, enduring a hellish nightmare in the basement of the Iranian foreign ministry. Is the nation William Buckley died for now about to be abandoned, for the sake of a presidential legacy?
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There are growing indications that the Obama administration will sign a nuclear agreement with Iran that will allow Tehran to become a nuclear-threshold state. It seems the only issue being contested at present is the extent of the cosmetic and temporary concessions the Iranians will grant so that Iran does not fully emerge as a nuclear weapons state until after the expiration of the Obama presidency. The disarming body language and genuine warmth that characterizes the public interaction between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iran’s Minster of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif seems to point in that direction, belying the fact that these two nations have not had diplomatic relations for 35 years because the government of one of those states ordered its armed thugs to attack and seize the embassy of the other nation, in the most flagrant violation of international law, holding its diplomats hostage for 444 days.
Of course, Barack Obama has promised on more than one occasion that he would never permit Iran to become a nuclear armed state. Then again, this is the same President Obama who warned Syria’s president not to use poison gas on his own people, or there would be consequences for crossing that red line. And let us not forget the President’s assurances that the war in Iraq was over and it was safe to withdraw all U.S. forces, or that the emerging Islamic State was nothing more than a “jayvee team” or that Yemen was a great success story for America’s anti-terrorism strategy — the same Yemen where Washington was recently forced to close its embassy after a coup in that country staged by anti-American rebels loyal to Iran.
The consequences involved in permitting Iran to become a nuclear weapons state are, obviously, far more consequential. Barack Obama is not the first president confronting a rogue regime about to acquire nuclear weapons capability. In the early 1990s, evidence mounted that North Korea was embarking on a nuclear weapons program. As with President Obama, then President Clinton pledged to the American people that the North Korean regime would never be permitted to obtain nuclear weapons. Then former President Jimmy Carter came to the rescue. He flew to North Korea, met with the reigning dictator and laid the groundwork for what became the 1994 Agreed Framework treaty, which supposedly froze North Korea’s attempt to develop atomic weapons through plutonium production in exchange for U.S. economic aid. However, the treaty collapsed after Clinton left office when U.S. intelligence learned that North Korea had cheated on the agreement by secretly developing a uranium enrichment program as an alternative path towards developing nuclear bombs. In 2006, North Korea conducted its first test detonation of a nuclear bomb.
It appears that the Obama administration is following in the path originally set by President Clinton. In addition to tolerating a vast nuclear enrichment facility, much of it underground, that can only have been established for the eventual mass production of nuclear bombs to mate with Tehran’s increasingly powerful and longer-range ballistic missiles, the current administration has been passive in the face of Iran’s growing hegemony in the Middle East, as witnessed by Tehran’s virtual occupation of Lebanon through its proxy militia, its massive intervention in the Syrian civil war on the side of Basher Assad, and increasing military involvement and control in Iraq and the recent pro-Iranian coup in Yemen. This passivity is inexplicable, considering the potential and dire strategic and economic consequences for the United States.
What about the character of the regime that President Obama and his national security team seem about to trust with the most destructive weapons on earth? Amid the long list of Iranian terrorist attacks against the U.S. and its interests aboard unleashed by Tehran since 1979, there is one which, more than any other, defines the essence of the regime of the Ayatollahs and its contempt for the United States.
In 1984, the CIA station chief in Beirut, William Buckley, was kidnapped by the Iranian controlled Hezbollah militia. The fate of William Buckley was disclosed byWashington Post columnist Jack Anderson in an article published the following year. According to Anderson, who based his account on confidential sources within the U.S. intelligence community, Buckley was smuggled into Iran, and subjected to numerous bouts of brutal interrogation under barbaric torture in the basement of the Iranian foreign ministry, the same building being presided over today by John Kerry’s Iranian counterpart, Zarif. The barbarous torture eventually induced a heart attack, leading to the death of Buckley. As Jack Anderson stated in his article, Iran was responsible for the horrific murder under torture of an American patriot.
President Obama seems determined to move forward on a nuclear agreement with the regime that tortured and murdered William Buckley. He should reflect on how this dedicated CIA agent must have felt, abandoned by his government and alone with his Iranian torturers, enduring a hellish nightmare in the basement of the Iranian foreign ministry. Is the nation William Buckley died for now about to be abandoned, for the sake of a presidential legacy?
(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
“Extremist” Muslims believe that the Koran and the Hadithmust be taken literally and that Sharia law, rather than “man made” law, must control everyone. Secular Muslims seem to disagree or not to be very interested. “Extremist” Roman Catholics believe that birth control, abortion and pre-marital sex are sinful and oppose governmental support for them. Secular Roman Catholics seem to disagree or not to be very interested.
“Extremist” Muslims are “literalist,” because they believe that the Koran is the word of Allah as faithfully transcribed by Mohamed, his messenger, and that there is no room for interpretation. The many conflicting verses in the Koran present a problem.
Rather than explain away inconsistencies in passages regulating the Muslim community, many jurists acknowledge the differences but accept that latter verses trump earlier verses. Most scholars divide the Qur’an into verses revealed by Muhammad in Mecca when his community of followers was weak and more inclined to compromise, and those revealed in Medina, where Muhammad’s strength grew. [Emphasis added, footnotes omitted.]
Classical scholars argued that anyone who studied the Qur’an without having mastered the doctrine of abrogation would be “deficient.” Those who do not accept abrogation fall outside the mainstream and, perhaps, even the religion itself. [Emphasis added.]
Islamist literalism coupled with abrogation now has temporal, and often fatal, consequences for non-Muslims as well as for “apostate” Muslims because, as Mohammad grew stronger, his words became stronger and more violent toward apostates and other non-believers.
According to an article titled “What is Islam?” Revisited by Father James V. Schall, S.J., posted at Catholic World Report on January 8th,
Islam considers itself the only true religion. It has a “narrative” of itself that all branches of Islam hold, although they differ somewhat on how it is to be achieved. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
In the Quran, there is no mention of the Trinity or Incarnation, except explicitly to deny them. It is blasphemy to believe in them, as well as to question anything connected with the Quran. Allah intends the whole world to observe the Sharia, the Muslim legal code, observing its letter. As soon as it can, this law is imposed in every Muslim land or smaller community, even in democratic states. No distinction between Islam and the state exists. Everyone is born a Muslim. If he is not a Muslim, it is because his parents or teachers corrupted him. It is impossible to convert from Islam to another religion, without grave, often lethal, consequences. [Emphasis added.]
It is not against the Quran to use violence to spread or enforce Islamic law. Those Islam conquers, even from its beginnings till now, it either kills, forces conversion, or imposes second class citizenship. The Islamic State, now so much to the forefront, seems to have the correct understanding of what the Quran intends and advocates. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
Dialogue is looked upon as a sign of weakness unless it can be used to further Muslim goals. In the case of the killings that Coren lists, if they are looked upon as legitimate means, there is no need either to talk about them or to cease their presumed effectiveness in spreading Islam. One cannot really appeal to the Quran to cease these killings, as there is ample reason within it to justify them as worthy means. Had it not been possible to justify these means in the Quran, the whole history of Islam would be different. Indeed, it probably never would have expanded at all. [Emphasis added.]
Similarly, “extremist” Christians can be characterized as “literalist” because they believe, for example, that Jesus was literally conceived immaculately and literally ascended bodily into Heaven. These views now have no deadly temporal consequences for Christians or anyone else.
As for the crusades and the inquisition, which Obama used to try to divert our attention from Islam,
Islam is the only religion the textual core of which actively and unequivocally defames other religions.
Soon after Muslim gunmen killed 12 people at Charlie Hebdo offices, which published satirical caricatures of Muslim prophet Muhammad, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC)—the “collective voice of the Muslim world” and second largest inter-governmental organization after the United Nations—is again renewing calls for the United Nations to criminalize “blasphemy” against Islam, or what it more ecumenically calls, the “defamation of religions.”
To ban “defamation” of Islam — in reality to ban accurate factual analyses of its core tenets — is to engage in jihad via lawfare with the help of non-Islamic nations, including Obama’s America, while violent Islamic jihad against all religions except “true” versions of Islam continues apace.
Yet the OIC seems to miss one grand irony: if international laws would ban cartoons, books, and films on the basis that they defame Islam, they would also, by logical extension, have to ban the entire religion of Islam itself—the only religion whose core texts actively and unequivocally defame other religions, including by name. [Emphasis added.]
For example,
Consider Christianity alone: Koran 5:73 declares that “Infidels are they who say God is one of three,” a reference to the Christian Trinity; Koran 5:72 says “Infidels are they who say God is the Christ, [Jesus] son of Mary”; and Koran 9:30 complains that “the Christians say the Christ is the son of God … may God’s curse be upon them!”
. . . .
[T]he Christian Cross, venerated among millions, is depicted—is defamed—in Islam: according to canonical hadiths, when he returns, Jesus (“Prophet Isa”) will destroy all crosses; and Muhammad, who never allowed the cross in his presence, once ordered someone wearing a cross to “throw away this piece of idol from yourself.” Unsurprisingly, the cross is banned and often destroyed whenever visible in many Muslim countries.
Reforming Islam
Egyptian President al-Sisi — who appears to be a fairly secular Muslim — told Muslim clerics in Cairo on New Years Day (on or about the date when Mohamed’s birthday is celebrated) that Islam needs to be reformed, substantially. He “accused Islamic thinking of being the scourge of humanity—in words that no Western leader would dare utter.” Following his address,
Sisi went to the St. Mark Coptic Cathedral during Christmas Eve Mass to offer Egypt’s Christian minority his congratulations and well wishing. Here again he made history as the first Egyptian president to enter a church during Christmas mass—a thing vehemently criticized by the nation’s Islamists, including the Salafi party (Islamic law bans well wishing to non-Muslims on their religious celebrations, which is why earlier presidents—Nasser, Sadat, Mubarak, and of course Morsi—never attended Christmas mass). [Emphasis added.]
met with a delegation aligned with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood . . . . It is understood that the group, which included a leading Brotherhood-aligned judge and a Muslim Brotherhood parliamentarian, discussed their ongoing efforts against the current Egyptian government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. [Emphasis added.]
El-Sisi came to power after he deposed the Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamist government in a popularly backed coup. After only one year of Muslim Brotherhood rule, 15 million people came out onto the streets demanding an end to their rule.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s stated goal is the recreation of an Islamic caliphate, although they follow a policy of the gradual implementation of sharia law. [Emphasis added.]
The Muslim Brotherhood, and “extremist” Islam in general, are Obama’s friends and advisers. They are also now the largest and most destructive enemies of western civilization; Obama assists them at every opportunity.
Meanwhile, a Muslim Brotherhood affiliate, Hamas, is busily training thousands of youth to attack Israel, the only free and democratic nation, as well as the only outpost of western civilization, in the Middle East.
On February 10th, a Jordanian columnist wrote, consistently with President al-Sisi’s remarks, that
“The escapism that mainstream Islam has nothing to do with those atrocities does not hold water anymore because Wahabism and Islam have become indistinguishable. To understand the crisis of Muslims today, one has to remember that Wahabism exists in several textbooks containing the alleged sayings of the Prophet Mohammad, or books of ‘Hadith,’ revered by so many. What we must confront is the undeniable fact that it is from many stories found in these books that the unprecedented cruelty of groups such as the so-called Islamic State and Jabhat Al-Nusra emanates. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
“There is obviously a propensity towards eliminating ‘the other’ imbedded deep within Wahabist ideology. It is not only foolish to deny this fact, it is also dangerous, for we would be covering the cancerous tumour with a bandage. What we cannot deny is that many of the Wahabist textbooks are the same operating manuals that Islamist butchers use to justify their savagery. For example, very few people know that while [the Jordanian pilot] Muath was being set on fire in that macabre video, the voiceover was a recitation of an Ibn Taymiyah fatwa deeming the incineration of unbelievers a legitimate act of jihad. Ibn Taymiyah is not some obscure scholar on the fringe of Sunni Islam. In the Sunni world, he is universally venerated with the title ‘Sheikh of Islam,’ elevating him to an almost infallible clerical status. [Emphasis added.]
“If we really want to defend Islam as a religion of mercy, if we really want to be believed when we proclaim the innocence of this religion, we need to do more than just repeat this meaningless mantra about us having nothing to do with [ISIS]. We have to muster the courage to identify the specific texts that actually defame Islam, denounce them and permanently cleanse Islamic tradition of them.” [Emphasis added.]
Until “extremist” Islam reforms itself, as al-Sisi (and a few other Muslims) contend that it must, Islam in all of its manifestations will remain an existential threat to what’s left of western civilization. If Islam manages to reform itself Obama — who considers Islam to be just peachy now — will, once again, be shown to have been on the wrong side of history.
Nuclear Iran
Unfortunately, Obama’s place on the wrong side of history may become apparent long before Islam is reformed, when Iran gets (or is permitted to keep) and uses “the bomb.” Iran, and perhaps Obama, have availed themselves of the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya, which
allows Muslims to have a declared agenda, and a secret agenda (Jihad, slaughter, and mayhem) during time of weakness, this is called Taqiyya.” To put it in simpler words, it is the “art” of deception, or more correctly, of deceiving non-Muslim infidels. [Emphasis added.]
[H]e is one of the two world leaders in the West telling the truth, warning of what is to come (Geert Wilders of the Netherlands is the other). This burden of responsibility for his people (how many of us wish our leaders had even a bit of that?) has earned him only the venom of the Obama Administration, who see him as trying to spoil their strategy of leading by procrastination. [Emphasis added.]
It is also becoming increasingly clear that the Obama Administration’s policy consists of running after Iran, in order to concede everything it wants, just to be able wave a piece of paper not worth the ink on it, claiming there is “a deal.” Iran, for its part, would probably prefer not to sign anything, and most likely will not. Meanwhile, both sides continue strenuously to claim the opposite. [Emphasis added.]
Iran seems likely to get and use, or to keep and use, nuclear weapons by virtue of the essentially bilateral Iran – US nuclear negotiations. Please see also The Iran scam continues, which I wrote in January of last year. The situation has worsened since then, with substantial concessions to, and few if any of significance by, Iran.
The U.S. concessions have, in part, been in exchange for Iran’s “help” in defeating the Islamic State and hence becoming the major power in the Middle East.
Iran would be the hegemon of the Middle East. Some states would accept Tehran’s authority, striking deals and kowtowing in order to survive. Europeans would accommodate Iran, based on its control of the flow of Gulf oil. Israel and Saudi Arabia, nations that Iran’s rulers have threatened to wipe from the map, would be left to fend for themselves. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
Doran cites evidence that in the first year of Obama’s first term, there were more White House meetings on Iran than any other national security concern. Detente with Iran was seen as “an urgent priority,” but the president “consistently wrapped his approach to that priority in exceptional layers of secrecy” because he was convinced that neither Congress nor the American public would support him. [Emphasis added.]
A year ago, Doran further reports, Benjamin Rhodes, a member of the president’s inner circle, told a group of Democratic activists (unaware that he was being recorded) that a deal with Iran would prove to be “probably the biggest thing President Obama will do in his second term on foreign policy.” He made clear that there would be no treaty requiring the Senate’s advice and consent. [Emphasis added.]
The president believes that “the less we know about his Iran plans, the better,” Doran concludes. “Yet those plans, as Rhodes stressed, are not a minor or incidental component of his foreign policy. To the contrary, they are central to his administration’s strategic thinking about the role of the United States in the world, and especially in the Middle East.” [Emphasis added.]
Obama’s plans may well blow up in His face and, of greater importance, ours. Iran, particularly with the help of Russia and North Korea, will be able to do it. Here is a
short animated film being aired across Iran, [which] shows the nuclear destruction of Israel and opens with the word ‘Holocaust’ appearing on the screen, underneath which a Star of David is shown, Israel’s Channel 2 reported on Tuesday.
Don’t worry; be happy
Here’s the Revolting Truth from Andrew Klavan, which debunks everything bad ever said about Obama. Sort of.
Iranian scientists are often very good, and their missiles are excellent, but the satellite was not a product of Persian technology. According to well-informed Iranians, 70 percent of the package is Russian, 20 percent is “Asian,” (i.e., North Korean), and the rest comes from Europe. The Iranian input was gluing it together.
It’s no coincidence. Russia, Iran and North Korea are in active cahoots. They are pooling resources, including banking systems (the better to bust sanctions), intelligence and military technology, as part of an ongoing war against the West, of which the most melodramatic battlefields are in Syria/Iraq and Ukraine.
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At the beginning of February, Iran sent a spy satellite into orbit, the first time it had done so in three years. As you’d expect, they bragged about it, proclaiming it a triumph of national scientific know-how according to Agence France-Presse:
The satellite was locally made, said the official IRNA news agency, as was its launcher, according to [Iranian President Hassan] Rouhani, who noted that Iran’s aim is to have no reliance on foreign space technology.
“Our scientists have entered a new phase for conquering space. We will continue on this path,” Rouhani said in a short statement on state television.
Iranian scientists are often very good, and their missiles are excellent, but the satellite was not a product of Persian technology. According to well-informed Iranians, 70 percent of the package is Russian, 20 percent is “Asian,” (i.e., North Korean), and the rest comes from Europe. The Iranian input was gluing it together.
The composition of the satellite is significant, as it neatly provides us with the proper context in which to think about the world. It shows us that Tehran is part of a global alliance that stretches from Pyongyang, North Korea through Moscow, across the Middle East and into our own hemisphere, notably Havana, Cuba and Caracas, Venezuela.
I believe that the Iranians, Russians and North Koreans want us to recognize their alliance. Indeed, at the same time the Iranians were launching “their” satellite into orbit, the North Koreans were testing an anti-ship missile with Russian fingerprints all over it. In all likelihood, it’s a Russian cruise missile.
It’s no coincidence. Russia, Iran and North Korea are in active cahoots. They are pooling resources, including banking systems (the better to bust sanctions), intelligence and military technology, as part of an ongoing war against the West, of which the most melodramatic battlefields are in Syria/Iraq and Ukraine.
To judge by their language, the leaders of the three countries think the tide of world events is flowing in their favor. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei delivered an ultimatum to the West, saying that Iran’s war against “evil” would only end with the removal of America. Russian President Vladimir Putin marches on in Ukraine, blaming the West for all the trouble, and the North Koreans are similarly bellicose.
They are singing from the same hymnal. And they aim to do us in.
Still, not all is well with our enemies. You wouldn’t expect a brutal regime to have trouble carrying out punishment against convicted criminals, but there are several documented cases in which that has occurred. Iran applies the Law of Talion — “an eye for an eye” — so that if someone is convicted for blinding another person, the punishment is to be blinded himself. Yet Iranian doctors frequently refuse to do it, insisting that it violates their oath to “do no harm,” and they have stuck to their principles, leaving the guilty parties in jail as the authorities search for a willing doctor.
This is, to be sure, an unusual form of civil disobedience, but I haven’t seen any reports of those doctors being punished for it. Which is not to suggest that human rights are improving in Iran, any more than they are in Russia or North Korea. Quite the contrary, in fact. Human Rights Watch, which is not notoriously tough on the Islamic Republic, recently published a grim analysis of the worsening treatment of the Iranian people.
Perhaps the doctors’ disobedience will carry over to broader segments of the society.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif (right) shakes hands with US Secretary of State John Kerry (left) in Geneva, January 14, 2015. (photo credit: AFP/Rick Wilking/Pool)
Corker and the Democrat he replaced as committee chairman, Senator Robert Menendez, left the latest briefing expressing concern about the administration basing negotiations on the need to maintain Iran’s potential nuclear weapons “breakout” time to at least one year.
“One of my major concerns all along that is becoming more crystal clear to me, is that we are, instead of preventing proliferation, we are managing proliferation,” Menendez said.
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WASHINGTON — Five of the six world powers negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program have stepped back, leaving Washington to hammer out a deal with Tehran, a key US lawmaker said Tuesday.
“It’s evident that these negotiations are really not P5+1 negotiations any more,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker said as he emerged from a closed-door briefing by Obama administration officials on the status of nuclear talks with Iran.
“It’s really more of a bilateral negotiation between the United States and Iran.”
The five permanent UN Security Council members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany have undertaken years-long talks with Iran in a bid to halt the Islamic republic’s nuclear drive.
Several rounds of sanctions have been imposed on Iran, cutting deeply into the country’s economy.
Under an interim agreement reached in November 2013, Iran has diluted its stock of fissile materials from 20 percent enriched uranium to five percent in exchange for limited sanctions relief.
Senator Bob Corker, R-TN (photo credit:: CC BY-SA, byUS Congress, Wikimedia Commons)
But two deadlines for a permanent agreement have already been missed, requiring the talks to be extended.
President Barack Obama met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House on Monday, and Obama said he saw no reason to further extend the current deadlines.
The present issue, Obama said, was “does Iran have the political will and the desire to get a deal done?”
With a March 31 deadline for a political agreement approaching, and a final deal confirming technical details required by June 30, Corker said the key players are now essentially Washington and Tehran.
“I was in Munich this weekend (for an international security conference) and was very aware that this was becoming more of a one-on-one negotiation,” the Senate Republican told reporters.
Corker and the Democrat he replaced as committee chairman, Senator Robert Menendez, left the latest briefing expressing concern about the administration basing negotiations on the need to maintain Iran’s potential nuclear weapons “breakout” time to at least one year.
“One of my major concerns all along that is becoming more crystal clear to me, is that we are, instead of preventing proliferation, we are managing proliferation,” Menendez said.
Having Iran just one year away from building a bomb would be “a different world and a far more challenging world,” he added.
This deal is a surrender, not just in Iran but throughout the entire region. The only thing missing is the little piece of paper and the declaration of peace in our time.
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Hassan Rouhani has plenty of reasons to feel cheerful, as the US attempts to deal its way out of a four-decade standoff with Iran. Secretary of State John Kerry has loosened up billions of dollars to rescue the Iranian economy in exchange for nothing but talk, for one thing. Now, though, it appears that Kerry will cut a deal that not only allows Iran to keep all of its centrifuges, but also grants them de facto hegemony over the Middle East and Afghanistan to boot — and does so behind the backs of our European Union allies.
With time for negotiations running short, the U.S and Iran are discussing a compromise that would let Iran keep much of its uranium-enriching technology but reduce its potential to make nuclear weapons, two diplomats tell The Associated Press.
Such a compromise could break the decade-long deadlock on attempts to limit Iranian activities that could be used to make such arms: Tehran refuses to meet U.S.-led demands for deep cuts in the number of centrifuges it uses to enrich uranium, a process that can create material for anything from chemotherapy to the core of an atomic bomb.
So what’s the solution that Kerry’s offering? A pledge from Iran to, er, not spin the centrifuges really fast. No, that’s actually what this compromise is:
The possible compromise under consideration, according to the AP, would see most of the 10,000 centrifuges in operation left in place but reconfigured so that they would be less productive. One way of doing that would be to spin the centrifuges more slowly. Other measures would be agreed upon to reassure the west that Iran could not make a warhead quickly, such as reducing its stockpile of uranium hexafluoride gas – the form in which uranium can be enriched by centrifuge.
Both the Guardian and the AP note that any change in either centrifuge speed or stocking of uranium hexafluoride gas would be immediately reported by the IAEA to the rest of the world. That, however, ignores the fact that Iran kept its nuclear-weapons program hidden successfully from the IAEA for most of a decade. Pardon us for not exactly considering that a fail-safe.
It also assumes that such a violation would return us to the status quo ante. It wouldn’t, on two levels. First, such a violation would occur when Iran builds its bomb, so by the time word got out, the bomb would almost certainly exists. Second, the current coalition would be very unlikely to reform to oppose Iran’s nuclear-weapons ambitions. It’s fraying at the edges already, or was until oil prices collapsed, and pressures in Ukraine have all but severed Russia from any interest in assisting the West. Cutting a bad deal now would end the effective opposition to Iranian nukes, and Iran knows it.
According to EU officials, US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, have discussed increasing the number of centrifuges which Iran would be permitted to keep. In exchange, the Iranians would undertake an obligation to bring their influence to bear in order to ensure quiet in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria.
European diplomats are quoted by Israeli officials as saying that the US in recent weeks has made significant concessions in its talks with Iran, so much so that it is willing to permit Tehran to operate 6,500 centrifuges while lifting sanctions that have hurt its economy this past decade.
The Europeans have told the Israelis that these concessions were offered in exchange for Iranian promises to maintain regional stability. According to Army Radio, the EU is opposed to the proposed linkage between the nuclear issue and other geopolitical matters. In fact, the Europeans suspect that Washington is operating behind Brussels’ back and that Kerry has not bothered to keep them in the loop in his talks with Zarif.
In other words, the US is about to rubber-stamp Tehran’s domination in Syria, less than two years after Barack Obama wanted to bomb their ally Bashar al-Assad for fighting against the Sunni uprising there. While we’re trying to woo Sunni tribes away from ISIS in Iraq — and working with a coalition of Sunni Arab states to fight them, instead of going there ourselves — Kerry wants to hand off Iraq to Iranian domination. And suddenly we’re ceding our authority in Afghanistan to the mullahs in Tehran, to boot.
Jeff pulls out the Chamberlain umbrella to explain the inexplicable:
A nuclear Iran is not only a threat to Israel but thanks to a missile deal with Russia, a threat to Europe and the US mainland. Beyond the threat from Iran directly, as one of the largest supporter of terrorism in the world Iran may very well share a nuclear weapon with Hezbollah, ISIS, its on -again buddy Hamas, or one of the other terrorist groups it supports.
President Obama is willing to sacrifice our safety and the safety of much of the world to give him a legacy of being a peacemaker, but it is more likely that like Neville Chamberlain before him, this President’s legacy will be as an appeaser who created many more deaths than he tried to save.
This deal is a surrender, not just in Iran but throughout the entire region. The only thing missing is the little piece of paper and the declaration of peace in our time.
Obama will tell himself and anyone who wants to hear that he has brought Iran back into the community of nations. Obama, after all, is a rare man. How many others can make 118 self-referential mentionsin a half hour talk, as Obama did in India this week?
Is it any wonder why someone who stands for something, say a country’s security, as Netanyahu does, gets under the skin of a man who is primarily concerned with little more than his own greatness, and whose presidency, in a word, has been a “selfie”?
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There is a bit of difference between Iran and U.S. President Barack Obama when it comes to Israel. Iran has never been reticent that its goal is to eliminate the State of Israel, and Israelis too while they are it. Iran’s proxy terror army of Hezbollah contributed their part on Wednesday, killing two Israeli soldiers and wounding seven with anti-tank fire from southern Lebanon directed at an Israeli convoy. Obama seems more interested, at least in the next two months, in eliminating one Israeli — namely, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
It has been a remarkable two weeks in U.S.-Israel relations. The president delivered his State of the Union address, in which he argued for staying the course with negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, overselling what has already been achieved, as well as what might be achieved. He also threatened to veto new sanctions legislation that might be passed by Congress, where some have called for tougher sanctions to be applied to Iran if a satisfactory deal were not struck between the P5+1 and the Iranians by June 30. Obama argued that passing such a measure now would be a sign of bad faith and drive the Iranians from the negotiating table. It was, of course, an odd prediction, since one area in which the Iranians have shown remarkable consistency has been in negotiating with European powers, or the now expanded negotiating group for over 10 years, always without a satisfactory outcome. The Iranians seem to like being seen as negotiating while their nuclear program advances.
Fact checkers awarded Obama a bunch of “pinocchios” for his latest effort, suggesting he was all but lying on the matter. No, the Iranians have not dismantled any centrifuges (they have more running than before), they have not removed any fissile material from the country for safekeeping, they have not allowed inspections on demand, they have not disabled their Arak heavy-water reactor, they have not agreed to end any missile program they are working on for delivery of a nuclear bomb.
”Our diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran,” Obama said, ”where, for the first time in a decade, we’ve halted the progress of its nuclear program and reduced its stockpile of nuclear material.”
James Robbins, a senior fellow in national security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council, begged to disagree:
”But has Iran’s stockpile shrunk? Under a deal concluded last November, Iran halted work on the most dangerous material, 20 percent refined uranium. However, Iran is still making lower-grade uranium. According to a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency last November, Iran’s stockpiles of low-enriched uranium gas and 5 percent enriched uranium were both growing. Also, the agency cautioned that their figures only covered ’declared sites,’ the nuclear facilities Iran has publicly acknowledged and allowed to be inspected.”
In the days after his address to Congress, the president repeated his threats about vetoing new sanctions legislation, when meeting with Democratic senators, several of whom, along with a few Republican colleagues, had been lobbied on the matter by Britain’s visiting Prime Minister David Cameron. The president upped the ante, accusing Democratic Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a leader in the attempt to pass new sanctions, of not thinking long-term, but just trying to make his donors (could Obama have meant Jewish donors?) happy.
The idea of a foreign leader directly lobbying members of Congress on an issue like the Iranian sanctions bill took on a new life when House Speaker John Boehner invited Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress on the Iranian issue on February 11. The White House predictably blew its lid, accusing Boehner of breaking established protocol for such an invitation. (It should have been coordinated with the White House.) The usual Obama water carriers like Jeffrey Goldberg were quick to lambaste Netanyahu for stage managing the invitation so as to embarrass Obama, and in the process threaten U.S.-Israel relations. As Joel Pollak describesGoldberg’s argument:
”In his most recent Atlantic column, he claims, for example, that Obama worked ‘in tandem’ with Netanyahu to promote sanctions on Iran: ‘Netanyahu traveled the world arguing for stringent sanctions, and Obama did much the same.’
“That is simply factually untrue. Obama resisted Iran sanctions for months, defying even a unanimous vote in the Democrat-controlled Senate. Not only was Israel frustrated, and Congress, but Europe as well, which accused Obama of re-inventing the wheel, resetting diplomacy that had started under (gasp) George W. Bush.
“In fact, Obama pushed the world towards a more lenient position on Iran, allowing nuclear enrichment in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.”
And then there is this doozy:
”It is Netanyahu’s job, Goldberg says, as ‘the junior partner in the Israel-U.S. relationship,’ to make concessions.”
When it comes to negotiating with Iran, Netanyahu does not sit at the table with the Iranians, but Obama’s representatives do. And it is U.S. negotiators who have been making concessions month after month since the talks began, in what appears to be a desperate attempt to salvage some deal they can broadcast as having achieved a minimal set of objectives. That objective has now been reduced to providing some minimum breakout time for Iran to achieve nuclear weapons capability if they ditch the deal. What will the West do in that time if Iran moves towards the bomb? It is pretty clear, any military response from Obama is out of the question.
The administration has further demonstrated its unhappiness about Netanyahu’s impudence in scheming with Boehner, by announcing that neither the president nor his secretary of state will meet with Netanyahu when he visits Washington, a date now moved back three weeks to overlap his visit to the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference. The excuse, couched in a diplomatic smokescreen, is that it would be improper for the president to meet with a candidate for office abroad so close to the time of that country’s election. That would be equivalent to electioneering and interference in the other country’s race. Presumably when President Bill Clinton met with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres just weeks before his election contest with Netanyahu in 1996, at a time when Israeli prime ministers were elected in a head-to-head battle, electioneering was the furthest thing from Clinton’s mind.
The Obama team may not meet with Netanyahu when he visits, but an experienced Obama campaign team from 2012 is now in Israel working to defeat Netanyahu. That, in and of itself, is nothing new for Israeli elections. Experienced American campaign teams have aided Israeli candidates from the Left and Right in recent decades. What is new is that the current anti-Netanyahu campaign includes a State Department funded group:
”U.S.-based activist group OneVoice International has partnered with V15, an ‘independent grass-roots movement’ in Israel that is actively opposing Netanyahu’s party in the upcoming elections, Haaretz reported on Monday. Former national field director for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign Jeremy Bird is also reportedly involved in the effort.
“OneVoice development and grants officer Christina Taler said the group would be working with V15 on voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts but would not engage in overtly partisan activities. She said OneVoice and V15 are still formalizing the partnership.”
Obama’s team has gone further to poison the waters for Netanyahu, planting a story in Haaretz that the Mossad was opposed to new sanctions legislation, a charge they publicly rebutted.
The Goldberg article was designed to deliver a message that Israel has two important objectives now — to keep Iran from going nuclear (for which their best hope of course is to count on Obama to do the job for them in negotiations), and second, to keep American close and happy with Israel’s behavior. Netanyahu, according to Goldberg, is killing the good vibes that presumably must have existed during the Obama years by his recent behavior.
There is an alternative interpretation for what is going on. Obama is really not terribly bothered by a nuclear Iran. A bad deal that looks like it delays Iran’s entry to the nuclear club is therefore not a bad option. It also allows Obama to check off one more box on his achievements list before his formal request to have his likeness carved into Mount Rushmore. Pakistan has a bomb. Israel has the bomb. Why not Iran, the leading Shiite nation? Iran, after all, is now our strategic partner, fighting with us to battle ISIS in Iraq.
The latest evidence that Obama is now on the Iranian team is the New York Times editorial calling for accepting that having Assad hang on in Syria is the least bad result, so backing a non-ISIS Syrian rebel team is a bad idea. The New York Times editorial page is little more than a conveyance tool for White House messaging at this point, and so this is now clearly Obama’s posture. How can we fight alongside Iran in Iraq, but support a side that is fighting Iran’s ally Assad in Syria?
Meanwhile, Hezbollah is stepping up its activities in the Golan. The Iranian goal appears to be to establish a base in Syria where Israel can be targeted by the Lebanese group, without getting an Israeli response in Lebanon itself. What is clear is that Hezbollah and Iran have Israel in their sights. If Iran gets the bomb, the retaliation options for Israel when Hezbollah pressure is applied, will be much more limited. There is no certainty that Iran subscribes to the mutually assured destruction deterrence club.
But not to worry. Obama will tell himself and anyone who wants to hear that he has brought Iran back into the community of nations. Obama, after all, is a rare man. How many others can make 118 self-referential mentionsin a half hour talk, as Obama did in India this week?
Is it any wonder why someone who stands for something, say a country’s security, as Netanyahu does, gets under the skin of a man who is primarily concerned with little more than his own greatness, and whose presidency, in a word, has been a “selfie”?
(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
It has been argued that Obama’s cognitive dissonance is demonstrated by His dealings with Iran and His other disruptive efforts in the Middle East. Perhaps the contrary is more accurate.
Basis of His foreign policies?
An article at Front Page Magazine by Bruce Thorton is titled The Dangers of Obama’s cognitive dissonance (also at Warsclerotic). It argues that Obama mistakenly believes that Iran and “we” want many of the same things and that He acts on that belief.
The heart of this mistake is the belief that whatever their professed beliefs, all peoples everywhere are just like us and want the same things we want. Since our highest goods are peace and prosperity, we think other nations’ privilege the same things. If peoples behave differently, it’s because they are warped by poverty or bad governments or religious superstitions, and just need to be shown that they can achieve those boons in rational, peaceful ways, especially by adopting liberal democracy and free-market economies. Once they achieve freedom and start to enjoy the higher living standards economic development brings, they will see the error of their traditional ways and abandon aggression and violence, and resolve conflicts with the diplomacy and negotiation we prefer. [Emphasis added.]
The Islamic Republic of Iran most likely does want peace and prosperity, but on its own terms.
Iran wants Islamic “peace” — the peace of universal submission to (a Shiite?) Allah — and at least sufficient prosperity to force its will on others who do not want “peace” of that sort. If Iran gets (or gets to keep) nuclear weapons, along with increasingly longer range missiles, it will be in an increasingly improved position to do that.
Obama may well have very similar goals for Iran. His demands that the P5+1 process continue despite Iran’s persistent refusals to make significant concessions, even as it continues to enhance its nuclear war machine, and His disposition to give Iran whatever concessions it wants, suggest that His and Iran’s objectives are similar. There is support for an alternative, that Obama is simply delusional. However, unless His closest, most trusted and therefore most important advisors are at least equally delusional, that alternative makes little sense. Although she appears to be a despicable person, Valerie Jarrett seems quite competent at what she does on His behalf. Others fall on their swords, fall into line and salute or leave.
Obama’s “extraordinary disconnect” in foreign policy was recently highlighted on CBS’ Face the Nation.
John Bolton said much the same.
Is it more likely that Obama merely fails to understand what’s happening, or that He understands and likes it? His State of Union address was full of foreign policy nonsense, much of it about Iran. However, it seems to have worked quite well with the large segment of the American public which neither understands nor cares about foreign affairs (except amusing affairs of a salacious nature) and believes that He strives mightily to give them the “free stiff” they believe they want, without understanding the economic hardships it has brought and will bring to them. If members of the public who already worship Him (and that includes most of the “legitimate news” media) continue to do so, it may well make little if any difference to Him or to His closest advisors whether those who disagree with Him still like, or continue to like, Him.
After all, as we learned at the Democrat National Convention that nominated Obama for a second term, “we all belong to the Government,” it’s “one big happy family” and Obama is the head of “our family.”
In the final analysis, it may make little difference whether Obama is incompetent and delusional or is competent, understands His plans for Iran and the rest of the world far better than the rest of us and has perverse conceptions of evil and good.
Both theories are worth considering because both can help us to understand what He does, why He does it and what He intends to accomplish. However, delusional actions and intentions are difficult for those who are not delusional to understand and therefore to challenge. Actions and intentions that are, instead, based on a rational thought process — but one that views evil as good and good as evil — are easier to understand and therefore to challenge.
As I have watched Obama and His accomplishments over the years, I have come to lean toward the notion that He is competent, evil, understands what He is trying to achieve and likes it.
He will want to clear the air most urgently on three controversial items of burning interest to both leaders: Riyadh’s flat opposition to the multilateral nuclear deal with Iran and skepticism in the face of Obama’s conviction that a comprehensive accord will curtail the Islamic Republic’s drive for a nuclear weapon.
(Only if King Salman is truly demented would he agree with Obama on Iran and oil prices. Increases in Saudi oil production have hurt Iran while Obama’s Iran scam and relief from sanctions continue to help it. — DM)
Past meeting between President Barack Obama and King Salman, then Crown Prince
President Barack Obama, having decided to cut short the third day of his India visit, will arrive in Riyadh Tuesday, Jan. 27 with the First Lady, to offer US condolences on the death of King Abdullah and hold critical talks with his successor, King Salman Bin Abdulaziz.
He will want to clear the air most urgently on three controversial items of burning interest to both leaders: Riyadh’s flat opposition to the multilateral nuclear deal with Iran and skepticism in the face of Obama’s conviction that a comprehensive accord will curtail the Islamic Republic’s drive for a nuclear weapon.
Next, the US leader will try and persuade the new Saudi ruler to slow down oil production in order to put the brakes on plunging prices, an example which other OPEC members are sure to follow.
Finally, Obama and Salman must decide how to handle the fall of Yemen into the hands of Shiite Houthi rebels, who have seized the capital Sanaa with Iranian support and brought down the US-Saudi-sponsored president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
Two secondary issues will be the struggle against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in the oil kingdom’s back yard, in which the US and Saudi Arabia are coalition partners; and the situation in the Syrian conflict.
Since this is an outsize agenda for one meeting, DEBKAfile’s sources in Washington and the Gulf expect Obama to focus in his initial encounter with Salman on the broad lines of the nuclear Iran dispute and oil prices. Detailed discussions on these and other issues will be set aside for US and Saudi officials of lower rank to hammer out in the coming weeks, as the new king begins to take hold of the reins of government.
A number of Middle East leaders will be following the outcome of this Riyadh summit with bated breath. Many are worried that Obama may persuade the new monarch to play ball with his Middle East policies, so effecting a radical reversal of the late Abdullah’s stance of flat opposition to Obama’s tactics in the region, aside from isolated cases.
A decision by Salman to accept America’s lead on the Iranian nuclear question and oil prices would be a serious blow for the anti-US Arab front, spearheaded hitherto by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and some of the Gulf emirates. It would also be a setback for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s fight against Obama’s nuclear diplomacy for Iran. This policy was underpinned by the Saudi-Egyptian political and military partnership that aimed at stalling the deal crafted by Washington, which purported to lay to rest the nuclear controversy with Iran.
He documented enough of his charges that Interpol issued “red notices” for seven high-ranking Iranian officials, including Ali Akbar Rafsanjani and Ali Velayati, who were Iran’s president and foreign minister respectively at the time of the AMIA bombing. (Interpol does not have the power to arrest, so a “red notice” is as close as it comes to issuing an arrest warrant) Rafsanjani, despite being implicated in an act of terrorism in another nation is often referred to as a “moderate” nowadays. He is also considered to be a mentor to Iran’s current president, also often referred to as a “moderate,” Hassan Rouhani.
Alberto Nisman’s work exposed the danger that Iran poses to world security. Iran continues to violate international law with impunity and unfortunately there are too few Nisman’s daring to challenge Iran’s brazen misbehavior. His death will make the task of reining in Iran’s ambitions that much more difficult.
****************
Sunday night Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman was found shot to death in his apartment. Nisman had been scheduled the following day to present his criminal complaint against Argentinian President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner before a closed session of Argentina’s congress.
The initial claim (one made by Kirchner herself on her Facebook page) that Nisman committed suicide hardly seemed credible at the time. How many people would kill themselves before the high point of their careers? Nisman had spent ten years investigating the 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing in Buenos Aires and now he was about to charge the president and other officials of his country with conspiring to cover up the Iranian involvement in that attack. (Now Kirchner says he was killed but “suggests that Nisman was murdered on the instructions of his foreign masters in order to create a scandal damaging to her and to her government.”)
Subsequent revelations during the week have made the claim of suicide even less credible now. At Business Insider, Armin Rosen recounted some of those revelations.
The lack of an exit wound suggested the fatal shot was fired at a further distance than Nisman could have managed had the wound been self-inflicted. His last WhatsApp was a photo of stacks of documentation related to the next day’s testimony and Nisman had apparently given his maid a grocery list for the following week. A 10-person government security detail was reportedly pulled off of his apartment the night of his assassination. Most damningly, there was no gunpowder residue found on Nisman’s hands, physical evidence that he didn’t discharge a firearm prior to his death.
Fausta has more, including some gleaned from the Spanish press. Notably despite earlier claims that Nisman’s apartment was locked from the inside, there are reports that there were two other ways into his apartment that were not locked. Fausta is also right that Nisman’s murder is all about Iran. (Rosen also wrote, “no matter who’s responsible for Nisman’s death, the Iranian regime benefits.”)
Nisman’s work on the AMIA case was invaluable in documenting Iran’s efforts to build a terror infrastructure in South America. Matt Levitt, an expert on Hezbollah, who recently published a book about the Iran-backed terror organization, wrote this week, “As I was writing my book, trying to navigate the convoluted details of the AMIA bombing and other Hezbollah plots, Nisman was an invaluable resource.”
Nisman’s work wasn’t just academic though. He documented enough of his charges that Interpol issued “red notices” for seven high-ranking Iranian officials, including Ali Akbar Rafsanjani and Ali Velayati, who were Iran’s president and foreign minister respectively at the time of the AMIA bombing. (Interpol does not have the power to arrest, so a “red notice” is as close as it comes to issuing an arrest warrant) Rafsanjani, despite being implicated in an act of terrorism in another nation is often referred to as a “moderate” nowadays. He is also considered to be a mentor to Iran’s current president, also often referred to as a “moderate,” Hassan Rouhani.
The AMIA bombing was not the only time Iran’s leadership was implicated in an attack on foreign soil. In addition to Rafsanjani and Velayati, a red notice was issued for Ali Fallahian for the AMIA bombing. Rafsanjani, Velayati and Fallahian were all implicated in another terror attack on foreign soil.
A German prosecutor “without naming them … implicated Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati and Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian” in the 1992 massacre at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin.
Iran’s revolutionary government is lawless. The Iranian actors in these foreign terror attackes weren’t rogue operators but members of the country’s political elite. It’s something to keep in mind when the Obama administration insists that it will make a nuclear agreement with Iran that will make everyone safer and more secure.
Even assuming the P5+1 nations can come to an agreement with Iran (an agreement is hardly a foregone conclusion, Iran would probably be very happy with a series of temporary agreements that free up billions and don’t force it to dismantle any element of their nuclear program), what grounds are there to trust Iran to keep its commitments?
Remember that the crisis with Iran over its nuclear program stems from Iran’s violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that it signed. Six UN Security Council resolutions – three of them unanimous – were passed imposing sanctions on Iran for its violations. Iran isn’t looking to come into compliance but to be granted absolution for its violations.
Alberto Nisman’s work exposed the danger that Iran poses to world security. Iran continues to violate international law with impunity and unfortunately there are too few Nisman’s daring to challenge Iran’s brazen misbehavior. His death will make the task of reining in Iran’s ambitions that much more difficult.
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