How can we possibly stop this man with a mere gun?
The Failure-in-Chief would like to remind all the people at the Pentagon that what they’re doing is hopeless because guns don’t work. Guns are bad. We all know the idea that it takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun is crazy NRA propaganda.
We can’t win wars with guns either. Remember how we tried and failed to defeat the Nazis with guns, and the war didn’t stop until we appeased them? No war in history has ever been won with guns. Why should this one be any different.
On Monday afternoon, President Obama spoke at the Pentagon about the Islamic State, or ISIS, a terrorist organization in Syria and Iraq.
Obama stressed all elements of American power were going toward fighting the organization. “Altogether, ISIL has lost over a quarter of the populated areas it had seized in Iraq,” the President said, using an alternative name for the terrorist group. “ISIL’s strategic weaknesses are real.”
Obama said the terrorist organization is doing their best to recruit from “Muslim communities around the world.”
“In order for us to defeat terrorist groups like ISIL and al-Qaeda, we must discredit their ideology. This broader challenge of countering violent extremism,” Obama said. “Ideologies are not defeated with guns, they are defeated by better ideas. We will never be at war with Islam,” Obama added, stressing that ISIS distorts Islam.
To summarize, we’re defeating ISIS, it has strategic weaknesses, but we can’t possibly defeat it with icky guns. Instead we must make more hashtags. Foreign Policy really suggested that gay marriage can defeat ISIS. That’s a plan alright.
How much territory has ISIS lost due to hashtags? Not so much as an inch. ISIS is winning the war of ideas among Muslims. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be defeated militarily.
When the USSR cut a deal with Hitler, their useful idiots in America began claiming that Nazism was an “ism” and couldn’t be defeated by force. Then when their German boyfriend stabbed Uncle Joe in the back, they began shrilly demanding the use of force. And once America won the war, they spent the rest of the time claiming that Uncle Joe Stalin really won the war.
Nazism couldn’t be defeated with guns back when the Germans were massacring Jews and helping the USSR carve up its own piece of Eastern Europe. But when the Huns showed up in the homeland of Socialism, suddenly they discovered that guns worked really well on Nazis.
Somehow, I suspect that if ISIS were pounding targets that Obama really cared about and beheading people he cared about, suddenly all those bombing raids would involve actually striking ISIS no matter where they are and without worrying about the collateral damage.
All those many branches of the Federal government have their own SWAT teams because clearly liberals believe that enemies of the EPA or the FDA can be defeated with guns. They just don’t believe that ideologies like ISIS, which after all don’t really want a Caliphate, but are upset about our foreign policy, can be defeated with guns.
The following is a dispatch from The Israel Project’s Omri Ceren regarding the state of nuclear negotiations with Iran:
Happy Monday from Vienna. The EU’s foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini arrived yesterday and told reporters: “As you know I have decided to reconvene the ministers. They will be arriving tonight and tomorrow. It is the third time in exactly one week. That’s the end, the last part of this long marathon.” Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif already held an impromptu meeting this morning. The overarching consensus – which is almost certainly correct – is that whatever gets announced will be announced no later than tomorrow afternoon. It might very well happen tonight.
As to what that announcement might be, there are a few options. In order of increasing probability:
0% chance: Kerry might make good on the comments that he made yesterday to reporters, and walks away from a bad deal.
Very low probability: the parties might come to a full-blown agreement ready to be implemented immediately. This scenario was never likely by June 30, and became functionally impossible after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei set out a range of new red lines a few weeks ago. Also, the Iranians gave a background briefing earlier today in Vienna where they provided their interpretation of an emerging final deal. Among other things they have some interesting views on what military-related restrictions will be lifted, which are in tension with how the Americans have been describing the deal. Those differences will have to be overcome, and they won’t be in the next few days.
Low-probability: the gaps might still be too significant to even colorfully announce a deal, and the parties would extend the interim agreement all the way through the summer. The option would be more attractive to the Obama administration than taking another 2 or 3 weeks. If the administration sends Congress a deal after July 9 then the Corker clock – how long a deal sits in front of Congress – goes from 30 days to 60 days. But if they get all the way through the summer, it goes back down to 30 days. The administration has obvious reasons to prefer that.
Most likely: there will be a non-agreement agreement. The parties will announce they’ve resolved all outstanding issues but they still have to fill in some details. Then the P5+1 and Iran would move in parallel to implement various commitments, and the Iranians would in particular have to work with the IAEA on its unresolved concerns regarding Iran’s weapons program (PMDs). In the winter the IAEA would provide a face-saving way for the parties to declare Iran is cooperating – IAEA head Amano said earlier this week that the agency could wrap up by the end of the year if Iran cooperates – and then a deal would officially begin. The option is attractive to the administration because it puts off granting Iran all of its anticipated sanctions relief until the IAEA makes some noises about the Iranians cooperating. The alternative would be poison on the Hill. This way the administration can tell Congress that of course PMDs will be resolved before any sanctions relief is granted; and after Congress votes, if the Iranians jam up the IAEA but demand relief anyway, lawmakers will have no leverage to stop the administration from caving.
The focus will then shift to Congress, where the debate on approving or disapproving of the deal will take place over the next month. Some of the questions will get technical and tangled – the breakout time debate is going to be mind-numbing – but lawmakers will also use a very simple metric: Is the deal the same one the President promised he’d bring home twenty months ago? Back then the administration was very clear about what constituted a good deal and emphatic that U.S. negotiators had sufficient leverage to secure those terms. The U.S. subsequently collapsed on almost all of those conditions, and lawmakers will want to know how the deal can still count as a good one.
In line with those questions, here is a roundup from the Foreign Policy Initiative on where the administration started and how dramatically it has moved backwards. From the overview of the analysis:
Over the past three years, the Obama administration has delineated the criteria that any final nuclear agreement between the P5+1 and Iran must meet. In speeches, congressional testimony, press conferences, and media interviews, administration officials have also articulated their expectations from Tehran with repeated declarations: “No deal is better than a bad deal.” This FPI Analysis… compiles many of the administration’s own statements on nuclear negotiations with Iran over the past three years, and compares them with current U.S. positions. It also examines U.S. statements on a range of other issues related to U.S. policy toward Tehran, and assesses whether subsequent events have validated them.
The web version has embedded links for each of the statements, so if you need them just click through on the url at the top. You might just want to do that anyway, because the web version is more readable.
(But, he inadvertently failed to mention, “we don’t want the bomb.” — DM)
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan warned against Israel’s plot to expand the occupied territories from “the Nile to the Euphrates” with the support of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group.
“This year’s rallies to mark the International Quds Day due to be held this Friday are more important than the previous years’ because the Zionist regime (of Israel) with the full support of ISIL terrorists… is seeking to realize the occupation of (areas from) the Nile to the Euphrates,” General Dehqan said in a speech on Monday.
Undoubtedly, massive participation of people in the international event can thwart “the dangerous plot”, the minister stressed.
He further emphasized that the only way to liberate the holy Quds is unity and solidarity among Muslims.
Back in January, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei underlined Iran’s determination to continue support for the Palestinian cause.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran will remain resolved (in its support) until the day that the cause of Palestine is materialized,” Ayatollah Khamenei said in a meeting with Head of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine–General Command (PFLP-GC) Ahmed Jibril in Tehran.
The Leader also noted that the issue of Palestine is among the top issues of the entire Muslim world.
Each year, the International Quds Day is celebrated on the last Friday of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan.
The event’s overarching theme is support for the Palestinians and fierce denunciation of Israel.
The day is also seen as the legacy of the late founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Imam Khomeini, who officially declared the last Friday of Ramadan as International Quds Day back in 1979.
An immense stretch of Sinai desert populated by half a million people is under siege, as the Egyptian army fights off a major offensive by the Islamic State’s Egyptian affiliate, the Sinai Province, against its positions in northern Sinai. The battle, which Monday, July 6, went into its sixth day, is being fought in an area bounded by the northern town of Sheikh Zuwaid, Rafah on the Gaza border, and up to Kerem Shalom and Nitzana on the Israeli border to the south. DEBKAfile’s military sources report a news blackout on the ongoing warfare except for Egyptian army handouts.
Egyptian security sources reported Monday that the latest round of helicopter strikes and ground operations had killed 63 Islamists in villages between Sheikh Zuwaid and Rafah, where four of their hideouts had been located. Our sources add that these air strikes are directed against civilian dwellings, especially in farming districts, where ISIS fighters are suspected of hiding out. No figures have been released by Cairo on civilian or Egyptian army casualties.
DEBKAfile describes the contest as an asymmetrical one between an army that depends heavily on aerial operations and ISIS terrorists, who have resorted mainly to guerilla warfare. By night, they flit swiftly on foot between the dunes to strike Egyptian army positions. By day, their foot soldiers trap Egyptian soldiers by setting up ambushes around those positions and on the roads of Sinai to keep Egyptian troops pinned down. Terrorist operations are a constant on their agenda.
The Egyptians respond with blanket air strikes which swoop on any moving object in the embattled area – whether by car or on foot
The hide-and-seek tactics employed by ISIS are sustainable in the long term, especially when the Islamists can rely on a constant influx of reinforcements, weapons and ordnance, the sources of which DEBKAfile disclosed in an exclusive report Sunday, July 5.
The Islamic State is rushing reinforcements to Egypt from Libya and Iraq for its battle with Egyptian forces in northern Sinai, which went into its fifth day Sunday, July 5, and other offensives, DEBKAfile’s intelligence and counter-terror sources report. After sustaining hundreds of casualties, both sides claim to have won the upper hand but the tenacious struggle is not over.
An Islamist manpower pool is provided by Egyptian extremists who crossed into Libya in the past and settled in bases around Benghazi. Last week, ISIS summoned them to take up positions in Cairo and the Suez Canal and wait for orders to go into action. They crossed back with the help of smugglers. Those rings, dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood underground, with branches controlled by Hamas and Hizballah, bring illicit weapons and ammunition supplies to Sinai from Libya via Egypt.
President Abdel Fatteh El-Sisi is therefore obliged to earmark substantial military and intelligence resources for defending the Suez Canal and Cairo – more even than the Sinai front.
The other source of jihadi reinforcements is Iraq, They use another branch of the smuggling network which carries them through southern Jordan to the Gulf of Aqaba where they are picked up by smugglers’ boats and ferried across to the eastern coast of the Sinai Peninsula.
The IDF had more than one reason for its decision last Wednesday to close to traffic Rte 12, Israel’s main southern highway, which runs parallel to the Egyptian border up to Eilat: It was a necessary precaution lest ISIS turned its terrorists and guns against Israel from next-door northern Sinai. The other reason was to deter the Islamists coming from Iraq from trying to transit Israel and reach Sinai with the help of Bedouin smugglers operating on both sides of the Israeli-Egyptian border.
Our military sources estimate that some 1,000 jihadists are directly engaged in the North Sinai battle with the Egyptian army, but add that they could quickly recruit supplementary fighting manpower from Bedouin tribes near the warfront who already play ball with the terrorists.
Egyptian tacticians have strictly limited the army action on this front to air and helicopter strikes and local ground and armored forces. They are focusing on defending three Sinai enclaves, the northern district around Sheikh Zuweid, El Arish port and Rafah, and Sharm el-Sheikh in the south, to pin ISIS forces down in those places and prevent them from fanning out into areas controlled by the big Bedouin tribes.
When President El-Sisi visited the troops in northern Sinai Saturday, July 5, he disclosed that only one percent of the Egyptian army of 300,000 men was assigned to Sinai. He indicated that his army was perfectly capable of wiping out the Sinai terrorist threat in no time if all its might were to be thrown into the fray.
This strategy leaves ISIS with free rein in central Sinai. However, El-Sisis, like his predecessor Hosni Mubarak, is not prepared to go all out against ISIS in its “dens” any time in the near future, because he needs all his military resources and assets he can muster to defend the capital Cairo and the Suez Canal.
Neither the Islamic Army nor the Muslim Brotherhood or any other radical Islamists make any secrets of their next plans. ISIS has announced that it is setting its sights on Egypt’s pyramids, the Sphinx of Giza, and the country’s unique historic monuments in general, after its savage vandalism and looting of other precious world heritage sites.
In a new message released Friday, July 3, a number of radical Islamist leaders, including the ISIS “caliph” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, told their followers that the destruction of Egypt’s national monuments, such as the pyramids and the sphinx, was a “religious duty” that must be carried out by those who worship Islam, as “idolatry is strictly banned in the religion.”
This message has sharply ratcheted up the jihadist element of ISIS military confrontation with Egypt to a higher, more inflammatory level.
(Not much chance of that. General al-Sisi supported the large masses of Egyptians who wanted then President Morsi deposed. He was later elected President of Egypt. Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood — which uses terrorism to gain and keep power — is an Obama favorite. Besides, al-Sisi’s efforts to reform Islam run counter to Obama’s delusion that Islam, as it is and has long been, is a wonderful religion of peace. — DM)
The silence was truly deafening. Not a sound from Archbishop Desmond Tutu or Alice Walker or the eager boycotters of Israel or the United Nations Human Rights Council about the brutal massacre of more than 70, perhaps 100, Egyptian soldiers and civilians by Islamist terrorists in the northern Sinai peninsula.
Since Israel, after the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, withdrew all its forces and all settlements — including Yamit — by 1982, the Sinai peninsula has been plagued by terrorist attacks, especially against tourists, by kidnappings, and by violence. After the 2011 Egyptian revolution and consequent uprisings, a major terrorist group emerged and became even more belligerent after the coup that deposed President Mohammed Morsi on July 3, 2013. This was Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis (ABM) that has claimed responsibility for numerous attacks against both Israeli interests and Egyptian personnel.
These assaults included an attack in July 2012 against a Sinai pipeline, a rocket strike in August 2012 on Eilat in south Israel, suicide bombings in el Tor in southern Sinai in May 2014, downing an Egyptian military helicopter in a missile attack, car bombings and hand grenades in Cairo, assassinations and attempted assassinations of Egyptian officials, beheading of four individuals in October 2014, an attack on a security checkpoint, and the June 29, 2015 murder in Cairo of Hisham Barakat, the Egyptian Prosecutor General, who in only two years in office had detained hundreds of members of the Muslim Brotherhood. He was the most senior Egyptian government official murdered.
In November 2014, ABM declared its allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS) and accepted the new self-appointed Caliph. It appears to have several hundred trained operatives and collaborators. There are different opinions about the actions of the Sinai Bedouin population, especially that of the largest of the 10 major tribes, the Tarabin tribe in northern Sinai, a tribe that is notorious for drug dealing, weapons smuggling, and human trafficking in prostitutes and African labor workers. Tarabin is said to have called for unification of all the tribes against the terrorists, but rumors of clashes appear to be untrue, and some even allege collaboration with the terrorists. What is true is that local Bedouin tribesmen, alleging discrimination by the state against them, have launched attacks against government forces in Sinai.
Over the last two years ABM, now regarding itself as a dedicated affiliate of IS, has tried to undermine the rule of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. It has attacked Egyptian army posts, and security centers, and also the UN Multilateral Force in northern Sinai, that oversees the terms of the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, and tried as well to infiltrate Israeli territory.
There had already been terrorist attacks on October 2014 and January 2015 when more than 30 were killed on each occasion in northeast Sinai. The most dramatic deed of ABM, which now seems to have changed its name to Province of Sinai, (POS) was the series of simultaneous coordinated attacks on July 1, 2015 on fifteen army centers of security forces and checkpoints in northern Sinai. The attacks, including three suicide bombers, killed at least 70 soldiers and civilians.
Evidently POS, imitating its mentor IS that has taken and now rules cities in Iraq and Syria, wanted to take over the city of Sheikh Zuweid, close to Israel, and cut off Rafah from al-Arish.
The danger to all of the democratic countries is immediate for a number of reasons. The first is that the success of the terrorists in their daring ambushes, control of the roads, taking police officers hostage, and planting mines in the streets, indicates not only their disciplined activity but also the influence of IS operatives directly and indirectly through training. IS in Iraq and Syria has operated in just this aggressive and disciplined fashion. All authorities responsible for security in the United States should be conscious of and take account of this highly organized success and of the threat of future similar attacks in the U.S. itself.
The second reason is that Hamas in Gaza is providing support to POS with weapons and logistical support, and even with Hamas terrorists taking part in operations. These have come from Hamas commanders in the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades that have been prominent for anti-Israeli attacks, including suicide bombings against civilians inside Israel. One particular active commander is Wael Faraj, who has smuggled wounded fighters from Sinai into Gaza.
A third problem is the obvious attempt to undermine and aim at the overthrow of President Sisi, a voice of sanity in the Muslim world. He has courageously criticized the extremists of his religion. In his remarkable speech at al-Azhar University in Cairo on January 22, 2015, he said that fellow Muslims needed to change the religious discourse and remove from it things that have led to violence and extremism. The Muslim religion, he said to imams, is in need of religious reform.
Since he assumed power on June 8, 2014, Sisi has attempted to stem the tide of terrorism by reinforcing the Sinai, restricting traffic, imposing curfews in the area, and demolishing homes of suspected terrorists in Rafah. He sought to create a buffer zone along the border with Gaza, and to destroy the tunnels built by Hamas. But clearly Sisi needs help to survive. It is imperative for the U.S. together with Israel to provide that help to the overwhelmed Egyptian army and intelligence services.
Israel is acutely aware of the danger. POS captured armored vehicles on July 1, 2015 that it can now use to penetrate the border fence between Sinai and Israel. That fence is unlikely to deter a trained terrorist group that now has combat experience. Israel responded by closing roads and two border crossings as a precautionary measure. But all the democratic countries, especially the United States, and also the United Nations because of its Multilateral Force, are now aware that the Islamist terror is at their doors as well as at the outskirts of Israel, and should act accordingly.
(The views expressed in this post are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
Napoleon sometimes claimed to be a Muslim. Obama often claims to be a Christian. Napoleon sought, and Obama seeks, power and glory through pretense.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon’s life and history are summarized at Wikipedia. He supported the French Revolution and was appointed General of the Army of Italy at the age of twenty-five. Three years later, he commanded an expedition against Egypt. This post compares his and Obama’s religious and political efforts to gain the confidence of Muslims. The lengthy quotations provided in this section of the post are from Worlds at War – the 2,500 year struggle between East and West, 2008, by Anthony Pagden.
While en route to conquer Egypt, Napoleon had his “Orientalists” compose a “Proclamation to the Egyptians.”
It is worth taking a closer look at this document for it summarizes not only the French hopes for the ‘Orient’, but also the ultimate failure of both sides to come to any approximate understanding of each other. It began with a familiar Muslim invocation: ‘In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. There is no God but God. He has no son nor has he any associate in His Dominion’, which was intended to indicate clearly that the French were not Christians. It then went on to assure the Egyptian people that Napoleon Bonaparte, commander of the French army, and ‘on behalf of the French Republic which is based upon the foundations of Liberty and Equality’, had not come to Egypt, as the Mamluks had put it about, ‘like the Crusaders’ in order to destroy the power of Islam. Nothing, Napoleon assured his readers, could be further from the truth. Tell the slanderers that I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring to you your rights from the oppressors, that I, more than the Mam-luks, serve God— may He be praised and Exalted— and revere his prophet Muhammad and the glorious Qur’an … And tell them also that all people are equal in the eyes of God and that the circumstances which distinguish one from another are reason, virtue and knowledge. 578 Having thus done his best to conflate the principle of human rights— in a language in which there exists no obvious translation for the word ‘right’ 579— with what the Orientalists had persuaded him were the basic tenets of Islam, the man whom Victor Hugo would later describe as the ‘Muhammad of the West’ continued,
O ye Qadis [judges], Shaykhs and Imams; O ye Sharbajiyya [cavalry officers] and men of circumstance tell the nation that the French are also faithful Muslims and in confirmation of this they invaded Rome and destroyed there the Holy See, which was always exhorting the Christians to make war on Islam. And then they went to the island of Malta from where they expelled the knights who claimed that God the Exalted required them to fight the Muslims. 580 [Emphasis added.]
It is hard to say how much Napoleon believed in all this. One of his generals later told a friend in Toulouse that ‘we tricked the Egyptians with our feigned love of their religion, in which Bonaparte and we no more believe in than we do in that of the late pope’. 582 But Napoleon’s personal beliefs were largely beside the point. The point was policy. Napoleon had always practised religious toleration because he knew that religious faiths could make deadly enemies. Toleration, however, was one thing; credence, even respect, was another. It is indeed highly unlikely that Napoleon had read much of the Qur’an he claimed to venerate. As he told Madame de Rémusant, the only holy book which would have been of any interest to him would have been one he had written himself. [Pagden, pp 326 – 327] [Emphasis added.]
Egyptians did not appreciate Napoleon’s Proclamation.
Just as most Muslims today have failed to be persuaded that Western social values can be made compatible with the Holy Law, the Shari’a, so too were the Egyptians who confronted Napoleon. We know something of how they reacted to Napoleon’s profession of love for Islam from the account of the first seven months of the occupation written by a member of the diwan— or Imperial Council— of Cairo named Abd-al Rahman al-Jabarti. Al-Jabarti was a well-read perceptive man who was not unimpressed by French skills and technology (he was particularly taken by the wheelbarrow) and ungrudgingly admired French courage and discipline on the battlefield, which he compared, glowingly, to that of the mujahedin, the Muslim warriors of the jihad. 585 But for all that he was a firm Muslim who could conceive of no good, no truth which did not emanate from the word of God as conveyed by the Prophet. He excoriated Napoleon’s declaration for its language, for its poor style, for the grammatical errors, and the ‘incoherent words and vulgar constructions’ with which it was strewn, and which often made nonsense out of what Napoleon had intended to convey— all of which was no tribute to the skills of Venture de Paradis or those of the French Arabists in the expedition. But al-Jabarti reserved his most searing criticism for what he repeatedly describes as French hypocrisy. The opening phrase of the declaration suggested to him not, as Napoleon had meant it to, a preference on the part of a tolerant nation for Islam; but rather that the French gave equal credence to all three religions— Islam, Christianity, and Judaism— which in effect meant that they had no belief in any. Toleration for a Muslim such as al-Jabarti was as meaningless as it would have been for any sincere believer. It was merely a way of condoning error. The years when some kind of rapprochement between Judaism and its two major heresies might have been possible were long since past. There could now be only one true faith, and any number of false ones. Napoleon could not claim to ‘revere’ the Prophet without also believing in his message. The same applied to the Qur’ an. You could not merely ‘respect’ the literal word of God. You had to accept it as the only law, not one among many. ‘This is a lie,’ thundered al-Jabarti; ‘To respect the Qur’an means to glorify it, and one glorifies only by believing in what it contains.’
Napoleon was clearly a liar. Worse he was also the agent of a society which was obviously committed to the elimination, not only of Islam, but of all belief, all religion. The invocation of the ‘Republic’, al-Jabarti explained to his Muslim readers, was a reference to the godless state which the French had set up for themselves after they had betrayed and then murdered their ‘Sultan’. By killing Louis XVI, the French had turned against the man they had taken, wrongly because their understanding of God was erroneous, but sincerely nevertheless, to be God’s representative on earth. In his place they had raised an abstraction, this ‘Republic’ in whose name Napoleon, who had come not in peace as he claimed but at the head of a conquering army, now professed to speak. Since for a Muslim there could be no secular state, no law which is not also God’s law, the French insistence that it was only ‘reason, virtue and knowledge’ which separated one man from another was clearly an absurdity. For ‘God’, declared al-Jabarti, ‘has made some superior to others as is testified by the dwellers in the Heavens and on the Earth.’ There are few things a believer, especially a believer in the fundamental sacredness of a script, dislikes more than a non-believer. To al-Jabarti the French seemed to be not would-be Muslims, but atheists. [Emphasis added.] [Id. at 329].
Obama
Napoleon, in his mix of religious and political doctrine, was a power-grubbing scoundrel and liar. How about Obama?
Obama has not claimed to be a Muslim and I don’t know what He is. To claim to be a Muslim would be politically inexpedient. However, He has proclaimed His respect and even reverence for Islam and for the “Holy” Qur’an.
overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.
Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance. . . . People in every country should be free to choose and live their faith based upon the persuasion of the mind and the heart and the soul. This tolerance is essential for religion to thrive, but it’s being challenged in many different ways. [Emphasis added.]
“Tolerance? Egyptian President al-Sisi is remarkable among Muslim leaders for his efforts to promote religious tolerance. Obama appears to despise him for supporting massive public protests against President Morsi and eventually becoming president. Morsi was a Muslim Brotherhood supporter and Obama appears to cherish the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization.
Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism — it is an important part of promoting peace.
And, as Obama tells us, the Islamic State and other such groups are not Islamic.
That sort of stuff didn’t work out well for Napoleon. Are Islamists more dedicated to religious tolerance now than in the days of Napoleon? It does not seem that they are. See, e.g., Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other Islamic nations.
The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam. But to be credible, those who condemn that slander must also condemn the hate we see in the images of Jesus Christ that are desecrated, or churches that are destroyed, or the Holocaust that is denied.
He sought power and glory by opposing those who offend “slander” Islam, including the maker of the You Tube video on which He and others in His administration blamed “spontaneous” September 11, 2011 “demonstrations” at the U.S. Benghazi annex.
I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing to do with this video, and I believe its message must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity. It is an insult not only to Muslims, but to America as well — for as the city outside these walls makes clear, we are a country that has welcomed people of every race and every faith. We are home to Muslims who worship across our country. We not only respect the freedom of religion, we have laws that protect individuals from being harmed because of how they look or what they believe. We understand why people take offense to this video because millions of our citizens are among them.
I know there are some who ask why we don’t just ban such a video. And the answer is enshrined in our laws: Our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech.
Obama, who claims to want a peaceful “two state solution” for the Israelis and Palestinians, has said little if anything about the propensity of Israel’s “peace partner,” the Palestinian Authority, to slander Israel and Judaism on a daily basis while honoring those who murder Jews.
Obama’s romance with Islam
Daniel Greenfield recently wrote a Front Page Magazine article titled Barack Obama’s Unholy Alliance: A Romance With Islamism. Please read the whole thing; it’s long but well worth the time. Mr. Greenfield notes, in connection with the Benghazi attack,
When the killing in Benghazi was done, the Jihadists left behind the slogan “Allahu Akbar” or “Allah is Greater” scrawled on the walls of the American compound.[6] These were the same words that Obama had recited “with a first-rate accent” for the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof. Obama had called it [the Islamic call to prayer] “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth.”[7] On that too, the murderers of four Americans agreed with him.
Those who disagreed and were to be denied a future included Mark Basseley Youssef, a Coptic Christian, whose YouTube trailer for a movie critical of Islam was blamed by the administration for the attacks.
Two days after Obama’s UN speech, Youssef was arrested and held without bail. The order for his arrest came from the top. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had told Charles Woods, the father of murdered SEAL Tyrone Woods, “We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video.”
The ACLU, which had developed deep Islamist connections,[9] sent a letter to Hillary Clinton thanking her for her support of freedom of speech.[10]
The Supreme Court’s “Miracle Decision”[11] had thrown out a blasphemy ban for movies, but Obama’s new unofficial blasphemy ban targeted only those movies that offended Islam. The government had joined the terrorists in seeking to deny such movies and their creators a future.
At the United Nations, Obama had compared the filmmaker to the terrorists. He had used a Gandhi quote to assert that, “Intolerance is itself a form of violence.”[12] Americans who criticized Islam’s violent tendencies could be considered as bad as Muslim terrorists and if intolerance of Islam was a form of violence, then it could be criminalized and suppressed. That became the administration’s priority.
. . . .
At the National Prayer Breakfast, Obama attacked Christianity for the Crusades in the presence of the foreign minister of Sudan, a genocidal government whose Muslim Brotherhood leader had massacred so many Christians and others that he had been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.[20][21] And he told Christians that they were obligated to condemn insults to Islam.[22]
Women’s rights? Obama supports those that don’t offend Islam. Continuing with Mr Greenfield’s linked article,
In August 2013, Al-Wafd, a paper linked to one of Egypt’s more liberal parties which supports equal rights for women and Christians, accused Obama of having close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. [60]
A year earlier, Rose El-Youssef magazine, founded by an early Egyptian feminist, had compiled a list of six Muslim Brotherhood operatives in the administration.[61][62]
Beyond Huma Abedin, Hillary’s close confidante and aide, the list included; Arif Alikhan, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Policy Development; Mohammed Elibiary, a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council; Rashad Hussain, formerly the U.S. Special Envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference and currently the Coordinator for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications; Salam al-Marayati, co-founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC); Imam Mohamed Magid, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and Eboo Patel, a member of President Obama’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships.
These were the types of accusations that the media tended to dismissively associate with the right, but both Egyptian publications were on the other side of the spectrum.
Egyptian liberals were the ones brandishing placards of a bearded Kerry in Taliban clothes or a photoshopped Obama with a Salafist beard. The protesters Obama had supposedly sought to support by calling for Mubarak to step down were crowding the streets accusing him of backing terrorists.
What made the Egyptian liberals who had seen America as their ally in pursuing reform come to view it as an enemy? The angry Egyptian protesters were accusing Obama of supporting a dictator; the original sin of American foreign policy that his Cairo Speech and the Arab Spring had been built on rejecting.
The progressive critiques of American foreign policy insisted that we were hated for supporting dictators. Now their own man was actually hated for supporting a Muslim Brotherhood dictator.
By 2014, 85% of Egyptians disliked America. Only 10% still rated America favorably.[63] It was a shift from the heady days of the Arab Spring when America had slid into positive numbers for the first time.[64]
Obama had run for office promising to repair our image abroad. As a candidate, he had claimed that other countries believed that “America is part of what has gone wrong in our world.” And yet the true wrongness was present in that same speech when he urged, “a new dawn in the Middle East.”[65]
That dawn came with the light of burning churches at the hands of Muslim Brotherhood supporters. Under Obama, America really did become part of what had gone wrong by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a crime that Obama will not admit to and that the media will not report on.
The Muslim Brotherhood was born out of Egypt and yet Egyptian views of it are dismissed by the media. Despite the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s final orgy of brutality as President Mohammed Morsi clung to power, despite the burning churches and tortured protesters, it is still described as “moderate.”
Morsi, who had called on Egyptians to nurse their children on hatred of the Jews,[66]was a moderate. Sheikh Rachid al-Ghannouchi, the leader of Ennahda, the Tunisian flavor of the Muslim Brotherhood, who had called for the extermination of the Jews “male, female and children,”[67] was also a “moderate.” Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, went one better with a fatwa approving even the murder of unborn Jews.[68] Qaradawi was another moderate.[69] [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
Obama sits at the center of a web of intertwined progressive organizations. This web has infiltrated the government and it in turn has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Consider the case of Faiz Shakir, who went from the Harvard Islamic Society where he helped fundraise for a Muslim Brotherhood front group funneling money to Hamas, the local Muslim Brotherhood franchise, to Editor-in-Chief and Vice President at the Center for American Progress, heading up the nerve center of the left’s messaging apparatus, to a Senior Adviser to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and then Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.[73] The next step after that is the White House.
Time magazine described the Center for American Progress as Obama’s idea factory, crediting it with forming his talking points and his government.[74] In an administration powered by leftist activists, the integration between the Muslim Brotherhood and the left resulted in a pro-Brotherhood policy.
Egyptian liberals had expected that the administration’s withdrawal of support for Mubarak would benefit them, but the American left had become far closer to the Muslim Brotherhood than to them. Instead of aiding the left, it aided the Brotherhood. The Egyptian liberals were a world away while the Brotherhood’s activists sat in the left’s offices and spoke in the name of all the Muslims in America.
The [American] left had made common cause with the worst elements in the Muslim world. It formed alliances with Muslim Brotherhood groups, accepting them as the only valid representatives of Muslim communities while denouncing their critics, both Muslim and non-Muslim, as Islamophobes. [Emphasis added.]
. . . .
When Obama declared to the UN that the future must not belong to those who criticize Islam’s brutality, bigotry and abuse of women, he was also defining whom it must belong to. If the future must not belong to those who slander Mohammed, it will instead belong to his followers and those who respect his moral authority enough to view him as being above criticism in image, video or word. [Emphasis added.]
With these words, Obama betrayed America’s heritage of freedom and announced the theft of its future. The treason of his unholy alliance with Islam not only betrays the Americans of the present, but deprives their descendants of the freedom to speak, write and believe according to their conscience.
Obama has placed the full weight of the government’s resources behind Islam. He has suppressed domestic dissent against Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood while aiding their international goals.
Is Osama Obama worse than Napoleon?
Napoleon represented a nation which, during the French Revolution, had become largely secular. Obama’s America, under His “leadership,” is becoming largely secular. Napoleon sought, and Obama seeks, each in his own way, to promote himself as deserving the approbation of Islam. Napoleon sought power and glory by lying. Obama does much the same, but He most often lies to the denizens of His America.
In the years immediately following the French Revolution, France was considered a great nation. When Obama took office, America was as well. Although some still celebrate America’s freedoms from tyranny on Independence Day, during the Reign of Obama she has become less free and large numbers of “His people” have become increasingly dependent. It’s time to put America back the way she was.
Postscript: I have read of no reported Independence Day incidents of workplace violencerandom violence Islamic terror attacks on Obama’s America. Might it be possible that Obama has convinced the (non-Islamic) Islamic State, et al, that, so long as He remains in power, terror attacks would interfere with His plans to promote Islam and otherwise to destroy the nation.
President Barack Obama pauses speaks at Taylor Stratton Elementary School in Nashville Photo: AP
The United States has blocked attempts by its Middle East allies to fly heavy weapons directly to the Kurds fighting Islamic State jihadists in Iraq, The Telegraph has learnt.
Some of America’s closest allies say President Barack Obama and other Western leaders, including David Cameron, are failing to show strategic leadership over the world’s gravest security crisis for decades.
They now say they are willing to “go it alone” in supplying heavy weapons to the Kurds, even if means defying the Iraqi authorities and their American backers, who demand all weapons be channelled through Baghdad.
High level officials from Gulf and other states have told this newspaper that all attempts to persuade Mr Obama of the need to arm the Kurds directly as part of more vigorous plans to take on Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) have failed. The Senate voted down one attempt by supporters of the Kurdish cause last month.
The officials say they are looking at new ways to take the fight to Isil without seeking US approval.
“If the Americans and the West are not prepared to do anything serious about defeating Isil, then we will have to find new ways of dealing with the threat,” said a senior Arab government official. “With Isil making ground all the time we simply cannot afford to wait for Washington to wake up to the enormity of the threat we face.”
Kurdish Peshmerga fighters train on a weapon during a training session with British military advisers
The Peshmerga have been successfully fighting Isil, driving them back from the gates of Erbil and, with the support of Kurds from neighbouring Syria, re-establishing control over parts of Iraq’s north-west.
But they are doing so with a makeshift armoury. Millions of pounds-worth of weapons have been bought by a number of European countries to arm the Kurds, but American commanders, who are overseeing all military operations against Isil, are blocking the arms transfers.
One of the core complaints of the Kurds is that the Iraqi army has abandoned so many weapons in the face of Isil attack, the Peshmerga are fighting modern American weaponry with out-of-date Soviet equipment.
At least one Arab state is understood to be considering arming the Peshmerga directly, despite US opposition.
The US has also infuriated its allies, particularly Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf states, by what they perceive to be a lack of clear purpose and vacillation in how they conduct the bombing campaign. Other members of the coalition say they have identified clear Isil targets but then been blocked by US veto from firing at them.
“There is simply no strategic approach,” one senior Gulf official said. “There is a lack of coordination in selecting targets, and there is no overall plan for defeating Isil.”
Western leaders increasingly accept that the “war on Isil” has not gone well, from the moment last year Mr Obama called the group a “JV [junior varsity] team” of jihadists compared with al-Qaeda. At that point, Isil had seized Fallujah, which US forces took in a bloody battle in 2004. It went on to take much of western Iraq and large areas of Syria, and in May took Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province.
Britain is moving closer to expanding its role in the war. The Government on Wednesday gave its strongest indication yet that MPs will be given a new vote on whether to bomb Isil in Syria.
Michael Fallon, the Defence Secretary, said it was “illogical” that British planes were able to hit extremists in Iraq but not across the border.
Any decision to bomb in Syria would have to be approved by MPs. In 2013, the Prime Minister lost a vote for British military action in Syria. However, Mr Fallon said: “It is a new Parliament and I think new Members of Parliament will want to think very carefully about how we best deal with Isil, and the illogicality of Isil not respecting the borderlines.”
Mr Fallon suggested that a bombing campaign could be mounted in revenge for the terror attacks in Tunisia if a link could be proved between the killer and Isil in Libya. Britain would only take military action in Libya “where we think there is an imminent threat, a very direct to British lives or, for example, to British hostages”, he said.
Senior Whitehall sources did not distance themselves from Mr Fallon’s comments but insisted there was no immediate prospect of military action.
The Telegraph understands that Mr Cameron is concerned that Labour might force the Government into another defeat over Syria.
Nothing is therefore left of the original US pledges to link sanctions relief to Iran’s compliance with its commitments or President Obama’s solemn vow to “snap back” sanctions any time for any Iranian violations. The IAEA is virtually left without teeth.
******************
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Sunday, June 28: “We are seeing a clear retreat from the red lines that the world powers set recently and publicly.” Addressing the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem and later the Knesset, he added: “There is no reason to rush to sign this bad agreement which is getting worse every day.”
Netanyahu was referring to three major concessions approved by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry in the final stage of negotiations for a comprehensive nuclear accord with Iran.
They are outlined here by DEBKAfile:
1. After barring International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections of suspect sites for years, Tehran will now be allowed to submit a paper with answers to queries about its past clandestine activities at those military sites, such as suspected tests of nuclear bomb detonators and explosives. That document would effectively draw a line on Iran’s suspect past
DEBKAfile: Iran has submitted countless documents to the IAEA, none of which gave specific replies to specific questions. The UN Security Council accordingly passed a number of resolutions requiring Tehran to come clean on the military aspects of its nuclear program. Tehran ignored them. Now Obama and Kerry are letting Tehran off the hook on its past secrets.
2. Obama and Kerry have withdrawn the “any time, anywhere” stipulation for snap inspections of suspect nuclear facilities, as mandated by the Additional Protocol signed by Iran. They now agree that international monitors must first submit a request to an “Iranian Committee” (not even a joint US-Iranian committee) for advance permission to inspect nuclear facilities.
This would leave Tehran free to approve, deny, or delay permission for inspections.
3. Washington has backed down on its insistence on predicating sanctions relief on Iran’s compliance with its obligations under the final accord. After Tehran countered with a demand for the sanctions to be lifted immediately upon the signing of the accord, the Obama administration agreed to remove them in three stages:
a) Straight after the deal is signed.
b) After ratification of the accord by the US Congress and Iranian Majlis.
This process is expected to take place by the end of 2015, and so Iran will win two multibillion windfalls this year without being required to meet any obligations beyond its signature
Obama counts on the support of 34 US senators. In any case, Congress is not empowered to reject or delay the deal
c) All remaining sanctions will be lifted when implementation of the accord begins.
Nothing is therefore left of the original US pledges to link sanctions relief to Iran’s compliance with its commitments or President Obama’s solemn vow to “snap back” sanctions any time for any Iranian violations. The IAEA is virtually left without teeth.
Already it looks as though Assad and Nasrallah have succeeded in sabotaging the hard-won armistice deal that the US, Jordan and Israel brokered between the Druze and Nusra Front, by forcing the half million Druze of Syria to choose sides between the belligerents. Whichever it is, they will be clobbered.
********************
Syrian ruler Bashar Assad and Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah have gone all out to stir up adversity between the Druze communitys of the Golan and Israel, and the Syrian rebel Al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.
To torpedo the armistice deal brokered between them earlier this month by the US, Jordan and Israel, 200 Syrian and Hizballah troops were pumped into the Druze village of Khader on the Syrian Golan, 3 km from the Israeli border. Since Friday, June 26, these troops have been attacking Nusra and the other Syrian rebel groups fighting to capture the Golan town of Quneitra. This has stalled the rebel operation for taking control of the highway to Damascus. Rockets from this battle strayed over to the Israeli side of Golan Sunday.
DEBKAfile’s military sources reveal that Nusra hit back over the weekend. They warned Druze leaders that if they don’t stop cooperating with Assad and Nasrallah, “their blood will be on their heads.” Fighters of this Islamist group then surrounded another, smaller Druze village, Skaska, on the western slopes of Jabal Druze and threatened to go in and massacre its inhabitants.
The Nusra ultimatum, posted Saturday, June 28, made it clear that since Syrian and Hizballah are firing against them from a Druze village, the Druze are held responsible for getting it stopped. Otherwise, they will be deemed collaborators of the Assad regime and in violation of the non-belligerence deal struck between them earlier this month.
Our sources add that Syria and Hizballah accompanied the 200-man force which infiltrated Khader, with Iranian and Syrian television crews and a group of Lebanese Druze members. The footage they showed was intended to demonstrate to the world that Lebanese Druze strongly challenged the Syrian rebel takeover of southern Syria including the Golan, and sided with Bashar Assad.
The fighting is so far low key between the Syrian and Hizballah troops ocupying the Druze village of Khadar and the Nusra Front fighters. But it is estimated by Israeli watchers that an escalation is not far off and, when it happens, the rebel Islamic group will make good on its threat of retribution against the Druze villagers of Skaska.
And then, yet another sensitive corner of the Syrian conflict may go up in flames, possibly putting Israel on the spot again.
Already it looks as though Assad and Nasrallah have succeeded in sabotaging the hard-won armistice deal that the US, Jordan and Israel brokered between the Druze and Nusra Front, by forcing the half million Druze of Syria to choose sides between the belligerents. Whichever it is, they will be clobbered.
US Secretary of State John Kerry will be spending this weekend in Vienna in an attempt to salvage the deal the Obama administration is trying to land with the Iranian regime. The reason for his sense of urgency is that Ayatollah Khameini publicly rejected the deal and came out with some new terms just before the 30 JUN deadline. The Obama administration and the US mainstream media are trying to spin this as if the “reformers” are somehow being derailed. That would be true if there were any actual reformers in the Iranian regime. The truth is that this is all by design and that so-called “reformers” like President Rouhani are in on the joke – and the US is the punchline.
So what did Khameini say? He demanded the following:
1. Iran would only dismantle their program if sanctions were lifted first. In other words, we’d simply have to take them at their word.
2. Inspections and placing a freeze on research and development for 10 yrs is thrown out of the deal.
Huh. So if the key things agreed to back in APR 15 are now “null and void” (which were pretty weak to begin with), then what’s left of this deal? Absolutely nothing. And like we said earlier, this is all by design. The Iranian negotiation team is fully on the same page as Khameini – otherwise they wouldn’t be allowed to be on the team to negotiate with the US State Department (DoS).
Our loyal readers are fully aware of the Iranian regime’s designs for these negotiations and the Middle East in general. If you’re new to our site, then you will want to check out the following articles:
Khameini is large and in-charge despite his failing health – don’t ever forget that Source: Associated Free Press
The original deal both sides agreed to back in APR didn’t allow for inspectors to have full access to key installations nor would we have had any visibility on projects that can improve Iran’s ability to produce a testable nuke. It also wouldn’t keep Iran from converting uranium hexafluoride (UF6) to metal or conducting work that enhances their metallurgy skills. As we previously stated in “Today’s Middle East: The Burning Fuse of the 21st Century’s Great Game,” if asked about it, the regime would simply say that it was for “radiation shielding” or conventional depleted uranium munitions. In fact the Obama administration doesn’t seem to be inclined to do anything about these indicators of increased proliferation. For instance, the regime’s Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) has been in the business of supplying Iranian medical research organizations for several years now. In fact, our sources connected to the opposition have informed us that AEOI personnel known to be involved with uranium enrichment manufacturing have set up an entity called the “Persian Health Equipment and Development Company” or “PHEDCO” back in FEB 15. Apparently the company was set up to produce medical-use centrifuges. We assess that the company isn’t capable of enriching uranium itself, but we do think that it can be used to acquire certain components of nuclear suppliers group-controlled aluminum 7075 and quite possibly carbon-fiber.
We’re also very much aware that the regime is interested in developing uranium metal-based reactor fuels that would improve their ability to produce uranian-based nuclear weapons. These fuels are currently being used in “civilian research reactors.” So what is it, exactly? In a nuclear reactor, the uranium fuel is assembled to where a controlled fission chain reaction can be achieved. The heat created by splitting the U-235 atoms is then used to make steam, which in turn spins a turbine to drive a generator that produces electricity. The chain reaction that take place in the core of a nuclear reactor is controlled by rods which absorb neutrons, enabling the chain reaction to continue. Water, graphite and heavy water are used as moderators in different types of reactors. Due to the kind of fuel being used, if there’s a major malfunction in a reactor, the fuel may overheat and melt – but won’t explode like a bomb. The type of uranium used for bombs is different from what you’d find in a regular nuclear power plant. Military-grade uranium is highly enriched (>90% U-235, instead of up to 5%). Since the 1990s, a lot of otherwise military-grade uranium has become available for producing electricity as the result of the global disarmament effort.
We assess that the regime’s efforts will enable their nuclear technicians to gain enough experience with uranium metal production processes that could shorten the weaponization timeline. That said, we see the timeline accordingly:
1. They may master uranium metal production within the next 6 months.
2. Another 2-3 months will be needed to learn how to fabricate uranium metal components for a weapon.
3. 4-5 months will likely be required to test components and assemble a nuclear device.
This timeline has probably already been shortened due to the collaborative work taking place between Iran and the DPRK (North Korea) that the Obama administration has also failed to address during these negotiations. The two rogue nations have been engaged in a series of joint-projects in both the nuclear weapon and ballistic missile fields. Perhaps the most important part of stopping the development of an Iranian nuclear weapon is to deal with their intercontinental ballistic missile program, since that’s where the delivery system of said weapon will come from. Unfortunately, the Obama administration doesn’t seem to think that’s important. Perhaps one of the American media outlets should pose the question in the next press conference with the President or DoS? We won’t hold our breath.
The two rogue nations have been able to circumvent sanctions at every turn thanks to their collaborative efforts and impotence that’s endemic throughout the UN and US government in particular Source: The Business Insider
This brings us to another problem: The Obama administration’s failure at the issue surrounding our European allies’ refusal to actually enforce the UN sanctions already on the books. As you would guess, the regime has been in the market for procuring military-grade blast valves. What the UN, US government and several other allied nations are aware of (and hoping that the public remain ignorant to) is that one of the top sellers of those valves to the Iranians is Finnish company Temet Oy. This company is a global leader in blast protection and special ventilation technology applied in protective constructions such as civilian shelters and hardened military facilities. In addition to the nuclear and defense industries, Temet is also involved in the energy sector – which is the reason why they’re so keen to help the Iranian regime with its “peaceful” nuclear program. If you don’t believe us see for yourself:
FYI, Temet’s blast valves are specifically designed to protect facilities from munitions strikes – such as a potential Israeli Air Force Operation, for instance. The civil-grade blast valves that they’re publicly selling to the regime for its oil and gas sectors are designed to mitigate the effects of smaller explosions at industrial facilities. Despite Finland’s strong track record in the counter-proliferation arena, they’re likely fully aware of what this company has been up to for some time. If they’re not, then the government should fire all of their most senior intel officials because they’re clearly incompetent. They should be aware and continue tracking Temet’s activities after the 2012 attempt by the company to circumvent EU sanctions by shipping products to Iran and receiving payment via third parties. The problem is Temet is just one of several European companies that have been cashing in big on the poorly-enforced sanctions. Finland isn’t the only government guilty of trading in their morals to make a quick buck – the Germans are just as guilty. Here’s some other incidents over the years that put some cold water on any hopes that even sanctions can be enforced:
As you can see, the Obama administration’s much-hyped nuclear “deal” with the Iranian regime was a failure from the get-go. Ayatollah Khameini knows the US government is weak because they’ve already caved into earlier demands – so why not raise the stakes and milk an already flaccid Obama administration for even more concessions? Iran’s true intentions for its program isn’t in doubt – its primary function is to produce a nuclear weapon. The Obama administration and the EU are fully aware of this as well – but they still won’t do anything about it. Europe lacks any real convictions and are now a shriveled corpse of what they used to be. People talk about the US in the same breath as “blood money” for oil, but the truth is the European nations are directly responsible along with China and Russia for propping up an increasingly belligerent Iranian regime who interprets “peace” as all opposing voices being silenced – by force. Their refusal to actually enforce sanctions and then turn around and circumvent them – sometimes openly – has led us to where we are. So President Obama isn’t the only one who will have a tarnished legacy.
Regarding our illustrious President, his “Hope and Change Foreign Policy” has been such a miserable failure that he’s now desperate for anything that he can claim as a “victory.” He certainly isn’t going to get that “victory” from his nonexistent strategy to combat the Islamic State (IS), so he’s forced to get a deal – any deal – signed with the Iranians, regardless of how bad it is for America and our allies in the Middle East. The saddest thing about all this is that the deal will empower the regime even more. When that happens – and it will – the biggest losers will be the average Iranian citizen who doesn’t share the regime’s militant ideology. How so? Once the regime is able to produce a nuclear weapon, they know the west won’t do anything to stop them. Period. When that occurs, they will be able to put the final nail in the coffin against the remaining opposition groups in the country. And so it goes…
If you want to know what this regime is all about, then check out the rest of our Inside Iran’s Middle East series:
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