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The big unanswered question about pending Iran deal

July 11, 2015

The big unanswered question about pending Iran deal, Harretz, , July 11, 2015

(Harretz includes the obligatory swipes at PM Netanyahu but then backs off, while raising an interesting question: Why does Obama continue to buckle to Iranian demands? Is it more than his need for a legacy, his affection for Islam, the likely that nobody will stop him, incompetence and/or a lack of interest? — DM)

866182083President Barack Obama, July 7, 2015. What is he thinking with his Iranian strategy? Photo by Reuters

It’s hard to overstate the importance of cracking the code that has caused the administration to capitulate. It’s liable to put us, albeit not in the near-future, in a situation where all hope will be lost.

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The inevitable revenge for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s deluded flirtation with the Republicans and Congress has arrived. It’s crystal clear: Because of Netanyahu’s contrarian and irresponsible behavior, bridges with the U.S. administration were burned and Israel was ousted from the circle of influence on the pending nuclear deal with Iran. Netanyahu bears part of the responsibility for the bad deal that will be signed with Iran.

If any Israeli figures had a real impact on our inability to prevent a bad deal, however, it was Meir Dagan, Yuval Diskin and Gabi Ashkenazi – the principal opponents who leaked their objections to a military operation. They, along with the noisy chorus of America’s proxies in Israel, torpedoed the credibility of the brinkmanship strategy Netanyahu was leading. Iran, free of Israeli pressure, kept galloping toward the bomb.

True, Netanyahu’s mistakes – even in the area of Iran – are not few in number. However, anyone who assigns him responsibility, even indirect, for the heap of failings of the U.S. administration with regard to Iran discounts the American president and insults the memory and intelligence of the public.

The accusers, whatever their obligations to the United States, have exempted themselves from the need to think more deeply about the interests underlying America’s capitulation to Iranian chutzpah. For the sake of the future, it is dependent upon Israel to solve the big unknown: what motivates President Barack Obama to ease – in reality, cancel – sanctions before the Iranians prove, within a significant time frame, that they have left the path of nuclear arms, terror and fraud. Why is he providing the ayatollahs’ state with economic power – and therefore political and military power – to continue harming its allies in the region. And, finally, why doesn’t the agreement include an explicit demand for Iran to completely turn away from the path of terror?

Cracking America’s unclear, scarcely believable code of conduct is a major challenge. It is simply not logical that the American president, who bears responsibility for the fate of the world, should capitulate to the Iranians – unless he has a decisive reason – and cede effective supervision of nuclear sites.

The Iranians need American benevolence – not the other way around. So why are the Iranians able to bend the Americans, and not vice versa? In any event, the reason for their success does not lie, as many tend to think, in typical American naïveté – and certainly not in weakness or foolishness, as some say about Secretary of State John Kerry.

Israel’s point of departure needs to be – and this is the truth – that the U.S. president is acting in line with his nation’s interests, and that John Kerry is executing his policy. The latter’s behavior, as reflected in caricatures and articles criticizing him, is in accordance with the president’s directives, and not because he is a weak or shallow figure.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of cracking the code that has caused the administration to capitulate. It’s liable to put us, albeit not in the near-future, in a situation where all hope will be lost. Then, we will be forced to make it clear to the Americans: You, who pushed us into a corner, like in the words of the Book of Isaiah – “And I looked, and there was none to help; and I beheld in astonishment, and there was none to uphold” – bear responsibility. In a situation of no choice, we will act – and we will have to act – for as the verse continues, “And My fury, it upheld Me / And I trod down the peoples in Mine anger.”

Categories: Foreign policy, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Kerry, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama administration, Obama's America, P5+1
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Know Comment: Sham smiles all around

July 10, 2015

Know Comment: Sham smiles all around, Jerusalem Post, David M. Weinberg, July 9, 2015

Supreme Leader 1Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. (photo credit:AFP PHOTO)

Decoupling allows Obama to smile and sell sham narratives about Iran, even as Khamenei rebuffs and humiliates America. With a smile, of course.

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With four deadlines come and gone, it’s probably safe to predict that there won’t be a grand package deal with Tehran this weekend, or at all. Instead, we’ll get a lot of smiles, and agreement to continue talking indefinitely, “for as long as the talks are useful,” without closure on Iran’s nuclear weapons drive.

Meanwhile, Ayatollah Khamenei’s centrifuges will continue to spin, Iran’s adventurism in the region will proceed unchecked, and President Obama won’t have to reveal to Congress the deep concessions he has already deposited in Iran’s pocket.

American analyst Michael Ledeen puts it bluntly: Khamenei doesn’t want to sign anything. He has two fixed principles: No “new relationship” with the Great Satan, and relentless pursuit of the atomic bomb. But since Obama won’t take an Iranian “no” for a definitive answer, the default American position will be a new form of “creative appeasement.”

Iran will promise to try really, really hard to be nice, and Obama will pay for this. Iran will continue to get its monthly sanctions relief payoff, while Obama will get Iranian smiles.

This will allow Obama to give another interview in which he blathers about meeting Iran’s “legitimate needs and concerns” and about his hopes that Iran will become “a very successful regional power.” After all, Obama will yet tell us, Iran “is one of the oldest and grandest civilizations in the world” – or something obsequious like that.

Who could have imagined, just a few years ago, that the president of the United States of America would wish the mullahs well in their quest for regional hegemony? What strategic thinker would have believed that the US would actively enter a de facto alliance with Shi’ite Iran (in Iraq, Syria and the Gulf) at the expense of America’s traditional Sunni allies and its ally in Israel? The metamorphosis of Iran, in pro-Obama elite opinion circles, from terrorist state into US partner is a long-brewing triumph for a certain set of pro-Iranian apologists and anti-Israel lobbyists in Washington.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal this week, Sohrab Ahmari showed how the National Iranian American Council advanced the argument that Iran deserves strategic respect, and placed its people in the Obama National Security Council.

Indeed, US think tanks played a prominent role in paving the way toward a climb-down from Obama’s declared policy of halting Iran’s nuclear drive.

Start with Thomas R. Pickering, the former under secretary of state for political affairs (and US ambassador to Russia, the UN and Israel), who showed up in Israel in 2012 as the head of “The Iran Project.” Peddling a “nuanced and sophisticated” view of Iran, he counseled an “engagement” strategy.

In a lecture at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Pickering asserted that the US must end its confrontation with Iran over nuclear weapons. Sanctions, he said, were only “contributing to an increase in repression and corruption within Iran,” and were “sowing the seeds of longterm alienation between the Iranian people and the US.” What about the use of military force to crush the Iranian nuclear bomb program? Well, military force should be the very last resort taken by the US, Pickering told us, “and probably not at all.”

Next was the Center for a New American Security.

Its 2013 report, primarily authored by former Obama administration deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East Colin H. Kahl, outlined “a comprehensive framework to manage and mitigate the consequences of a nuclear- armed Iran.” In other words, stopping the Iranian nuclear effort was already a passé discussion.

Then came the Atlantic Council, which called for Washington to “lessen the chances for war through reinvigorated diplomacy that offers Iran a realistic and face-saving way out of the nuclear standoff.” That’s diplomatic-speak for a containment strategy.

Then the Rand Corporation concluded that a nuclear-armed Iran would not pose a fundamental threat to the US and its regional allies. “An Iran with nuclear weapons will still be a declining power,” it said. “Iran does not have territorial ambitions and does not seek to invade, conquer, or occupy other nations.”

In his last article before dying in 2013, the leading realist theorist Ken Waltz of Columbia University even argued that Iran should get the bomb. It would create “a more durable balance of military power in the Middle East,” he wrote in the establishment journal Foreign Affairs.

The writing has been on the wall. Both Washington’s retreat from confrontation with Iran and its shift toward appeasement of Iran were there for those willing to see.

Obama has even invented a fancy term – “decoupling” – to obscure the magnitude of American collapse before Iran.

“Decoupling” means that the nuclear talks can take place in a virtual vacuum, without reference to Iranian behavior in any other field or arena – as if Iran were Iceland. There is just no coupling or link between Iran the nuclear power and Iran the aggressive adversary.

Decoupling means that Obama can be forgiven for failing to constrain Iranian terrorism. It means that Iran can get nuclear sanctions relief without having to scale back its hegemonic and subversive muckraking around the region.

The suave concept allows Obama to “decouple” the ayatollahs’ unpleasant anti-Semitic and genocidal rhetorical outbursts from Iran’s “responsible” (sic) understandings with the West on nuclear matters. It also allows Obama to ignore Iran’s human rights abuses.

Decoupling allows Obama to smile and sell sham narratives about Iran, even as Khamenei rebuffs and humiliates America. With a smile, of course.

Categories: Decoupling, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Iranian Threats, Israel, Khamenei, Obama, Obama administration, Obama's America, P5+1
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12 Times the Obama Administration Caved to Iran on Nuclear Deal | SUPERcuts! #211

July 7, 2015

12 Times the Obama Administration Caved to Iran on Nuclear Deal | SUPERcuts! Washington Free Beacon via You Tube, July 6, 2015

With their own words, Barack Obama, John Kerry and their team trying to make a nuclear deal with Iran have caved time and time again.

 

Categories: Baghdad Barry, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran centrifuges, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Obama, Obama administration, Obama's America, P5+1, Sanctions
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Syria, Hizballah torpedo understanding between Druze and Syrian rebel Nusra Front near Israeli border

June 28, 2015

Syria, Hizballah torpedo understanding between Druze and Syrian rebel Nusra Front near Israeli border, DEBKAfile, June 28, 2015

Druze_village_of_Hadar_16.6.15The Druze village of Khader – another flashpoint

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.

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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.

Categories: Assad, Druze, Druze militia, Foreign policy, Golan, Hezbollah, Iran - Syria war, Iranian proxies, Israel, Jordan, Middle East, Nursa Front, Obama administration
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The Palestinians’ Real Strategy

June 22, 2015

The Palestinians’ Real Strategy, The Gatestone Institute, Khaled Abu Toameh, June 22, 2015

  • Marzouk’s remarks refute claims by some in the Arab and Western media that Hamas is moving toward pragmatism and moderation, and that it is now willing, for the first time, to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Many in the West often fail to understand Hamas’s true position because they do not follow what Hamas says in Arabic — to its own people. In Arabic, Hamas makes no secret of its call for the destruction of Israel.
  • The current strategy of the Palestinian Authority (PA) is to negotiate with the international community, and not with Israel, about achieving peace in the Middle East. The ultimate goal of the PA is to force Israel to its knees. For the PA, rallying the international community and Europe is about punishing and weakening Israel, not making peace with it.
  • Their strategy is no longer about a two-state solution so much as it is about inflicting pain and suffering on Israel. It is more about seeking revenge on Israel than living in a state next to it.
  • Hamas’s terrorism also helps the PA’s anti-Israel campaign in the international community. Each terrorist attack provides the PA with an opportunity to point out the “urgent” need to force Israel to submit to Palestinian demands as a way of “containing the radicals.”

All signs indicate that the Palestinians are planning to step up their efforts to force Israel to comply with their demands. But as the Palestinians are not united, they are working on two fronts to achieve their goal.

One party, headed by the Palestinian Authority (PA), believes that, with the help of the international community, Israel will be forced to fully withdraw to the pre-1967 lines, including east Jerusalem, and accept the “right of return” for millions of refugees and their descendants to their former homes inside Israel.

The second party, represented by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and several other terror groups, continues to reject any form of compromise, and insists that the only solution lies in the elimination of Israel. Unlike the first party, this one believes that direct or indirect negotiations with the “Zionist enemy” are a waste of time and that terrorism is the only means for the Palestinians to achieve their goal.

The two Palestinian parties, the PA and Hamas, have been at war with each other since 2007, when Hamas seized full control over the Gaza Strip and forced the Palestinian Authority to flee to the West Bank.

But while the two rival parties are fighting each other, they are also working separately to overpower Israel.

On June 19, a Hamas-affiliated group claimed responsibility for the shooting attack that killed Danny Gonen, a 25-year-old man who was visiting the West Bank.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian groups rushed to “welcome” the killing of the young Israeli man who, by the way, was not a “settler,” but a resident of the Israeli city of Lod, near Ben Gurion Airport.

In separate statements, these terror groups explained that the attack came in the context of Palestinian efforts to “preserve the resistance” against Israel in the West Bank. They said that such attacks were “legitimate means” to achieve Palestinian rights and aspirations.

These groups made it unavoidably clear that their real objective is not to “liberate” the West Bank, but to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. As one of them said, “We will continue to support any resistance action on the land of Palestine until it is liberated, from the (Mediterranean) sea to the (Jordan) river, and cleansed from all Zionist usurpers.”

Hours after the West Bank attack, a senior Hamas leader, Musa Abu Marzouk, repeated that his movement was seeking to replace Israel with an Islamist state: “Hamas wants a state not only in the Gaza Strip, but in all of Palestine; we won’t give up our weapons and will continue to fight in order to liberate our land.”

Marzouk’s remarks refute claims by some Arab and Western media that Hamas has been moving toward pragmatism and moderation, and that it is now willing, for the first time, to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Many in the West often fail to understand Hamas’s true position because they do not follow what Hamas says in Arabic — to its own people. In Arabic, Hamas makes no secret of its call for the destruction of Israel. To Hamas’s credit, this message is often repeated in English and other languages.

While Hamas and its allies work toward destroying Israel through terrorism, the Palestinian Authority seems more determined than ever to step up its worldwide campaign to delegitimize and isolate Israel with the help of various international parties, such as the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Some senior Palestinian officials like to describe this campaign as a “diplomatic war” against Israel. They argue that this war has thus far proven to be much more “effective” than rockets and suicide bombings. “When we launch rockets at Israel, we don’t get any sympathy,” explained one official. “But everyone in the international community is now supporting our diplomatic efforts. That’s why we believe that what Hamas is doing right now is harmful to Palestinian interests.”

Shortly before the Israeli man was fatally shot in the West Bank, the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, revealed his plan to rally the world against Israel so that it would be forced to submit to the Palestinian Authority’s demands, above all a complete withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines.

Erekat’s plan calls for working very closely with EU countries and members of the UN Security Council, to increase pressure on Israel to comply with the Palestinian demands. It also calls for recruiting international support for recognition of a Palestinian state and paving the way for it to join various international organizations and conventions.

In his plan, Erekat warns against endorsing any UN Security Council resolution that would include recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, or offer concessions on the “right of return” for refugees. He also repeats the Palestinian Authority’s rejection of the idea of land swaps between the future Palestinian state and Israel. In addition, Erekat emphasizes his opposition to the idea of creating a demilitarized Palestinian state or giving up any part of Jerusalem.

The Palestinian Authority’s current strategy is to negotiate with the international community, and not with Israel, about achieving peace in the Middle East. The PA knows that it is not going to get from Israel all that it is asking for. That is why the Palestinian leaders have chosen to negotiate with France, Britain, Sweden and the US. The Palestinians are hoping that these countries will give them what Israel cannot and is not prepared to offer at the negotiating table.

Even if Israel wanted to give one hundred percent of what it gained in 1967, the reality on he ground does not allow it. Since 1967, both Jews and Arabs have created irreversible “facts in the ground,” such as the construction of tens of thousands of houses for both Arabs and Jews. A full withdrawal would mean that tens of thousands of Jews and Arabs would lose their homes both in the West Bank and in Jerusalem.

The ultimate goal of the Palestinian Authority is, with the help of the international community, to force Israel to its knees. For the PA, rallying the international community and Europe is about punishing and weakening Israel, not making peace with it. The PA wants to see Israel degraded, isolated and turned into a rogue state. It wants to see Israelis brought before the International Criminal Court and expelled from as many international organizations as possible.

From talking to senior Palestinian Authority officials, one is left with the impression that their true goal is to see Israel in a state of surrender and defeat. Their strategy is no longer about a two-state solution so much as it is about inflicting pain and suffering on Israel. It is more about seeking revenge on Israel than living in a state next to it.

In many ways, the PA’s “diplomatic war” on Israel also helps Hamas. By constantly accusing Israel of “war crimes” and “atrocities,” the PA is helping Hamas justify its terror attacks against Israelis. The PA’s anti-Israel campaign also helps in creating sympathy and understanding for Hamas’s terror attacks.

Meanwhile, Hamas’s terrorism also helps the Palestinian Authority’s anti-Israel campaign in the international community. Each terrorist attack provides the PA with an opportunity to point out the “urgent” need to force Israel to submit to Palestinian demands as a way of “containing the radicals.”

This is how Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, although remaining sworn enemies, complement each other’s role against Israel.

And many in the international community seem to be helping these two Palestinian camps in their effort to undermine and destroy Israel.

677Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (r) meets with the Hamas political bureau chief Khaled Mashaal in Qatar, July 20, 2014. (Image source: Handout from the PA President’s Office/Thaer Ghanem)

Categories: Abbas, Antisemitism, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Europe, Foreign policy, France, Hamas, Human rights, Ideology, Iranian proxies, Islamic jihad, Islamism, Israel, Jerusalem, Jewish occupation of Israel, Jews, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama administration, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace process, Settlements, Terrorists, Two state solution, United Nations
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Terror will not be defeated with reports

June 22, 2015

Terror will not be defeated with reports, Israel Hayom, Dr. Gabi Avital, June 22, 2015

(Please see also, US: Iran’s Support for Terror Undiminished. — DM)

Iran is led by rational and calculated religious clerics, whose goals are openly declared and well-defined. The rationality one should expect to find in the State Department has dissipated in a haze of illusions, which are exacting a heavy toll. Meanwhile, only the Islamic State stands to outflank Iran, and that is only under the assumption that these two terrorist entities are on completely divergent paths. To be sure, that is quite the baseless assumption.

Yet those who with one hand sound the alarm over an increase in terror, while with the other help the perpetrators of said terror rule the roost by giving it nuclear weapons, must provide convincing explanations. The United States, with its utter foreign policy failures — from Iraq to Yemen to Syria to Egypt and Iran — is not forthcoming with such explanations.

Where is Michael Moore when you need him? The State Department can see what is happening, but Kerry is on his way to a nuclear deal with the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. Not much could be worse.

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Understanding history is a tricky proposition. Its lessons are sometimes hidden to us for long periods; often only subsequent generations can achieve the proper historical perspective, after a series of fateful events has unfolded. Even so, within less than 40 years we have witnessed global events that many political scientists correctly predicted.

The time is the late 1970s. All signs point to an oncoming revolution in Iran. However, U.S. President Jimmy Carter (whom some call the worst president ever), is instead consumed with the wording for a peace deal that undermines pre-existing agreements and international accords. Egypt wins the entire pot in a peace deal with Israel. Iran rises in prominence; the Soviet Union bolsters its standing across the globe, until the arrival of Ronald Reagan, who in an effort to defeat the Soviet Union in the ongoing Cold War, announces his Star Wars program.

We know the ending. Almost every single international relations expert points to that declaration as the beginning of the fall of the Soviet Union. In 1989, Reagan concludes two terms in office, and the Soviet Union falls apart.

Terrorism spreads across the globe. The leading sponsors are Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iran. An extensive report, examining the dangers of mass terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, is being compiled. The conservative-democratic pendulum in the U.S. swings toward the Democratic candidate, Bill Clinton. The egregious disregard of the report, now collecting dust, brings terrorism to its horrific pinnacle on Sept. 11, 2001. All fingerprints lead back to Saudi Arabia. Everything had already been laid out in the dust-covered Pentagon report. What the democratic Pentagon and State Department cooked up, the Republican George W. Bush was forced to eat.

The State Department has now published its annual report on terrorism. The seeds of this report were planted in the Carter era, when peace at all costs was championed without any understanding of the world in general and the Middle East in particular. Iran is led by rational and calculated religious clerics, whose goals are openly declared and well-defined. The rationality one should expect to find in the State Department has dissipated in a haze of illusions, which are exacting a heavy toll. Meanwhile, only the Islamic State stands to outflank Iran, and that is only under the assumption that these two terrorist entities are on completely divergent paths. To be sure, that is quite the baseless assumption.

So what does the report say? There will be a dramatic 35% rise in global terrorist acts. Iran supports terrorist organizations all over the world and in the Middle East especially; it backs the Shiite fighters in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon and in Syria, with arms, training, money and intelligence. And we haven’t even mentioned Syria yet, or Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Yet those who with one hand sound the alarm over an increase in terror, while with the other help the perpetrators of said terror rule the roost by giving it nuclear weapons, must provide convincing explanations. The United States, with its utter foreign policy failures — from Iraq to Yemen to Syria to Egypt and Iran — is not forthcoming with such explanations. Russia is back on the Cold War track; the Islamic State group is emboldened by the conduct of the U.S. president and his team at the State Department; Iran is envisioning a nuclear bomb in its arsenal; and Saudi Arabia is looking on nervously as the carpet of reciprocity is being pulled out from under it and its oil fields.

Only a week before Secretary of State John Kerry, one of the pillars of this dangerous U.S. foreign policy, takes off to pursue the deal with Iran, Tina Kaidanow, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, tells us: “We continue to be very, very concerned about [the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] activity as well as proxies that act on behalf of Iran.”

What then, is Kerry really unaware of the findings in the 388-page report? And does he not understand that the deal with Iran, the seeds for which were planted in the Carter era and now being cultivated by Obama, is terrorism itself, and that there is no need for any report to merely sit and collect dust again in the State Department cellar?

Where is Michael Moore when you need him? The State Department can see what is happening, but Kerry is on his way to a nuclear deal with the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. Not much could be worse.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Free world, Funding terrorism, Human rights, Ideology, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Israel, Kerry, Middle East, Obama, Obama administration, Obama's America, P5+1, Rogue nations, Sanctions, Saudi Arabia, Support for terrorism, Terrorism
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US: Iran’s Support for Terror Undiminished

June 22, 2015

US: Iran’s Support for Terror Undiminished, The Clarion Project, June 21, 2015

Iran-Basij-March-IP_1The Iranian volunteer Basij militia (Photo: © Reuters)

In an interview with The Atlantic, U.S. President Barack Obamas admitted that some of the money freed up the deal’s proposed sanction relief may up going towards terrorism, although he argued that Iranian government would have to make good on their commitments to improve the country’s economy.

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Despite the fact that Iran’s global terror activities were “undiminished” between 2013 and 2014, the U.S. State Department is still entirely committed to pursuing a nuclear deal with Iran.

“We think it’s essential that we pursue those negotiations,” said Tina Kaidanow, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal. “None of that implies that we would be, again, in any way taking our eye off the ball with respect to what Iran is doing as a supporter of terrorism.”

Iran’s support for terror was documented in the State Dept.’s annual report on global terrorism, which was released Friday. The report says “Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism worldwide remained undiminished,” which makes the State Dept. “very, very concerned,” according to Kaidanow.

While the June 30 deadline for the deal is now fewer than 10 days away, the release of the report shows, “Iran continued to sponsor terrorist groups around the world,” according to Kaidanow.

The report specifically mentions Iran’s continued support for the Shiite terror organization Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as those fighting with embattled Syrian President Bashaar al-Assad.

The Clarion Project reported last week that Iran is supporting more than 100 terrorist organizations in Syria and Iraq alone.

In an interview with The Atlantic, U.S. President Barack Obamas admitted that some of the money freed up the deal’s proposed sanction relief may up going towards terrorism, although he argued that Iranian government would have to make good on their commitments to improve the country’s economy.

“I don’t think …anybody in this administration said that no money will go to the military as a consequence of sanctions relief,” Obama said. “The question is, if Iran has $150 billion parked outside the country, does the IRGC automatically get $150 billion? Does that $150 billion then translate by orders of magnitude into their capacity to project power throughout the region? And that is what we contest …”

The report also showed that between 2013 and 2014, there was a significant rise in global terror attacks, causing an increase in over 80 percent of violent deaths from the previous year (which itself had seen a 43 percent increase from the year before). In addition, the report showed:

  • There was an average of 1,122 attacks per month
  • Kidnappings increased by one-third, with more than with 9,400 people taken hostage
  • The number of global attacks rose by 35 percent
  • 32,727 people were killed worldwide (versus 17,800 in 2013)
  • 34,700 people were injured in attacks in close to 95 countries
  • In Iraq alone,  10,000 people died in 3,360 attacks representing close to a third of all people killed in terror attacks worldwide.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Funding terrorism, Ideology, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Middle East, Obama, Obama administration, Obama's America, P5+1, Terrorism, Terrorists
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Op-Ed: Obama’s Faith in anti-Semites and the Cost

June 20, 2015

Op-Ed: Obama’s Faith in anti-Semites and the Cost, Israel National News, Steve Apfel, June 18, 2015

(Please see also, State Department Report Minimizes Palestinian Incitement to Violence.– DM)

Perhaps it’s more self-deception than ignorance. But it’s atrocious for a leader with the balance of human survival on his shoulders to deal a joker like this: “…The fact that (Iran’s leaders) are anti-Semitic doesn’t mean that this overrides all their other considerations.”

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It is one thing to hate Greeks or Turks, for want of example, and quite a different thing to hate Jews. Likewise, to hate this country or that one is not akin to hating Israel. The faultless logic of a felon explains all. Asked why he robbed banks Willie Sutton explained, “That’s where the money is.” Well, Israel is where six million Jews are, and Iran is not the only power that, day and night, aches to wipe them off the face of the earth.

Clearly there’s more to hating Israel than meets the eye. By ”more” I mean a human condition – the raising of blind hatred to such a power that incendiary rhetoric is not enough to contain an imperative for violence. And right at this point the leader of the free world commits a cardinal error. By papering over this special hatred, American President Obama tilts the globe towards an ultimate catastrophe.

Calculated or innocent, the error is mighty convenient for that do or die Iran deal. To get the piece of paper signed it helps Obama to make light of the risk posed by Jew-mad fanatics. It’s not enough to decouple Tehran’s world-wide web of terrorism from the nuclear talks. To placate mullahs and ayatollahs he must downplay the rabid anti-Semitism from that quarter, already guilty of two heinous attacks on Jewish targets, in Borges and Buenos Aries. Now there’s talk of US complicity. Diplomatic sources told World Tribune that the US pressed Argentina to end, or at least fudge the investigation of Iran’s involvement.

Pacts with the devil come at a price. That  was Tehran’s price, and at the wink of an eye Washington paid it. Lately Obama declared himself an honorary member of the ‘tribe.’ And he has always had “Israel’s back” should Iran’s bite prove to be worse than its bark. A President for whom Democrat Jews voted for twice is duty-bound to give assurances of the kind. Certainly he can’t afford to be seen making a Chamberlain look-alike pact with a bunch of Fuhrers.

To drive his message home, Obama gave The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg a morale booster to pass onto American Jewry: they needn’t be overly concerned. “There are deep strains of anti-Semitism in the core regime,” Goldberg’s ‘Pres’ conceded, “but they also are interested in maintaining power.”

Even Goldberg was left wide-eyed. “It’s my belief,” he told the President, “that it is difficult to negotiate with parties that are captive to a conspiratorial anti-Semitic worldview; not because they hold offensive views, but because they hold ridiculous views… I don’t believe that the regime can be counted on to be entirely rational.”

The truth is somewhat more profound. True, there’s nothing calculated in verbal attacks of the kind that Iran makes. Like a volcano they seem to emanate from a deep-down superheated disturbance. But when anti-Semites spew vitriol at Israel they do more than distort facts or recite a miscellany of canards. Seldom do anti-Semites react to provocation, to something that Jews did. When a core figure warns that Iran needs only 24 hours and an excuse to wipe Israel off the map, he’s not mad at Israel’s deeds. No, he is passionately in love with hating Jews.

Anti-Semites are not, as the phrase goes, in their right minds. In a real sense they are out of their minds. A passion can do that. And the passion that collects around Israel is like no other. It consumes whole countries. It sweeps up domestic and international affairs in a maelstrom. It distorts trade. Quite sane leaders when it comes to Israel lose their minds. According to Walter Russell Mead, “nations and political establishments warped by this hatred tend to make one dumb decision after another — starting at shadows, warding off imaginary dangers, misunderstanding the nature of problems they face.”

It’s what Goldberg was getting at, and also what left him nonplussed that his revered leader did not get it. Debriefing Foreign Policy Journalafterwards he bemoaned the great man’s obtuseness. “Obama doesn’t seem to fully understand that anti-Semites actually believe the dangerous and idiotic things they say.” Had he not been a died-in-the-wool Democrat, perhaps Goldberg would have paid closer attention to the President’s own ‘take’ on the subject. Had he done so Obama would not have slipped that cardinal error past him. Here it comes.

“The fact that you are anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn’t preclude you from being interested in survival. It doesn’t preclude you from being rational about the need to keep your economy afloat; it doesn’t preclude you from making strategic decisions about how you stay in power; and so the fact that (Iran’s) supreme leader is anti-Semitic doesn’t mean that this overrides all of his other considerations.”

The dead give-away lurks where? We hit on it here, there and everywhere in that snatch from an Obama lecture.  It makes us want to interject with, ‘How about the Third Reich!’ For how can the President be that ignorant about the last word in Jew-mad regimes? No one taught Obama that the extermination of Jews was not a means to an end but an end in itself? He doesn’t know that the Final Solution was not a part of the war effort, it was fully equal to the whole war effort? He’s not aware that resources needed for winning the war were diverted to the higher priority of putting Jews to death? He never read about the failure of Operation Barbarossa, a turning point in the fortunes of the Third Reich, in no small measure caused by the diversion of trains for Hitler’s genocide project? Hitler condemned his own troops to the pitiless Russian winter so that trains to death camps would continue to run and oven chimneys would continue to smoke.

Perhaps it’s more self-deception than ignorance. But it’s atrocious for a leader with the balance of human survival on his shoulders to deal a joker like this: “…The fact that (Iran’s leaders) are anti-Semitic doesn’t mean that this overrides all their other considerations.”

For the good of the world so fatuous a notion ought not to pass muster. Yet Obama-voting Jews passed it. Tehran warns that it will not abide the “Zionist tumor.” The White House says, don’t worry, the mullahs and ayatollahs will keep cool heads. Tehran declares that destruction of Israel is non-negotiable. Obama says ignore it. Maybe Tehran will play ball. Maybe it will behave so as not to ruin the American leader’s pet project.

Iran of course is not Obama’s only pet project. If it’s learning he’s in want of, there’s a textbook case of Jew-hatred and its cost near the top of Washington’s foreign agenda. Everyone knows how desperately Obama wants to secure a state for Palestinians. Hark to the appeal from the President’s very Jewish heart. If your age-old values still mean anything to you, Oh Israel, set the oppressed Palestinians free.

Now here’s the thing. If Jordan was still occupying the “West Bank” and Egypt was still occupying Gaza, the Palestinians would not be pleading to be set free. They’d be as happy as the day was long under the occupying powers. We know, because for nineteen long years, ending in 1967, Palestinians told the world they were happy not to have a state to call their own. They were more than happy; Arafat and his cronies inscribed it in the founding PLO Charter. We like what we have. Life under Egypt is fine; we accept the King of Jordan as our sovereign ruler. As for the Arab world, it would be wrong to say it was happy.

The wants and wishes of subjugated people in Gaza and “West Bank” never entered the mind of the Arab world. No Arab leader offered hisbrothers living on Israel’s doorsteps a home to call their own. Only Jewish leaders did that – a couple of times after 1967. Even then Arafat said ‘Nein! and with his Intifadas bit the Jewish hand that proffered the prize. Abbas said ‘Nein! after Arafat – a few times.

And here are the Palestinians, half a century on, wallowing in self-pity even as they insist they’ll not live with a Jewish state for a neighbour. If that is not a self-inflicted wound from hating the Jew then pigs can fly.

Categories: Antisemitism, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Freedom, Human rights, Ideology, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Islam, Islamism, Israel, Nazis, Obama, Obama administration, P5+1, Two state solution
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State Department Report Minimizes Palestinian Incitement to Violence

June 19, 2015

State Department Report Minimizes Palestinian Incitement to Violence, The Investigative Project on Terrorism, Jume 19, 2015

These blatant omissions from the report leave create a sense that examples of Palestinian incitement to violence and glorification of terrorists are sporadic occurrences. In reality, the Palestinian Authority institutionalizes a systematic campaign of violent incitement and continues to praise terrorists for killing Jews and Israelis, while encouraging other Palestinians to follow in their footsteps.

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The U.S. State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2014 issued Friday minimizes official Palestinian incitement to violence against Israel and completely overlooks Palestinian glorification of terrorists.

The annual report lists major terrorist incidents worldwide and outlines each country’s counterterrorism efforts and legislation. Terrorism attacks and their resulting deaths spiked last year, the report found, an increase largely driven by attacks by the Islamic State and Nigeria’s Boko Haram terrorist groups.

With respect to the Palestinian Authority (PA), the report praises the PA for taking “significant steps to ensure that official institutions in the West Bank that fall under its control do not create content that leads to incitement to violence.” The report acknowledges that “some instances of inciting taking place via official media” still occur, listing only three examples. However, the report diminishes the fact that incitement to violence is a systematic and institutionalized PA phenomenon.

Click here for an Investigative Project on Terrorism comprehensive outline of Palestinian violent incitement focused only on incidents last fall.

The State Department assessment also ignores the direct participation of senior PA officials in praising terrorists and inciting violence against Israelis and Jews.

For example, the report does not mention PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ call last October for Palestinians to prevent Jews from going to the Temple Mount compound “in any way.” The video clip of Abbas’ Oct. 17 speech was shown 19 on PA television times in three days, implicitly calling for Palestinians to use violence against Israelis.

Instead, the report described PA efforts “to ensure” Friday sermons in more than 1,800 mosques controlled by the PA “do not endorse incitement to violence … the guidance is that no sermon can discuss political or lead to incitement to violence.”

In February, however, the PA Minister of Religious Affairs and other prominent religious officials resorted to an age-old blood libel accusing Jews of attacking Muslims sites and that Israel is trying to destroy the al-Aqsa Mosque, Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) reports. Such accusations are baseless and encourage Palestinians to conduct terrorist attacks against Israel.

The State Department report also omits any reference to official Palestinian glorification of terrorists.

For example, after the October shooting of Rabbi Yehuda Glick, Abbas sent a condolence letter to the family of terrorist Mutaz Hijazi who was killed by Israeli authorities in a firefight during a raid for his capture. In the letter, Abbas called the terrorist a “Shahid,” a martyr, who “rose to Heaven while defending our people’s rights and holy places,” PMW reported.

Moreover, a senior Fatah official claimed that Hijazi was a Fatah operative and expressed pride in his actions, a PMW translation shows.

These blatant omissions from the report leave create a sense that examples of Palestinian incitement to violence and glorification of terrorists are sporadic occurrences. In reality, the Palestinian Authority institutionalizes a systematic campaign of violent incitement and continues to praise terrorists for killing Jews and Israelis, while encouraging other Palestinians to follow in their footsteps.

Categories: Abbas, Antisemitism, Fatah, Foreign policy, Israel, Jerusalem, Obama, Obama administration, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace process, Temple Mount, Terrorism, Terrorists, Two state solution, West Bank
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Obama offers further concessions to keep Iran nuclear deal alive

June 17, 2015

Obama offers further concessions to keep Iran nuclear deal alive, Breitbart, John Hayward, June 17, 2015

ap_barack-obama_ap-photo9-640x493

Why is current intransigence — the refusal to engage in honest disclosure about past activities — not taken as a very major clue about Iran’s likelihood to make good on assurances about the future? This is like waving aside the arrest record of an infamous thief to hire him as a bank security guard, insisting that what he writes on his employment application today matters far more than whatever the cops were so upset about a few years ago.

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As if the Iran nuclear deal farce were not ridiculous enough already, President Obama is ready to reward Tehran for its intransigence once again.

Until now, a sticking point in the deal was Iran’s refusal to come clean about its history of nuclear cheating, to establish an honest baseline from which future compliance can be measured. Secretary of State John Kerry just signaled the Administration is willing to unstick this point and give Iran what it wants, immediate sanctions relief, without resolving those issues.

“In his first State Department news conference since breaking his leg last month in a bicycling accident, Mr. Kerry suggested major sanctions might be lifted long before international inspectors get definitive answers to their longstanding questions about Iranian experiments and nuclear design work that appeared aimed at developing a bomb. The sanctions block oil sales and financial transfers,” the New York Times reports.

In a video conference from Boston, Kerry said, “We’re not fixated on Iran specifically accounting for what they did at one point in time or another. It’s critical to us to know that going forward, those activities have been stopped, and that we can account for that in a legitimate way. That clearly is one of the requirements in our judgment for what has to be achieved in order to have a legitimate agreement.”

The move reveals this “nuclear deal” as a bit of badly-staged theater in which Obama pretends to be securing Peace In Our Time by working out a tough deal, when in reality Iran is completely driving this process, extracting one concession after another from Obama because they know he cannot afford to walk away from the table. Obama’s concern about his reputation and political legacy, and the damage to his party that would result in the 2016 election cycle if his much-ballyhooed deal falls apart, trump any and all concerns he has about exactly when Iran gets the bomb.

Without knowing what Iran has been up to in the past, it is impossible to accurately judge whether they are complying with whatever sketchy agreement they sign now. The New York Times does a good job of explaining this, and warning that capitulation to Iran will set a dangerous example to other aspiring rogue nuclear states:

Those favoring full disclosure of what diplomats have delicately called the “possible military dimensions” of Iranian nuclear research say that the West will never know exactly how long it would take Iran to manufacture a weapon — if it ever developed or obtained bomb-grade uranium or plutonium — unless there is a full picture of its success in suspected experiments to design the detonation systems for a weapon and learn how to shrink it to fit atop a missile.

For a decade, since obtaining data from an Iranian scientist on a laptop that was spirited out of the country, the C.I.A. and Israel have devoted enormous energy to understanding the scope and success of the program.

Failing to require disclosure, they argue, would also undercut the atomic agency — a quiet signal to other countries that they, too, could be given a pass.

Support for the concessions Kerry teases is based on the idea that Iran will never allow its national pride to be injured by divulging the details of its past mischief. When only one side in a negotiation is permitted to introduce its pride as leverage, that is the winning side. The people trading away vital security considerations to curry favor with the prideful party are the losers.

The Times finds Kerry suggesting “assurances about the future were more important than excavating the past.” What good are those assurances when there is no evidence on where the Iranian program stands on the day a new deal is signed?

Why is current intransigence — the refusal to engage in honest disclosure about past activities — not taken as a very major clue about Iran’s likelihood to make good on assurances about the future? This is like waving aside the arrest record of an infamous thief to hire him as a bank security guard, insisting that what he writes on his employment application today matters far more than whatever the cops were so upset about a few years ago.

No one on Earth, outside the Obama White House and its friends in U.S. media, will interpret capitulation on this issue as anything less than a major victory for Iran. As Lawrence J. Haas notes at U.S. News and World Report, the White House was loudly insisting it would never make this concession, just a few months ago. “They have to do it. It will be done. If there’s going to be a deal, it will be done,” Haas recalls Kerry saying in a PBS interview in April. But suddenly they don’t have to do it, and it won’t be done.

Another discarded scrap of Obama rhetoric will be the President’s repeated assurances that Iran is X number of years away from having a nuclear weapon. Without the historical evidence Iran refuses to provide, there is really no way to be sure how far Iran is from a deliverable weapon. Once again, it seems as if Obama’s major concern is making sure it happens after he collects a round of applause for striking a “historic” deal, enters a comfortable retirement, and watches the whole mess become someone else’s problem.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Ideology, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Kerry, Obama, Obama administration, P5+1, Peace in our time, Red Lines, Sanctions
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