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Archive for the ‘Obama’ category
Cartoons of the day
October 4, 2015Cartoons of the day
October 3, 2015
Not Satire (?) | Obama To Receive Second Nobel Peace Prize
September 12, 2015Obama To Receive Second Nobel Peace Prize, USA Today,
(It may — or may not — be a hoax. I have found no other such reports.
Update: Yep. It appears to be. Other articles by the same writer at the same source include Cynthia Francis, Wife of Pope Francis, Seeks Annulment To 38-Year Marriage. — DM)
(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
The Norwegian Nobel Committee, based in Oslo Norway, announced yesterday the name of their laureate for the 2015 Nobel Prize for Peace. President Barack Hussain Obama is their selection for this years prestigious award. With the Nobel Institutes selection, President Obama becomes the third man ever to win a Nobel Prize more than one time. He joins legendary physicist John Bardeen and brilliant chemist Fredrick Sanger, who were each awarded two Nobels in their respective fields.
President Obama’s first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded by the committee shortly after he took office in 2009. Viewed as contentious at the time, his selection as a laureate was described by the committee as being due to his creation in international politics of a new political climate which emphasized multilateralism and his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. Strong objections were raised at the time by many who were critical of the Nobel Committee’s choice of President Obama. Many argued that his selection so soon after having ascended to the Presidency was a political handout from the Norwegians. He had not been in a position to effect international diplomacy for any measurable time. Nor had he actually accomplished any action of note that had led to the spread of international peace. It seemed that he had been selected for no other reason than that he was elected to the Presidency.
Fast forward to the year 2015 and the Nobel Committee has once again selected President Obama, though this time he has had ample time and opportunity to make his mark upon the world stage. The Nobel Committee cited three separate contributing factors which led to their choice of President Obama a second time. The first was his for his leadership in brokering a diplomatic solution to the disarmament of chemical weapons in Syria. The second was for his strong commitment to drawing down the military presence of The United States in foreign countries, most notably Afghanistan and Iraq. The third was for his strong and continuing support of the United Nations and international law. Specifically his commitment to the U.N Assembly to move aggressively forward on U.N. resolution 21 and provide support for UNODA.
The peace prize will be awarded to President Obama on October the tenth of this year at the Nobel Institute’s Oslo headquarters. President Obama has expressed his gratitude to the Nobel Committee for their consideration of him as a laureate. He has subsequently pledged to donate the cash portion of the annual Nobel Prize to several charities that serve the domestic United States.
What is to be done?
September 7, 2015What is to be done? Power Line,
(In this context, the refusal of Obama — a rogue president — to comply with U.S. law jeopardizes our national security. He will probably continue to get away with it until he leaves office. — DM)
President Obama has failed to comply with the conditions of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (the Corker-Cardin bill) that he himself signed into law. By its express terms the law required Obama to transmit to Congress “the agreement. . . . including all related materials and annexes.” He was obligated to do this “not later than five days after reaching the agreement.”
Obama has not done so. The administration has failed or refused to submit the IAEA side deal with Iran regarding the possible military dimensions of Iran’s research at the Parchin military facility to Congress.
Indeed, the administration claim not even to have seen the IAEA side deal. Rather, administration officials claim only to have been briefed by the IAEA on the terms of the side deal. They claim it is cloaked in secrecy that prevents its disclosure. The side deal is nevertheless an integral part of the JCPOA and its disclosure expressly required by the act.
Whether or not the side deal is “confidential” matters not one iota under the terms of the Corker-Cardin bill. It should be noted, however, that the administration appears to have constructed an elaborate pretense regarding the side deal. Fred Fleitz has advanced a highly plausible case that administration officials themselves drafted one or more side deals including this one for the IAEA including the Parchin side deal. He calls the arrangement “a national security fraud.”
Obama’s noncompliance with the act is more than problematic. It precludes (or should) the president’s authority to waive sanctions. It prevents (or should) the JCPOA itself from coming to a vote in Congress. Yet little notice has been taken of any of the serious issues that Obama has created in the service of his Iranian fantasies. As always, Obama acts by the executive equivalent of main force and trusts others to fall into line.
Rep. Mike Pompeo and attorney David Rivkin take note in a brief Washington Post column. They write:
Congress must now confront the grave issues of constitutional law prompted by the president’s failure to comply with his obligations under the act. This is not the first time this administration has disregarded clear statutory requirements, encroaching in the process upon Congress’s legislative and budgetary prerogatives. The fact that this has happened again in the context of a national security agreement vital to the United States and its allies makes the situation all the more serious.
For Congress to vote on the merits of the agreement without the opportunity to review all of its aspects would both effectively sanction the president’s unconstitutional conduct and be a major policy mistake. Instead, both houses should vote to register their view that the president has not complied with his obligations under the act by not providing Congress with a copy of an agreement between the IAEA and Iran, and that, as a result, the president remains unable to lift statutory sanctions against Iran. Then, if the president ignores this legal limit on his authority, Congress can and should take its case to court.
At the least, the congressional leaders should refuse to call up the JCPOA for a vote of approval and “register their view” as Pompeo and Rivkin suggest. Congress should force the issue in other ways within the scope of their powers. I don’t know about the proposed judicial remedy; it seems like weak tea. I don’t have the answer, but Congress should not proceed as though the conditions precedent to a vote of approval and the waiver of sanctions have occurred as required under the Corker-Cardin bill; they have not.
Nuclear Jihad
September 7, 2015Nuclear Jihad, Gatestone Institute, Denis MacEoin, September 7, 2015
- In the year 628, Muhammad, now ruling in Medina, signed the ten-year Treaty of Hudaybiyyah with his long-time enemies, the tribal confederacy of Quraysh, who ruled Mecca. Twenty-two months later, under the pretext that a clan from a tribe allied with the Quraysh had squabbled with a tribe allied to the Muslims, Muhammad broke the treaty and attacked Mecca, conquering it. It is as certain as day follows night, that the Iranian regime will find a pretext to break the deal. Already, on September 3, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene’i made it clear that he would back out of the deal if sanctions were not completely removed at once.
- The Iranian regime not only despises democracy; it considers all Western law, including international law, invalid.
- The Shi’a consider themselves underdogs, who are willing to sacrifice all to establish the rights of their imams and their successors. That was what the 1979 revolution was all about, and it is what present the Iranian regime still insists on as the justification for its opposition to Western intrusion, democracy, women’s rights and all the rest, which are deemed by Iran’s leadership as part of a plot to undermine and control the expansion of the Shi’i faith on the global stage. These are not Anglican vicars.
- The Iranian Army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “have responsibility… for a religious mission, which is Holy War (Jihad) in the path of God and the struggle to extend the supremacy of God’s law in the world.” — Iran’s Constitution, Article “The Religious Army”.
- A Third World War is already taking place. The Iran deal strengthens the hands of a regime that is the world’s terrorist state, a state that furthers jihad in many places because its clerical hierarchy considers itself uniquely empowered to order and promote holy war.
- Obama’s trust in Khamene’i’s presumed fatwa of 2013, forbidding nuclear weapons, rests on the assumption that it even exists. It does not. Even if it did,fatwas are not permanent.
- Why, then, is this deal going ahead at all? Why is one of the world’s most tyrannical regimes being rewarded for its intransigence, and especially for repeatedly violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty?
“[Some] analysts,” writes the historian and former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, “claimed the president [Barack Obama] regarded Iran as an ascendant and logical power — unlike the feckless, disunited Arabs and those troublemaking Israelis — that could assist in resolving other regional conflicts. I first heard this theory at Georgetown back in 2008, in conversation with think tankers and former State Department officials. They also believed Iran’s radical Islam was merely an expression of interests and fears that the United States could with sufficient goodwill, meet and allay. … Iran, according to Obama was a pragmatic player with addressable interest. For Netanyahu, Iran was irrational, messianic, and genocidal – ‘worse,’ he said, ‘than fifty North Koreas.'”[1]
Since the signing of the deal at the UN, hot-tempered criticisms and defences have gone into overdrive in the political, journalistic, and diplomatic spheres. Acres have been written and are still being written about the deal, making it the hottest political potato of recent years. Expert analysts such as Omri Ceren and, more recently, Joel Rosenberg have cut through the deliberate obfuscation to show the extent of the dangers the deal presents to the Middle East, the United States, Israel, and the world.
The deal’s supporters insist that it will bring peace and calm to the region, while a host of denigrators — chief among them Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu — have exposed the enormous risks it entails. Already, a vast majority of American citizens are opposed to the deal.
Within the U.S. Congress, bipartisan opposition to the deal is high and mounting. Yet, on September 2, President Obama succeeded in winning over a 34th senator, enough that ultimate passage of the deal is a foregone conclusion. That does not, however, mean that the debate will end. In all likelihood, it will grow fiercer as time passes and true consequences become clearer to the public and politicians alike.
Recent revelations that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which oversees nuclear developments worldwide, has agreed that only Iranians will be allowed to inspect the most controversial of Iran’s nuclear sites, have raised anxieties about proper monitoring of the deal. The military complex of Parchin, where Iran is suspected of work on nuclear weapons, will be closed to outside inspection, making it certain that, if Iran decides to cheat (something it has done before), it will be able to do so with impunity. Sanctions will not be re-imposed. And, as we shall see, cheating on the deal can be justified by the Iranians who could always refer to the practice of the prophet Muhammad with the Quraysh tribe in Mecca.
Obama, his Secretary of State John Kerry, and the entire US administration are not merely behind the deal, but almost fanatically so. Many argue that Obama is more interested in securing his “legacy” as the world’s greatest peacemaker (or war-creator, as the case may well turn out to be), the statesman par excellence who alone could bring the theocratic regime of Iran in from the cold and shower the Middle East with true balance in its troubled affairs.
To bring this about, Obama has had to diminish, if not leave totally open to obliteration, American support for Israel, the single country in the world most clearly exposed to a possible genocide should the Iran’s Islamic regime choose to exterminate it, as it has so often threatened to do.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s words mellal-e Eslami bayad Esra’il-ra qal’ o qam’ kard – “the Islamic nations must exterminate Israel” — have been given renewed vigour now that it is highly likely that Iran, evading serious inspections by the IAEA, will soon possess the weapons to do just that.
Even if the treaty is a done deal, it is time to show yet another massive hole in the administration’s strategy. Already, Obama, Kerry and the tightly knit administration have shown themselves remarkably obdurate in turning a blind eye to the many concerns that surround the deal. At the end of the “sunset period,” if not sooner, Iran gets to have, legitimately, as many bombs as it likes. Other problems include breakout times; centrifuge production; centrifuge concealment; uranium enrichment by stealth; refusal to allow the IAEA to inspect military sites; the acquisition of intercontinental ballistic missiles — presumably to be used intercontinentally at guess who. It is no secret that the hardliners in Iran still speak of America as “The Great Satan” and consider it their enemy. That does not even include the implications of lifting sanctions on, and paying billions of dollars to, the world’s main sponsor of terrorism.
As Michael Oren has shown, however, the American president presumably thinks he is doing a deal with a logical and pragmatic regime. Barack Obama, an intelligent, well-read man of Muslim origin, knows almost nothing about Islam; that is the greatest flaw in the Iran deal he has fought so hard to inflict on the human race. With access to platoons of experts, to some of the greatest libraries with holdings in Islamic doctrines and history, and with the Mullahs and Iran’s public still daily promising to destroy America, Obama apparently still believes Islam is a religion of peace and that a theocratic, terror-supporting, medieval regime should have the power to make nuclear bombs. The obverse is that he might like, perhaps not wittingly, to see America, Israel and the West brought to their knees.
This author has previously exposed one aspect of Iran’s serious lack of logic, rationality, or pragmatism — namely the extent to which apocalyptic thinking, messianic prophecy, and dreams of Islamic transcendence through universal conflict pervade the clerical elite, a high percentage of the masses, and even the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. One might assume that this would be especially true when they are flush with cash and nuclear weapons, and the risk to their own survival is substantially lower.
On August 17, just over a month after the signing of the nuclear deal, Iran’s Supreme Leader, ‘Ali Khamene’i, addressed a religious conference, where he expressed his undying hatred for the United States. He said, for example:
We must combat the plans of the arrogance [i.e. the West, led by the U.S.] with jihad for the sake of Allah. … jihad for the sake of God does not only mean military conflict, but also means cultural, economic, and political struggle. The clearest essence of jihad for the sake of God today is to identify the plots of the arrogance in the Islamic region, especially the sensitive and strategic West Asian region. The planning for the struggle against them should include both defense and offense.
The deal has done nothing whatever to stop military threats to Israel, an ally of the United States (though treated with disrespect by America’s president). Speaking on 2 September, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp’s top commander in Tehran province, Brigadier General Mohsen Kazemayni, stated that, “… they [the US and the Zionists] should know that the Islamic Revolution will continue enhancing its preparedness until it overthrows Israel and liberates Palestine.”
There is a simple word for this: warmongering.
Why is the U.S. President insisting on a bad deal with a warmongering regime?
When a military force at its strongest fantasizes about the coming of a Messiah (the Twelfth Imam) to lead them to victory over all infidels, talk of logic, rationality and pragmatism seems acutely out of touch with reality.
Obama’s assumption that there is something solid about the Iranian regime that makes it suitable as a recipient for such largesse and the chance to enrich uranium until kingdom come seems to be based on false consciousness. The regime has been in place for almost forty years, quite a respectable time for a dictatorship. In part, that has been because it has mastered the art of suppression, giving its people a degree of freedom that is missing in several other Islamic countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Sudan, or Afghanistan. These partial freedoms, especially for young people, lull the population into risk-averseness, possibly helped along by the memory in 2009 of pleas for more freedom, which the United States ignored and the mullahs savaged.
Obama, in his ongoing attempt to portray Islam as benign — and a dictatorial regime as a sold basis for peace and understanding in the Middle East — ignores the religious element of the theocracy, as well as the sadistic repression, and in doing so misses a lot.
First of all, Shi’ite Islam is different from its Sunni big brother. It is deeply imbued with features largely absent from Sunni Islam. The most important Shi’i denomination is that of the Twelvers (Ithna’ ‘Ashariyya), who, from the beginning of Islam, have believed themselves to be not only the true version of the faith, but the group destined by God to rule in its name. Beginning with ‘Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet and the fourth Caliph of the Sunnis, the Shi’a began as his supporters. (Please see the Appendix that follows this article: it contains material that even Barack Obama and his advisors need to know; without it, they simply will not “get” what the ayatollahs are about. It comes to an important conclusion that has considerable bearing on today’s events — and not the one you may expect.)
Beneath the smiles and banter lie the unsmiling masks and the taqiyya-flavoured lies. Beneath the wheeling and dealing and the refusals to compromise lies a sense of destiny for the regime, a belief that it stands on the brink of the realization of the centuries-old Shi’ite dream: that God will finally set his people on the pinnacle of the world and usher in the never-ending reign of the Imam Mahdi, with all injustice gone, the martyrs in paradise, the ayatollahs and mujtahids andmaraji’ in glory, and all the infidels in hell.
It is precisely because Barack Obama and his aides have never got down and dirty to take in hard information that they have remained utterly out of touch with the real springs and cogs of Iranian Shi’ite thinking.
Obama has, when all is said and done, let himself be deluded by the charm offensive of Hassan Rouhani and his henchman Javad Zarif. Obama may not believe in the mystical land of Hurqalyaor the white steed on which the Twelfth Imam will ride to the world’s last battle any more than you or I do. But the clerical elite of Iran, and those who follow them blindly — men and women brought up from birth on these tales, and who travel in the thousands every day to send a message to the Imam at the Jamkaran Mosque near Qom — believe these things with absolute devotion, and that is why this story matters, because it has political consequences.
Shi’i Muslim law enshrines jihad, holy war, as fully as does Sunni law. For Sunnis, jihad has always been possible under the authority of a Caliph, whether fought under his orders or led by kings and governors under his broad aegis.
The Shi’a, however, do not recognize the Caliphate and have often been the victims of Sunni jihads. They may feel impelled to fight a holy war, but under what authority could they do so?
The power of the clergy had waned under the anti-clerical reign of Iran’s Pahlavi dynasty (1925-1979), only to burst out more strongly than ever in the Islamic Revolution, which placed all authority in a new system of government: rule by a religious jurist, a faqih.[2] Overnight, a jihad state was brought into existence; a jihad state with vast oil reserves, modern military equipment, and, at first, the support of almost the entire Iranian population. The clerical hierarchy under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini did not just intend to prepare the way for the coming of the Mahdi. They were now his earthly deputies, in whose hands lay life and death for millions.
The new Shi’ism allowed the clergy to take on powers they had never imagined. More and more economic and legal power came to be concentrated in the hands of a narrow body of scholars, and sometimes a single man could be the source of religious and legal authority for the entire Shi’i world — in Iran, Afghanistan, eastern Arabia, Bahrain, and so on. Thus were the foundations laid for the revolutionary rank of Supreme Leader, taken by the Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamene’i.
Look for a moment at the preamble to the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran.[3] You will see quickly that this does not read like any other constitution you have seen. The preamble sets the tone. Here, in an account of the circumstances leading to the revolution we read of the clergy as the ruhaniyyat-e mobarez, “the militant or fighting clergy.” These are not Anglican vicars at their prayers or rabbis studying Talmud. A mobarez is a warrior, a champion, a fighter. Not far down the preamble, one encounters a description of their struggle as “The Great Holy War,”jihad-e bozorg. We are not in Obama’s world of logical and pragmatic striving for political and diplomatic coherence. This is made even clearer in one of the constitution’s earlier articles, “The Religious Army.” Here, we read that the Iranian Army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps “have responsibility… for a religious mission, which is Holy War (Jihad) in the path of God, and the struggle to extend the supremacy of God’s law in the world.”
How do you reach a compromise and a pragmatic deal with a regime that thinks in this way? Are the U.S. administration and the P5+1 blind to something the Iranians have never even bothered to conceal? Do they really take everything in the talks at face value? Perhaps they think references to jihad and fighting clergy are nothing more than pious talk “for domestic consumption,” as they tried to explain — as real and everyday as the myths and legends of other faiths. If they do, then they have far less excuse for their blindness, for the Iranian regime is already at war and is already fighting its jihad.
In Iraq, for example, a country with a majority Twelver Shi’i population, Iranian-backed militias have been at war for many years, first against the Americans, then the Sunnis, and now the hordes of Islamic State. In June 2014, Grand Ayatollah al-Sayyid ‘Ali al-Husayni al-Sistani issued a fatwa calling on Iraqis to fight against Islamic State, justifying their fight as jihad wajib kafa’i: a Jihad that is compulsory for those who choose it, but not for the entire population. The ruling calls for a struggle against ISIS’s irhab – their “terrorism.” Jihad is a religious and legal duty, and even though ISIS may call its fighting jihad, it is here condemned as terror.
Hezbollah, created and backed by Iran, is by far the largest terrorist group in the region. Hezbollah is considered a state within a state, with forces and infrastructure inside Lebanon and Syria. It has used the name “Islamic Jihad Organization” to cover its attacks on Israeli forces in Lebanon. In its 1988 Open Letter (Risala maftuha), it describes its followers as “Combatants of the Holy War” and goes on — in terms similar to those in the Hamas Covenant — “our struggle will end only when this entity [Israel] is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.”
Hezbollah and its creator, the Iranian Islamic regime, have a curious link to the Palestinian terror movement, Hamas, despite Hamas being exclusively Sunni. By financing, arming, and defending Hamas, Iran is fighting a strange proxy jihad that serves its own purposes of defying the West, achieving regional hegemony, and winning praise from all Muslims in the world for its own war against Israel. It also furthers the goals of the Muslim Brotherhood (of which Hamas is the Palestinian branch) in the same struggle.
I have dragged you through the briars and mud because it is important here to see another culture through its own eyes. If we insist in pretending that Shi’i Muslims think like Sunni Muslims or, worse still, like Jews or Christians — if we brush all that history and all those doctrines under the carpet of “any deal is better than no deal ” — we will go on making the same mistakes. We will believe that a purely political and diplomatic enterprise to bring Iran in from the cold and create a new trading alliance will transform an evil regime into a land of sweetness and light.
Members of the U.S. Congress must wake up and examine, in however cursory a fashion, these views that motivate the Iranian leadership, and must stop pretending that they are as logical and pragmatic as would be convenient for the wishes of the West.
Not that Obama and Kerry have ever sounded logical or pragmatic in how they have approached this debate and this deal-making process. In an act of supreme folly, the White House has dismissed Ayatollah Khamene’i’s recent call for “Death to America;” they pretend it is just empty rhetoric for the Iranian people.
Left: Senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Movahedi Kermani, speaking on July 17 in Tehran, behind a banner reading “We Will Trample Upon America” and “We defeat the United States.” Right: Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, proclaims “Death to America” on March 2
We are walking with a blindfold toward sure disaster. Forget the dreams of a Messiah if you will, but do not for one moment let yourself be lulled into thinking that only ISIS is serious about waging a jihad.
Despite their oft-expressed delusion that “Islam is a religion of peace,” President Obama, Secretary John Kerry and other leaders are, like it or not, already engaged in a war against jihad. They have already fought it in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere. However much Obama wants to stand off from involvement in the jihad struggles of the Middle East, he cannot: Western states are fighting jihad, sometimes abroad, increasingly at home.
A Third World War is already taking place, a war the Islamists and Islamic states understand, but which many in the West still refuse to grasp. They are not even willing to respect the true motivations of the enemies against whom they fight. The Iran deal strengthens the hands of a regime that is the world’s terrorist state, a state that furthers jihad in many places because its clerical hierarchy considers itself uniquely empowered to order and promote holy war.
Let us for the moment ignore the nuclear aspect of this deal and look instead on what it offers the world’s leading jihad state. The removal of sanctions coupled with the business deals Europeans and others are rushing to secure, the delivery of perhaps $150 billion to Tehran, and the turning of many blind eyes to both Iran’s internal repression and its jihad wars in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Gaza, and Lebanon leave the ayatollahs poised to dominate much of the Middle East.
And that is not all. Obama’s belief in the stability of the Iranian regime seems to rest on its endurance since 1979. His trust in Khamene’i’s presumed fatwa of 2013, forbidding nuclear weapons rests on the assumption that it even exists. It does not. No one has ever seen it. Even if the fatwa did exist, fatwas are not permanent. They are always regarded as temporary rulings with Twelver Shi’ism. This is a crucial technical point that the White House seems incapable of — or ill-disposed to — grasping.
Further, Obama’s faith in Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as a reformer and moderate flies in the face of Rouhani’s devotion to the hardline clerical leadership of which he is a part. Here are a few facts:
- ‘Ali Khamene’i is 76 years old, but his health is poor and he may not live much longer. Already, factions within the hierarchy will be jostling for the Supreme Leadership.
- In the Usuli Twelver version of Shi’ism, once a Mujtahid dies, his fatwas are no longer valid. A new Mujtahid or, in this case, a new Supreme Leader, has to issue fatwas of his own. A new fatwa may confirm an old one or radically differ from it.
- A new Supreme Leader is an unpredictable personality.
- The Iranian nuclear program is already up and running.
- The breakout time for weapons grade materials may be as short as three months.
- Iran already has and is acquiring ballistic missiles with an intercontinental range.
- Jihad is hard-wired into the regime’s philosophy.
- Iran is already conducting a series of jihad wars abroad.
- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has expressed a hope to return to the presidency in 2017. Ahmadinejad and his clique are bent on apocalyptic outcomes and actions to bring the Hidden Imam back to this world.
We only have to get this wrong once. Chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” are not narcotic iterations of slogans but sincerely felt expressions of intent.
Khamene’i last month praised the Iranian people for calling for the deaths of the USA and Israel, and said that he hoped God would answer their prayers because in at most ten years, the Iranian mullahs and their IRGC will possess the power to exterminate Israel, if they and their God so wish.
Why, then, is this deal going ahead at all?
Why are sanctions against the world’s leading exporter of jihadi terrorism being lifted, not strengthened?
Why is one of the world’s most tyrannical regimes being rewarded for its intransigence, and especially for repeatedly violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty?
Why has Israel’s Prime Minister been vilified and sidelined simply for drawing attention to the weaknesses of a deal that could lead to the death of all of his people?
Why have the P5+1 never taken seriously the Shi’ite rule that it is permitted to lie to infidels and conceal one’s own true intentions?
Why are secrets being kept — such as the contents of the two side-deals?
Why is the U.S. Congress being asked to vote without the benefit of full disclosure?
Why is the IAEA banned from spontaneously inspecting only declared Iranian nuclear sites, and why are military sites completely off-limits?
The questions are so many and so critical that we remain in the dark about where this will lead mankind. No one who has ever done a financial or political deal would ever sign on the dotted line until they had answers to all their questions. Far more hangs on this deal than perhaps any deal in history. Yet those who want to make it enforceable under international law are uninformed about the most basic contents of the deal, as well as the beliefs and historical roots of their enemy.
Such folly is almost without precedence, except possibly in the process of appeasement that endeavoured to placate the Third Reich and treat Adolf Hitler as the best friend of democracy.
The Iranian regime not only despises democracy, it considers all Western law — including international law — invalid. This view has several deep roots. For both Sunni and Shi’i Muslims, only rule under God is valid, under a Caliph or a clerical theocracy under a Supreme Ruler. Human beings have no right to interfere. Democracy leads to the making of human laws that may contradict shari’a law, and such effrontery is considered arrogant and presumptuous. The democratic elements in Iran are tightly controlled, and supremacy rests in all areas beneath clerical authority. The same principle applies to international law, UN resolutions, treaties and so forth.
Iran has openly genocidal intent, as well as a devotion to holy war that goes to the very deepest level.
Before we leave the subject of jihad, there is one other factor that everyone has overlooked. It is the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, the most important agreement in early Islamic history. In the year 628, Muhammad, now ruling in Medina, signed the ten-year Treaty of Hudaybiyyah with his long-time enemies, the tribal confederacy of Quraysh, who ruled Mecca. Twenty-two months later, under the pretext that a clan from a tribe allied with the Quraysh had squabbled with a tribe allied to the Muslims, Muhammad broke the treaty and attacked Mecca, conquering it.
What is important about this is that Muhammad had made the treaty while he was still relatively weak. But in the months after signing it, his alliances and growing conversions meant that he now possessed superior military strength — and that was when he pounced.
In 1994, the treaty became crucial to the issue of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.[4]In September 1993, Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat signed the Oslo Accords along with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the following year the two leaders were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
However, even as he awaited that prize, Arafat spoke at a mosque in Johannesburg alluded to the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah and referred to “a jihad to liberate Jerusalem”: “I see this agreement,” he said, “as being no more than the agreement signed between our Prophet Muhammad and the Quraysh in Mecca.”
Non-Muslims may well have misunderstood this as a reference to some early Muslim peace-making. But Arafat made his meaning clear: “We now accept the peace agreement, but [only in order] to continue on the road to Jerusalem.”[5]
The nuclear deal that President Obama and his supporters have imposed will strengthen Iran considerably, removing sanctions and delivering perhaps $150 billion to the country. It is as certain as day follows night, that the Iranian regime will find a pretext to break the deal. Already, on September 3, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene’i made it clear that he would back out of the deal if sanctions were not completely removed at once.
Whatever happens in the days ahead, the U.S. Congress, backed by a majority of the American public, needs to strike this madcap deal down before it wreaks a storm of tribulations on everyone.
Denis MacEoin has a PhD (Cambridge 1979) in Persian Studies and has written widely on Iran and its religious beliefs.
Appendix
‘Ali became the first in a line of twelve imams, all deemed the true leaders of Islam, but all denied their right to rule and all but one assassinated (or so it is claimed) by the Sunni Caliphs. From this comes the Shi’i sense of suffering, injustice, oppression by despots, neglect and rights — all of which played an important part in the 1979 revolution and continue to play out across society.
The Shi’a are the underdogs who are willing to sacrifice all to establish the rights of their imams and their successors. That was what the 1979 evolution was all about, and it is what present the regime still insists on as the justification for its opposition to Western intrusion, democracy, women’s rights and all the rest, which are deemed by Iran’s leadership as part of a plot to undermine and control the expansion of the Shi’i faith on the global stage.
The twelfth imam, according to Shi’ite legend, was a young boy, Muhammad al-Mahdi, the son of the murdered eleventh imam. Born in 869 in the Iraqi city of Samarra during the reign of the Sunni Abbasid Caliphate, his father, Hasan al-‘Askari, died when Muhammad was born.
It is said that young Muhammad, in order to avoid his enemies, went into something called Occultation (ghayba). Even if this originally was physical, he was never seen alive again and is supposed to have entered the celestial realm of Hurqalya, from which he will one day return as the promised Saviour, the Qa’im bi’l-Sayf, the One Who will Arise with the Sword to do battle with injustice and infidelity.
This belief is what waters modern Shi’i apocalypticism, something promoted intensely by former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This expectation has considerable significance for Iran’s drive to nuclear power. But that is not why I raise the issue here. There is another, more mundane, aspect to the Imam’s disappearance and continued Occultation, and it may be even more relevant to the matters at hand.
The answer to what authority they could fight under was that only the Imam in each generation could order or lead jihad. But when the twelfth Imam vanished from human sight, was jihad to remain in abeyance until his return or could it be fought under another authority? The answer was not at first simple, but one thing started to happen: the Shi’a began to consider their religious scholars to be the intermediaries with the Imam, and this laid the basis for the possibility that they might have the right to order jihad. For some time, this was just conjectural, for the Shi’a had little worldly power.
In 1501, a new dynasty, the Safavids, came to power in Iran, forced most of the population to convert to Shi’ism, and created a line of kings under whom the clerical class became more and more powerful. The Shah could still lead jihad, but the clergy were needed to give permission. The Safavid dynasty lasted till 1722, and an interregnum was followed by the emergence of a new line of Shahs, the Qajars, who ruled from 1796 to 1925.
Under the Qajars, the Shi’i clerical hierarchy underwent deep and lasting changes, producing today’s version of Twelver Islam, the Usulis.
The newly powerful ‘ulama of the 19th century took on the mantle of deputies for the Hidden Imam and ordered jihads in 1809 and 1826 (against Russia), 1836, 1843, and 1856-7 (against the British). In 1914, when the British occupied Iraq at the start of World War I, the Shi’i clergy in the shrine centres there declared jihad to reinforce the call for Holy War by the Ottoman empire.
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[2] As in Khomeini’s theory and book, Velayat-e Faqih, the Custodianship of the Jurisprudent.
[3] Here in English, here in Persian.
[4] For a detailed discussion of the treaty and its implications for making peace with Muslims, see Daniel Pipes, “Lessons from the Prophet Muhammad’s Diplomacy,” The Middle East Quarterly, September 1999, pp. 65-72.
[5] Natasha Singer, “Arafat Text Raises Ire,” Forward, May 27, 1994.
Op-Ed: MUST READ: Facing Iran on its Own
September 6, 2015Op-Ed: MUST READ: Facing Iran on its Own, Israeli National News, Prof. Louis Rene Beres, September 6, 2015
(“Ready, fire, aim . . . think” is a poor strategy. “Think, ready, aim, fire and then think some more” is better. That should be obvious, but is it?– DM)
The urgent primacy of Israel’s defining a nuclear doctrine is clear. The cumulative harms ensuing from the significant diplomatic failure to stop the Iran deal will ultimately depend upon Israel’s own selected responses.
In core matters of war and peace, timing is everything. For Israel, now cheerlessly confirmed in its long-held view that U.S.-led diplomacy with Iran was misconceived, future strategic options should be determined with great care. In essence, this means that the beleaguered mini-state’s nuclear policies, going forward, should be extrapolated from carefully fashioned doctrine, and not assembled, ad hoc, or “on the fly,” in assorted and more-or-less discrete reactions to periodic crises.
More precisely, should Israel decide to decline any residual preemption options, and prepare instead for aptly reliable and protracted dissuasion of its nearly-nuclear Iranian adversary, several corresponding decisions would be necessary. These closely-intersecting judgments would concern a still-expanding role for multilayered ballistic missile defense,[1] and also, a well-reasoned and incremental discontinuance of deliberate nuclear ambiguity.[2]
In this connection, among other things, Jerusalem will need to convince Tehran that Israel’s nuclear forces are (1) substantially secure from all enemy first-strike attacks,[3] and (2) entirely capable of penetrating all enemy active defenses.[4]
To succeed with any policy of long-term deterrence, a nearly-nuclear Iran would first need to be convinced that Israel’s nuclear weapons were actually usable. In turn, this complex task of strategic persuasion would require some consciously nuanced efforts to remove “the bomb” from Israel’s “basement.” One specific reason for undertaking any such conspicuous removal would be to assure Iranian decision-makers that Israeli nuclear weapons were not only abundantly “real,” but also amenable to variable situational calibrations.
The strategic rationale of such assurance would be to convince Iran that Israel stands ready to confront widely-different degrees of plausible enemy threat.
In the “good old days” of the original U.S.-U.S.S.R. Cold War (we may now be on the brink of “Cold War II”), such tangibly measured strategiccalculations had been granted their own specific name. Then, the proper term was “escalation dominance.” Early on, therefore, it had been understood, by both superpowers, that adequate security from nuclear attack must always include not only mutually-reinforcing or “synergistic” protections against “bolt-from-the-blue” missile attacks, but also the avoidance of unwitting or uncontrolled escalations. Such unpredictably rapid jumps in coercive intensity, it had already been noted, could too-quickly propel certain determined adversaries from “normally” conventional engagements to atomic war.
Occasionally, especially in many-sided strategiccalculations, truth can be counter-intuitive. On this point, regarding needed Israeli preparations for safety from a nearly-nuclear Iran,[5] there exists an obvious, but still generally overlooked, irony. It is that in all foreseeable circumstances of nuclear deterrence, the credibility of pertinent Israeli threats could sometimes vary inversely with perceived destructiveness. This suggests, at a minimum, that one distinctly compelling reason for moving deliberately from nuclear ambiguity to certain limited forms of nuclear disclosure would be to communicate the following vital message to Iran: Israel’s retaliatory nuclear weapons are not too destructive for actual operational use.
Soon, Israel’s decision-makers will need to proceed more self-consciously and explicitly on rendering another important judgment. This closely-related decision would concern making an essentially fundamental strategic choice between “assured destruction” and “nuclear war fighting” postures. To draw upon appropriate military parlance, assured destruction strategies are those postures generally referred to as “counter-value” or “mutual assured destruction” (MAD) strategies.
Nuclear war fighting strategies, on the other hand, are more typically synonymous with “counterforce .”
In principle, counter-value and counterforce strategies represent seemingly alternative theories of deterrence, differential nuclear postures in which a state chooses to primarily target its strategic nuclear weapons on either its presumed enemy’s “soft” civilian populations and supporting infrastructures, or on that same enemy’s “hard” military assets. Although presumptively in prima facie violation of humanitarian international law, or the law of armed conflict (because counter-value doctrine would apparently disregard, bydefinition, the binding legal obligations of “distinction”), it is still reasonable to recall another relevant argument: Favoring counter-value targeting doctrines could more persuasively reduce the probability of a nuclear war.
Significantly, this means that any Israeli commitment to assured destruction strategies could ultimately prove less corrosive, and more humane.
It is also plausible that a geographically vulnerable state lacking Clausewitzian “mass,[6] and contemplating “counter-value versus counterforce” targeting issues, would opt for some sort or other of “mixed” strategy. In any event, whichever nuclear deterrence strategy Israel might actually decide to choose, what would only matter is what Iran itself would perceive as real. Always, in matters of nuclear strategy, the only decisional reality is perceived reality.
In choosing between two core nuclear targeting alternatives, Israel could decide to opt for nuclear deterrence based primarily upon assured destruction strategies. Reciprocally, however, looking at the negative consequences column, Jerusalem could thereby invite an enlarged risk of “losing” any nuclear war that might sometime arise. For the most part, this is true because counter-value-targeted nuclear weapons are not designed to efficiently destroy military targets.
If, on the other hand, Israel were to opt for nuclear deterrence based primarily upon counterforce capabilities, Iran could then feel especially threatened, a potentially precarious condition that could subsequently heighten the prospect of an enemy first-strike, and thereby, of an eventual nuclear exchange.
In these particular matters, assorted “intervening variables” must also be considered. Israel’s strategic decisions on counter-value versus counterforce doctrines should depend, at least in part, on certain prior investigations of: (1) enemy state inclinations to strike first; and (2) enemy state inclinations to strike all-at-once, or in stages.
Should Israeli strategic planners assume that an already-nuclear Iran is apt to strike first, and to strike in an unlimited fashion (that is, to fire all or most of its nuclear weapons, right away), Israeli counterforce-targeted warheads, used in retaliation, could hit only empty silos/launchers. Anticipating such manifestly unfavorable circumstances, Israel’s only reasonable application of counterforce doctrine would then be to strike first itself.
Nonetheless, any idea of an Israeli nuclear preemption, even if technically “rational” and legal, would likely be dismissed out-of-hand in Jerusalem.
Concerning specific jurisprudential issues of law and nuclear weapons use, the U.N.’s International Court of Justice, in a landmark 1996 Advisory Opinion, ruled that nuclear weapons could sometimes be used permissibly, but only in those largely residual circumstances where the “very survival of a state would be at stake.”
If, as now seems most likely, Israel were to reject all conceivable preemption options, there would be no compelling reason for Jerusalem to opt for a counterforce strategy vis-à-vis Iran. Rather, from the discernibly critical standpoint of persuasive intra-war deterrence, a counter-value strategy would likely prove more appropriate.
With this in mind, The Project Daniel Group, in 2004, had urged Israel to “focus its (second-strike) resources on counter-value warheads….”[7] This earlier suggestion still makes perfect sense today.
Should Israeli planners assume that an already-nuclear Iran is apt to strike first, but, for whatever reason, to strike “only” in a limited fashion, holding some measure of nuclear firepower in reserve for anticipated follow-on strikes, Israeli counterforce-targeted warheads might display damage-limiting benefits. Moreover, such counterforce targeting preparations could serve an Israeli conventional preemption, either as a compelling counter-retaliatory threat, or, should Israel decide not to preempt, as a threatened Israeli retaliation.
For example, should a conventional Israeli defensive first-strike be intentionally limited, perhaps because it would have been coupled together with a calculated quid-pro-quo of no further destruction, in exchange for an enemy cessation of hostilities, recognizable counterforce targeting preparations could serve to reinforce an Israeli counter-retaliatory strike.
Here, Israel’s attempt at intra-war deterrence could fail, thus occasioning the need for additional follow-on damage limiting strikes.
Israeli preparations for nuclear war-fighting should never be interpreted as a distinct alternative to nuclear deterrence. Instead, such preparations should always be considered as essential and integral components of Israeli nuclear deterrence.[8] The overriding purpose of Israel’s nuclear forces, whether still ambiguous, or newly disclosed, must consistently be deterrence, not any actual military engagement. In principle, of course, nuclear war-fighting scenarios are not ipso facto out-of-the-question, but they should always be rejected by Israel where still possible.
Si vis pacem, para bellum atomicum. “If you want peace, prepare for atomic war.”
In the still-valid counsel of Project Daniel: “The primary point of Israel’s nuclear forces must always be deterrence ex ante, not revenge ex post.” Or, conceptualized in the historically antecedent language of Sun-Tzu, the ancient Chinese military thinker, Israel should be guided by the following sound maxim: “Subjugating the enemy’s army without fighting is always the true pinnacle of excellence.”[9]
Yet, even at this late date, there are existentially menacing circumstances that could sometime turn a rational Israeli prime minister toward preemption. These are prospectively catastrophic circumstances wherein sustained and stable nuclear deterrence with Iran is expected to be highly improbable, or even inconceivable.
If Israeli leadership should have corollary doubts about Iranian decisional rationality, it could still make strategic sense to launch certain appropriately defensive first strike attacks. This calculation would obtain, moreover, even if the expected retaliatory and public relations consequences for Israel would expectedly be overwhelming.
There are two final and closely-related observations.
First, even if it could be assumed, by Israel, that Iranian leaders will always seek to act rationally, this would ignore the accuracy of information used to make rational decisions. Rationality, in all strategic calculations, refers only to the intention of maximizing preferences. It says nothing about whether or not the information used is correct or incorrect.
This means that perfectly rational Iranian leaders could sometime make errors in calculation that would lead them to launch an aggressive war against Israel.[10]
Second, Iranian leaders could sometime be irrational, but this would not mean that they were also mad or “crazy.” Rather, in all pertinent matters, an irrational national decision is “merely” one which does not place the very highest value upon national survival. For a relevant example, Iranian decision-makers could sometime choose to act upon a preference-ordering that values destruction of the Jewish State and the corollary fulfillment of presumed religious expectations more highly than the Shiite republic’s physical existence.
In principle, at least, faced with just such an irrational adversary, Israel might still manage to forge a successful plan for deterrence. Here, however, Jerusalem would first need to base its discernibly calculable threats upon those particular and identifiable religious institutions or infrastructures held most sacred in Tehran.
When the ancient Greek leader, Pericles, delivered his famous Funeral Oration, with its ritualistic praise of Athenian civilization – a speech we know today by way of Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War – his perspective was openly strategic. Long before military calculations had ever needed to include nuclear weapons, and about a half-century after the Persian (Iranian) defeat of Greece at Thermopylae by Xerxes, Pericles had already understood the vital connections between enemy power and self-inflicted error. “What I fear more than the strategies of our enemies,” Pericles had presciently warned, “is our own mistakes.”
There is a important lesson here for Israel: Looking beyond the just-completed nuclear agreement with Iran, do not forget that the cumulative harms ensuing from this significant diplomatic failure will ultimately depend upon Israel’s own selected responses.[11] To best ensure the most suitable responses, Jerusalem should first be certain to fashion a theoretically-refined[12] and appropriately flexible strategic doctrine.
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Sources:
[1] See, on this role: Louis René Beres and (Major-General/IDF/Res.) Isaac Ben-Israel, “Think Anticipatory Self-Defense,” The Jerusalem Post, October 22, 2007; Professor Beres and MG Ben-Israel, “The Limits of Deterrence,”Washington Times, November 21, 2007; Professor Beres and MG Ben-Israel, “Deterring Iran,” Washington Times, June 10, 2007; Professor Beres and MG Ben-Israel, “Deterring Iranian Nuclear Attack,” Washington Times, January 27, 2009; and Professor Beres and MG Ben-Israel, “Defending Israel from Iranian Nuclear Attack,” The Jewish Press, March 13, 2013. See, also: Louis René Beres and (General/USAF/Ret.) John T. Chain, “Could Israel Safely Deter a Nuclear Iran,” The Atlantic, August 9, 2012; Professor Beres and General Chain, “Living With Iran,” BESA Center for Strategic Studies, Israel, May 2014; and Louis René Beres and (Lt. General/USAF/Ret.) Thomas McInerney, “Obama’s Inconceivable, Undesirable, Nuclear-Free Dream,” US News & World Report, August 29, 2013.
[2] See, on such discontinuance: Louis René Beres, “Like Two Scorpions in a Bottle: Could Israel and a Nuclear Iran Coexist in the Middle East,” The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, Vol. 8., No. 1, 2014, pp. 23-32; Louis RenéBeres, “Facing Myriad Enemies: Core Elements of Israeli Nuclear Deterrence,” The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol. XX, Issue 1., Fall/Winter 2013, pp. 17-30; Louis René Beres, “Lessons for Israel from Ancient Chinese Military Thought: Facing Iranian Nuclearization with Sun-Tzu,” Harvard National Security Journal, Harvard Law School, 2013; Louis René Beres, “Striking Hezbollah-Bound Weapons in Syria: Israel’s Actions Under International Law,” Harvard National Security Journal, 2013; and Louis René Beres, “Looking Ahead: Revising Israel’s Nuclear Ambiguity in the Middle East,” Herzliya Conference, 2013, March 2013; IDC/Herzliya.
[3] Recently, improved security for Israeli nuclear forces has been associated with enhanced sea-basing options. See, on these options: Louis René Beres and (Admiral/USN/ret.) Leon “Bud” Edney, “Israel’s Nuclear Strategy: A Larger Role for Submarine-Basing,” The Jerusalem Post, August 17, 2014; and Professor Beres and Admiral Edney, “A Sea-Based Nuclear Deterrent for Israel,” Washington Times, September 5, 2014.
[4] See Professor Beres and Admiral Edney, “What Now For Israel: What are the Jewish State’s security options after the Iran Nuclear Agreement?”, US News & World Report, July 14, 2015.
[5] On July 23, 2014, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, called openly for the annihilation of Israel. See: Y. Mansharof, E. Kharrazi, Y. Lahat, and A. Savyon, “Quds Day in Iran: Calls for Annihilation of Israel and Arming the West Bank,” MEMRI, July 25, 2014, Inquiry and Analysis Series Report, No. 1107. In its July 2015 agreement with Iran, the U.S. included no contingent requirement that Iran first reject such expressly genocidal intentions. Jurisprudentially, it is significant that precisely such a requirement is deducible from the authoritative 1948Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. In other words, by not insisting upon such a requirement, the U.S. was acting in violation of its own antecedent treaty obligations.
[6] See Karl von Clausewitz, On War.
[7] See: Israel’s Strategic Future: Project Daniel, The Project Daniel Group, Louis René Beres, Chair, Ariel Center for Policy Research, ACPR Policy Paper No. 155, Israel, May 2004, 64 pp.
[8] Herman Kahn’s instructive comment many years back stipulates: “It is incorrect and unproductive to categorically accuse those who subscribe to war-fighting concepts either of wanting to fight a nuclear war, or of having less interest in deterrence.” See Kahn, Thinking About the Unthinkable in the 1980s, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1984, p. 43.
[9] In heeding this ancient counsel, Israeli decision-makers will always have to bear in mind the totality of the Iranian threat, that is, the direct perils of a nuclear missile attack, and also the indirect risks issuing from assorted Iranian surrogates. Most plainly, Iranian surrogate power resides in the Shiite militia, Hezbollah, which now operates out of Syria, as well as Lebanon; in the government and its derivative militias in Iraq; in Shiite Houthi rebels, now expanding their control across Yemen; and even in Sunni Hamas, which sometimes represents specifically Iranian preferences and expectations in Palestinian Gaza. Significantly, the cumulative impact of Iranian-posed direct and indirect threats to Israel is plausibly greater than the simple sum of its parts – in other words, this injurious impact is authentically synergistic.
[10] For pertinent law, see: Resolution on the Definition of Aggression, Dec. 14, 1974, U.N.G.A. Res. 3314 (XXIX), 29 U.N. GAOR, Supp. (No. 31) 142, and U.N. Doc. A/9631, 1975, reprinted in 13 I.L.M. 710, 1974; and Charter of the United Nations, Art. 51., Done at San Francisco, June 26, 1945. Entered into force, for the United States, Oct. 24, 1945, 59 Stat., 1031, T.S. No. 993, Bevans, 1153, 1976, and Y.B.U.N. 1043.
[11] In this connection, Israel must conspicuously augment its comprehensive deterrence posture with expanding active defenses. At the same time, however, the country’s leaders must bear in mind that any such augmentation ought not to override its obligations to be proactive or audacious. “Defensive warfare,” wrote Clausewitz, “does not consist of waiting idly for things to happen. We must wait only if it brings us visible and decisive advantages.” In a further observation that could have been composed in a direct warning to modern Israel about a nuclearizing Iran, the Prussian military thinker went on insightfully: “That calm before the storm, when the aggressor is gathering new forces for a great blow, is most dangerous for the defender.”
[12] “Theories are nets,” said the German poet, Novalis, “and only those who cast, will catch.”
Four parties caused Syria’s genocidal calamity. Should Israel get involved?
September 6, 2015Four parties caused Syria’s genocidal calamity. Should Israel get involved? DEBKAfile, September 6, 2015
Refugees flooding into Europe
Chapter by chapter, a long list of the guilty parties must bear responsibility for the Syrian catastrophe hacking the ruined country into bleeding parts.
1. The first culprit is undoubtedly its insensate president Bashar Assad and his close family, who have had no qualms about spilling the blood of some 300,000 men, women, children and old people – some estimate as many as half a million – and making some 11 people homeless, to keep himself in power. No one has ever counted the number of people maimed and crippled by the war, but they are conservatively estimated at one million.
These figures add up to genocide or serial mass murder, which has been allowed to go into its fifth year.
2. Iran warrants second billing for this mass crime.
Tehran has laid out the stupendous sum of some $40 billion to keep the mass marderer Assad in power with total disregard for his methods of survival. The motives behind the ayatollahs’ military and political boost are well recorded. Worth mentioning here is that Tehran not only pressed its Lebanese proxy, the Shiite Hizballah group, into service alongside Assad’s army, but sent its its own generals to orchestrate the war, led by the Al Qods Brigades chief Qassem Soleimeni.
We can reveal here that 22 Iranian generals have died fighting for the Assad cause.
3. The third place belongs to the United States and President Barack Obama. His refusal to put American boots on the ground may have been the correct decision for the US, but it had four direct consequences:
a) The slaughter of the Syrian people continued unchecked. Even after President Obama declared that chemical warfare was a red line, he backed down at the last minute against intervening and ordered the US fleet to draw back from the Syrian coast.
To this day, Assad continues to use chemical weapons to poison his enemies.
b) Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry let Iran use its military backing for Assad as a high card in the negotiations for a nuclear accord. Instead of making it a condition for a deal against the lifting of sanctions, Washington allowed Tehran to come away from the table with US non-intervention in Syria as one of its concessions for buying Iran’s assent to the Vienna deal.
Tehran, in a word, won Washington’s tacit approval for propping up the atrocious Syrian ruler.
c) The rest of the world, including the United Nations and the European Union, followed the Obama administration’s lead and stood aside as at least 11 million Syrians became homeless refugees.
The lifeless body of a three-year old Syrian child washed up from the sea has figured in the Western media as a symbol of the tragic fate of Syria’s refugees. However, his tragedy came after the hair-raising atrocities endured by millions of those refugees for nearly five years.
Many families were forced to sell their daughters as sex slaves to buy food, their young sons to pedophile predators. The slave markets were centered on the Persian Gulf. Young Alan Kurdi died aged three. Many thousands of Syrian refugee children still live in appalling circumstances. No humanitarian organization has started an outcry or a campaign to rescue them.
d) US refusal to intervene in the most savage humanitarian tragedy the world has seen for many decades opened the door to the belligerent branch of al Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, to march into the vacuum. The videotaped records of beheadings, the massacre of the Iraqi Yazdi people, the enslavement of its women and the burning alive of “apostates,” followed in quick succession.
The strongest nation in the world fought back with an ineffective trickle of air strikes on ISIS targets, allowing the group to go forward to conquer terrain and gain in strength.
4. Russia bears a heavy weight of guilt – and Israel would do well to watch its cynical conduct and draw the right conclusions. Like the ayatollahs, President Vladimir Putin led the second world power to total commitment for keeping Bashar Assad in power. Among other motivations, Putin pursued this policy to settle a score with Obama for the overthrow of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi.
With one world power on the sidelines and a second jumping in with two feet, the Syrian imbroglio was bound to have devastating historical repercussions.
Throughout the Syrian conflict, Israel refrained from interfering, with only one exception: It supported Syrian rebel groups holding a strip of southern Syria, as a buffer against Iranian, Hizballah and Syrian army encroachment on its northern borders.
More than a thousand injured Syrians were treated and their lives saved in Israeli hospitals after receiving first aid at a field hospital on the Israeli-Syria border.
The esteemed Israeli historian Prof. Shlomo Avinery said Sunday, Sept 6, that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu did the right thing in steadfastly keeping Israel out of the Syrian conflict. He very much doubted that Syrian refugees would seek asylum in a country they regard as the Zionist enemy.
Israel’s opposition leader Isaac Herzog nonetheless urged the government to take in a limited number of Syrian asylum seekers from among those flooding into Europe, and not to forget that “we are Jews.”
One wonders why he never had a word to say about US dereliction when Assad committed his atrocities across Israel’s border.
Herzog’s favorite advice to Netanyahu is to go to Washington right now, beard President Obama in the Oval Office and hammer out an agreed policy on Iran.
Netanyahu referred to the Syrian refugee crisis at the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday: “While Israel is not indifferent to the human tragedy of refugees from Syria and Africa, it is a small country that cannot throw its doors open to them,” he said.
“We have conscientiously treated thousands of wounded from the fighting in Syria, and we have helped them rebuild their lives,” the prime minister recalled. “But Israel is a very small country, with neither demographic nor geographic depth, and therefore we must control our borders.”
Regarding a visit to Washington, the prime minister has a problem: Just as President Obama has not invited any Syrian refugees to come to America, he has not issued Netanyahu with an invitation to come to DC, whether to discuss the Iranian or the Syrian questions.
Cartoon of the day
September 5, 2015
The nuclear chess game begins: Iran plays for sanctions relief before compliance with deal
September 4, 2015The nuclear chess game begins: Iran plays for sanctions relief before compliance with deal, DEBKAfile, September 4, 2015
A long way to go for Iranian approval of nuclear accord
The crowing this week over Barack Obama’s success in gaining congressional support for his Iranian nuclear deal against Binyamin Netanyahu’s defeat was premature. The July 14 Vienna deal between Iran and six world powers was just the first round of the game. Decisive rounds are still to come, before either of the two can be said to have won or lost.
The biggest outstanding hurdle in the path of the accord is Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his silence on where he stands on the deal whether by a yea or a nay.
Without his nod, nothing goes forward in the revolutionary republic. So the nuclear accord is not yet home and dry either in Tehran or even in Washington.
While Obama gathered congressional support in Washington for the accord to pass, Khamenei made three quiet yet deadly remarks:
1. “Sanctions against Tehran must be lifted completely rather than suspended. If the framework of sanctions is to be maintained, then why did we negotiate?”
White House spokesman Josh Earnest answered him: “Iran will only see sanctions relief if it complies with the nuclear deal.”
There lies the rub. For the Obama administration, it is clear that Iran must first comply with the accord before sanctions are eased, whereas Tehran deems the accord moot until sanctions are lifted – regardless of its approval by the US Congress.
Here is the first stalemate, and not the last. DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources foresee long, exhausting rounds ahead that could drag on longer even than the protracted negotiations, which Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif brought to a close in Vienna.
2. Khamenei next took the step of referring the accord to the Majlis (parliament) for approval, pretending that to be legally in force, the accord requires a majority vote by the parliament in Tehran. He put it this way, “I believe… that it is not in the interest of the majlis to be sidelined.”
This step was in fact designed to sideline President Hassan Rouhani, on whom Obama and Kerry counted to get the nuclear deal through, and snatch from him the authority for signing it – or even determining which body had this competence.
It had been the intention of Rouhani and Zarif to put the accord before the 12-member Council of Guardians for their formal endorsement. But Khamenei pulled this rug out from under their feet and kept the decision out of the hands of the accord’s proponents.
3. His next step was to declare with a straight face: “I have no recommendation for the majlis on how to examine it. It is up to the representatives of the nation to decide whether to reject or ratify it.”
This step in the nuclear chess game was meant to show American democracy up in a poor light compared to that of the Revolutionary Republic (sic). While Obama worked hard to bring his influence to bear on Congress he, Khamenei, refrained from leaning on the lawmakers, who were freed to vote fair and square on the deal’s merits.
This of course is a charade. Our Iranian sources point out that the ayatollah exercises dictatorial control over the majlis through his minion, Speaker Ali Larijani. He has absolute trust in the lawmakers never reaching any decision on the nuclear deal, or anything else, without his say-so.
Congressional approval in Washington of the nuclear accord may give President Obama a fine boost but will be an empty gesture for winning endorsement in Tehran. It might even be counter-productive if American lawmakers carry out their intention of hedging the nuclear deal round with stipulations binding Iran to full compliance with the commitments it undertook in Vienna, or also continue to live with existing sanctions or even face new ones.
Netanyahu and the Israeli lobby AIPAC, far from experiencing defeat in their campaign to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, are well fired up for the next round: the fight for sanctions.
Iranian Regime Celebrates Its Victory In The Nuclear Agreement
September 4, 2015Iranian Regime Celebrates Its Victory In The Nuclear Agreement, MEMRI, September 4, 2015
After Iran and the P5+1 announced the JCPOA on July 14, 2015, top Iranian officials, headed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, said that the country was a superpower with standing equal to that of the U.S., and that this status would become even stronger because of the agreement. They boasted of Iran’s might and said that it had forced the superpowers to surrender to it and its demands.
Following are highlights from these statements:
Iranian Defense Minister: The Superpowers Surrendered To Iran And “Obeyed The Iranian Rights”
At an armed forces general command ceremony on August 30, 2015, Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan said: “Today, Iran has attained such status that the superpowers have surrendered to it, because of its majesty, its steadfastness, its resistance, and its unity. Despite their great pride, the regime of the arrogance [the West, led by the U.S.] sat humbly behind the negotiating table and obeyed the rights of the Iranian nation.”[1]
Leader Khamenei: “Those Who Levelled Sanctions Against Us Yesterday Are Dying Today – Because Iran Has Become The Region’s Foremost Military Power”
On August 24, 2015, the website of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei published a poster titled “The Iron Fist,” symbolizing Iran’s might following the agreement. The text on the poster states: “Those who levelled sanctions against us yesterday are dying today, because Iran has become the region’s foremost military power. The Islamic Republic of Iran has proven that it works diligently to defend itself. The entire nation unites as a solid fist, standing fast against the aggressors who lack all reason.” The poster features a fist adorned with Iranian flags breaking through clouds; the fist is made up of military equipment, including missiles, jets, ships, tanks, and so on.[2]
IRGC Website Javan: “Iran Is Becoming A Power… Equal To America In The World”
On July 15, 2015 the Javan website, which is affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), claimed that Iran has become a superpower with standing equal to that of the U.S., and that this is why the U.S. agreed to conduct a dialogue with Iran in nuclear talks: “In his speech following the agreement between Iran and the P5+1, Obama stated: ‘This deal is also in line with a tradition of American leadership. It’s now more than 50 years since President Kennedy stood before the American people and said, “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.” He was speaking then about the need for discussions between the United States and the Soviet Union.’[3]
“This speech clearly shows the sunset of American power and that [the U.S.] has been downgraded from a superpower to an ordinary power. First, Obama considers diplomacy and negotiations to be America’s leadership tradition, while its record indicates that since it emerged in the international arena during World War I, it has chosen no path but military force. The wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the dozens of other crimes in Latin America show that America’s leadership tradition has never been diplomacy. Superpowers see themselves as too big to waste their time in negotiations and diplomacy with third-world or smaller countries. They are used to determining how others should behave by waving their finger, and fulfilling their interests by way of military assault. America’s diplomatic record includes several rounds of talks with the former Soviet Union. Therefore, we can say that from World War II to 1990, America’s leadership tradition championed diplomacy or negotiations only vis-à-vis powers of equal standing…
“Obama’s statements defending negotiating with Iran can lead to one of two conclusions: Either America views Iran and its deterrence as equal to those of the former Soviet Union… or America does not have the status it once did…
“What has happened now is that the U.S. Secretary of State [John Kerry] has abandoned all his duties and his life to negotiate with Iran – to haggle, to capitulate, to call on the Europeans to help in the talks, and he does not consider Iran to be like Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, and Iraq. So what really happened here?
“In his televised speech on April 5, 2015, following the Lausanne agreement, Obama said that of the three options – attack, sanctions, and negotiations – he saw no other option but negotiations, and even before that he said, ‘If I could have, I would have dismantled Iran’s entire nuclear [project].’ The other side of the ‘if I could have’ coin is ‘I can’t.’ How can we understand this ‘I can’t?’ After all, America has a military presence in 50 places around the globe, including in the Persian Gulf…
“America’s conduct in the absence of the Soviet Union shows that Iran is becoming a power that is second to, or even equal to America in the world. [Therefore,] America does not have the courage to attack it militarily or even to conduct bilateral talks [with it], so it is being helped by three European countries [France, Britain, and Germany].
“It is not unreasonable that America believes that our military capabilities do not surpass its own, but it fears [Iran’s] soft power, which is stronger than military bombardment… This soft power has two main avenues: an covenant between the nation and the Imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini]… and an alliance with the countries of the region [that is based on] emotion and faith. The Iraqi nation is an example of this alliance; there, America sacrificed 4,400 troops and ousted Saddam [Hussein], but the friends of the Islamic Revolution [of Iran] sat on Saddam’s throne and did not in any way allow [the Americans] to seize power there. This soft power cannot carry out a military assault, which is why the Islamic Revolution’s increasing might has caused America to transform itself, due to fear, from a stupid enemy into a relatively clever one.”[4]
Senior Khamenei Advisor In IRGC: Nuclear Agreement Will Improve Iran’s Status And Might
Yadollah Javani, senior advisor to Khamenei in the IRGC, wrote in the July 27, 2015 editorial of the IRGC weeklySobh-e Sadeq: “Will war break out between Iran and America? This cannot be decisively answered with a yes or no. But we can prove that in past years, the U.S. was incapable of carrying out, and could not work up the courage to carry out, a military assault on Iran. In the past decade, the Americans and Zionists have repeatedly threatened to attack Iran, but due to their deep concerns regarding the implications of a possible war against [Iran], they have not followed through with their threats… Therefore, American officials announced that Iran’s nuclear dossier would only be resolved by diplomatic means.
“After the [April 2, 2015] Lausanne statement, U.S. President Obama announced that war or increased sanctions would not subdue Iran or destroy its nuclear industry. Throughout all these years the Americans threatened to attack Iran militarily, but both they and others, including the Iranian nation, knew full well that this threat was mainly psychological warfare, and that America could not start another war in West Asia.
“With its record of empty military threats, the Americans once again began to boast about the issue of a military assault on Iran, after the conclusion of the Vienna talks and the signs of an emerging nuclear agreement between Iran and the P5+1. The military threat has come from Obama, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and other American officials in recent days; they have all stressed the option of military force against Iran in the future…
“So far the Americans have not attacked, because of Iran’s deterrence, which is steadily increasing. A decade ago, the Americans were stronger than they are today, and the Islamic Republic of Iran was weaker. In the past decade, the power of America and its allies in the region has eroded, while the power of the Islamic Republic and its allies has only increased. Therefore, the regional upheavals during the past decade have worked in Iran’s favor, and to the detriment of the U.S.. Thanks to the nuclear agreement, this process will not take a turn for the worse for Iran, but could only add special might to it.
“This is precisely the cause of the concern regarding the nuclear agreement that has been expressed by officials of the Zionist regime and of America’s other allies in the region, such as the Al-Saud regime. Therefore, the boasting by America, following the acknowledgement of a nuclear Iran by the agreement between Iran and the P5+1, comes from necessity, and reflects America’s attempt to maintain the façade of its status as a world superpower.
“However, the truth is that the time of this superpower has passed, and America must accept the facts of the new world. The world’s balance of power is shifting, and a new international political order is being shaped. [This new world order] includes the acknowledgement of a nuclear-fuel-cycle-Iran with decisive deterrent capabilities in the region by the world’s six main powers…”[5]
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