(But the humanitarian, peace-loving Islamic Republic of Iran, where sanity, good will toward all and freedom flourish, needs nukes to take its rightful place in our multicultural International Community. Right? — DM)
Ali Khamenei / AP
The Iranian regime has launched a nationwide social media campaign called, “We Love Fighting Israel,” which encourages Iranian children, teens, and Internet users to photograph themselves alongside messages of hate for the Jewish state.
The movement has sprouted online in the last few days across social media sites such as Twitter, Instagram, and other platforms as a result of a recent call by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rallying the nation to take on Israel.
The campaign drew outrage from opponents of Iran’s hardline regime and calls for sites such as Instagram to shut it down for violating policies against hate speech.
Thousands of Iranians are reported to have already joined the electronic movement following comments by Khamenei’s outlining Iran’s goal of destroying the Jewish state.
“Our people love fighting against the Zionists and the Islamic Republic has proved this as well,” Khamenei was quoted as saying in a recent speech by the country’s state-run media. “By Allah’s Favor and Grace, we have passed through the barrier of denominational discord.”
These remarks inspired Iranian social media users to take to the Internet and launch the “We Love Fighting Israel” movement. The campaign even has spawned its own hashtag on Twitter, “#FightingtheZionists.”
The anti-Israel campaign now “has gone viral on the web,” according to Iran’s state-controlled Mehr News Agency, “getting more and more boost from individuals who post photos reading similar sentences, [and] sharing the #Fightingthezionists hash tag.”
More than 300 pictures have already been posted to an Instagram account titled, “FightingTheZionists.” The account, which had some 3,000 followers as of Tuesday evening, links to Khamenei’s personal Instagram account.
Users post pictures with messages declaring, “We love fighting against Israel,” “I love to fight Israel,” “We are lovers of fighting Israel,” and “I love fighting against Zionists,” among other similar messages.
One picture in particular has caught the eye of Iran critics on the web and prompted a harsh response to the anti-Israel campaign.
The photo shows a young child decked out in military gear and holding a sign that translates from Farsi as, “I love fighting against Zionists.”
Captioned alongside the photo is an English language message that reads: “Our people love fighting against the Zionists and the Islamic Republic has proved this as well, Ayatollah Khamenei.”
It is not the only photo to depict young children as participating in the campaign to fight Israel.
The photos posted on the Instagram page depict “several groups of people including war veterans, students, journalists, and people from all walks of life joining the campaign,” according to Mehr News.
The American nonprofit group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), which works to prevent Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, expressed disgust at the campaign on its Twitter account.
UANI lashed out at the Iranian regime for promoting “vile hate” and the “indoctrination of hate children.”
Additionally, Matan Shamir, UANI’s director of research, called on social media sites to immediately take steps to remove the Iranian campaign.
“The Iranian regime’s brazen exploitation and indoctrination of innocent children to hate and commit violence is utterly deplorable,” Shamir said. “Instagram and its parent company Facebook must enforce their own guidelines prohibiting hate speech and incitement to violence, and remove such propaganda immediately.”
Shamir went on to criticize Iran for its own domestic human rights abuses, such as preventing average citizens from accessing the Internet.
“It is intolerable that while the regime blocks its own citizens from accessing many popular social media platforms, it uses them to advance its own crude and hateful ideology,” he said.
(The Iran Scam continues to plod along and along as Iran gets what it demands. — DM)
The nuclear extension definitely lacks any clear key terms upon which prospective nuclear talks would be anchored or that give any idea how a final nuclear deal could be reached.
But what is clear is that the Islamic Republic, particularly the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior cadre of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), have gained considerable amount of geopolitical, geostrategic and economic advantages from this offer by the Obama administration. The Supreme Leader’s strategies to buy time, regain full recovery in the economy, pursue his regional hegemonic and ideological ambitions, and reinitiate his government’s nuclear program have been fulfilled.
[T]he extension of nuclear talks offered to the Islamic Republic is not going to alter Iran’s stand on its nuclear program.
The extension not only will not alter the Islamic Republic’s position on its nuclear program, but will give the ruling clerics the opportunity to be further empowered, making them more determined to pursue their regional hegemonic ambitions.
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While the Obama administration formerly stated that extending the nuclear talks is out of equation, nevertheless, President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry raised the option of an extension a day before the November 24th deadline. Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, definitely welcomed the idea.
After over a year of negotiations, which have traveled across the globe from Vienna, to Oman, and to New York, the negotiators (the Islamic Republic and the P5+1: China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) planned to extend the nuclear talks for another seven months in order to finalize the preliminary deal reached last year in Geneva. Accordingly, the nuclear negotiations will continue through the end of June.
The obscure objectives are to achieve a “headline” agreement by March 1st and seal the complete technical details of the headline agreement by July 1st. Details and nuances of the nuclear talks, with regards to agreements and gaps, have yet to be released, but some diplomats stated the repeatedly-heard phrase that “progress has been made.”
The nuclear extension definitely lacks any clear key terms upon which prospective nuclear talks would be anchored or that give any idea how a final nuclear deal could be reached.
But what is clear is that the Islamic Republic, particularly the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and senior cadre of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), have gained considerable amount of geopolitical, geostrategic and economic advantages from this offer by the Obama administration. The Supreme Leader’s strategies to buy time, regain full recovery in the economy, pursue his regional hegemonic and ideological ambitions, and reinitiate his government’s nuclear program have been fulfilled.
Based on the extension offered by the Obama administration, the Islamic Republic will continue receiving $700million per month in frozen assets during the extended seven month period. Secondly, Iran will further consolidate its economy through increased sales in oil, particularly to Asian countries, heighten business deals with some Western companies, regain the value of its currency, and enjoy the removed sanctions on some of its industries. As a result, Iran will attempt to address the economic challenges which were threatening the hold on power of the ruling politicians.
From the economic perspective, the $700 million in sanctions relief will boost Iran’s economy as it is an equivalence of approximately 350,000 more oil barrels a day, based on the current market price.
The Islamic Republic exports roughly one million barrels of crude oil in a day. The sanctions relief would be equivalent to a 30 percent increase in oil sale. In the next few months, Tehran will attempt to push for additional sanctions relief as well as ratchet up its economic deals, such export of gas and other goods, to some European and Eastern countries including France, Germany, Russia, Japan, and China.
Some European countries’ exports to Iran have already ratcheted up due to the prospects of the nuclear negotiations. Tehran Times, the Islamic Republic’s state newspaper, stated that Germany was Iran’s leading trade partner “The European country (Germany) exported €207 million of goods to Iran in June 2014, an 88 percent rise compared to June 2013.” Nevertheless, Tehran needs the complete lifting of economic sanctions in order to gain the optimal potentials of its economy and gain full recovery.
Third, the extension of the nuclear negotiations will ensure to the Iranian leaders that the international community, specifically the West, will not make efforts in further isolating Iran and pressuring it economically or politically.
In addition, the extension of nuclear talks offered to the Islamic Republic is not going to alter Iran’s stand on its nuclear program. Iran will continue holding the position that their demands for the following issues to be met: maintaining a specific number (tens of thousands of) fast-spinning centrifuge machines, Tehran should have the capacity to produce nuclear fuel in the future, and maintain specific level of enriching uranium. In the next few months, the Islamic Republic is not going to give up its capacity to produce plutonium which can be utilized for weapons at its heavy water reactor in the city of Arak. Iran is less likely to provide more evidence proving that it did not carry out secret tests on the development of atomic weapons in Parchin or other military complexes. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency recently pointed out that the Islamic Republic continues to deny the IAEA access to sensitive military site which are suspected to be used for nuclear activities.
Finally, the Islamic Republic’s antagonistic stance towards the United States and the West will remain the same as well. This week, while Khamenei officially granted his blessing to Rouhani to continue with the game of nuclear negotiations, he also called the West “arrogant.” Earlier, he published a “9-step plan” to eliminate Israel. After the extension of the nuclear talks, President Rouhani pointed out on state television that “I promise the Iranian nation that those centrifuges will never stop working.” The extension not only will not alter the Islamic Republic’s position on its nuclear program, but will give the ruling clerics the opportunity to be further empowered, making them more determined to pursue their regional hegemonic ambitions.
(A very good summary of the Iranian mullahs vs. those who don’t want them to have nukes. — DM)
I take it that the mullahs who run the show in Iran have been pursuing nuclear warheads to hitch to ballistic missiles for about as long as the regime as been in business. They have sacrificed much in pursuit of their goals and they are within shouting distance of success, mostly minus whatever sacrifice imposed by the sanctions crafted by Congress against the will of the Obama administration.
Watching the absurd negotiations taking place with the Iranian regime in Vienna, with the United States and the rest of the crew steadily bidding against themselves, I wonder what is to be done by the likes of us. We understand what is happening, but are powerless to do a blessed thing about it.
As the negotiations drag on past their appointed hour, I want to round up some of the recent news and commentary that sheds some light on where we are and whither we are tending. Beyond the links I have little in the way of commentary other than to say that they provide an aid to understanding the consequential events taking place behind closed doors.
Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, “Iran cheats, Obama whitewashes” (subscribers only, accessible via Google here). Stephens makes a powerful case that the Obama administration has gone into public relations on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran:
Why the spin and dishonesty? Partly it’s the old Platonic conceit of the Noble Lie—public bamboozlement in the service of the greater good—that propels so much contemporary liberal policy-making (cf. Gruber, Jonathan: transparency, lack of). So long as the higher goal is a health-care bill, or arms control with Russia, or a nuclear deal with Iran, why should the low truth of facts and figures interfere with the high truth of hopes and ideals?
But this lets the administration off too easily. The real problem is cowardice. As a matter of politics it cannot acknowledge what, privately, it believes: that a nuclear Iran is undesirable but probably inevitable and hardly catastrophic. As a matter of strategy, it refuses to commit to the only realistic course of action that could accomplish the goal it professes to seek: The elimination of Iran’s nuclear capabilities by a combination of genuinely crippling sanctions and targeted military strikes.
And so—because the administration lacks the political courage of its real convictions or the martial courage of its fake ones—we are wedded to this sham process of negotiation. “They pretend to pay us; we pretend to work,” went the old joke about labor in the Soviet Union. Just so with these talks. Iranians pretend not to cheat; we pretend not to notice. All that’s left to do is stand back and wait for something to happen.
Caroline Glick, Jerusalem Post, “Iran’s no China.” Glick draws the inevitable contrast, not to our benefit:
Not only will Obama’s Iran opening not redound to the US’s benefit in the short term. Its inevitable result will be a decade or more of major and minor regional wars and chronic instability, with the nuclear-armed Iran threatening the survival of all of America’s regional allies. It will also lead to shocks in the global economy and massively expand Iran’s direct coercive power over the world as a whole.
Not only is Obama no Nixon, compared to him, Neville Chamberlain looks like a minor, almost insignificant failure.
Eds., New York Daily News, “Obama bombs in Iran again.” The editors of the Daily News pay attention to what the mullahs have to say:
The supreme religious leader of Iran has confirmed what many Americans already knew: The seven-month extension of talks on Iran’s nuclear program is a victory for the fanatics in Tehran and a serious setback for the world.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei crowed that, in blowing through the deadline set for Iran to agree to curbs on its uranium enrichment, the West had failed to cow a resurgent Islamic Republic.
“In the nuclear issue,” he told fellow mullahs, “America and colonial European countries got together and did their best to bring the Islamic Republic to its knees — but they could not do so — and they will not be able to do so.”
As I say, the public pronouncements of the mullahs on this matter of the utmost seriousness have a higher truth quotient than those of the Obama administration. The least we can do is attend to them.
Reuel Marc Gerecht, Weekly Standard, “Extending extensions.” In the department of what is to be done?, Gerecht offers this: “Increase the pressure. Don’t be scared of Ali Khamenei. We still hold the high ground. Use it—or lose it. Iranian research and development continue to advance.”
George Will, Washington Post, “Better a contained Iran than an all out war.” Will seems to me the lamest commenter on this subject. He holds to the views expressed in this December 2013 column, but he has yet to explain what he means by “containment.”
Will assumes that the same theory of deterrence applies to Iran’s ongoing war against the United States as applied to the Soviet Union’s against what we used to call the free world. For these purposes Will does not differentiate between a theologically driven regime such as Iran’s and a militantly atheist regime such as the Soviet Union’s. Will has thus opted for discretion as the better part of valor in ignoring the case made by Norman Podhoretz in the Wall Street Journal column “Strike Iran now to avert disaster later” (accessible via Google here).
No doubt, Kerry and others never heard of this tactic even though every kid watching old cop shows is well-versed in it.
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Many cops, attorneys and others have used the classic good cop/bad cop tactic to try to force concessions or confessions. The key of course is not to admit that you are just doing good cop/bad cop. That seems to have escaped Iranian negotiators in the ongoing nuclear program talks who have been giving interviews bragging about how they are screaming at American and other diplomats in a good cop/bad cop ploy. Hmmmm. It is nothing like a man screaming like a lunatic to convince you that he and his country should have access to weapons-grade nuclear material.
Part of the tactic does not appear to be an act. This appears to be the signature style of Iran’s foreign minister and lead negotiator Javad Zarif. His shouting and screaming is so loud that security repeatedly came bursting into the room out of concern that there was a violent breakout. Western diplomats have been sitting back to allow Zarif to blow himself out in each of the tirades. In one incident, European Union Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton assured worried security officers that it was just Zarif again and that everyone was used to it.
What really caught my eye however was that Zarif’s unprofessional outbursts were openly discussed in the Iranian press and that the Iranian team also has been discussing how they are tricking Western diplomats with the use of the good cop/bad cop tactic. No doubt, Kerry and others never heard of this tactic even though every kid watching old cop shows is well-versed in it.
Iranian diplomat Abbas Araghchi discussed how Zarif “shouted” at Kerry in a way that was likely “unprecedented” in the history of U.S. diplomacy. That appears to be a good thing and a source of pride. He then went on to brag that he and Zarif play the roles of “good cop, bad cop” to “baffle the Western diplomats” and keep them uneasy. Clever.
As if to show the triumph of Iranian diplomacy, Araghchi said that after Zarif yells at Kerry and other diplomats there is largely silence in the room except for “one or two very respectful sentences.” They appear to mistake shocked and embarrassed silence of diplomats with people are cowed by the brilliant screaming and pounding of Zarif. They will see the same reaction to people raving on the New York subway. Few people call the guy screaming about the microchip in his brain in the Penn Station “a master negotiator.” However, they may now wonder if he is an Iranian diplomat.
(Assuming an eventual bad nuke deal, will the U.S. Congress be able to kill it? In a reasonably bipartisan fashion?– DM)
‘I just want this much enriched uranium’ (Reuters)
It will be near-impossible, especially after the immigration debate, to sell the Republican-controlled Congress on whatever Iran deal Obama negotiates. But the Democrats won’t be an easy sell, either.
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The other day I fell into conversation with a very smart congressman named Ted Deutch, a Democrat from Florida, about his minimum requirements for an Iran nuclear deal. Deutch, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is—like a large number of Democrats—fairly-to-very dubious about the possibility of a true breakthrough with Iran, and fairly-to-very worried about the consequences of a bad deal. (It seems likely, at this moment at least, that the Iran talks will be extended for several more months.)
Democrats such as Deutch will need to be convinced by the Obama administration that it hasn’t been outplayed by Iran. If an accord is eventually reached, and if Obama cannot convince the Democrats that he has delivered to them the toughest possible deal, then Congress will do everything in its power to undo the agreement. The Republicans, of course, are itching to subvert an Obama-negotiated deal, and Democratic support will be important to them as they make their case.
As I’ve written previously, I support a diplomatic solution to the challenge posed by the Iranian nuclear program because such a solution could theoretically achieve, without bloodshed, what a military strike might not achieve with bloodshed. But as I outline in this column, I don’t believe that either the diplomatic solution, or a solution that requires crushing sanctions and the credible threat of force, are overly likely to neutralize this threat. (And yes, it is a threat. An Iran with nuclear weapons would pose an acute challenge to pro-American moderates across the Middle East, and to the cause of nuclear non-proliferation, in particular in the world’s most volatile region. And it would pose a genocidal threat to Israel; please see, in case you haven’t read it yet, John Kerry’s condemnation of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s recently tweeted nine-point plan for Israel’s destruction.)
(One more parenthetical: Of course the Iranian regime wants a nuclear capability. Iran is surrounded by enemies—imagined, in some cases, but real, in others—and it is completely rational for Iran’s leaders to want to deter these enemies with nuclear weapons. Its leaders see what happened to Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi, who didn’t have nuclear weapons. And these leaders also have pretensions of empire, by the way.)
The goal of a deal is to make it as hard as possible for Iran to reach the nuclear threshold. Deutch’s analysis focuses on three potential weaknesses. The first is the notion that any agreement to curtail Iranian uranium-enrichment activities would one day expire. “I worry about a time-limited deal, one which remains in place for a 10- or 15-year term,” he said. “What happens after that period? Does Iran then have a free path to a bomb?”
The answer is, yes, Iran would have a free path to the bomb. Ten or 15 or even 20 years might seem like a long time in the U.S., but the people of the Middle East are patient. Any agreement that contains an expiration date is an inadequate agreement, because it will, in essence, grant Iran time-delayed permission to build nuclear weapons.
Deutch’s second concern relates to sanctions relief: “I don’t want to see the Iranian economy prematurely bolstered.” A legitimate fear on the part of skeptics is that the U.S. will agree to lift the most biting sanctions now in place before guaranteeing real progress in the deconstruction of Iran’s nuclear program. “The third issue,” Deutch went on to say, “concerns our ability to access any enrichment, research, or military sites.” He makes the point that the Iranian regime had kept hidden from the world at least two uranium-enrichment facilities, at Natanz and Fordow. “We need access to sites like Parchin which have military dimensions and which the Iranians prohibited us from seeing. If we can’t become comfortable in our knowledge about what they’re doing in nuclear-weapons development, then I’m not comfortable with a deal.”
It seems unlikely that the Iranians will share with the West the true scope of their nuclear-weapons development work. And unfortunately, it seems as if the West is willing to let Iran slide on this important issue. From Reuters:
World powers are pressing Iran to stop stonewalling a U.N. atomic bomb investigation as part of a wider nuclear accord, but look likely to stop short of demanding full disclosure of any secret weapon work by Tehran to avoid killing an historic deal.
Officially, the United States and its Western allies say it is vital that Iran fully cooperate with a U.N. nuclear agency investigation if it wants a diplomatic settlement that would end the sanctions severely hurting its oil-based economy. …
A senior U.S. official stressed that the powers had not changed their position on Iran’s past activities during this week’s talks: “We’ve always said that any agreement must resolve the issue to our satisfaction. That has not changed.”
Privately, however, some officials acknowledge that Iran may never be prepared to admit to what they believe it was guilty of: covertly working in the past to develop the ability to build a nuclear-armed missile—something it has always denied.
Deutch’s position on the matter of Iranian concealment is not particularly hawkish for his party. He is fairly representative of a broad swath of Democratic thinking and, in fact, on important issues he scans less hawkish than the (putatively) most important Democrat, Hillary Clinton. Given what Clinton told me in an interview over the summer, I can’t imagine that she’s overjoyed by reports coming out of the nuclear talks this week. “I’ve always been in the camp that held that they did not have a right to enrichment,” she said. “Contrary to their claim, there is no such thing as a right to enrich. This is absolutely unfounded. There is no such right. I am well aware that I am not at the negotiating table anymore, but I think it’s important to send a signal to everybody who is there that there cannot be a deal unless there is a clear set of restrictions on Iran. The preference would be no enrichment. The potential fallback position would be such little enrichment that they could not break out. So, little or no enrichment has always been my position.”
It will be near-impossible, especially after the immigration debate, to sell the Republican-controlled Congress on whatever Iran deal Obama negotiates. But the Democrats won’t be an easy sell, either.
(The past indicates what the future will bring. Since Iran continues to refuse to acknowledge its past efforts to get nukes, and even to permit inspections to determine what it did and is doing now, there is no reason to assume — or even to hope — that it will permit effective future inspections of its efforts to get and use nukes. — DM}
Iran has made clear that it is not an issue it is ready to budge on. “PMD [possible military dimensions] is out of question. It cannot be discussed,” an Iranian official said.
IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano this week said Iran had again failed to provide explanations needed for the inquiry, making clear it has made scant headway in recent months.
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VIENNA (Reuters) – World powers will press Iran to cease stonewalling a U.N. atomic bomb investigation as part of a wider nuclear accord, but will likely stop short of demanding full disclosure of any secret weapon work by Tehran to avoid killing an historic deal.
Officially, the United States and its Western allies say it is vital that Iran fully addresses the concerns of the U.N. nuclear agency if it wants a diplomatic settlement that would end sanctions severely hurting its oil-based economy.
“Iran’s previous activities have to come to light and be explained,” a senior Western diplomat said.
Privately, however, some officials acknowledge that Iran would probably never admit to what they believe it was guilty of: covertly working in the past to develop the means and expertise needed to build a nuclear-armed missile.
Iran denies this and says its nuclear program is peaceful.
The six powers face a delicate balancing act: Israel and hawkish U.S. lawmakers – wary of any rapprochement with old foe Iran – are likely to pounce on a deal if they believe it is too soft on Tehran’s alleged nuclear arms activity.
A senior Western official said the six would try to “be creative” in coming up with a formula that would satisfy demands by those who want Iran to come clean about any atomic bomb research and those who say it is unrealistic to expect the country to openly acknowledge it.
The outcome could also affect the standing of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which for years has been trying to investigate what it calls the possible military dimensions (PMD) of Iran’s nuclear program.
While the global powers – the United States, France, Germany, Russia, China and Britain – seek to persuade Iran to scale back its uranium enrichment program to lengthen the timeline for any bid to assemble nuclear arms, the IAEA is investigating possible research on designing an actual bomb.
The aim is to reach a comprehensive solution to end a 12-year nuclear dispute by a Nov. 24 deadline, though diplomats say it is more likely that the negotiations will be extended.
If an eventual accord does not put strong pressure on Iran to increase cooperation with the IAEA by making it a condition for some sanctions relief, it may hurt its future credibility, according to some diplomats accredited to the agency.
“You don’t want to undermine the integrity of the IAEA,” one said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif arrives at the Iranian embassy for lunch with former European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton in Vienna November 18, 2014. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader
The IAEA issued a report in 2011 with intelligence information indicating concerted activities until about a decade ago that could be relevant for developing nuclear bombs, some of which the U.N. agency said may be continuing.
“SIMPLY IRRELEVANT”
Iran has made clear that it is not an issue it is ready to budge on. “PMD is out of question. It cannot be discussed,” an Iranian official said.
IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano this week said Iran had again failed to provide explanations needed for the inquiry, making clear it has made scant headway in recent months.
“I believe the PMD issue is not a deal-breaker even though it probably should be,” another Western official said. The official added that many inside the IAEA and Western governments shared concerns about the deadlocked investigation and felt uneasy about compromising on the issue.
Iran denies ever harboring any nuclear bomb ambitions and its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has issued a religious decree against atomic weaponry.
Because of this, experts say, it is virtually impossible for the Iranian leadership to make any “mea culpa” about activity geared toward developing nuclear bombs.
Another reason Tehran might be reluctant to admit to any wrongdoing is that it could later be used as a justification for Iran’s enemies to attack it out of “self-defense”.
As a result, the powers are weighing how hard to press it.
A U.S. official said it was “a fine line” that needs to be walked on PMD. The six want to make sure the Iranians address the issue to some extent, but do not want to hit them so hard with it that they feel like they will lose face.
Experts differ on whether Iran must come completely clean: some argue it is necessary to ensure that any such work has since been halted but others say this can be achieved without a “confession”.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in Vienna with EU negotiator Catherine Ashton and US Secretary of State John Kerry. Photo: Twitter
With four days to go before the international deadline for an agreement over Iran’s nuclear program expires, the signs emerging from Vienna, where negotiations have been taking place, are that a final deal will not be agreed by Monday. Moreover, European leaders are said to be increasingly disillusioned with the American determination to grant more concessions to entice Iran into a deal, adding yet another layer of complexity to the deliberations.
Both US Secretary of State John Kerry and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius will return to Paris later today for what Reuters described as “consultations.” Earlier reports that Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif was planning to leave Vienna for Tehran turned out to be false, with Iranian negotiators subsequently confirming that “the talks will continue.”
The obstacles to any deal are well-known, and little progress has been made to bridge the gaps between the two sides, despite the enthusiasm of the Obama Administration for a deal. Major powers in the shape of the P5+1 – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany – want Iran to reduce its number of centrifuges from the 19,000 currently in operation to 4,500, in order to delay Iran’s accumulation of the fissile material that would enable a nuclear weapon.
The Iranians are unhappy with the degree and timing of sanctions relief, insisting that sanctions should be terminated immediately rather than incrementally.
Nor is there agreement over the duration of any deal. The P5+1 is said to be looking for a 20 year deal, while the Iranians want something much shorter.
Domestic considerations are also coming to the fore, particularly in the United States, where unease with both the substance of any deal, and the possibility that President Obama will bypass Congress to secure it, is growing among legislators as well as the American public. “We did some polling last week, which we’ve not yet publicly released, which shows that 7 out of 10 Americans want Congressional approval of a deal,” said Josh Block, the President of The Israel Project, an Washington-DC based advocacy group, who is in Vienna monitoring the talks.
Western states are hardly in lockstep. The British government has sounded distinctly pessimistic that a deal is within reach, while Kerry is said to be anxious that the French government will not support a deal, having been unsuccessful in his earlier attempt to secure an undertaking from Fabius that no last minute objections would surface.
“There was a meeting in Vienna today of the French and British Foreign Ministers and the US Secretary of State which was described to me as ‘frosty,’” Block said. “That leads me to believe that the French and maybe the British will adopt a harder line than the Americans.”
The French, Block explained, have “fundamental objections” to nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and want to avoid a deal that would cause non-nuclear states in the region to embark on nuclear programs.
Back in Washington, DC, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill) has said that he will “definitely” reintroduce sanctions legislation on Iran in the next Congress.
“I think the Republicans will definitely bring it up. It’s a movie we’re going to see again,” Kirk said on Capitol Hill. “The Republican majority will be working with [Sen. Mitch McConnell – R-KY] about when the time is to come up for a vote on that.”
President Obama will also have to keep a close eye on those Democratic Party legislators who will refuse to back a deal that does not explicitly prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Last year, 16 Democrats led by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) joined the 59 co-sponsors of a bill to impose tough new sanctions on Iran in the event of a failed deal, but the legislation was blocked by outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today released a statement declaring, “Along with my colleagues, who authored the bipartisan sanctions law that brought the Iranians to the negotiating table, I wish negotiations to succeed. But the success of negotiations can only be defined as an agreement that removes the threat of a world with a nuclear Iran.”
“Unless Iran is willing to agree to a final deal that prevents it from building, developing or acquiring a nuclear weapon, we should not allow any relaxation of sanctions,” Schumer said.
Today Palestinian extremists Islamists murdered four Israelis, three of whom were also U.S. citizens, at a Jerusalem synagogue. Several others are in critical condition. Palestinians celebrated their actions and their intended consequences.
This morning I posted an article by Robert Spencer of Front Page Magazine titled More Beheadings, More Denial at Warsclerotic, of which I am an editor. Mr. Spencer’s article deals with Obama’s response to the recent Islamic beheading of “Abdul-Rahman Kassig, previously known as Peter.” Obama proclaimed that Kassig’s beheading by personnel of the Islamic State “represent no faith, least of all the Muslim faith.” As I noted in a parenthetical comment at the top of the article,
(Please see also this article, and others, on today’s Islamic slaughter at a Jerusalem synagogue. “Knives, axes and guns” were used.” Hamas responded with praise for the terrorists who did it. Will Obama, our Islamic “scholar” in chief, declare that such Palestinian “actions represent no faith, least of all the Muslim faith?” He won’t. Nor, of course, will he admit that the Palestinian’s Islamic actions, like those of the Islamic State, do represent Islam.– DM)
Mr. Spencer observed that Islamic savagery comparable to that of the Islamic State could happen in the United States and that
It could happen anywhere that people read the phrase “when you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks” (Qur’an 47:4) as if it were a command of the Creator of the Universe. But to point out that simple and obvious fact nowadays only brings down upon one’s head charges of “hatred” and of “demonizing all Muslims,” when in a sane society it would bring honest explanations from Muslims of good will of what they were doing to ensure that no Muslim ever acted on that verse’s literal meaning. [Emphasis added.]
Here’s a pertinent video by Pat Condell:
Continuing with the quotation from Mr. Spencer,
In reality, they’re doing nothing. No Muslim organization, mosque or school in the United States has any program to teach young Muslims and converts to Islam why they should avoid and reject on Islamic grounds the vision of Islam – and of unbelievers – that the Islamic State and other jihad groups offer them. This is extremely strange, given the fact that all the Muslim organizations, mosques and schools in the United States ostensibly reject this understanding of Islam. And even stranger is that no American authorities seem to have noticed the absence of such initiatives, much less dared to call out Muslim groups about this. [Emphasis added.]
On the contrary, instead of calling on Muslim groups to take some action to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future, Obama’s latest denial was even more strenuous in its dissociation of the beheading from Islam: “ISIL’s actions represent no faith, least of all the Muslim faith which Abdul-Rahman adopted as his own.” [Emphasis added.]
“Least of all”! As if it were possible that the Islamic State’s actions represented Buddhism, or Methodism, or Christian Science, or the Hardshell Baptists, or the Mandaeans, to greater or lesser degrees, but the most far-fetched association one could make, out of all the myriad faiths people hold throughout the world, would be to associate the Islamic State’s actions with…Islam. The Islamic State’s actions represent no faith, least of all Islam – as if it were more likely that the Islamic State were made up of Presbyterians or Lubavitcher Hasidim or Jains or Smartas than that it were made up of Muslims.
Here’s a video of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim, speaking at Yale University on September 15th. Although more than an hour long, it’s well worth watching and considering. Please see also this article, commenting on her background and views of Islam.
Is Jonathan Gruber still advising Obama? This video is from left-leaning(?) MSNBC.
Did Obama “steal” His notions about Islam from Gruber, or merely Gruber’s tactics for masking His true beliefs and intentions, this time about Islam rather than about ObamaCare? Did Obama arrive at His notions of Islam and how to present them Himself, based on His own Islamic studies — particularly the propriety of lying to non-Muslims on behalf of Islam? Or is He, again, just sucking up to Iran? In the latter connection, please see this semi-satirical post titled To get a nuke deal with Iran Obama and the Islamist world demonize Israel.
The Israeli-Palestinian “peace” process and the “two state solution.”
For years, the Obama Administration has been pushing Israel, hard, to agree to a two state solution with the “moderate” Palestinian Authority (Fatah). Hamas is the Palestinian entity which, in April of this year, formed a quasi-unified government with the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas. Fatah’s alleged moderation, and that of Abbas, is of this type:
Abbas is seventy-nine years old and probably will not last much longer. He has personally encouraged terrorism, most recently when commenting on the killing of a Palestinian, Mutaz Hijazi, who attempted to assassinate Yehuda Glick, an advocate of Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount.
With anger, we have received the news of the vicious assassination crime committed by the terrorists of the Israeli occupation army against [your] son Mu’taz Ibrahim Khalil Hijazi, who will go to heaven as a martyr defending the rights of our people and its holy places.
Hijazi, it should be stressed, shot Glick, a civilian, at pointblank range. Fortunately Glick now appears to be recovering in hospital.
The assassin’s admirer, Mahmoud Abbas, is the same Mahmoud Abbas about whom President Barack Obama said last March:
I think nobody would dispute that whatever disagreements you may have with him, he has proven himself to be somebody who has been committed to nonviolence and diplomatic efforts to resolve this issue. [Emphasis added.]
That was in an interview where Obama, of course, portrayed Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu as the recalcitrant party who needs to “seize the moment” and make peace.
Even if Abbas wanted to reject Islamic terrorism, doing so would be akin to signing his own death warrant.
In a speech in Ramallah on November 11, marking the tenth anniversary of the death of his predecessor, Yasser Arafat, Abbas declared: “He who surrenders one grain of the soil of Palestine and Jerusalem is not one of us.”
This statement alone should be enough for Kerry and Western leaders to realize that it would be impossible to ask Abbas to make any concessions. Like Arafat, Abbas has become hostage to his own rhetoric. How can Abbas be expected to accept any deal that does not include 100% of his demands — in this instance, all territory captured by Israel in 1967? [Emphasis added.]
Abbas himself knows that if he comes back with 97% or 98% of his demands, his people will either spit in is face or kill him, after accusing him of being a “defeatist” and “relinquishing Palestinian rights.”
Abbas was elected for a five year term as President of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) on November 11, 2004, until January 9, 2009. However,
due to Palestinian Internal conflict he unilaterally extended his term for another year and continues in office even years after that second deadline expired. As a result of this, Fatah’s main rival, Hamas announced that it would not recognise the extension or view Abbas as rightful president.[6][7][8] [Emphasis added.]
For these and many other reasons, a “two state solution” would ultimately pit Israel and Hamas against either other, more so even that presently. It would result in either the death of Israel — the only free and democratic state in the region — or the death of the Palestinian state notion. The United States should agree with Israel that the death of the Palestinian state notion is preferable to the death of Israel. There is no apparent reason to assume, or even to hope, that Obama does.
On a lighter note, this might be better than a two state solution but, due to regional demographics and Israel’s dedication to democracy, would not work either.
A bad nuke deal with Iran seems likely to be approved by the P5+1 negotiators under Obama’s guidance. It will be disastrous. However, if it is signed and Obama tries to implement it, there will be little if anything the Congress can do about it, even if it wants to, until January of 2017 — which will likely be too late. Even if it is not too late in 2017 it may or may not happen, depending on who is our President and who controls Congress.
I have written extensively about the Iran Scam and Obama’s untruths and obfuscations concerning it. I did so most recently in a semi-satirical article titled To get a nuke deal with Iran Obama and the Islamist world demonize Israel. Please read at least the Iran Scam article; to repeat here the points made there would make this post far too long.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) took to the Senate floor on Thursday to ask for unanimous consent to schedule a vote on a bill that would give Congress final approval over any deal, or else reinstate tough sanctions on Iran.
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.) quickly rejected the request, arguing that scheduling a vote on the deal would be “premature at this point.” He said it would “send a fairly chilling message” that U.S. officials at the table with Iran did not have full authority to negotiate an agreement.
But when Republicans take control of the Senate, they could move to pass that bill, or push legislation from Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) which would reinstate sanctions if Iran violates any deal.
Their bill also pledges military support for Israel if it decides to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, which it has threatened to do.
. . . .
The president has already threatened to veto the legislation, but doing so would be politically risky. The bill already enjoys the support of 60 senators, including 16 Democrats, and there is sweeping support for a similar bill in the House.
A deal that’s not supported by Congress or seen as weak could also hurt the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, especially if it fails to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons capabilities.
Obama has displayed utter disdain for the Congress and constitutional processes. He will most likely continue to do so, in spades, when the new Republican dominated Congress is seated in January. The perceptions of the author of the linked article are excessively optimistic, as suggested below.
As a lame duck President, Obama has little if anything to lose. Any impact on the 2016 elections of a bad nuke deal with Iran may well not be of substantial importance to Obama and, to the extent that it is, He will probably use His ample opportunities to “Gruber” – to obfuscate and lie effectively — about the facts and their consequences substantially to diminish any adverse impact of His actions on those elections.
There’s more here about Obama, Gruber and Grubering, which Obama continues to do with at least modest success.
As the Obama administration did from the beginning and continues to do with the ObamaCare debacle, it will “Gruber” the facts and consequences of a nuke deal in presenting it to the Congress and the public. Should the next Congress nevertheless pass a bill which He does not like, He will veto it as He has promised to do. To override a veto requires the affirmative vote of two thirds of both houses under Article 1, Section 7, of the Constitution. Even in the unlikely event that an Obama veto is overridden, there is no reason to assume that He will apply the new law as Congress intends.
Congressional attempts to defund administration efforts to implement an agreement with Iran seem unlikely to work: multiple other governmental functions, facially unconnected with the matter, would still have to be funded. The parameters of their funding would have to be extraordinarily tight to avoid fund shifting. Even then, the Obama administration has shown itself to be extraordinarily adept at fund shifting regardless of congressional intent as reflected in seemingly clear statutory language.
Even were U.S. Sanctions – the only sanctions on which the Congress has any significant impact – to be reinstated, their enforcement would be up to the Obama administration, not the Congress. The administration would likely refuse to enforce them, as it has multiple times with other Federal laws of which Obama does not approve. Were the Congress or other interested parties to succeed in getting judicial review, the process would be long and the results uncertain until the Supreme Court granted and exercised review. That process could easily take years. In addition, it remains questionable whether the Congress, its representatives or anyone else would even have standing to initiate judicial action.
In any event Germany, Iran’s most substantial commercial partner and others who now deal with Iran, as well as Iran itself, have enjoyed substantial sanctions relief for long enough that the process is broken to the point that U.S. efforts to revive useful sanctions would likely be ineffective. According to an article at FARS News Agency, an Iranian source, posted on November 16th,
Chairman of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi said imposing sanctions against Tehran is an already failed policy.
“The sanctions imposed on Iran are a failed policy; the sanctions tool has never been able to make the Iranian nation withdraw from its righteous positions,” Boroujerdi said in a meeting with new Italian Ambassador to Tehran Mauro Conciatori on Sunday. [Emphasis added.]
“Sanctions have only resulted in ample financial loss for the European industrial and trade companies,” he added. [Emphasis added.]
The article claiming that a Republican controlled Congress can dash Obama’s hopes for a nuke deal with Iran also suggests that it can pledge “military support for Israel if it decides to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.” It can certainly do that. However, just as the Obama administration has refused to enforce or simply ignored aspects of other legislation, it can refuse to enforce or simply ignore that pledge as well.
With the exception of a possible — but far from certain — prompt and effective Israeli military attack on Iran’s nuke facilities, the mess has gone too far for effective action. Israel, which rarely brags about what she can or intends to do, has quite properly been rather coy about the resources she can use against Iran. So have possible allies in the Middle East concerning such help as they may be willing and able to provide. However, Israel probably has substantial electromagnetic pulse (EMP) capabilities which could be used to damage Iran’s command and control facilities substantially.
The attack could be carried out using a nuclear warhead detonated after launch by one of Israel’s Jericho III missiles at high-altitude over north central Iran.
EMP affects computers and other electronics and would disrupt critical infrastructure that relies on electronics and electricity, such as communications, transportation, and other networks.
The burst would create “no blast or radiation effects on the ground,” the article stated.
“Coupled with cyber-attacks, Iranians would not know it happened except for a massive shutdown of the electric power grid, oil refineries, and a transportation gridlock,” the article said.
“Food supply would be exhausted and communication would be largely impossible, leading to economic collapse. Similarly, the uranium enrichment centrifuges in Fordo, Natanz, and widely scattered elsewhere, would freeze for decades.”
Iran more than likely also has substantial EMP capabilities, so unless Israel uses her own first, and sooner than Iran anticipates, it will be too late.
Summary and Conclusions
Sanctions may well have prompted Iran to agree to discuss a nuke deal with P5+1. However, the negotiations have done little beyond diminishing those sanctions to the point of ineffectiveness, while giving Iran ample time, incentive and opportunity to continue research on, and implementation of, its nuke plans. If preventing Iran from continuing its development of nukes had been the objective, or even a substantial objective, Iran’s military facilities and advances on nuke development would have been central to any “interim agreement.” Far from being central, they were not even peripheral.
From the beginning, as contended here, here, here and elsewhere, the “Grubered” interim agreement and White House Summary of it have given Iran every possible advantage and shielded its military facilities from effective scrutiny.
Some elections have consequences. Obama’s 2012 election had very unfortunate consequences. However, the 2014 elections will probably have few if any beneficial consequences with respect to the Iran Scam and come January 2017 it will probably be too late should effective action then be attempted.
If, as seems likely, a nuke deal with Iran, good for Iran and bad for the most of the rest of world is signed, it now appears that the only possible effective solution with a decent chance of success will be prompt military action by Israel, in conjunction with her temporary and therefore uncertain allies in the Middle East which are opposed to Iranian nukes.
I am well aware of the possible adverse consequences of such a strike, including extreme actions that Russia and her allies might take in response. However, the possibility of mutually assured destruction worked in the past and should work again. Russia, et al, unlike Iran, are not compelled by a barbaric religion to bring to the world Armageddon and the arrival of the Twelfth Imam. They want power, not death. If they and their enemies are obliterated, their current power and hopes of increasing it would be destroyed along with them.
You’ve been a great friend for the last six years and, to express our appreciation, we’d like to acknowledge some of your many helpful actions:
1) In 2009, our presidential election results were so dubious that millions of brave, pro-democracy protesters risked their lives to demonstrate throughout our country. When our Basij paramilitary force brutalized them, you kept your response irrelevantly mild for the sake of “engaging” us. That surely helped Iranians understand the risks of protesting our “free” election of 2012 (involving our eight handpicked candidates). It was indeed a very orderly rubberstamp.
2) After eight years of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, we KNEW you’d fall for the smiles of his successor, President Hassan Rouhani! Human rights abuses have actually worsened under his rule and his polished charm only makes him better at duping the world into acquiescing to our nukes, so we LOVE how you’ve overlooked these facts.
7) Speaking of enforcing red lines, we LOVE how you backed off yours, after our Syrian buddy, Basher Assad, used chemical weapons on his own people. That was a very helpful signal to everyone that we need not take your threats too seriously (contrary to those scary words you issued in 2012 about how stopping our nukes militarily was still an option, unlike containment, and how you don’t bluff). But we understood back then that you were trying to get re-elected, so we didn’t take it personally.
9) Fortunately, you don’t take our Supreme Leader Khamenei seriously when he tweets out his plan for destroying Israel (why let our true motives get in the way of a fantastic nuclear deal, right)?
12) It’s so cute of you to write us these letters asking for help against ISIS and showing us how desperately you want a nuclear deal. All we had to do was hint at an ISIS-for-nukes exchange and you got so excited!
14) What’s really awesome about the deal that we’re “negotiating” is that it allows us to continue nuclear enrichment but makes it even harder for Israel to take any military action against our nuclear program. And our agreement will give the press even more ammunition against such an attack. We already know about the world media’s anti-Israel bias – they can’t even get a simple story about vehicular terrorism against Israelis correct. Even we were surprised at how The Guardian writes accurate headlines when Canada suffers an Islamist car attack but not when Israel does). So if you accept our nukes and Israel then attacks them, the media will be even harsher on Israel (even though the world will be silently relieved, if Israeli courage succeeds at neutralizing what scared everyone else).
And after everyone sees the killer deal that you’re giving us, the world’s bad actors will line up to talk to you, with demands of their own that you can try to satisfy in the hope that they’ll stop opposing your national interests so much.
Overall, we appreciate you even more than we did President Carter, because getting nukes is WAY COOLER than holding 52 American diplomats and citizens hostage for 444 days.
With our deepest gratitude,
Your Friends in the Iranian Regime
p.s. We’re glad you didn’t take any personal offense when one of our officials used the N-word to describe you back in 2010. He actually has nothing but respect for you, as do we.
Noah Beck is the author of The Last Israelis, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and other geopolitical issues in the Middle East.
Ali Khamenei / AP
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