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Report: Hezbollah enlisting West Bank youth to carry out terror attacks against Israel

August 30, 2015
Lebanese Hezbollah supporters march during a religious procession, to mark the burning of the tents that is part of the Ashura religious ceremony, in NabatiehLebanese Hezbollah supporters march during a religious procession in Nabatieh. (photo credit:REUTERS)

Saudi daily quotes Palestinian security source as saying PA concerned by Hezbollah attempts to make inroads with Palestinian youth.

Hezbollah has been working intensively to enlist former operatives from Fatah’s armed wing, the Al Aksa Brigades, in order to carry out terror attacks against Israeli targets in the West Bank and inside Israel, a Palestinian security source was quoted as saying on Sunday.

Saudi daily Okaz quoted the source as saying that “among those Hezbollah members involved in the operation is Kayis Ubayid, who was behind the kidnapping of Col. (res.) Elahanan Tenebaum in 2000.” Tenenbaum was released to Israel from Hezbollah captivity as part of a prisoner exchange in 2004.

The source added that Palestinian security forces believe that recent shootings and the use of explosive devices such as that thrown at an IDF position near Beit Jala, south of Jerusalem, earlier this month, are part of the Lebanese Shi’ite group’s efforts.

The Palestinian source claimed that Israel is well-aware of the Hezbollah activities. He added that some of those Palestinian operatives approached by Hezbollah reported the Shi’ite group’s efforts to Palestinian Authority officials. “We estimate that there are a number of youths who were drawn into joining Hezbollah’s ranks and are now operating in the West Bank, because of economic hardship or the deterioration in the security situation,” the source said.

“We don’t know how many people there are, but there is no doubt that the phenomenon is gaining momentum among former Al Aksa Brigade youths that have been approached by Hezbollah to work in exchange for economic support. The matter is a personal choice of these youth, who have chosen to take action against Israeli targets.”

The Palestinian security source expressed concern that, for the first time, their was a willingness among Palestinian youth to join Hezbollah. “These attempts have not gone unnoticed by us in recent years, but in recent months we feel that the phenomenon has grown, with interest expressed by the youths,” he said. “The number of youths involved can be counted on two hands, but nonetheless this is a dangerous development, which if it manages to carry out just one terror attack – it will change the situation completely. We fear that the issue will become a phenomenon, with more and more youths being seduced into getting money from Hezbollah. When they number in the dozens, handling them will become much more complicated.”

The source said that the matter was a security challenge for the Palestinian Authority, which is also currently acting against Hamas’s efforts to revive its military wing, the Kassam Brigades, in the West Bank.

The source said that in the mid-2000s, Hezbollah had tried to enlist West Bank youth, offering salaries which reached tens-of-thousands of dollars per month. “In the years 2004-2005, the Al Aksa Brigades claimed responsibility for terror attacks which were all funded by Hezbollah, whose main enlister was Kayis Ubayid.

This would not mark the first time that Palestinian security forces have warned of Hezbollah attempts to enlist fighters in the West Bank. The move could potentially be tied to Hezbollah’s patron – Iran.

In January, Iranian Defense Minister Hussein Dehghan warned that Israel “will not escape revenge” for its alleged assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ General Muhammad Allah-Dadi and of Jihad Mughniyeh in an air strike in the Syrian Golan Heights attributed in foreign reports to the IAF.

Dehghan said at the time that Iran would continue to arm the West Bank and Hezbollah. “Tehran will continue to strengthen the axis of resistance in order to deal with the Zionist entity.”

Categories: Death to Israel, Fatah, Hezbollah, Iran / Israel War, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Israel, Obama, Obama and Israel, Obama's legacy, P5+1
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Egypt sends Assad secret arms aid, including missiles, with Russian funding

August 30, 2015

Egypt sends Assad secret arms aid, including missiles, with Russian funding, DEBKAfile, August 30, 2015

( Given that Egypt is heavily reliant on Saudi funding as well as the absence of any other news source beyond “Debka,” I find this article worthy of a generous helping of salt. – JW )

Egyptain_missile_in_Zabadani_25.8.15

Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi has begun supplying Bashar Assad with arms, including missiles, after concluding a secret deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin and his consent to pick up the tab, DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources reveal. The first batch of short-range Egyptian-made surface missiles has reached the Syrian forces fiercely battling rebels for weeks for the recovery of the strategic town of Zabadani without breaking through (See picture showing missile with Egyptian factory markings.) 

It is not clear if the Egyptian missiles have also been passed to the Hizballah forces fighting with the Syrian army, considering that El-Sisi and Hizballah are at daggers drawn.

Our sources also reveal that the Egyptian arms consignments are freighted from Port Said to the Syrian port of Tartus by Ukrainian cargo vessels. These ships are today the most popular means of transport for clandestine and Black Market arms freights across the Mediterranean and Adriatic Seas.

Sums and quantities are yet to be determined, but Western intelligence sources report that Ukrainian vessels called in at Egyptian ports at least three times from July 22 to Aug. 22 and sailed off to Syria laden with weapons.

It is a deal that may affect the fate of the Assad regime from five, often conflicting, perspectives:

1. By providing Assad with an additional source of weapons, Cairo is reducing his dependence on Iran. This suits the Syrian ruler very well at this time, because he is fully aware of Tehran’s latest steps to draw Gulf rulers and Moscow into supporting a plan for ending the Syrian war, by installing a provisional government in Damascus and so easing his exit.

2. A certain parting-of-the ways has developed between Moscow and Tehran on how to terminate the Syrian conflict. By sending Assad arms, Cairo  casts its vote for Moscow’s perspective in preference to Tehran’s.

3. El-Sisi is now diametrically opposed on Syrian policy to the GCC led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates who are patrons of the rebel movement dedicated to toppling Assad.

4. He is also on the opposite side to Israel and Turkey. Israel backs the rebels fighting in southern Syria to create a barrier against the encroachment of Hizballah and Iranian Al Qods Brigades up to its northern border and the Golan. Turkey and the US have reached terms on Syrian policy. Saturday, Aug. 30, Turkish jets carried out their first air strikes in Syria against the Islamic State, as part of its deal with the US.

5. The Russian-Egyptian understanding on the Syrian question is a signpost that clearly marks the way to deepening military and strategic relations between Moscow and Cairo.

Taking the lead on a resolution of the Syrian question, the Kremlin staged a discussion last Tuesday, Aug. 18, with three Arab visitors: Jordan’s King Abdullah, UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and the Egyptian president. It was led by Mikhail Bogdanov, Deputy Foreign Minister in charge of Middle East Affairs, and followed by individual tête-à-têtes between Putin and each visitor in turn.

The Russian and Egyptian leaders did their best, according to DEBKAfile’s Moscow sources, to draw the Jordanian and UA rulers over to their pro-Assad policy, or at least accept common ground for a measure of cooperation. In effect, Putin and El-Sisi were out to convince Jordan and the US to back away from the Syrian rebel cause and the Saudi line. Their future actions may indicate how far they succeeded.

Categories: Arab nations, Assad, Egypt, Hezbollah, Iran - Syria war, Iranian proxies, Israel, Middle East, Putin, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates
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Admiral James ‘Ace’ Lyons (Ret). on the Iran Nuke Deal

August 29, 2015

Admiral James ‘Ace’ Lyons (Ret). on the Iran Nuke Deal, The Daily Ledger via You Tube, August 27, 2015

 

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Kerry, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's affinity for Islam, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1
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Obama’s Politicized Intelligence

August 29, 2015

Obama’s Politicized Intelligence, Washington Free Beacon, , August 28, 2015

(Please see also, Pentagon Not Targeting Islamic State Training Camps. Is there anything that Obama has not distorted for political purposes? — DM)

“Analysts,” reports the Daily Beast, “have been pushed to portray the group as weaker than the analysts believe it actually is.” This sort of dishonesty helps no one—except a president whose primary concern is leaving office with his reputation for ending wars intact, and the military brass who wish to remain in his good graces.

**********************

The anniversary of the U.S. war against the Islamic State passed with little notice. It was August 7 of last year that President Obama authorized the first airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq, a campaign he expanded a month later to include targets in Syria. So far this month, the president has delivered remarks on the Voting Rights Act, his deal with Iran, the budget, clean energy, and Hurricane Katrina. ISIS? Not a peep.

Obama’s quiet because the war is not going well. Despite the loss of Tikrit earlier this year, the Islamic State’s western boundary is stable, and its eastern boundary now encroaches on Damascus. The president’s air campaign is one of the most limited and desultory America has fought in decades—ranking last in daily averages of strike sorties and bombs dropped. In late July, when the Turks permitted America the use of their air bases to launch attacks on ISIS, a “senior administration official” told the New York Times that the decision was “a game changer.” In the ensuing days the number of airstrikes in Syria actually fell.

The growing number of U.S. advisers—there are now more than 3,300 American military personnel in Iraq—has been unable to repair the damage wrought on the Iraqi Army by sectarian and political purges after our 2011 withdrawal. Even as the administration brags about killing more than 10,000 ISIS terrorists, a number that strains credulity, the Caliphate has become more deeply entrenched in its territory, and inspires attacks abroad.

Meanwhile the congressional authorization that the president sought is dead. One of our most gifted generals predicts the conflict will last “10 to 20 years.” And now comes news that the Pentagon is investigating whether intelligence assessments of ISIS have been manipulated for political reasons. “Analysts,” reports the Daily Beast, “have been pushed to portray the group as weaker than the analysts believe it actually is.” This sort of dishonesty helps no one—except a president whose primary concern is leaving office with his reputation for ending wars intact, and the military brass who wish to remain in his good graces.

What’s especially galling about this allegation is that Obama and the Democratic Party have spent years spuriously accusing President Bush of lying the United States into war in 2003. Spend a moment thinking of what the news cycle would be if George W. were still our president and the Pentagon inspector general opened an investigation into whether the bureaucracy was sprucing up intelligence to make it politically palatable: The chorus of “Bush lied, people died” would be deafening, Congress would demand investigations, the national security leak machine would start humming, John Conyers would reconvene his mock impeachment hearing, and the entire controversy would be set against the backdrop of antiwar marches and publicized denunciations of militaristic policy. What have we instead? ABC’s Good Morning America mentioned the Pentagon investigation. No other broadcast network did.

It’s an unanticipated consequence of Barack Obama’s presidency: his immobilization of the antiwar legions, the way his election immediately neutered the zealots who, if a Republican were in office, would be marching against drone strikes and mass surveillance and war in Afghanistan and air war in Libya, Syria, Iraq and proxy war in Yemen. What does it say about the left that the most spirited attacks on Obama national security policy have come from the right: On drones, surveillance, and congressional authorization for war, you are far more likely to hear criticism from Ted Cruz or Rand Paul than from the politicians who rode into office denouncing Bush’s misadventure in Iraq. The protestors who flooded New York in 2004 and fell to the ground at the D.C. “Die-In” in 2007—they either support the president or are too busy with Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter to care.

Obama has thus been allowed to wage a war for more than a year not only without the authorization he called for but also without the accountability that pressure from his left would bring. He’s flying solo, and below him are an endless, inconclusive war, a terrorist state built on sharia law and sex slavery, rampant chemical weapons use, civilian casualties, and a refugee crisis that is causing social, economic, and political instability in Europe. The only thing missing from this picture is outrage—elite fury over the geopolitical and humanitarian results of the president’s evasive policy, of doing only the bare minimum necessary to convince people that you aren’t ignoring the problem.

There’s no outrage because the media, our bipartisan political establishment, and indeed the American people themselves are unwilling to face the scope of the challenge the Islamic State presents. To uproot it we would have to send U.S. ground forces to Iraq in large numbers, not just special forces operating in tandem with unrestricted air support. We would have to retake and hold ground lost in the years since we departed Iraq, and we would have to commit to remaining in Iraq and Syria for a long time. To deal a blow to radical Islam that would deter recruitment, stop the bandwagon effect, and secure America from attack by militants and their fellow-travelers would require a military and economic commitment the United States, and least of all our president, is simply not prepared to make.

Easier to perform the illusion of activity, of success and advance, so that all the boxes are checked, all our consciences placated. Easier to pretend that the problem of ISIS can be “contained” and that our new ally Iran can handle the situation in its emerging capacity as regional hegemon. Easier to go about our business, to spin or outright ignore the war our country has been waging in Iraq and Syria for more than a year. So much easier not to worry about what’s happening over there—until, that is, the enemy attacks us here.

Categories: Air strikes, Denial, Foreign policy, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Islamism, Obama, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, Terrorism, U.S. combat troops, U.S. politics
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Dividing the Arabs: America and Europe’s Double Game

August 29, 2015

Dividing the Arabs: America and Europe’s Double Game, The Gatestone Institute, Bassam Tawil, August 29, 2015

  • Iran is on its way in a few years to having nuclear weapons capability. The breakout time, according to President Obama, would effectively be “zero.” Iran could then make as many bombs as it would like, along with intercontinental ballistic missiles to delver them to major American cities, directly from Iran, from South America, or — making identification and retaliation impossible — from submarines submerged off the U.S. coast.
  • Obama with one hand allows Iran to glide to nuclear capability and encourage the Muslim Brotherhood and similar Islamist terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State in the Sinai Peninsula — while with the other hand, he claims to support Israel.
  • Qatar’s role is duplicitous. It plays host to U.S. military bases at the same time that it funds and supports ISIS.
  • Hamas, since last year’s war, has chosen to use its scant resources to rebuild its kidnapping tunnels and war capability, instead of developing businesses and turning the Gaza Strip into a magnificent Arab Riviera, as Dubai has become. Hamas’s failure does not come from a lack of resources; it comes from a deliberate choice of how to use them.
  • The Iranians, in opposing American policy, which is a tissue of amateur plans and plots, are flexible and exploit Islam’s taqiyya [dissimulation] — religious approval to lie in the cause of Allah and to further Islam. However, they are not even bothering with that, they are telling the truth: “Death to America; Death to Israel.”

The United States is playing a double game in the Middle East: empowering Shiite Iran, while at the same time enabling Sunni ISIS to overthrow the moderate Arab regimes, as if to stop Iran.

The Americans are well aware that the Sunni Arab countries around Iran will now have to arm themselves to the teeth, thereby gutting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

America, despite its power and the image it projects of working against ISIS in Iraq, does not touch ISIS in its real headquarters, Syria, where ISIS actually could actually be hurt. So nothing really changes, and both Iran and ISIS continue to strengthen.

Even as the members the UN Security Council, eager do business with Iran, voted to allow Iran to build nuclear weapons, the Iranians continue to fund Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip — all Iranian proxies — in order to split the Arab ranks.

In other words, the hypocritical Obama administration, in backing the Iranians, keeps trying to sabotage the Arabs and provoke dissension.

The U.S. “divide-and-conquer” policy can also be seen in America’s ongoing support for Turkey and Qatar, both loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey and Qatar, however, do nothing but foment incitement and support terrorist organizations. Both countries have totally abandoned the real existential interest of the Arab nation: its historic battle against Iran.

Qatar’s role is duplicitous. It plays host to U.S. military bases at the same time that it funds and supports ISIS, which is working against the West and against moderate Arab regimes.

The worst, however, is Turkey, which supports ISIS — the enemy of the West — despite Turkey being a member of NATO. Turkey also expends inordinate efforts at retaining its control of occupied Cyprus. Above all, its hypocrisy is scandalous. While it claims to care about the independence and human rights of the Palestinians, Turkey is really nothing but a radical Islamist country now denying independence and human rights to its own Kurdish citizens. At the same time, it supports Hamas and Iran in their effort to crush the unity of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the PLO as the only legitimate representatives of the Palestinian people.

Turkey, like many other nations, including the countries that negotiated with Iran, is just waiting for the sanctions to be lifted from Iran, so that its dubious military and economic relations with the Mullahs will finally be acceptable.

Turkey and Qatar have also divided the Sunni Islamic camp and fragmented the Arab ranks. Both countries give the Palestinians political support, the deluded hope of “return,” and funding that is used for rebuilding Hamas’s military capabilities and kidnapping tunnels.

It is both folly and underhandedness for the United States to provide these countries with even a tattered umbrella of military aid.

Not only the U.S. but Europe, which supports Iran, would like to see Hamas — a terrorist offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood — become stronger at the expense of the Palestinian people.

Europe would like to empower Hamas even further by handing it diplomatic and political support. There are rumors that the UN is planning to grant Hamas observer status in the General Assembly, as it did the Palestinian Authority.

We all know that the issue of Palestine could have been resolved long ago by establishing a demilitarized Palestinian state next to Israel, and giving the descendants of the original Palestinian refugees living in the Arab states full citizenship. But the manipulations employed by the Europeans and Americans deliberately perpetuate the Palestinian issue by using “good cop – bad cop” tactics. (Emphasis added. — DM)

Europe and the U.S. whitewash not only Hamas’s threats to Israel, but also, more importantly, its deadly subversion of Palestinian Authority. Both Europe and America totally disregard Hamas’s planned coup against PA leader Mahmoud Abbas last year, Hamas’s war crimes in the Gaza Strip, and the unspeakable treatment of its own people at home. Only one year ago, Hamas was murdering its own citizens extra-judicially, and ordering them to be cannon fodder for the benefit of international television crews.

Hamas, since then, has chosen to use its scant resources to rebuild its kidnapping tunnels and war capability, instead of to develop businesses and turn the Gaza Strip into a magnificent Arab Riviera, as Dubai has become. Hamas’s failure does not come from a lack of resources; it comes from a deliberate choice of how to use them.

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are now operating against Egypt and Israel not only from the Gaza Strip, but from the Sinai Peninsula as well. Thus, in addition to allowing Iran to sail to nuclear weapons capability, President Obama encourages the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State in the Sinai Peninsula with one hand, while with the other hand he claims to support Israel.

After all is said and done, if we Arabs had joined ranks — even temporarily and even with Israel — we could have long ago put a stop to Iran’s plans for expansion.

But because of our own shortsightedness, we waited too long and now the Iranians have established footholds in the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea, and are increasing their control of Arab states such as Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

Iran is on its way in a few years to having nuclear weapons capability. The breakout time, according to President Obama, would effectively be “zero.” Iran could then make as many bombs as it would like, along with intercontinental ballistic missiles to delver them to the major cities of the “Great Satan,” the United States, directly from Iran, from South America, or — making identification and retaliation impossible — from submarines submerged off the U.S. coast.

The Iranians, in opposing American policy, which is a tissue of amateur plans and plots, are flexible and exploit Islam’s taqiyya [dissimulation] — religious approval to lie in the cause of Allah and to further Islam. However, they are not even bothering with that, they are telling the truth: “Death to America; Death to Israel.”

1225U.S. President Barack Obama (left). Iranian President Hassan Rouhani (right).

By this point, near the end of the process of Sunni Muslim self-destruction, a large part of the Arabs’ energy has been wasted on internal wars and the misallocation of resources to the barren, useless confrontation with Israel, even while many Arab states secretly collaborate with the Zionists.

All that will be left for the Arabs will be to continue to argue among themselves and with the Israelis about the Palestinian issue. We should instead stop the distractions and the wounds we are inflicting upon ourselves, and put the Palestinian problem behind us by granting equal rights and citizenship to Palestinians residing in Arab countries, in order to shift our focus totally, if belatedly, to the real battle: The Islamic Republic of Iran.

Categories: Arab nations, Arabs, Foreign policy, Hamas, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Islamism, Israel, Middle East, Obama, Obama and Israel, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace process, Sunni states
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Israel will Never be a Second Czechoslovakia

August 29, 2015

Israel will Never be a Second Czechoslovakia, American Thinker, Shoula Romano Horing, August 29, 2015

(Obama loves Israel to death. Or tries.

Obama first Jewish president

— DM)

Israel is not like the Czechoslovakia of 1938 and never will be. Israel is an independent military and nuclear power that intends to use its right of self-defense against Iran and its terrorist proxies whether “Emperor” Obama  likes it or not, or tries to stop it.

Obama and his army of Democratic followers in the Congress, progressive groups, and the media repeatedly state their main argument in favor of the agreement, which is that Israel is the only country in the world opposing the Iran nuclear deal. First,  It seems that President  Obama  and his supporters have not paid attention to a recent CNN poll taken on  August 20  that  found that 60 percent of Americans  disapprove of how Obama is handling the Iran deal, and  56 percent  believe that Congress should reject it.

Secondly, like any other self-respecting sovereign country, Israel is against any deal that threatens her own survival by an evil Jihadist Islamic state clearly intent on its annihilation, which is being imposed on her by world powers as a fait accompli.

It seems that Obama and his supporters are delusional, expecting that Israel will allow itself to become a second Czechoslovakia. They are outraged and shocked that Israel has not only refused to quietly accept this very bad deal but dares to fight the deal publicly, loudly, and proudly.

Like Czechoslovakia in 1938, Israel is a small democracy surrounded by hostile nations, and like Czechoslovakia, it was excluded from negotiations that led to a diplomatic deal that shapes its fate and threatens its survival. In 1938, the enlightened democracies in Europe decided to sacrifice Czechoslovakia for a comfortable, temporary solution. The Munich agreement was signed, when Britain and France believed that handing Czechoslovakia to Hitler was the only way to save the world from another war. It is regarded as the shameful culmination of the Allies refusal to confront Nazi aggression and gave Hitler what he wanted in exchange for his verbal promise of “peace in our time” as Neville Chamberlain called it.

In his biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Champion of Freedom, Conrad Black recalls the scene when the poor Czechoslovakian delegates were brought into the room to be informed of their nation’s fate as set out in the Munich Agreement. “No Czech answer was requested. They were handed a fait accompli. The Czechs wept, and Hubert Masarik (Czech diplomat attending the Munich conference) said, prophetically and justly: ‘They don’t know what they are doing to us or to themselves.… These poor, good men were the final players in a macabre and shameful Gothic tragedy.”

The Jewish state has for 67 years been mourning its beloved soldiers who have courageously died defending it from the evil regimes that surround her. However, it will never weep over a deal imposed on it by a morally bankrupt world. Those days of passivity were over when the enormity of the Holocaust was revealed. The Jewish state has been fighting for itself on its own since its independence.

Obama’s threats of a military attack on Iran when violations of the deal occur are not taken seriously by anyone and are a source of laughter for the Iranian regime. Israel does not need  the U.S. or any another party to save her but it does need for Obama and the world powers to move away from Israel’s path and let it do everything in its means to minimize the nuclear threat, and the more menacing conventional  threat resulting from the hundreds of  billions of dollars Iran and its terrorist proxies will get  from the deal.

For the last two years, Obama has been trying to tie Israeli hands and prevent it from practicing its right to self-defense against Iran. Dan Raviv from CBS News reported in March 2014, that the Obama’s administration has asked Israel to stop killing key scientists in the Iranian nuclear program while Obama has been negotiating. In an August interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon implicitly warned that the assassinations could be renewed by saying;” I am not responsible for the lives of Iranian scientists.’

But much worse, in Article 10 of the deal, Obama and world powers have agreed that they will assist Iran in thwarting attempts to undermine its nuclear program. The agreement stipulates that they, with the Iranians, will foster “cooperation through training  and workshops to strengthen Iran’s ability to protect against and respond to, nuclear security threats, including sabotage, as well as to enable effective  and sustainable nuclear security  and physical protection systems.”

Recent years have seen various mishaps befall the Iranian nuclear program, from powerful computer viruses to the death of the nuclear scientists, which world media outlets have often attributed to the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. According to an audio recording with former Defense Minister Ehud Barak leaked to an Israeli television channel on August 22, Israeli leaders planned to attack military targets in Iran in 2010, 2011, and 2012 but were held back due to the opinions of other government and military leaders.

It is quite disturbing that the U.S. as well as the U.K., Russia, China, France, and Germany will actively try to prevent covert actions against the Iranian nuclear program, as well as any potential military operation against Iran, making such options far more complicated and dangerous for a country like Israel. Congress should ask Obama whether he will order U.S. jets to shoot down Israeli jets intent on destroying an Iranian nuclear weapon facility.

The Congressional Democrats must not repeat the mistakes of the past and sacrifice the future for the present; The Democrats must not ignore Iranian aggression in the hopes of gaining an illusory peace. A vote for the deal is a vote for the beginning of the next war between Israel and Iran and its proxies. The Jewish people can never again remain passive in the face of genocidal enemies.

 

Categories: Czechoslovakia, Death to Israel, Denial, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Hitler, Iran / Israel War, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Israel, Jews, Munich, Nazis, Obama, Obama and Israel, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, U.S. Congress, U.S. politics
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Resolving the Syrian war is not the silver bullet for stopping ISIS

August 29, 2015

Resolving the Syrian war is not the silver bullet for stopping ISIS, DEBKAfile, August 29, 2015

(Please see also, Pentagon Not Targeting Islamic State Training Camps. — DM)

jISIS_mobile_defense_of_SVBIED_8.15ISIS “mobile defense SVBIED” in action in Iraq

President Obama may likewise offer King Salman all sorts of assistance for standing up to ISIS, but he will find no buyers in Riyadh for his failed policy of reliance on Saudi Arabia’s rival, Iran, for liquidating the Islamist threat looming against the oil kingdom from neighboring Iraq.  Neither is US aid much use for stemming the tide of pro-ISIS radicalism spreading among young Saudi men.

As matters stand today, therefore, the Islamic State faces no tangible threat – even if Iran does go ahead and achieve a nuclear bomb.

**************************

The war to stop the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) has entered a dark tunnel. And with it the bottomless conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Libya and Iraq. The search for a ray of light moves next week from Moscow to Washington, when Saudi King Salman Bin Abdulaziz makes his first visit as monarch for talks with President Barack Obama.

The three worried Arab rulers received in the Kremlin Tuesday, Aug. 25, by President Vladimir Putin could only talk in circles: Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi,is  embattled on three fronts, Sinai, his border with Libya and Cairo; Jordan’s King Abdullah II – is wedged between two wars; and UAE Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, has sent his army to fight the Yemen insurgency alongside Saudi Arabia.

For them, resolving the Syrian conflict looked like the silver bullet, the key to ending all their troubles. But whichever Russian or Iranian plans and ideas they considered for a way forward, they were all forced to come back to the same impasse. Even Putin and Obama can’t get around or ignore two solid facts:

1. In the year since the US built an international coalition for fighting ISIS, the brutal Islamists have not been cut down; they have instead been empowered to seize more turf outside their Iraqi and Syrian conquests, such big oil fields in Libya, an ascending threat to Egypt and big plans for Lebanon.

2. A major letdown has followed on the high hopes reposed in Iran. The nuclear deal negotiated with the six world powers – and the elevated regional status conferred on Iran – hinged closely on US expectations that Tehran would put up effective military resources for tackling ISIS.

But the Revolutionary Guards, the popular Syrian and Iraqi forces the Guards established,and  the Afghan and Pakistani Shiite militias they imported – none have proved a match for ISIS and jihadi tactics.

In Syria, ISIS stands fast, unthreatened in the terrain, towns and oil fields they have captured, in the past year – excepting only on fringe fronts, where they have been forced back by local Kurdish rebel fighters.

Hizballah is a big part of the disappointment. It was supposed to serve as a bulwark against ISIS invading eastern Lebanon from Syria. Instead, these Lebanese Shiite fighters, allies of Assad’s army, are bogged down in a bitter battle for the strategic Syrian town of Zabadani, after failing to breach Syrian rebel defenses in forays from the south, the north or the center.

The door is therefore open for the Islamist State to march into Hizballah’s strongholds in the Lebanese Beqaa valley and head north to the port of Tripoli for a foothold on the Mediterranean.

Whether Bashar Assad stays or goes, which might have made a difference at an early stage of the Syrian insurgency, is irrelevant now that his army and allied forces are in dire straits.

In Iraq, the forces fighting ISIS are equally stumped. The jihadis are in control of a deadly string of  strategic towns, Ramadi, Faluja, the refinery city of Baiji, Mosul, and most of the western province of Anbar, including Haditha which commands a key stretch of the Euphrates River.

Here, too, the Islamist terrorist army’s lines remain intact, unbroken either by the undercover Jordanian Special Forces campaign 200 km inside Anbar, albeit backed by US and Israeli military and intelligence assistance; by the “popular mobilization committees” set up by the Iranian general Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy of the Al Qods chief Qassem Soleimani, or less still by US-trained Iraqi army units.

This week, the impasse spurred two combatants into chilling escalations:

— Iran began shipping its solid propellant missile, Zelzal-3B (meaning “earthquake”), across the border into Iraq, in the hope that this powerful projectile, with a range of 250km , would give the Revolutionary Guards their doomsday weapon for tipping the scales against ISIS.

— The Islamists, for their part, embraced a new tactic, known in the west as “SVBIED mobile defense.” Scores of armed vehicles are packed tight with hundreds of tons of explosives and loosed against military convoys on the move and static enemy positions and bases.

This tactic quickly proved itself by killing the 10th Iraqi Division’s chief, deputy and its command staff, as well as the deputy chief of Iraqi forces in Anbar.

In Moscow last week, Putin offered his three Middle East guests Russian nuclear reactors, arms, joint pacts for fighting terror and assorted ideas for the future of Bashar Assad. But he too had no practical proposals for bringing the Islamic State down.

President Obama may likewise offer King Salman all sorts of assistance for standing up to ISIS, but he will find no buyers in Riyadh for his failed policy of reliance on Saudi Arabia’s rival, Iran, for liquidating the Islamist threat looming against the oil kingdom from neighboring Iraq.  Neither is US aid much use for stemming the tide of pro-ISIS radicalism spreading among young Saudi men.

As matters stand today, therefore, the Islamic State faces no tangible threat – even if Iran does go ahead and achieve a nuclear bomb.

Categories: Assad, Egypt, Foreign policy, Hezbollah, Iran, Iran - Syria war, Iranian proxies, Iraq war, Islamic State, Libya, Middle East, Obama's legacy, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Siani, Sunni states, Syria war
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Iran Deal: A Potential Kiss Of Death For Liberalism In The Middle East’

August 28, 2015

Iran Deal: A Potential Kiss Of Death For Liberalism In The Middle East’, MEMRI, August 27, 2015

In a July 19, 2015 article on Al-Ahram’s English-language website titled “Iran Deal: A Potential Kiss of Death for Liberalism in the Middle East,”[1]Egyptian blogger and political commentator Nervana Mahmoud criticized the claim made, inter alia, by U.S. President Barack Obama and others in his administration, that the nuclear deal with Iran will strengthen moderate elements in that country.[2] Rather than promote liberals, she writes, the deal will only vindicate Iran’s current theocratic leadership by ending Iran’s isolation. It will also, she stresses, send a message to other authoritarian regimes in the region that the U.S. is likely to overlook their crackdown on dissidents, while encouraging Islamist movements to emulate Iran by embracing extremism.

Ms. Mahmoud goes on to accuse the Obama administration of promoting “illiberalism” by defining as moderate “any group, entity, or state willing to show pragmatism and cooperation with the United States, regardless of that state’s intolerant actions on the ground.”

24629Nervana Mahmoud (Image: Nervana1.org)

“For The Iranian Mullahs, The Nuclear Deal Is An Indirect Acknowledgment From The West That Their Anti-Modernity Model Is Viable And Successful”

“After 12 years of diplomatic proposals and 20 months of tough negotiations, theocratic Iran and world powers have reached a nuclear deal that, regardless of its potential advantages, is undoubtedly a victory for smart illiberalism and a potential kiss of death for the prospect of liberal, pluralistic democracies in the Middle East.

“Both illiberal Shi’a and Sunni Islamists and illiberal non-Islamist autocrats could receive an enormous boost from the deal.

“A few years ago, against all advice, I visited the Islamic Republic of Iran. To my surprise, I found a vibrant nation, with many liberal youth yearning for freedom and democracy. Those youth may now celebrate the lifting of sanctions and the end of isolation, but it is doubtful the nuclear deal will bridge the deep divide between them and their theocratic rulers.

“For the Iranian Mullahs, the nuclear deal is an indirect acknowledgment from the West that their anti-modernity model is viable and successful. U.S. President Barack Obama may be genuine in his hopes that Iran will abandon its ‘path of violence and rigid ideology’ following this ‘historic agreement,’ but his hopes may turn out to be no more than wishful thinking.

“The regime – now less isolated–has less incentive to couple its agreed abandonment of its nuclear program with an abandonment of what it sees as successful ideology than ever before.”Many commentators have pointed out that the deal could not have come at a worse time for the Arab world. With open sectarian tension in many Arab countries, a strong Islamic Iran will only inspire other political Islamic groups to try to match up to the Mullahs.

“Iran’s regional influence in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen will only prompt a counter-movement by forces that share an underlying belief in Islamism, but differ in its sectarian interpretation. Since 1979, Sunni Islamism has learned one important lesson from Iran: ‘Yes, we can’ -– a slogan the Islamists touted quietly, long before Obama uttered those words in 2008.

“Arab Islamists saw theocratic Iran as a perfect model for fulfilling their dream of ruling Muslim societies. The new nuclear deal will add two more lessons, and liberal democracy is not one of them– defiance and lobbying in Washington…

“Last Saturday, Ahrar Al-Sham, an Islamist Sunni insurgent group fighting in Syria, published an article in the Washington Post claiming to believe in ‘a moderate future for Syria.’ Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at Brookings, scrutinized their claim: ‘Ahrar Al-Sham has been one of the most consistent military allies of Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Al-Nusra.’ The publication of the article in itself indicates how some people in the corridors of power in Washington are willing to buy Ahrar’s narrative.

“The implication for Syria could not be more serious. Syria will continue to be torn between two mutually exclusive Sunni versus Shi’a forces; many of them are radical, ruthless, and undemocratic. Somehow, the Obama administration seems to see no problem in embracing both…’However, tacitly embracing radical Shi’a militias’ fight against radical Sunni groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS), while pretending that other radicals such as Ahrar Al-Sham are moderate, does not seem to be a sound strategy.”

“It Is Dangerous For The U.S. To Empower Illiberalism In A Region That Suffers Mainly As A Consequence Of Its Illiberal Players”

“In Egypt, neither the removal of Hosni Mubarak nor the ousting of Muhammad Mursi has produced a liberal democracy. Moreover, a significant section of the Muslim Brotherhood, despite its antipathy to Shia Islamism, has started to view the Iranian model as the way forward to regain power.

“They wrongly attribute their failure to run the country during Morsi’s tenure to what they describe as their ‘reluctance to embrace revolutionary politics.’ The Mullahs’ violent ejection of their opponents in 1979 is seen as ‘a model.’ In addition, the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters will continue to lobby in Washington, hoping that its projection of an Iranian–style defiance will convince the Obama Administration to exert pressure on the leadership in Cairo to change its posture toward the group.

“On the other hand, many among President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s supporters will use Iran as a pretext to justify more crackdown on opponents, and argue that world powers, which are willing to lift sanctions against the Iranian regime, despite 36 years of ruthless rule, have no moral ground on which to judge Egypt.

“In his speech in Cairo in 2009, President Obama advocated tolerance, respect for minorities, and religious freedom. He also said elections alone do not constitute a true democracy.

“Now, as Hisham Melhem, Bureau Chief of the Al Arabiya News Channel in Washington, has pointed out, ‘after almost six and a half years of trying to shape events in the Middle East, President Obama has very little to show for it except the nuclear deal with Iran.’ More alarmingly, the American president seems to have lowered the bar, and is now willing to accept a softer definition of moderation to include any group, entity, or state willing to show pragmatism and cooperation with the United States, regardless of that state’s intolerant actions on the ground.’

“There are intrinsic reasons behind the metastasizing sectarian and ethnic conflicts that followed the failed Arab awakening. It is unreasonable to expect the United States to ‘fix’ the region; however, it is dangerous for the U.S. to empower illiberalism in a region that suffers mainly as a consequence of its illiberal players. It would be a pity if President Obama went down in the history books as the man who fumbled with the West’s anti-illiberalism alarm button, and embraced the enemies of liberalism in the Middle East.”

_____________________

Endnotes:

[1] English.ahram.org.eg, July 19, 2015.

[2] See for example Obama’s interviews in Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (Aawsat.net, ,May13, 2015) and with National Public Radio (Npr.org, April 7, 2015).

Categories: Egypt, Foreign policy, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama's legacy, P5+1, Reform Islam, Sisi, Theocracy
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Use Our Senatorial Nuclear Option to Stop Iran’s Radioactive Nuclear Option

August 28, 2015

Use Our Senatorial Nuclear Option to Stop Iran’s Radioactive Nuclear Option, National Review – Morning Jolt, Jim Geraghty, August 28, 2015 (via e-mail).

A simple proposal: To stop Iran’s nukes, use our own nuclear option. Scrap the filibuster, pass a resolution declaring the Iran deal a treaty that requires Senate authorization, introduce the text of the Iran deal, and vote it down.

Remember, Democrats got rid of the filibuster for nominations in 2013, arguing that GOP obstructionism was interfering with the president’s constitutional authority to make judicial appointments. The Constitution requires Senatorial consent to treaties. The administration claims the Iran deal isn’t a treaty because they think it has “become physically impossible“ to pass a treaty in the Senate.

Do you think Iran will honor its side of the agreement? Probably not, right?

Even if they do, do you think Iran will attempt to build a nuke quickly when the deal expires? Certainly, right?

Do you think that if Iran gets a nuke, they will use it? Pretty darn likely, right?

So, congressional Republicans . . . what are you willing to do to prevent a mushroom cloud either in the Middle East or closer to home?

Categories: Foreign policy, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Middle East, Obama, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, Obama's motivations, P5+1, Treaties, U.S. Congress, U.S. Constitution
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Poof goes the Big Enchilada

August 28, 2015

Poof goes the Big Enchilada, Israel Hayom, David M. Weinberg, August 28, 2015

Just in case there was any doubt as to what U.S. President Barack Obama is up to, Professor Andrew Bacevich of Boston University has laid it out for us in a series of recent articles.

Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran is meant to reboot and redirect the entire vector of American Middle East policy: to retreat from Pax Americana and allow Iran to take its rightful place as a major regional power.

For decades, two tenets have informed U.S. policy in the Middle East. The first is that U.S. interests there are best served by the position of unquestioned American pre-eminence. The second is that military might holds the key to maintaining that dominant position. (In this context, Israel has been an important U.S. regional ally).

This approach is what Bacevich calls the “Big Enchilada” — the America-as-top-dog approach that Obama is seeking to overturn.

Obama rejects this notion, since he essentially views America’s preponderance in world affairs as arrogant and sinful. He feels that American “bullying” has brought about disastrous results.

Most telling was Obama’s infamous lament in 2010 about America as “a dominant military superpower, whether we like it or not.” In other words, he really doesn’t like it at all. No statement could be more revealing of Obama’s disgust for American global leadership.

In the context of the current deal with Iran, Obama has been equally clear as to how he expects this play out. If successfully implemented, the agreement that slows Iran’s nuclear program will also end Iran’s isolation. This will allow Tehran, over time, to become a “legitimate” and “extremely successful regional power” and a “powerhouse in the region.” These are Obama’s own words.

All this leads, of course, to American retreat — blessed retreat from Obama’s perspective — from the projection of power in the region. Replacing America will be a revanchist, greatly emboldened, anti-Semitic and genocidal (toward Israel), Islamic Republic of Iran. Poof goes the Big Enchilada.

Obama has been mostly dismissive of Iran’s “bad behavior,” as he flippantly calls it. He says that he “hopes to have conversations” with Iranian leadership that might lead someday to their “abiding by international norms and rules”; that he “hopes and believes” that Iranian “moderates” will leverage their country’s reintegration into the global economy as an opportunity to drive kinder, gentler and less revolutionary foreign policies.

Whether Obama himself believes such nonsense is moot. The rub is that Obama doesn’t view American behavior in the region over past decades as any more moral or legitimate than Iran’s behavior. Consequently, the main thing for him is the humbling and retreat of America.

What happens after that? Well, that will be some other president’s problem, and Israel can lump it.

It is against the backdrop of such unfounded expectations and dangerous strategic vision that Prime Minister Netanyahu is leading the fight against the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran, otherwise known as the nuclear agreement.

Netanyahu understands that the nuclear agreement isn’t just about Iran’s nuclear program. It’s about American detente with Iran and a perilous rejigging of America’s global strategic posture. As such, Netanyahu’s main goal is to prevent American retreat from the region, to thwart any intensification of American rapprochement with Iran and to avert the inevitable corollary of this: the further downgrading of U.S.-Israel ties.

To do so, the Iran deal must be kept strategically disputed and politically fragile. Even if (or when) Obama steamrolls over Congress, the deal must remain controversial and questionable. It needs to become politically toxic.

American and European companies must know that investing in Iran is still a risky business. Iran must know that it is under extraordinary scrutiny, and that American opponents of the deal will jump at every opportunity to scuttle it if red lines are crossed. Space must be cleared for the rescinding or cancellation of the accord in the face of Iranian “bad behavior.” Obama’s successor should be under pressure to vigorously oppose Iranian hegemony in the region and to act more forthrightly than Obama to block Tehran’s nuclear program.

In fact, a climate must be created that will encourage the next U.S. administration to backtrack from the deal, to reassert and reinvigorate America’s traditional foreign policy approach, and to revitalize the U.S.-Israel relationship.

This explains why Netanyahu has rebuffed all attempts by dozens of well-meaning mediators to scale down his opposition to the deal and cut a compensatory deal with Obama. Aside from the fact that Obama never rewards his “friends” and has little to offer Israel of meaningful counterweight to this terrible deal, Netanyahu understands that far more is at stake. It’s the big enchilada.

In this regard, it’s worth considering the status of Obama’s “comprehensive plan of action” with Iran. It is not a formal treaty between the U.S. and Iran; it is not even a signed agreement with the P5+1. Rather, it is a set of multilateral “understandings.” Such understandings can and should be considered short-lived.

The Iran “agreement” should be thought of as no more authoritative or binding for future U.S. administrations than, say, the “Bush letter” to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in which President George W. Bush suggested recognition of settlement blocks. Obama has tossed this letter right out the window.

The Iran “agreement” should be thought of as no more authoritative or binding for future U.S. or Israeli administrations than, say, the “Clinton parameters” for Israeli-Palestinian peace that were outlined during President Bill Clinton’s final days in office. Netanyahu is correct to have dismissed these parameters as no longer relevant.

The Iran “agreement” should be thought of as no more authoritative or binding for future U.S. administrations than, say, the apparently ridiculous, secretive “side agreements” on inspections which the International Atomic Energy Agency has reached with Iran, with or without Obama administration review.

Presidential promises, letters, memos, agreements and understandings — especially when declared or imposed unilaterally — are transient things. They are valid and binding only for as long as the principal holds political power. In Obama’s case, that is another 510 days, and no longer.

Then, hopefully, America can snap back to solid, assertive foreign policy principles, and claw back to a position of responsible leadership against truly dangerous actors in the Middle East.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran - secret deal, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Israel, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama and Israel, Obama's affinity for Iran, Obama's America, Obama's legacy, P5+1, U.S. Congress
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