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US finds peeling back the Iran sanctions onion no easy task

June 10, 2015

US finds peeling back the Iran sanctions onion no easy task, Israel Hayom, June 10, 2915

(For Obama, principles are as flexible as words.

Humpty words

— DM)

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew | Photo credit: Reuters

Under the sanctions developed over decades, hundreds of companies and individuals have been penalized not only for their roles in the country’s nuclear program but also for ballistic missile research, terrorism, human rights violations and money laundering.

Officials say the administration can meet its obligations because of how it interprets nuclear sanctions.

For example, they say measures designed to stop Iran from acquiring ballistic missiles are nuclear-related because they were imposed to push Iran into the negotiations. Also, they say sanctions that may appear non-nuclear are often undergirded by previous actions conceived as efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

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The Obama administration may have to backtrack on its promise that it will suspend only nuclear-related economic sanctions on Iran as part of an emerging nuclear agreement, officials and others involved in the process told The Associated Press Tuesday.

The problem derives from what was once a strong point of the broad U.S. sanctions effort that many credit with bringing Iran to the negotiating table in the first place.

Administration officials vehemently reject that any backtracking is taking place, but they are lumping sanctions together, differently from the way members of Congress and critics of the negotiations separate them.

Under the sanctions developed over decades, hundreds of companies and individuals have been penalized not only for their roles in the country’s nuclear program but also for ballistic missile research, terrorism, human rights violations and money laundering.

Now the administration is wending its way through that briar patch of interwoven economic sanctions.

The penalties are significant. Sanctioned foreign governments, companies or individuals are generally barred from doing business with U.S. citizens and businesses, or with foreign entities operating in the American financial system. The restrictions are usually accompanied by asset and property freezes as well as visa bans.

Negotiators hope to conclude a final nuclear deal by June 30. According to a framework reached in April, the U.S. will be required to lift sanctions that are related to Iran’s nuclear program but could leave others in place. President Barack Obama can suspend almost all U.S. measures against Iran, though only Congress can revoke them permanently.

“Iran knows that our array of sanctions focused on its efforts to support terrorism and destabilize the region will continue after any nuclear agreement,” Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told a gathering of American Jews in a weekend speech. U.S. officials will “aggressively target the finances of Iranian-backed terrorist groups and the Iranian entities that support them,” he said, including the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Iran’s Quds Force.

The Treasury Department’s sanctions point man, Adam Szubin, has been tasked with sorting out the mess, according to U.S. officials, though no clear plan has yet been finalized.

Officials say the administration can meet its obligations because of how it interprets nuclear sanctions.

For example, they say measures designed to stop Iran from acquiring ballistic missiles are nuclear-related because they were imposed to push Iran into the negotiations. Also, they say sanctions that may appear non-nuclear are often undergirded by previous actions conceived as efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

The officials who provided information for this story spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the private discussions.

After years of negotiations, U.S. officials believe a deal is within reach that for a decade would keep Iran at least a year from being able to build a nuclear weapon.

In return, the U.S. would grant billions of dollars in relief from sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy. But the whole package risks unraveling if the U.S. cannot provide the relief without scrapping sanctions unrelated to Iran’s nuclear program.

Administration officials say they are examining a range of options that include suspending both nuclear and some non-nuclear sanctions, a step that would face substantial opposition in Congress and elsewhere. Under one scenario, the U.S. could end non-nuclear restrictions on some entities, then slap them back on for another reason. But Iran could then plausibly accuse the U.S. of cheating on its commitments.

U.S. President Barack Obama has spoken about Iran potentially recouping up to $150 billion in assets trapped overseas. The process for how that would take place is still being worked through, said officials.

The Iranian Central Bank may prove the most glaring example of the administration’s dilemma, and officials acknowledge there is no way to give Iran the sanctions relief justified by its compliance without significantly easing restrictions on the institution.

The bank underpins Iran’s entire economy, and for years the U.S. avoided hitting it with sanctions, fearing such action would spread financial instability and raise oil prices. By late 2011, with Iran’s nuclear program advancing rapidly, Obama and Congress did order penalties, declaring the bank a “primary money laundering concern” and linking its activity to ballistic missile research, terror financing and support for Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The effects were far-reaching: Petroleum exports fell by 60%, Iran suffered runaway inflation, cash reserves dried up and industrial output in several sectors plummeted. And Iran agreed to talk about its nuclear program with the United States and five other world powers.

Now that the nuclear agreement is so close, Iran wants these sanctions lifted. The administration officials say all sanctions on the bank are nuclear-related.

Lew told the Jewish conference in New York that a nuclear accord would include the suspension of all “secondary” oil, trade and banking restrictions — those that apply to U.S. and non-U.S. banks, as well as foreign governments.

Many of these measures overlap with American sanctions tied to Iran’s nuclear program, and that has officials considering new sanctions to keep certain Iranian institutions under pressure.

Eliminating the secondary sanctions across the board could have wide-ranging implications, making it easier for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and its police, intelligence services and paramilitary groups to do business.

That possibility has Iran’s rivals in the region, including Israel and the Sunni monarchies of the Middle East, gravely worried.

“I share their concern,” Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, said Tuesday in Jerusalem.

“If the deal is reached and results in sanctions relief, which results in more economic power and more purchasing power for the Iranian regime, it’s my expectation that it’s not all going to flow into the economy to improve the lot of the average Iranian citizen,” he said.

“I think they will invest in their surrogates. I think they will invest in additional military capability.”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is under U.S. sanctions because of its proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. But because the U.S. views the corps as so pernicious, the administration is considering new measures to help block it from meddling in the internal conflicts of Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.

Of the 24 Iranian banks currently under U.S. sanctions, only one — Bank Saderat, cited for terrorism links — is subject to clear non-nuclear sanctions. The rest are designated because of nuclear and ballistic missile-related financing, while several are believed to be controlled by the Revolutionary Guard.

Will they be cleared for business with the world? U.S. officials still cannot say one way or another. Congress, too, has not received a list of banks and institutions that would be released from sanctions under the deal.

If the United States cannot deliver on its promises, it could take the blame for a collapse of the years-long negotiations toward a nuclear deal, putting the world — in the words of Obama and other U.S. officials — on a path toward military confrontation. At the same time, an Iran unburdened by sanctions could redouble efforts toward nuclear weapons capacity, while international unity and the global sanctions architecture on Tehran fray.

Categories: Diplomacy, Economy, Foreign policy, Human rights, Iran military, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Israel, Middle East, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Sanctions, Saudi Arabia, Sunni, Support for terrorism, U.S. Congress
Tags: Economy, Foreign Policy, human rights, Iran military, Iran Scam, Iranian proxies, Israel, Middle East, Nukes, Obama, Sanctions, Saudi Arabia, Sunni, Support for terrorism, U.S. Congress

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Op-Ed: Core Synergies in Israel’s Strategic Planning

June 9, 2015

Op-Ed: Core Synergies in Israel’s Strategic Planning, Harvard Law School National Security Journal via Israel National News, Prof. Louis René Beres, June 9, 2016

(Rather “high brow,” but well worth considering seriously. — DM)

Significantly, the most insidious synergy of all could involve a rudimentary failure to understand that belligerent enemy intentions ultimately depend for their efficacy upon confused, partial, or inadequately thoughtful Israeli responses.

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To best serve Israel, the country’s strategic studies community should favor more conceptual or “molecular” assessments of expected security perils. Going forward therefore, it will not suffice for this community to operate in ways that are roughly comparable to the purely reportorial activities of journalists and pundits, that is, of ordinary observers who focus exclusively on current personalities and events. With this timely warning in mind, the following brief essay explains and argues for a specifically enhanced Israeli consideration of enemy “synergies.”

For the most part, the concept of synergy is already familiar to capable scientists and scholars. It signifies, above all, that the usually binding axioms of geometry can sometimes be overridden by various intersecting phenomena. Applied to Israel, this concept suggests that certain identifiable threats to the Jewish State should no longer be considered as wholly separate or discrete, but instead, as more-or-less interpenetrating and mutually-reinforcing.

The most obvious and portentous example of pertinent synergy for Jerusalem is represented by Iranian nuclear weapons and Palestinian statehood.[1]

At first, any such talk of “synergy” may sound needlessly pretentious, or at least more contrived, concocted, or complicated than is really the case. In medicine, after all, it would already seem plain that the dangers of smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol together must exceed either one behavior without the other. This is because the synergistic effect is presumptively much greater than those consequences ascertained by merely adding these two injurious activities together.

For Israeli planners, the still-widely-unrecognized synergy between Iranian nuclearization and “Palestine” should finally be treated with a more emphatic intellectual regard.[2] Notwithstanding the declared assumptions of virtually all acknowledged national strategists, Iran and Palestine,[3] as “negative force multipliers,”[4] do not represent thoroughly separate or unrelated hazards to Israel. To continue to assess each one independently of the other would be a serious conceptual error. It would be to consciously obscure what is potentially most revealing and most ominous.

Israel’s main security policies must involve carefully nuanced considerations of active defense, as well as of deterrence, preemption, and war-fighting. The country’s multilayered missile defenses are central to national survival. As long as incoming rocket aggressions from Gaza, West Bank, and/or Lebanon (Hezbollah) were to remain “only” conventional, the inevitable leakage could still be tolerable. But once these rockets were fitted with chemical and/or biological materials, such porosity could quickly prove “unacceptable.“[5] This means, among other things, that the projected harms of rocket attacks upon Israel would depend not only upon the inherent dangers posed by a particular weapon system, but also upon the ways in which these individual harms would intersect.[6]

Once facing Iranian nuclear missiles, Israel’s “Arrow” ballistic missile defense system would require a fully 100% reliability of interception. To achieve any such level of reliability, however, would be impossible. Now, assuming that the prime minister has already abandoned any residual hopes for a cost-effective eleventh-hour preemption against pertinent Iranian nuclear assets , this means that Israeli defense planners must prepare instead, and longer-term, for stable deterrence.[7]

Theory is a net. Only those who cast, can catch.[8] Because of the expectedly corrosive interactive effects involving Iranian nuclear weapons and Palestinian statehood, for example, Israel will need to update and refine its existing theories of deterrence.

Looking ahead, there are various antecedent issues of theoretical concern. For one, Israel’s leaders will have to accept that certain more-or-less identifiable leaders of prospectively overlapping enemies might not necessarily satisfy the complex criteria of rational behavior in world politics. In such partially improbable but still conceivable circumstances, assorted Jihadist adversaries in Palestine, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, or elsewhere might sometime refuse to renounce certain still-contemplated aggressions against Israel.[9]

By definition, these irrational enemies could exhibit such more-or-less plausible refusals even in anticipation of fully devastating Israeli reprisals. But, would they still remain subject to alternative threats or forms of deterrence? And might an entire state sometime exhibit such non-rational orientations, thereby becoming, in essence, a suicide terrorist writ large?

These utterly core questions can no longer be ignored. Sooner rather than later, and facing new and prospectively incalculable synergies from Iranian and Palestinian aggressions, Israel will need to take appropriate steps to assure that: (1) it does not become the object of any non-conventional attacks from these enemies; and (2) it can successfully deter all possible forms of non-conventional conflict. To meet this ambitious but indispensable goal, Jerusalem, inter alia, absolutely must retain its recognizably far-reaching conventional superiority in pertinent weapons and capable manpower, including effective tactical/operational control over the Jordan Valley.

In this connection, a Palestinian state could make Israeli military and civilian targets more opportune for Iranian rockets. It could simultaneously undermine the Jewish State’s critical early-warning systems.

Maintaining a qualitative edge in conventional war-fighting capacity could reduce Israel’s overall likelihood of ever actually having to enter into a chemical, biological, or even nuclear exchange with regional adversaries. Correspondingly, Israel should plan to begin to move incrementally beyond its increasingly perilous posture of “deliberate nuclear ambiguity.”[10] By preparing to shift toward prudently selective and partial kinds of “nuclear disclosure” – in other words, by getting ready to take its “bomb” out of the “basement,” but in carefully controlled phases[11] – Israel could best ensure that its relevant enemies will remain sufficiently subject to Israeli nuclear deterrence.

In matters of defense strategy, truth may emerge through paradox. Israeli planners, it follows, may soon have to acknowledge that the efficacy and credibility of their country’s nuclear deterrence posture could sometime vary inversely with enemy perceptions of Israeli nuclear destructiveness. However ironic or counter-intuitive, enemy views of a too-large or too-destructive Israeli nuclear deterrent force, or of an Israeli force that is not sufficiently invulnerable to first-strike attacks,[12] could substantially undermine this deterrence posture.

Here, too, carving “Palestine” out of the still-living body of Israel (whatamounts to the unhidden Palestinian Authority plan for a “one state solution”), could impact the Iranian nuclear threat, and vice-versa. Once again, Israel’s defense planning must account for possible and prospectively prohibitive synergies.

Also critical, of course, is that Israel’s current and future adversaries will always acknowledge the Jewish State’s nuclear retaliatory forces as “penetration capable.” This suggests forces that will seem “assuredly capable” of penetrating any Arab or Iranian aggressor’s active defenses. Naturally, a new state of Palestine would be non-nuclear itself, but it could still present a new “nuclear danger” to Israel by its probable impact upon the prevailing regional “correlation of forces.”[13] Palestine, therefore, could represent an indirect but nonetheless markedly serious nuclear threat to Israel. Here, yet again, is an example of the need for Israeli planners to think synergistically.

More remains to be done. Israel should continue to strengthen its active defenses, but Jerusalem must also do everything possible to improve each critical and interpenetrating component of its nuanced deterrence posture. In this bewilderingly complex and dialectical[14] process of strategic dissuasion, the Israeli task may require more incrementally explicit disclosures of nuclear targeting doctrine, and, accordingly, a steadily expanding role for cyber-defense and cyber-war.

Even before undertaking such delicately important refinements, Israel will need to more systematically differentiate between adversaries that are presumably rational,[15] irrational, or “mad.”[16]

Overall, the success of Israel’s national deterrence strategies will be contingent, inter alia, upon an informed prior awareness of enemy preferences, and of specific enemy hierarchies of preferences. In this connection, altogether new and open-minded attention will need to be focused on the seeming emergence of “Cold War II” between Russia and the United States. Any such emergence, of course, could have meaningful effects upon both Israeli and adversarial military postures.[17]

If, within a pattern of “Cold War II,” a newly-formalized state of Palestine does not find itself in the same ideological orbit as Iran, the net hazard to Decision-makers will then need to explore and acknowledge what amounts, paradoxically, to a geometry of chaos. Israel could still exceed the sum of relevant intersecting threats. While attempting to survive amid growing regional disorder, therefore, Israel’s leaders should learn to understand the profound strategic limits of normal “geometry”—where, quite mundanely, the whole is always expected to equal to the sum of its parts—and to augment an enhanced understanding with certain new geometric orthodoxies. In essence, these decision-makers will then need to explore and acknowledge what amounts, paradoxically, to a geometry of chaos.

Still, even this long-hidden geometry could reveal a discernible sense of symmetry and form, including the precise shape of certain critically interwoven enemy threats. Wherever the belligerent whole might add up to more than the sum of its constituent parts, Israel’s leaders could discover lethal hazards of adversarial synergies. Significantly, the most insidious synergy of all could involve a rudimentary failure to understand that belligerent enemy intentions ultimately depend for their efficacy upon confused, partial, or inadequately thoughtful Israeli responses.

When Pericles delivered his famous Funeral Oration, with its meticulously elaborate praise of Athenian civilization, his geostrategic perspective was applicable to more than the particular struggle at hand. Recorded by Thucydides, Pericles had expressed confidence in a military victory for Athens (a confidence, of course, that turned out to be misplaced), but also grave concern for any self-imposed limitations along the way: “What I fear more than the strategies of our enemies,” he had warned, “is our own mistakes.” However unforeseen, there is a vital lesson here for present-day Israel: In observing enemy preparations for war and terror, never forget that the ultimate success of these preparations will depend upon Israel’s selected responses.

There exists an overarching or determinative synergy between certain individual or intersecting enemy preparations and Israel’s own prepared policies and reactions.

In all world politics, but especially in the Middle East, we are present at the gradual unveiling of a “big picture,” but the nucleus of meaning—the essential truth of what is taking place—involves what is left out. For the foreseeable future, Israel’s enemies will continue with their ardent preparations for every form of war and terrorism. Unaffected by any civilizing expectations of international law of comity, these calculated preparations will proceed largely on their own track, culminating, if left suitably unobstructed, in new and ever more serious aggressions against Israel. The Jewish State must remain vigilant of such an emergent “big picture,” but also of every imaginable intersection or pattern of intersections between its component parts.

Always, Israel’s leaders and planners must reflect, core dangers to national security are profoundly synergistic.

Always, Israeli policy must recall, these fundamental dangers are potentially much greater than the additive sum of their respective parts.

Always, Jerusalem must insightfully recognize, even a bewildering geometry of chaos has potentially meaningful sense and form.

Always, it must be Israel’s consuming task, to discover this synergistic truth.

Sources:

[1] There are other still more complex synergies that need to be examined. These concern, especially, the intersecting roles of ISIS and al-Qaeda, including pertinent sub/state-state relationships with Syria, Iran, Libya, Lebanon, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. Also worth exploring, in this connection, is the plausible escalation of “Cold War II,” a broadly transforming context of world politics that could create a “synergy of synergies.” Although all such bewildering hypotheticals may be intimidating or annoying to scholars and policy-makers, there remains no reasonable explanatory alternative to taking them into account.

[2] Rabbi Eleazar quoted Rabbi Hanina, who said: “Scholars build the structure of peace in the world.” See: The Babylonian Talmud, Order Zera’im, Tractate Berakoth, and IX.

[3] Once a Palestinian state were created, it would more likely become subject to destruction by assorted Arab forces, than by Israel. Plausibly, in this connection, ISIS forces fighting their way westward across Jordan could quickly arrive at the West Bank (Judea/Samaria), and make fast work of any now indigenous Hamas/PA national “army.” In such dire circumstances, the citizens of “Palestine” would assuredly rue the day of their recently-declared “independence.”

[4] This is a term that will likely be favored by the generals, over synergy.

[5] See, on this issue: Louis René Beres and (Major-General/IDF/Res.) Isaac Ben-Israel, “Think Anticipatory Self-Defense,” The Jerusalem Post, October 22, 2007; Professor Beres and MG Ben-Israel, “The Limits of Deterrence,” Washington Times, November 21, 2007; Professor Beres and MG Ben-Israel, “Deterring Iran,”Washington Times, June 10, 2007; Professor Beres and MG Ben-Israel, “Deterring Iranian Nuclear Attack,” Washington Times, January 27, 2009; and Professor Beres and MG Ben-Israel, “Defending Israel from Iranian Nuclear Attack,” The Jewish Press, March 13, 2013. See also: Louis René Beres and (General/USAF/ret.) John T. Chain, “Could Israel Safely Deter a Nuclear Iran?” The Atlantic, August 9, 2012; Professor Beres and General Chain, “Living With Iran,” BESA Center for Strategic Studies, Israel, May 2014; and Louis René Beres and (Lt.General/USAF/ret.) Thomas McInerney, “Obama’s Inconceivable, Undesirable, Nuclear-Free Dream,” U.S. News & World Report, August 29, 2013.

[6] Here, it warrants mention that Palestinian statehood could represent an enlarged set of risks to Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor. Already, in 1991 and 2014, this small reactor came under missile and rocket attack from Iraqi and Hamas aggressions respectively. For authoritative assessments of these attacks and related risks, see: Bennett Ramberg, “Should Israel Close Dimona? The Radiological Consequences of a Military Strike on Israel’s Plutonium-Production Reactor,” Arms Control Today, May 2008, pp. 6-13.

[7] With particular reference to nuclear deterrence, the primary function of Israel’s nuclear forces must always be dissuasion ex ante, rather than revenge ex post.

[8] This convenient metaphor is generally attributed to Novalis, the late 18th-century German poet and scholar. See, for example, introductory citation by Karl R. Popper, in his The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959). Ironically, perhaps, Novalis’ fellow German poet, Goethe, had declared, in his early Faust fragment (Urfaust): “All theory, dear friend, is grey. But the golden tree of life is green.” (Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie, Und grűn des Lebens goldner Baum.)

[9] See, on this point: Louis René Beres, “Religious Extremism and International Legal Norms: Perfidy, Preemption, and Irrationality,” Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, Vol. 39, No.3., 2007-2008, pp. 709-730.

[10] See: Louis René Beres, “Like Two Scorpions in a Bottle: Could Israel and a Nuclear Iran Coexist in the Middle East,” The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 8, No. 1., 2014, pp. 23-32; Louis René Beres, “Facing Myriad Enemies: Core Elements of Israeli Nuclear Deterrence,” The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol. XX, Issue 1., Fall/Winter 2013, pp. 17-30; Louis René Beres, “Lessons for Israel from Ancient Chinese Military Thought: Facing Iranian Nuclearization with Sun-Tzu,”Harvard National Security Journal, 2013; Louis René Beres, “Striking Hezbollah-Bound Weapons in Syria: Israel’s Actions Under International Law,” Harvard National Security Journal, 2013; Louis René Beres, “Looking Ahead: Revising Israel’s Nuclear Ambiguity in the Middle East,” Herzliya Conference presentation, 2013; March 2013; IDC, Herzliya; Louis René Beres and (General/USAF/ret) John T. Chain, “Could Israel Safely Deter a Nuclear Iran?” The Atlantic, 2012.

[11] On identifying alternative nuclear disclosure options, see: Louis René Beres, “Israel’s Strategic Doctrine: Updating Intelligence Community Responsibilities,”International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Vol. 28, No. 1, Spring, 2015, pp. 89-104.

[12] On Israeli submarine basing measures, see: Louis René Beres and (Admiral/USN/ret.) Leon “Bud” Edney, “Israel’s Nuclear Strategy: A Larger Role for Submarine-Basing,” The Jerusalem Post, August 17, 2014; and Professor Beres and Admiral Edney, “A Sea-Based Nuclear Deterrent for Israel,” Washington Times, September 5, 2014.

[13] See: Louis René Beres, “Understanding the Correlation of Forces in the Middle East: Israel’s Urgent Strategic Imperative,” The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs,Vol. IV, No. 1 (2010).

[14] Dialectic formally originated in the fifth century BCE, as Zeno, author of the Paradoxes, had been acknowledged by Aristotle as its inventor. In the middle dialogues of Plato, dialectic emerges as the supreme form of philosophical/analytic method. Here, Plato describes the dialectician as one who knows best how to ask and answer questions. This particular knowledge – how to ask, and to answer questions, sequentially – should now be insistently transposed to the organized study of Israeli security issues.

[15] Israelis, like Americans, are inclined to project their own dominant sense of rationality upon adversaries. Acknowledging that western philosophy has always oscillated between Plato and Nietzsche, between rationalism and irrationalism, we have all routinely cast our psychological lot with the Greek thinkers and their inheritors. Significantly, however, Israel is now up against a steadily transforming ordering of the geostrategic universe; now, Israel’s strategists might sometimes be better advised to read Dostoyevsky and Kafka, than to dwell too fixedly on Platonic rationalism.

[16] “Do you know what it means to find yourselves face to face with a madman,” inquires Luigi Pirandello, “with one who shakes the foundations of all you have built up in yourselves, your logic, and the logic of all your constructions? Madmen, lucky folk, construct without logic, or rather, with a logic that flies like a feather.”

[17] On this point, see: Louis René Beres, “Staying Strong: Enhancing Israel’s Essential Strategic Options,” Harvard National Security Journal, Harvard Law School, June 13, 2014.

Categories: Arab nations, Cognitive dissonance, Fatah, Gaza, Golan, Hamas, Insurgents, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islamic jihad, Islamic State, Islamism, Israel, Mad Mullahs, Middle East, P5+1, Palestinians, Peace process, Rocket attack, Terrorism
Tags: Arab nations, Cognitive dissonance, Fatah, Gaza, Golan, Hamas, Insurgence, Iran, Iran Scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islamic Jihad, Islamic State, Islamism, Israel, Mad Mullahs, Middle East, Palestinians, Peace Process, Rocket attacks, Terrorism

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Leaked Information: Khamenei’s Lies Exposed

June 9, 2015

Leaked Information: Khamenei’s Lies Exposed, Front Page Magazine, Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, June 9, 2015

(?????????????????? — DM)

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[W]hat the ayatollah is announcing to the media — that basically the Islamic Republic does not desire to seal a final nuclear deal with the six world powers — is not the truth. The leaked information (in Persian language) indicates that the Supreme Leader has already instructed the nuclear negotiating team and his advisors to ignore his public statements and seal the final nuclear deal.

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Iran’s paramount religious leader can be described as one of the longest-ruling dictators in the Middle East who still enjoys the throne. An ideologue and a Shiite Islamist, he is also a shrewd Machiavellian politician.

Although he attempts to project himself to the Muslim world as a united religious leader who pursues truth, faith, and honesty, his double-faced character can easily be detected in the discrepancies among his statements and policies.

When Khamenei came to power, he lacked the charisma of his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. To rule, he continued the major policies of his predecessor, relying on hard power and hardliners to suppress domestic opposition, making different statements to the public than in private, and funding Shiite or non-Shiite extremists groups in the region such as Hezbollah and the Houthis.

In addition, he created the Office of the Supreme Leader, comprised of close advisors and excluding the presidential and other major offices in order to further consolidate his power and prevent the leaking of information. The Islamic Republic’s major domestic and foreign policy decisions are made in the small gilded circle of his office and he is the final decision-maker of the country.

To rule, the ayatollah began wielding power without being held accountable. In order to do so, his government pre-select a handful of candidates to become president. Presidents do not have any actual power, but would be held accountable, blamed for any gaffes such as economic mismanagements and failure in nuclear talks, among other things. This system has so far worked for the ayatollah.

His predecessor and founder of the Islamic Republic came to power by promising people that oil revenues will be distributed among the population and that people do not have to pay for major bills such as electricity or water (in a speech that he gave in Behesht e Zahra). The videos and audios of that speech were removed from public access. Now, one can even be punished or executed by the Islamic Republic if the government finds that particular speech in one’s possession. Ayatollah Khamenei also continued this dual policy of deceiving the public.

Most recently, with regards to the marathon nuclear negotiations, Mr. Khamenei’s double standards have become more obvious due to leaked information.

In less than a month, the six world powers (known as the P5+1; the United States, China, Germany, United Kingdom, France, and Russia) and the Islamic Republic will be reaching the deadline for their marathon nuclear talks, marking one the lengthiest international negotiations of our generation.

The position and opinion of the Islamic Republic’s paramount leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on the nuclear negotiations and the terms of the final nuclear deal can be characterized as the most crucial factor in determining whether a final deal will be reached by the end of June or not.

Khamenei recently stated, “We will never yield to pressure… We will not accept unreasonable demands… Iran will not give access to its (nuclear) scientists,” he added, “They say we should let them interview our nuclear scientists. This means interrogation… I will not let foreigners talk to our scientists and to interrogate our dear children… who brought us this extensive (nuclear) knowledge… We will not allow the privacy of our nuclear scientists or any other important issue to be violated.”

Nevertheless, what the ayatollah is announcing to the media — that basically the Islamic Republic does not desire to seal a final nuclear deal with the six world powers — is not the truth. The leaked information (in Persian language) indicates that the Supreme Leader has already instructed the nuclear negotiating team and his advisors to ignore his public statements and seal the final nuclear deal.

The Supreme Leader’s double-standards and the difference in what he states publicly and what he instructs behind the scenes, indicate that he indeed needs the final nuclear deal and he will be more likely willing to allow inspections in order to obtain the deal. Ayatollah Khamenei is cognizant of the fact that the final nuclear deal is geopolitically, economically, and ideologically a win for him. Iran’s nuclear infrastructure will not be dismantled, Iran’s break-time to become a nuclear state will shrink from one year to zero in the next few years, Iran’s economy will be strengthened, and the US will likely ignore Iran’s increasing influence and their proxy wars in the region because of the nuclear deal.

Khamenei is being disingenuous with the public and other nations for several reasons. First of all, The fact that Iran’s negotiating team are continuing with the talks, sitting at the same table with Obama administration’s diplomats, and the fact that there is contradiction between what the Supreme Leader and his advisors stated publicly and behind the scenes indicates that Khamenei is giving a green light to the nuclear team to get a nuclear agreement from the White House, the major player in the talks. Secondly, by showing that Iran is not in need of such a deal, Khamenei is giving leverage to the Iranian negotiating team to obtain more concessions from the West.

Khamenei attempts to publicly show that he is a strong religious and nationalistic leader who is totally against foreign inspection and monitoring of his country. Finally, he desires to project the picture that he is not desperate for the final nuclear deal in order to get as many concessions as he can from the Obama’s administration. And so far, his tactics and dual policies have worked for him in further strengthening his throne and power.

Categories: Diplomacy, Foreign policy, Iran - underground sites, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian proxies, Khamenei, Obama, P5+1, Sanctions
Tags: Foreign Policy, Iran - underground sites, Iran nuke inspections, Iran Scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian proxies, Khamenei, Obama, Sanctions

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Directive 11: Obama’s Secret Islamist Plan

June 8, 2015

Directive 11: Obama’s Secret Islamist Plan, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, June 8, 2015

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What little we know about the resulting classified 18-page report is that it used euphemisms to call for aiding Islamist takeovers in parts of the Middle East. Four countries were targeted. Of those four, we only know for certain that Egypt and Yemen were on the list. But we do know for certain the outcome.

Obama’s insistence that human rights be made a core national security interest paved the way for political and military interventions on behalf of Islamists. Obama had never been interested in human rights; his record of pandering to the world’s worst genocide plotters and perpetrators from Iran to Turkey to Sudan made that clear. When he said “human rights”, Obama really meant “Islamist power.”

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Behind the rise of ISIS, the Libyan Civil War, the unrest in Egypt, Yemen and across the region may be a single classified document.

That document is Presidential Study Directive 11.

You can download Presidential Study Directive 10 on “Preventing Mass Atrocities” from the White House website, but as of yet no one has been able to properly pry number 11 out of Obama Inc.

Presidential Study Directive 10, in which Obama asked for non-military options for stopping genocide, proved to be a miserable failure. The Atrocities Prevention Board’s only use was as a fig leaf for a policy that had caused the atrocities. And the cause of those atrocities is buried inside Directive 11.

With Obama’s typical use of technicalities to avoid transparency, Directive 11 was used to guide policy in the Middle East without being officially submitted. It is possible that it will never be submitted. And yet the Directive 11 group was described as “just finishing its work” when the Arab Spring began.

That is certainly one way of looking at it.

Directive 11 brought together activists and operatives at multiple agencies to come up with a “tailored” approach for regime change in each country. The goal was to “manage” the political transitions. It tossed aside American national security interests by insisting that Islamist regimes would be equally committed to fighting terrorism and cooperating with Israel. Its greatest gymnastic feat may have been arguing that the best way to achieve political stability in the region was through regime change.

What little we know about the resulting classified 18-page report is that it used euphemisms to call for aiding Islamist takeovers in parts of the Middle East. Four countries were targeted. Of those four, we only know for certain that Egypt and Yemen were on the list. But we do know for certain the outcome.

Egypt fell to the Muslim Brotherhood, which collaborated with Al Qaeda, Hamas and Iran, before being undone by a counterrevolution. Yemen is currently controlled by Iran’s Houthi terrorists and Al Qaeda.

According to a New York Times story, Obama’s Directive 11 agenda appeared to resemble Che or Castro as he “pressed his advisers to study popular uprisings in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia to determine which ones worked and which did not.”

The story also noted that he “is drawn to Indonesia, where he spent several years as a child, which ousted its longtime leader, Suharto, in 1998.”

The coup against Mubarak with its coordination of liberals, Islamists and the military did strongly resemble what happened in Indonesia. The most ominous similarity may be that the Muslim mobs in Indonesia targeted the Chinese, many of whom are Christians, while the Muslim mobs in Egypt targeted Coptic Christians.

Both were talented groups that were disproportionately successful because they lacked the traditional Islamic hostility to education, integrity and achievement. Islamist demagogues had succeeded in associating them with the regime and promoted attacks on them as part of the anti-regime protests.

Chinese stores were looted and thousands of Chinese women were raped by rampaging Muslims. Just as in Egypt, the protesters and their media allies spread the claim that these atrocities committed by Muslim protesters were the work of the regime’s secret police. That remains the official story today.

Suharto’s fall paved the way for the rise of the Prosperous Justice Party, which was founded a few months after his resignation and has become one of the largest parties in the Indonesian parliament. PJP was set up by the Muslim Brotherhood’s local arm in Indonesia.

His successor, Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie, was more explicitly Islamist than Suharto and his Association of Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI) conducted a campaign against Christians, Hindus and Buddhists. It helped purge non-Muslims from government while Islamizing the government and Indonesia’s key institutions.

Habibie had been the Chairman of ICMI and ICMI’s Islamists played a key role in moving Suharto out and moving him in. It was obvious why Obama would have considered the Islamization of Indonesia and the purge of Christians under the guise of democratic political change to be a fine example for Egypt.

While we don’t know the full contents of Directive 11 and unless a new administration decides to open the vaults of the old regime, we may never know. But we do know a good deal about the results.

In its own way, PSD-10 tells us something about PSD-11.

Obama’s insistence that human rights be made a core national security interest paved the way for political and military interventions on behalf of Islamists. Obama had never been interested in human rights; his record of pandering to the world’s worst genocide plotters and perpetrators from Iran to Turkey to Sudan made that clear. When he said “human rights”, Obama really meant “Islamist power”.

That was why Obama refused to intervene when the Muslim Brotherhood conducted real genocide in Sudan, but did interfere in Libya on behalf of the Brotherhood using a phony claim of genocide.

Positioning Samantha Power in the Office of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights at the National Security Council was part of the process that made over the NSC from national security to servicing a progressive wish list of Islamist terrorist groups that were to be transformed into national governments.

Power, along with Gayle Smith and Dennis Ross, led the Directive 11 project.

Secret proceedings were used to spawn regime change infrastructure. Some of these tools had official names, such as “The Office of The Special Coordinator For Middle East Transitions” which currently reports directly to former ambassador Anne Patterson who told Coptic Christians not to protest against Morsi. After being driven out of the country by angry mobs over her support for the Muslim Brotherhood tyranny, she was promoted to Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.

“The Office” is still focused on “outreach to emergent political, economic and social forces in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya” even though counterrevolutions have pushed out Islamists in Egypt and Tunisia, while Libya is in the middle of a bloody civil war in which an alliance of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda controls the nation’s capital.

But even as Morsi’s abuses of power were driving outraged Egyptians into the streets, Gayle Smith, one of the three leaders of Directive 11, reached out to the “International Union of Muslim Scholars”, a Muslim Brotherhood group that supported terrorism against American soldiers in Iraq and which was now looking for American support for its Islamist terrorist brigades in the Syrian Civil War.

The men and women responsible for Directive 11 were making it clear that they had learned nothing.

Directive 11 ended up giving us the Islamic State through its Arab Spring. PSD-11’s twisted claim that regional stability could only be achieved through Islamist regime change tore apart the region and turned it into a playground for terrorists. ISIS is simply the biggest and toughest of the terror groups that were able to thrive in the environment of violent civil wars created by Obama’s Directive 11.

During the Arab Spring protests, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit had told Hillary Clinton that his government could not hand over power to the Muslim Brotherhood. “My daughter gets to go out at night. And, God damn it, I’m not going to turn this country over to people who will turn back the clock on her rights.”

But that was exactly what Hillary Clinton and Obama were after. And they got it. Countless women were raped in Egypt. Beyond Egypt, Hillary and Obama’s policy saw Yazidi women actually sold into slavery.

Directive 11 codified the left’s dirty alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood into our foreign policy. Its support for Islamist takeovers paved the way for riots and civil wars culminating in the violence that birthed ISIS and covered the region in blood.

And it remains secret to this day.

Categories: Christians, Egypt, Foreign policy, Houthi, Human rights, Indonesia, Iran, Iran in Yemen, Iranian proxies, Iraq, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Jews, Libya, Middle East, Morsi, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama, Obama's America, Secularism, Terrorists, Turkey, Yemen
Tags: Christians, Egypt, Foreign Policy, Houthi, human rights, Indonesia, Iran, Iran in Yemen, Iranian proxies, Iraq, Islamic slaughter, Islamic supremacy, Jews, Libya, Middle East, Morsi, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama, Obama's America, Secularism, Terrorists, Turkey, Yemen

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Shoshana Bryen: The Kurds: A Guide for U.S. Policymakers

June 7, 2015

Shoshana Bryen: The Kurds: A Guide for U.S. Policymakers, securefreedom via You Tube, June 5, 2015

Shoshana Bryen, Senior Director, Jewish Policy Center; Former Senior Director for Security Policy, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA):

Categories: Air strikes, Arab nations, Assad, Caliphate, Department of Defense, Foreign policy, Hezbollah, Iran, Iran - Iraq war, Iran - Syria war, Iran in Yemen, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Iraq war, Islamic State, Islamism, Kurdish fighters, Kurds, Middle East, Obama, P5+1, Peshmerga, Sanctions, Syria war, Turkey
Tags: Air strikes, Arab nations, Assad, Caliphate, Department of Defense, Foreign Policy, Hezbollah, Iran, Iran - Iraq war, Iran - Syria war, Iran in Yemen, Iran Scam, Iranian proxies, Iraq war, Islamic State, Islamism, Kurdish fighters, Kurds, Middle East, Obama, Peshmerga, Sanctions, Syria war, Turkey

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IDF Rehearsing for Nightmare Scenario: 4,000 Killed in Days

June 7, 2015

IDF Rehearsing for Nightmare Scenario: 4,000 Killed in Days, Israel National News, Gil Ronen, June 7, 2015

Security forces are currently rehearsing and preparing for a scenario in which Israel’s enemies launch a “carpet” missile attack that Iron Dome will be unable to counter, due to the sheer number of missiles involved, Arutz Sheva has learned from knowledgeable sources that wish to remain anonymous.

In this scenario, up to 4,000 Israelis will be killed in the first days of the attack, which could happen as early as this summer.

“Iran is seeking to cover Israel with intense fire,” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned in a special briefing for journalists at the week’s end.

“In Lebanon, the Iranians are inserting the most advanced weapons in the world, and strengthening Hezbollah, so that it can hit any spot in Israel,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying in the daily Makor Rishon. “They are trying to build a second front in the Golan, and of course, in Gaza.”

‘Earth-shaking shock’

Former prime minister and defense minister Ehud Barak also sounded dire warnings last week, regarding Hezbollah’s ability to deal a heavy blow to Israel, and Israel’s unpreparedness for this.

“Our rival is serious, and we have no room for smugness on any front,” he said. “We must not be smug and take our superiority as something that is self-evident and supposedly God-given. Superiority is the result of serious work. We have not really dealt with 100,000 rockets, and we have not started to deal with the matter of their accuracy. When the rockets are accurate, it is not more of the same thing. It is something completely different.”

“The country has no choice but to reach conclusions,” Barak warned. “One cannot deal with this challenge by deploying in all of the places, from which [anti-missile] missiles can be fired. These things are very expensive: Iron Dome and Magic Wand, Arrow and Super-Arrow are expensive projects.

“One cannot exaggerate the importance of safeguarding security,” he added, “and one cannot exaggerate the earth-shaking shock that can take place when it turns out that we did not prepare and we did not understand the urgency and practicality of challenges of this sort, and the need to translate clear thought to conclusions, and we will find ourselves [in a situation where] citizens suddenly discover that one cannot walk slowly and lackadaisically to the bomb shelters, knowing that nothing can happen, as we did in during Operation Protective Edge. These things must be done now, we must not wait.”

Categories: Air strikes, Ehud Barak, Fatah, Foreign policy, Gaza, Golan, Hamas, Hezbollah, Insurgents, Iran, Iranian missiles, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Netanyahu, Palestinians, Rocket attack, Terrorists
Tags: Air strikes, Ehud Barak, Fatah, Foreign Policy, Gaza, Golan, Hamas, Hezbollah, Insurgents, Iran, Iranian missiles, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Netanyahu, Palestinians, Rocket attack, Terrorists

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Israel’s Revenge Is That “We Are Still Here”

June 7, 2015

Israel’s Revenge Is That “We Are Still Here” The Legal Insurrection, William A. Jacobson, June 7, 2015

My wife and I are back, after an intense two weeks in Israel.

From the Lebanese to Gaza borders, from the Mediterranean Sea to Judea and Samaria, from the cool evenings of Jerusalem to the heat of the Negev Desert, from an apartment in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem to Bedouin villages in the north and south, from university campuses to military bases, from faculty to students, from Jews to Muslims … I can’t say we saw it all, but we saw a lot.

I’ve documented most of our big events in daily posts, with the exception of our emotional meetings with the families of Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner, students killed in the 1969 Supersol supermarket bombing by Rasmea Odeh; that post is coming, but I still have new photos, documents and information I have to work through.

Here are my 5 Big Takeaways from the trip:

1. Our Revenge Is That “We Are Still Here”

Near the start of our trip, we visited Moshav Avivim straddling the Lebanese border, where we met Shimon Biton, a survivor of the 1970 bazooka attack on a school bus by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Biton, who was six and one-half years old, lost his father in the attack, and himself was shot point blank range by the terrorists when they realized he survived the bazooka attack. Ten days before we met Biton, he was reunited for the first time in 45 years with the nurse who helped save him. (Featured Image)

When we asked whether he ever wanted revenge, Biton told us that the revenge was that “we are still here and building for another 70 families.”

Moshav-Aviviv-Shimon-Biton-e1432683043370

[Shimon Biton, Moshav Avivim, Israel]

When we related that story to numerous people we met along the rest of the trip, heads vigorously shook up and down. It struck a chord, since almost every Israeli has a relative or friend impacted by terror.

Despite several decades of terrorism, particularly intense during the Second Intifada, and a world campaign against it, the People of Israel are still there.

The will to resist is underestimated. Israel has a longer-term view, and a history. It will not give in to boycotts, or Obama, or outside pressure that puts its security at risk.

2. “I don’t like Bibi, BUT….”

For whatever the reason, most of the people with whom we interacted self-identified as center-left or left.

There was no shortage of criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: He’s egotistical, he doesn’t keep his tough promises, he is only interested in his own political survival, he’s a liar, his pre-election comment about Arab voting was shameful, and so on.

Yet with only a couple of exceptions, the negative comments always were followed with a big BUT.

Benjamin-Netanyahu-at-Western-Wall-post-election-2015-e1426681806959

[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Western Wall after 2015 election victory.]

But he is the only Israeli politician who has the stature to handle the world pressure; but I don’t envy the position he is in with so many forces against us; but [opposition leader Yitzhak “Bougie” Herzog] Bougie is weak and no one will fear him; and so on.

These opinions pretty much were reflected in polling and the election results — Many people may not like Netanyahu, but he is the only Israeli politician capable of standing up for Israel in a hostile world.

3. I don’t like Obama, no BUTs about it

Polling in Israel shows Obama is hugely unpopular. Our anecdotal interactions with Israelis confirmed that polling.

I can’t recall anyone, from left to right, who had anything nice to say about Obama. The most consistent theme was that Obama is naive and weak, and that naivitee and weakness had resulted in disaster in the Arab world as it encouraged the most aggressive Islamist elements.

They see Syria falling apart with al-Qaeda or ISIS groups likely to control large parts of the country; or if not, then Iran in control. There are no good outcomes for Israel’s Golan Heights border. Along the Lebanese border there is Hezbollah, and in Gaza Hamas and increasingly even more radical Salafist-ISIS groups.

Against this background of being surrounded by a sea of increasing threats resulting from Obama administration policy, not a single person thought the Iran nuclear deal made any sense, or trusted the Obama administration on it.

In other words, Israelis live in the real world, not the world of Obama’s delusional hope. And they don’t appreciate Obama taking risks with their lives.

4. Are we really that popular in the United States?

The anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement was a frequent topic of conversation, almost always brought up by us as part of describing the type of coverage at Legal Insurrection. This coincided with what I consider an irrational panic the past two weeks in the Israeli press and political discourse about BDS (more on that in a later post.)

I tried to explain that there is a complete disconnect between the BDS movement in the U.S. and the vast majority of Americans. Gallup and Pew polling shows Israel at or near historical highs in terms of Israel’s favorability both abolutely and relative to favorability of Palestinians. The gap between those who pick Israel over Palestinians when the question forces a choice, also is historically high.

Virtually every Israeli we met was shocked that Israel is actually so popular in the United States. Even Israelis who have extensive American contacts and visit the U.S.

That’s not all so surprising. Both the U.S. and Israeli media focus on the negative, though for different reasons. The U.S. media long has had in implicit anti-Israel bias, compounded by the rise of left-leaning new media, while the Israeli media competes for readers with a “sky is falling” outlook.

(added) Israel’s enormous popularity among Americans is a strategic asset. That strategic asset needs to be used more effectively to minimize the damage from the narrow but influential slices of the American population — radical faculty, some students, and mainstream journalists — who have explicit or implicit anti-Israel biases. The American people as a whole are the “Israeli Lobby.”

5. The Next War is Only a Matter of Time

While we were in Jerusalem, Israel underwent a national defense drill, including sirens warningof incoming rockets.

Our tour along the Gaza border, particularly near Sderot, also reflected preparation for the next round of rocket fire through reinforcing key civilian infrastructures, such as schools.

Sderot-Israel-bomb-shelter-street-e1433110130989

[Sderot, Israel, street bomb shelter with “Shalom” grafitti]

There was a pervasive feeling that the calm cannot last. And sure enough, while we were there and just after we left, rockets were fired from Gaza to Israel by Salafists suffering from a Hamas crackdown, and groups competing with Hamas for control.

That’s the logic of the region in which Israel lives: Radical groups retaliate against each other by firing rockets at … Israel.

The next war is coming. Every Israeli knows it. It’s only a matter of time.

* * * * *

Those are my big takeaways. I hope you enjoyed the coverage.

We will be back in Israel, hopefully next year.

Categories: Elections in Israel, Foreign policy, Gaza, Golan, Hamas, Human rights, Iranian proxies, Israel, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Palestinians, Peace process, Rocket attack, Terrorism, Two state solution
Tags: Elections in Israel, Foreign Policy, Gaza, Golan, Hamas, human rights, Iranian proxies, Israel, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Palestinians, Peace Process, Rocket attack, Terrorism, Two state solution

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Two major Mid East escalations: Yemeni rebels fire Scuds at Saudi air base. ISIS warns Syrian rebels

June 6, 2015

Two major Mid East escalations: Yemeni rebels fire Scuds at Saudi air base. ISIS warns Syrian rebels, DEBKAfile, June 6, 2015

us_patriot_missiles_saudi_arabia_6.6.15

US Patriots stationed in Saudi Arabia

Saudi military sources reported Saturday, June 6, that Patriot air defense batteries had intercepted Scud missiles fired by Yemen Houthi rebels against the kingdom’s largest air base at Khamis al-Mushait in the south west. It is from there that Saudi jets take off to strike the Yemeni rebels. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the Patriot anti-missile systems, which were activated for the first time, were manned by American teams. This was the first direct US military intervention on the Saudi side of the Yemen conflict.

It was also the first time that Houthi rebels or their allies had fired Scud missile into the oil kingdom. Our sources add that the launch was supervised by Hizballah officers. They were transferred by Tehran to Yemen to ratchet up the conflict – although US, Saudi, Yemeni government and Houthi representatives meeting secretly in Muscat Friday agreed to attend a peace conference in Geneva this month.

Nonetheless, through Friday night and Saturday morning, Houthi forces and allied military units kept on battering at Saudi army and National Guard defense lines, in an effort to break through and seize territory in the kingdom’s southern provinces. The insurgents were evidently grabbing for strategic assets to strengthen their hand at the peace conference.

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is also juggling his chips on the deteriorating Syrian warfront. In the coming hours, he is widely expected to announce the activation of the mutual defense pact signed between Iran and Syria in 2006, under which each signatory is committed to send military troops if necessary to defend its partner.

Thursday, June 4, Khamenei fired sharp verbal arrows at the Obama administration: “The United States tolerates extremist groups in Syria and Iraq and even helps them in secret,” he charged.

Our military sources add that although various Mid East publications, especially in Lebanon, are reporting that Iran has already sent units in numbers ranging from 7.000 to 15,000 troops to Syria, none have so far landed, except for the Shiite militias brought over at an earlier stage of the Syrian conflict. The expected Khamenei announcement may change this situation.

ISIS was not waiting. Saturday morning, the group issued a warning to the Syrian rebel forces fighting in the south – the Deraa sector of southern Syria near the meeting point of the Jordanian and Israeli borders and the Quneitra sector opposite the Israeli Golan. They were ordered to break off contact with the US Central Command Forward Jordan-CF-J which is located north of Amman, and the IDF operations command center in northern Israel. Any Syrian rebels remaining in contact with the two command centers would be treated as infidels and liable to the extreme penalty of beheading, the group warned.

The impression of ominous events brewing in the regime was rounded off Friday night by an unusual announcement by the Israeli army spokesman that Iron Dome anti-missile batteries had been deployed around towns and other locations in the south, although no reference was made to any fresh rocket attacks expected from the Gaza Strip. DEBKAfile adds: The first batteries were arrayed Thursday night, June 4, at vulnerable points in southern Israel – from the southernmost Port of Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba to the western Port of Ashdod on the Mediterranean.

Categories: Arab nations, Eilat, Foreign policy, Gaza, Golan, Hezbollah, Houthi, Iran, Iran - Iraq war, Iran - Syria war, Iran in Yemen, Iranian proxies, Iraq war, Islamic State, Israel, Khamenei, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Shiite, Sunni, Syria war, Yemen
Tags: Arab nations, Eilat, Foreign Policy, Gaza, Golan, Hezbollah, Houthi, Iran, Iran - Iraq war, Iran - Syria war, Iran in Yemen, Iranian proxies, Iraq war, Islamic State, Israel, Khamenei, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Shiite, Sunni, Syria war, Syrian rebels, Yemen

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Iran Will Walk

June 5, 2015

Iran Will Walk, The Gatestone Institute, Lawrence A. Franklin, June 5, 2015

(What if the article is otherwise correct but Obama agrees to a “deal” anyway? — DM)

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Praetorian Guard of Iran’s regime, controls most of the economy, as well as the black-market, alternative economy. The IRGC therefore actually benefits from sanctions; it is private firms, such as those involved in international commerce, that suffer. Why would IRGC operatives want to see the playing field made more level by private investment, transparency and a competitive economy?
Sanctions never hurt the regime’s ruling class; lifting them only helped the regime solidify its power over its people.
The objective of these two demands [an immediate lifting of all sanctions and no, or severely limited, inspections] is either to have them accepted, or to render it untenable for the Obama administration to offer Congress any deal that could be accepted – thereby shifting blame for the collapse of the talks to the U.S.
The U.S should also be on guard against the mullahs’ belief that the Obama administration is weak both politically and its aversion to using force. The mullahs might find great pleasure in humiliating Obama, as they did President Jimmy Carter, by dragging out hostage crisis negotiations by running out the clock until his term was over. They clearly believe that the Obama administration, simply to say it got “a deal,” is ready to sign anything.

From Washington to Riyadh, not to mention Jerusalem, statesmen are gritting their teeth at the possibility of a U.S.-Iran nuclear deal that seems overly generous to the theocratic-terror state of the Islamic Republic.

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Representatives of the P5+1 countries pose with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif after nuclear negotiations in Lausanne, Switzerland on April 2, 2015. (Image source: U.S. State Department)

Most intelligence analysts and journalists assume that because Iran’s leadership endorsed the negotiations and has been the beneficiary of several key concessions by the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany), that an agreement is imminent. Forecasters have been predicting what the likely consequences of such a deal would be: negative.

But what if the Iranians walk?

Sanctions never hurt the regime’s ruling class; lifting them only helped the regime to solidify its power over its people.

A nuclear deal combined with an improvement in the commercial and business relations with the West would be inimical to IRGC interests.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Praetorian Guard of the regime, controls most of the economy as well as the black-market, alternative economy. IRGC-controlled conglomerates operate outside the law and reap huge profits through their control of the black market. The IRGC therefore actually benefits by sanctions; it is the private firms, such as those involved in international commerce, that suffer.

Furthermore, IRCG naval vessels, and private ships under their control, have been engaging in sanctions-breaking deliveries of imports across Persian Gulf waters to Dubai. The IRGC then sells the products at a profit by filtering them through the many foundations they control in Iran.

The most recent example of IRGC’s skirting of sanctions involved the illegal acquisition of aircraft through front-organizations with offices in both Europe and the Arabian Peninsula. Mahan Air, an IRGC front, was able to purchase 15 used commercial aircraft for $300 million. Another front, al-Naser Air, was about to purchase two more aircraft, this time from a U.S. owner. Israeli intelligence, however, passed details of the planned sale to the U.S. government, and on May 21, the deal was scuttled by the Office of Export Enforcement of the Department of Commerce.

Why would IRGC operatives want to see the playing field made more level by private investment, transparency and a competitive economy?

Moreover, if a nuclear deal indicated improved relations with the United States, Iranian hardliners, whether clerical revolutionaries or intelligence operatives, might fear seeing their ideological legitimacy erode. The Iranian regime’s only remaining fig leaf of legitimacy is its anti-American animus, with its accompanying pledge to “protect” Iran’s interests against the U.S.-Israel-Sunni “alliance.”

Improved relations with Washington might raise false hopes among Iran’s citizens that the regime may ultimately improve its woeful record on human rights. There remains only a thin patina of clerical control over Iranian society; if the hoped-for social and political reforms were not implemented, the result could produce a destabilizing political environment, harmful to the interests of the regime.

Another fallacy embraced by many “inside-the-beltway” analysts is that, as the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei endorsed the negotiations, a legitimate deal is now probable.

The once all-powerful Office of the Supreme Leader no longer calls all the shots. The current Iranian regime resembles a military junta or a security state as much as a theocracy. While the reach of Ayatollah Khamenei, through his network of representatives, still penetrates all dimensions of Iranian society, he does not have the final decision on key security matters. The regime’s strategic assets, for instance, such as its ballistic missile programs, are firmly under the control of the IRGC. Decisions related to Iran’s expansionist presence in the region are made by IRGC Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani. The role of Khamenei’s representative to the IRGC resembles more that of a handler than of an action officer.

The principal task for the regime is to find a way to back out of the negotiations while avoiding the blame. Iran’s efforts at disengagement may already have been underway for the past few weeks; the pace of decoupling from the talks seems to be accelerating. Iran has been increasing its demands apparently in the hope that they will either be accepted, or else rejected like the “poison pills” they are — such as inspectors no longer being allowed on its military sites.[1]

Another way to make the talks no longer palatable for the Obama administration was to create a hostile incident with the United States in the Persian Gulf, as it has tried to do by aggressively tailing American warships. Iranian ships affiliated with the IRGC Navy also seized a commercial ship, the Maersk Tigris, in the Strait of Hormuz, and temporarily detained both vessel and crew. Then, on May 14, IRGC boats fired several shots across the bow of a Singapore flagged vessel, but it escaped unharmed.

By this type of reckless comportment, the IRGC Navy appears intent on producing a clash with American naval vessels in the Gulf waters. Western negotiators have only to recall the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, when the IRGC and Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security operated independently after they felt that the reformers had gone too far, thus threatening hard-liner control of the regime. The IRGC may have decided that Rouhani along with his American-educated Foreign Minister Zarif have reached a similar tipping point. This independent IRGC initiative is being executed even though a deal would release Iranian monetary assets that would in turn boost the sagging economy.[2]

Iran’s combative posture in Gulf waters against international shipping is also a direct challenge to international maritime law, which guarantees freedom of navigation through the world’s shipping lanes such as the Strait of Hormuz. A key principle of U.S. foreign policy is to enforce this freedom of navigation, if it is challenged by any foreign power, as one also hopes the U.S. will do in the South China Sea.

Iranian military and political spokesmen have also raised the temperature of their anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric of late. Leading members of the regime, including its Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, keep repeating, “Death to America” as well as its theological “obligation” to destroy Israel. While the Obama administration has alleged that these threats are just for “internal consumption,” an old Persian saying goes: “They spit in his eye and he calls it rain.”

Mojtaba Zolnour, Ayatollah Khamenei’s Deputy Representative to the IRGC, stated that the Islamic Republic of Iran, “has the divine permission to destroy Israel.” This media assault on Israel was designed to widen the divergence between the Obama administration and the Israeli government regarding the efficacy of the framework of a nuclear agreement negotiated so far.

Additionally, various Iranian principals have drawn “lines in the sand” designed to cause the Americans to disengage from the talks, such as the assertion that Iran will never accept inspection of its declared military sites. Another is Tehran’s repeated statement that it will not accept a gradual lifting of sanctions. Iranian leaders have insisted on immediate and irreversible lifting of all sanctions immediately after a nuclear deal is signed. The objective of these two demands is either to have them accepted, or to render it untenable for the Obama administration to offer Congress any deal that could be accepted — thereby shifting the blame for the collapse of the talks to the U.S.

Regime hard-line representatives to the majlis [Iranian Parliament] have already been mobilizing members to denounce the talks as detrimental to Iran’s national sovereignty. Eighty majlismembers signed a petition on May 12, calling upon the regime to suspend the nuclear talks until Washington halts its rhetorical threats against Iran. Hardliners in the majlis and elsewhere within the regime’s bureaucracy will likely continue to lobby against any deal.

Western analysts should be looking for the Iranian regime’s hard-line media outlets to increase domestic commentary condemning alleged U.S. deception in the negotiations as a reason to abandon the talks.

The death knell for the nuclear negotiations could come from newspapers such as Kayhan, a pro-regime newspaper run by Hossein Shariatmadari, and often characterized as a Khamenei mouthpiece.

The regime’s Friday-prayer Imams in key Iranian cities might also start opposing the talks. The themes of their noonday khutbahs [sermons] are likely to appeal to Iranian people’s patriotism, and suggest that it is more important for Iran to endure continued sanctions rather than submit to intrusive monitoring that offends Iran’s sovereignty.

Finally, hardliners who oppose any possibility of Iran’s improved relations with the U.S. may launch personal attacks on Iran’s negotiators to the nuclear talks, and, in an effort to discredit them, challenge their loyalty to the Iranian revolution. Their point of attack on Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif’s loyalty might be his alleged obsequious behavior to Secretary of State John Kerry. Zarif, on account of his many years of residency and education in the United States, can be depicted as an Americanized Iranian.

The United States should also be on guard against the mullahs’ belief that the Obama administration is weak — both politically and in its reluctance to use force. The mullahs might find great pleasure in humiliating Obama as they did President Jimmy Carter, when they dragged out hostage crisis negotiations by running out the clock until his term was over. They clearly believe that the Obama administration, simply to say it got “a deal,” is ready to sign anything.

[1] “Iran’s powerful Guard rejects inspection of military sites” by Ali Akhbar Dareini, Associated Press, 19 April 2015. Deputy Chief of the IRGC General Hossein Salami is quoted and several more statements by IRGC officials since have repeated the same prohibitive statements regarding Iran’s military sites.

[2] “U.S. to Award Iran $11.9 Billion Through End of Nuke Talks,” Washington Free Beacon, 21 January 2015. In the first of many subsequent denunciations, Senator Mark Clark of Illinois attacked the Obama administration’s plan to free Iran’s frozen assets if nuclear deal is reached.

Categories: Diplomacy, Foreign policy, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Israel, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Soleimani, Theocracy, U.S. Congress
Tags: Ayatollah Khamenei, Foreign Policy, Iran nuke inspections, Iran Scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, IRGC, Israel, Obama, Obama's America, Soleimani, Theocracy, U.S. Congress

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The Kurd-Shia War Behind the War on ISIS

June 5, 2015

The Kurd-Shia War Behind the War on ISIS, The Daily Beast, Mat Wolf, June 5, 2015

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Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters

“We could see outright civil war,” Farhan Siddiqi, a research fellow on international politics and national security at the Middle East Research Institute (MERI), tells The Daily Beast. Siddiqi says he believes the Kurds and the Shia central government would face domestic and international pressure to avoid such a conflict, but if cooler heads failed a hypothetical conflict could escalate into something even worst than the current ISIS war.

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In a dusty town near the Iranian border, the terror group was defeated, but the victors are at each other’s throats.

JALAWLA, Iraq — Behind Iraq’s front lines against the so-called Islamic State, Kurdish and Shia factions already are drawing a blueprint for what could be the region’s next major conflict.

In the city of Jalawla in Iraq’s Diyala province, near the Iranian border approximately 80 miles east of Baghdad, Kurdish forces have given the boot to the Shia militia they previously allied with to take the city from ISIS in a bloody November battle. Last month, the commanding Kurdish Peshmerga general in Jalawla threatened to start shooting if the Shia refused to leave the city immediately.

“This area is ours now, and that’s not changing,” Brig. Gen. Mahmoud Sangawi told The Daily Beast. He added that Jalawla, an abandoned city that previously had 83,000 people and was 80 percent Sunni Arab in 2003, would soon have a Kurdish mayor. Sangawi bragged that henceforth the city would also be called by its new Kurdish moniker, “Golala.”

Not so fast, say the Shia militias. They were recruited in the name of a fatwa from Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in June 2014, following the Iraqi army’s humiliating loss of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, virtually without a fight. Many are trained and advised by Iranians, and they have been the spearhead of Baghdad’s efforts to recover lost territory in the name of the national government.

The Kurds, meanwhile, have fought hard to protect, consolidate and indeed expand areas they consider “their” territory.

“They [the Kurds] need to recognize this region is Iraq,” says Ali Khorasani, the commander of the Hashd al-Shaabi militias that Sangawi’s Peshmerga expelled from Jalawla. Hashd al-Shaabi is the Arabic term for Popular Mobilization Units, the name preferred by the volunteer Shia militias.

Khorasani said the Kurds “are strong, and they’re very organized, and our relationship was good, but now our relationship has problems.” And that appears to be an understatement. When asked if Kurdish moves in the region might lead to another war, Khorasani replied tersely: “Maybe.”

For now, Khorasani’s unit has been dispersed to the south of Jalawla around a town called Sadiya. It’s only a five-minute drive from Jalawla, but Kurdish forces are limiting access to Sadiya and prevented us from going there. Khorasani spoke to The Daily Beast by phone.

The ISIS blitz of northern and central Iraq one year ago sent the on-paper highly trained and well-equipped Iraqi army scrambling, and led to the sacking of controversial Shia Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. He was widely criticized for his sectarian policies that alienated the country’s Sunni Arabs, who are now the main support base for ISIS.

The Iraqi army’s retreat also opened the door for Kurdish forces to seize large swaths of territory abandoned by government forces.

Now, the central government’s inability to deal decisively with ISIS in Anbar province and its loss of the Anbar provincial capital Ramadi has seen the Kurds acting even more brazenly in anticipation of an independence push. Iraqi Kurdistan President Masoud Barzani has promised a long-awaited Kurdish independence referendum.

“Certainly an independent Kurdistan is coming,” Barzani said on a visit to Washington D.C. on May 6. “It will take place when the security situation is better and when the fight against ISIS is over.”

“We could see outright civil war,” Farhan Siddiqi, a research fellow on international politics and national security at the Middle East Research Institute (MERI), tells The Daily Beast. Siddiqi says he believes the Kurds and the Shia central government would face domestic and international pressure to avoid such a conflict, but if cooler heads failed a hypothetical conflict could escalate into something even worst than the current ISIS war.

Since the summer of 2014, the Kurds have increased their territory by 40 percent, most notably around the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, often called the “Kurdish Jerusalem.” Today Kirkuk has a Kurdish population of around 50 percent combined with large groups of Arabs and Turkmens. The city and its outlying territories were frequent targets of “Arabization” by the Saddam Hussein regime, a policy meant to shift the ethnic balance of power there as he waged a genocidal war against the rebellious Kurds. Now they want the city back, but Arab families who have lived there for decades have no place to go.

Areas like Jalawla are a different matter. It is closer to Baghdad than to the Iraqi Kurdish capital Erbil. It, too, was the target of waves of Arabization, but it has been a majority Arab city for decades. By Sangawi’s own admission the population was less than 10 percent Kurdish in 2003.

“The Baath regime had a process of oppressing the Kurdish people. They had to change their names to Arab names or leave the city,” Sangawi says. “When filling out forms they had to register as Arab. In 1970, 32 percent of this city was Kurdish. The city was only 8 percent Kurdish at the time of the American invasion in 2003. The Arabs tried to rob the Kurds of their land.”

Today, Jalawla has been completely abandoned by its civilian inhabitants, many of whom supported ISIS, according to Sangawi. Feral dogs dart in front of Peshmerga convoys and Kurdish graffiti proclaims the city part of Kurdistan. The immediate surrounding area of the town—dusty flat fields speckled with palm groves—clashes with the green, mountainous terrain often associated with Kurdistan, and syncs up more with stereotypically Arab lands.

Parts of Jalawla, especially the former ISIS command center on high ground overlooking the city, have been reduced to rubble. However, a spring bloom of un-manicured pink desert roses has overrun the walls and sidewalks, offsetting the many bullet holes and craters that otherwise dot the settlement.

“One-hundred and ten Peshmerga died in the fighting. When ISIS came in here they left many IEDs and explosives on the roads,” says Sangawi.

But the November fighting wasn’t the area’s first battle, and likely not its last. The Kurdish-Arab rift in the city goes back over a millennium.

Golala, Jalawla’s Kurdish name, means the “land of flowers.” Its Arabic title’s etymology is more grisly. In 637 AD, Arab Muslim forces during the early Islamic conquest of the Middle East won a decisive battle here against a Zoroastrian Persian force. A popular tale in the region holds the Arabs named the location Jalawla from an Arabic verb meaning to cover or to fill, as so many Zoroastrian corpses filled the landscape.

Sangawi knows this tale, and says he considers the Zoroastrians the Kurds’ forebears before Arabs took their territory—a perfect and historically convenient parable for Kurdish claims on the region.

Dark haired with a round face, thick droopy mustache and rosy cheeks, the 63-year-old Sangawi at first comes across as a friendly grandfatherly type, albeit one who travels with an entourage equipped with RPGs and machine guns. And most grandfathers don’t blithely threaten former heads of state.

“We’ve killed lots of people, a lot of them like Maliki,” he says of the former Iraqi prime minister, who said in a TV interview last month that anyone wishing to break up Iraq would create a “river of blood.”

“Maliki can eat shit,” Sangawi chuckles.

Sangawi’s been with the Peshmerga since the 1970s and has jumped around the Kurds’ various political parties, at one point even becoming a Marxist before joining up with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the party of former Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

Compared to Sangawi’s stance of bold antagonism, Khorasani is more conciliatory. The 45-year-old says he was in the legal profession before volunteering for the militia, and he makes a point of saying how the liberation of Jalawla was a joint effort. Even before then, he adds, the Kurds and Shia Arabs could find common cause.

“This is Iraq. We used to be united. They opposed the former regime and so did we,” he laments. “We were one.”

But Sangawi counters: “We were both against Saddam Hussein. We fought together. However, when the Shias came to power they treated us the same as Saddam Hussein, that’s why we don’t have a good relationship now.”

Siddiqi, at the Middle East Research Institute, says that the new Baghdad government under Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has shown a willingness to negotiate and be more accommodating to Iraq’s minorities, but the country’s age-old tensions still run deep.

“Saddam Hussein is gone, but his authoritarianism still survives along all levels of Iraqi society,” Siddiqi says. “It remains to be seen if the government becoming more accommodating will reduce calls for independence.”

If a conflict were to occur, he adds, the Hashd al-Shaabi would be at the forefront of any government pushback against the Kurds. “The central government could easily call on the Shia militias it’s currently using against ISIS, using religious pretexts and slogans to drive them forward,” he says.

The central Iraqi government has already come under fire for its use of the militias, whose religious zealotry exacerbates sectarian tensions in Iraq. The government’s operation to retake the Sunni-majority Ramadi was originally named “At Your Service, Hussein,” in honor of a major Shia historical and religious figure. Human Rights Watch has also raised concerns that the Hashd al-Shaabi have committed serious human rights abuses while ostensibly fighting ISIS.

Siddiqi says the international community, including the central government’s main ally, Iran, would be wary of seeing another war in the region. “Iran wants peace, it does not want Iraq to become another Syria or another Yemen,” he says, adding that although opposed on many issues, the U.S. and Iran have tacit tactical cooperation in Iraq these days, and neither would support a Shia-Kurd conflict.

If a fight did occur, Siddiqi says he believes world powers would do their best to take a “hands-off” approach to avoid further escalation. If Kurdish independence were to succeed, he continues, it would only be accomplished via an agreement with Baghdad, not another war.

But far from Tehran and the beltway, on the dusty plains of disputed Jalawla, Sangawi says he’s ready for that war, drawing little distinction between Shia Hashd al-Shaabi and Sunni ISIS, and viewing them both as his people’s ancient enemies.

“The Shia militias believe if they kill ISIS they’re going to heaven, and ISIS believes if they kill the Shia people they are going to go to heaven,” Sangawi declares. “They fight over religion, not for land.”

“For me, if they attack me I will attack them, because this is my land. If they come to this land, of course I will fight them.”

Categories: Arabs, Iran, Iranian proxies, Irqui military, Islamic State, Kurdish fighters, Peshmerga, Shiite, Sunni
Tags: Arabs, Iran, Iranian proxies, Iraqi military, Islamic State, Kurdish fighters, Peshmerga, Shiite, Sunni

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