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Is there anything the Iranians could do that would upset President Obama?

June 16, 2015

Is there anything the Iranians could do that would upset President Obama? Jerusalem Post, Eric R. Mandel, June 16, 2015

(Not likely. — DM)

Biden and ObamaUS President Barack Obama (L) and Vice President Joe Biden. (photo credit:OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO BY PETE SOUZA)

The administration’s fear of provoking actions while the nuclear negotiations are ongoing is interpreted by Iran not as pragmatism, but as an invitation to cheat on any future deal.

This schizophrenic foreign policy is not fooling anyone. At best, it is naïve; at worst, it threatens longterm American national security and foreign interests, to say nothing of Israel’s existence.

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It is probably time of us who have strenuously opposed acquiescing in Iran’s development of nuclear weapons to throw in the towel… Mr. Obama’s definition of a satisfactory outcome has evolved… from the complete abandonment… of the Iranian nuclear program to an honor-system reliance on the Iranians.” – Conrad Black, National Review.

What stands out in the following bullets?

• Iran is increasing its financial and military support for the genocidal Syrian ophthalmologist President Bashir Assad.

• The Iranian proxy Hezbollah is helping to prop up the Assad government with its armed forces in Syrian territory.

• US President Barack Obama has stopped supporting Hayya Bina, a “civil society program in Lebanon that seeks to develop alternative Shi’ite political voices to Hezbollah” (The Wall Street Journal).

Reminiscent of the president’s abandonment of the Iranian people during the 2009 Green Revolution, when he sided with the radical mullahs over Iranians seeking a democratic government, the US has decided to leave Lebanese Shi’ites with little choice but the repressive fundamentalist Hezbollah government.

But shouldn’t it be in America’s foreign policy interests to help Iranian and Lebanese Shi’ites break free from the repressive shackles of these anti-Western terrorists and help create the conditions for a peaceful and non-threatening Islam? Anyone paying attention to Iran’s behavior since the Revolution knows that the ayatollah does not reciprocate appeasement. You would have thought after six years of a failed Middle East policy that the president would have learned that unilateral concessions are pocketed, and only encourage more demands and intransigent behavior.

The administration’s fear of provoking actions while the nuclear negotiations are ongoing is interpreted by Iran not as pragmatism, but as an invitation to cheat on any future deal.

The Iranians have been testing the Obama administration with transgressions of the Joint Plan of Action, and their escalating support of the Yemini Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, Syria and the Iraqi Shi’ite government. Iran has learned that this American administration would rather bury its head in the sand than act upon almost any transgression.

Iran can be confident that the Obama administration will be the loudest public defender of the deal, knowing it is the president’s foreign policy legacy. Future transgressions will be swept under the table to avoid anything that might unsettle the Iranian regime. Just this week, Iran tested advanced satellite missile launchers, which could be used to deliver nuclear warheads.

Although they contradict current UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolutions, the Obama administration has remained silent, claiming the Iranians are complying with their commitments because the Joint Plan of Action does not address missile systems. The administration conveniently fails to acknowledge is that the JPA does not abrogate the UNSC sanctions.

The president’s outreach to the Iranian-backed Shi’ite Houthis in Yemin, while simultaneously defending the Iranian narrative that it does not support the Shi’ite fighters, fuels the fire that the White House will defend the Iranian narrative after the deal is concluded. Nothing must get in the way of threatening the “success” of the deal.

Even more egregious is the White House’s silence on the blatant violation of a UNSC blacklist. Qassem Suleimani, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, is barred from traveling to UN member states like Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, yet he travels freely to these nations. For the past eight years, the American government has listed the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist-supporting entity. The Quds Force reports directly to the supreme leader.

The history of the Quds Force’s terrorist activity is well known.

Ahmad Vahidi, who directed the Quds Force at the time, allegedly planned the infamous bombing of the Jewish Center in Buenos Aires in 1994. According to the Obama administration, in 2011 it attempted to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US in Washington. No wonder America’s Gulf allies are less than enthusiastic about the US cozying up to the mullahs.

Israel and the Sunni Arab world see the president’s desire to align with Iran as both incomprehensible and inevitable. With little chance of the Senate having the votes to override the president’s almost certain veto this summer, the president is a step closer to his grand plan, in place since his first day in office – to distance America from Israel and the Gulf States, and create a new relationship with the world’s capital for terrorism, Tehran.

The head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, went to Israel last week and bluntly told the Israelis that the US expects sanctions relief to increase Iranian support of its proxies, including State Department-designated terrorists Hezbollah and Hamas. The Quds Force can expect a virtual windfall for its overseas terrorist activities. Iran is expected to receive at least $150 billion in sanctions relief, and Dempsey said it would not all be staying in Iran to help its people and economy. Is this administration acting as an indirect supporter of terrorist entities by facilitating their financing? You be the judge.

To deflect charges that the White House is in bed with the Iranians, the administration has allowed the Treasury Department to continue to place some sanctions on Hezbollah members. Like the blacklisting of Quds leader Qassem Suleimani, however, sanctions or blacklisting are one thing, enforcement is another.

This schizophrenic foreign policy is not fooling anyone. At best, it is naïve; at worst, it threatens longterm American national security and foreign interests, to say nothing of Israel’s existence.

Nuclear weapons in the hands of a terrorist state in a decade’s time. That’s a perplexing goal for the leader of the free world.

Categories: Foreign policy, IAEA, Ideology, Iran, Iran military, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Israel, Obama, P5+1
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Cartoon of the day

June 16, 2015

H/t The Jewish Press

Obama nukes

 

 

 

Categories: Humor, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Obama, P5+1
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The Iran scam grows even worse – Part I, Nuke site inspections

June 15, 2015

Dan Miller’s Blog, May 15, 2015

(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM

It is likely that the P5+1 nuke deal with Iran will be approved soon. Military and other nuke sites which Iran has not “disclosed” will not be inspected. Nor will Iran’s nuke ties with North Korea — which P5+1 member China seems to be helping, Iran’s massive support for terrorism and abysmal human rights record be considered because they are also deemed unnecessary for deal approval. Sanctions against Iran are moribund and will not be revived regardless of whether there is a “deal.” However, a bronze bust of Obama may soon be displayed prominently in Supreme Leader Khamenei’s office and one of Khamenei may soon be displayed proudly in Dear Leader Obama’s office.

Iran fenced in

Part I — Nuke site inspections

According to a June 11, 2015 article by the Middle East Research Institute (MEMRI), Iran’s Supreme Leader has said there will not even be “token” IAEA inspections.

This past week, members of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team revealed details about the Iran-U.S. nuclear negotiations. The negotiations were dealt a blow when Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei rejected an agreement reached by the two sides concerning a token inspection of military facilities and questioning of several nuclear scientists and “military personnel”; these were to be the response to the IAEA’s open dossier on possible military dimensions (PMD) of Iran’s nuclear program to which Iran has so far refused to respond.

Iranian reports on these developments show that in order to arrive at a comprehensive agreement, the U.S. is willing to forgo actual inspection of Iranian military facilities and to settle for inspection of declared nuclear facilities only, as set forth under the Additional Protocol, while the ongoing monitoring of Iran’s nuclear program will be left to intelligence elements. [Emphasis added.]

Also on June 11th, it was reported that

CIA Director John Brennan likely came to Israel last week to tell Israeli officials that a final nuclear deal with Iran does not have to include a commitment by Tehran to provide access to military bases, or Iranian consent to interview its scientists, a new report by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) said. [Emphasis added.]

On June 12th, Iranian President Rouhani reiterated that

the country will never allow its secrets to be exposed under the Additional Protocol of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or any other treaty.

“Certainly, Iran will not allow its secrets to be obtained by others under the pretext of implementing the (Additional) Protocol or any other treaty,” President Rouhani said at a press conference in Tehran.

He reaffirmed that foreigners will be denied access not only to Iran’s military secrets but also to secret information in other technological fields.

Here’s a video with comments by Former DIA Director Lt. General Michael Flynn and Ambassador Robert Joseph on Iran’s ballistic missile program and other aspects of the “deal:”

Here’s the Obama administration’s most recent waffle on inspections of Iran’s nuclear sites and sanctions relief:

Although the State Department spokesman waffled, his comments were, unfortunately, at least generally consistent with the January 14, 2014 White House Summary of the framework for subsequent P5+1 negotiations. As I noted here in January of 2014, that summary failed even to mention such military sites as Parchin — even though the IAEA “had reason to think that there had been implosion testing in 2011 but was refused access to inspect” it, Iran’s development and testing of rocketry capable of delivering nuclear warheads and its development and testing of nuclear warheads.

It had been reported on November 27, 2013 that

Despite Tehran’s protestations that it has no intention of ever creating a nuclear weapon, Iran, in fact, has been developing a warhead for some 15 years. That design is now near perfect. [Emphasis added.]

It had been reported on November 28, 2013 that

A top Iranian military leader announced late Tuesday that Iran has developed “indigenous” ballistic missile technology, which could eventually allow it to fire a nuclear payload over great distances. [Emphasis added.]

Why does the White House Summary fail to mention such things? Probably because they are not within the parameters of the November 24, 2013 Joint Plan of Action.

The Joint Plan of Action, — on which the White House Summary seems to have been based — states, in a superficially comforting preamble,

The goal for these negotiations is to reach a mutually-agreed long-term comprehensive solution that would ensure Iran’s nuclear programme will be exclusively peaceful. Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever seek or develop any nuclear weapons. This comprehensive solution would build on these initial measures and result in a final step for a period to be agreed upon and the resolution of concerns. This comprehensive solution would enable Iran to fully enjoy its right to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes under the relevant articles of the NPT in conformity with its obligations therein. This comprehensive solution would involve a mutually defined enrichment programme with practical limits and transparency measures to ensure the peaceful nature of the programme. This comprehensive solution would constitute an integrated whole where nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. This comprehensive solution would involve a reciprocal, step-bystep process, and would produce the comprehensive lifting of all UN Security Council sanctions, as well as multilateral and national sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear programme. [Emphasis added.]

There would be additional steps in between the initial measures and the final step, including, among other things, addressing the UN Security Council resolutions, with a view toward bringing to a satisfactory conclusion the UN Security Council’s consideration of this matter. The E3+3 and Iran will be responsible for conclusion and implementation of mutual near-term measures and the comprehensive solution in good faith. A Joint Commission of E3/EU+3 and Iran will be established to monitor the implementation of the near-term measures and address issues that may arise, with the IAEA responsible for verification of nuclear-related measures. The Joint Commission will work with the IAEA to facilitate resolution of past and present issues of concern.

However, while the Joint Plan of Action calls for “enhanced monitoring” of Iran’s facilities, its focus is on nuclear enrichment, not Iran’s militarization of nukes.

Enhanced monitoring:

Provision of specified information to the IAEA, including information on Iran’s plans for nuclear facilities, a description of each building on each nuclear site, a description of the scale of operations for each location engaged in specified nuclear activities, information on uranium mines and mills, and information on source material. This information would be provided within three months of the adoption of these measures.

Submission of an updated DIQ for the reactor at Arak, designated by the IAEA as the IR-40, to the IAEA.  Steps to agree with the IAEA on conclusion of the Safeguards Approach for the reactor at Arak, designated by the IAEA as the IR-40.

Daily IAEA inspector access when inspectors are not present for the purpose of Design Information Verification, Interim Inventory Verification, Physical Inventory Verification, and unannounced inspections, for the purpose of access to offline surveillance records, at Fordow and Natanz.

IAEA inspector managed access to: centrifuge assembly workshops; centrifuge rotor production workshops and storage facilities; and, uranium mines and mills.

Despite Obama’s claims, Iran appears to have increased, not rolled-back, its nuclear enrichment program. According to the New York Times on June 1st,

With only one month left before a deadline to complete a nuclear deal with Iran, international inspectors have reported that Tehran’s stockpile of nuclear fuel increased about 20 percent over the last 18 months of negotiations, partially undercutting the Obama administration’s contention that the Iranian program had been “frozen” during that period.

But Western officials and experts cannot quite figure out why. One possibility is that Iran has run into technical problems that have kept it from converting some of its enriched uranium into fuel rods for reactors, which would make the material essentially unusable for weapons. Another is that it is increasing its stockpile to give it an edge if the negotiations fail.

Here’s an “explanation” by Marie Harf, the “the Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at the U.S. State Department. . . .”

Iran will not budge on inspection of its military and other sites it has not disclosed and which are claimed by the IAEA to be places where Iran’s weaponization of nukes is likely. The Obama Administration will not budge on permitting Iran to get away with it.

Although Israel has been the only free and democratic nation consistently to oppose the P5+1 “negotiations” and the framework on which they are based from the beginning, France has sometimes opposed Obama’s pursuit of a bad “deal.” Recently, France even demanded the inspection of Iran’s sites as sought by the IAEA and stated that it would not consent to a P5+1 “deal” without them.

However, “the French position creates a problem for President Obama because the deal has to be agreed on by the P5+1, not the ‘P4+1-with-one-vote-in-opposition’.” Of the P5+1 members (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, plus Germany), France appeared to stand alone on this point. However, the linked article suggests that Obama may be trying to use France’s support for a Palestinian state within Israel to convince her to agree that such inspections are unnecessary.

The first story is about France, a member of the P5+1 negotiating a deal with Iran on nuclear capabilities. The French government has expressed increasing concern that the emerging deal is flawed — perhaps fatally.

The other story is that Obama’s

expressed skepticism about the achievability of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement appears to have given way to the French notion that “all other ways have been explored,” and that it is time to let the UN determine parameters for a “big overarching deal.” And, as it happens, the French draft corresponds with the President Obama’s own — strongly held — belief that Israel has to ascribe to the President’s view, despite having just elected a Prime Minister who disagrees.

. . . .

Smash the two stories together, you get an American president supporting France in its efforts to be a major player in the Middle East in exchange for French support of the P5+1 deal with Iran.

In both cases, guess who pays the price: Israel.

The rest of the “free world,” such as it has become, will also pay a hefty price for such a “deal” with Iran.

On a similar note, it was reported on June 9th that

A senior Western diplomat told Ma’ariv in a report published Tuesday that “a diplomatic attack against Israel is expected soon that will surprise even the pessimists in Jerusalem.”  [Emphasis added.]

“In the (UN) Security Council, in western capitals and at EU headquarters, they are just waiting for the Iran deal to be signed and for it to be approved by the American Congress,” warned the diplomatic source.

It appears that the waiting period will likely expire in September, at which time a UN General Assembly will open in tandem with the first shots of the diplomatic barrage against Israel.

Diplomatic sources familiar with Western European positions vis-a-vis Israel said the EU already has a list ready, itemizing sanctions against Israel in the fields of trade, agriculture, science and culture. [Emphasis added.]

That list is to be translated into an economic assault – unless Israel presents a new set of concessions it is willing to make for a new round of peace talks, after the last set of talks was torpedoed by the PA signing a unity deal with the Hamas terrorist organization.

“S‭enior officials in Jerusalem are aware of the existence of sanctions documents at EU headquarters, some of which have even fallen into their hands,” one diplomatic source revealed to Ma’ariv.

Were Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to have agreed with Obama on the Iran nuke “negotiations,” Israel’s punishment by imposing economic sanctions on her as those on Iran cease would now be unlikely.

Obama seems to be happy with any “deal” that Iran is willing to sign, despite Iran’s ongoing nuke militarization, the Iran-North Korea-China connection, Iran’s continued massive support for terrorism and its abysmal human rights record. With such a “deal,” Iran will be able to pursue such goals essentially unimpeded, at least until a different administration takes over in Washington.

gary_varvel_gary_varvel_for_04272014_5_-500x367 (H/t Freedom is just another word.)

Parts II through ?? of this series will be posted over the next several days.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Ideology, Iran, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Israel, Khamenei, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama administration, Obama's America, P5+1, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Rouhani, Supreme Leader, Two state solution
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State Dept Struggles to Explain Massive Nuke Concessions To Iran

June 13, 2015

State Dept Struggles to Explain Massive Nuke Concessions To Iran, Washington Free Beacon via You Tube, June 12, 2015

 

Categories: Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran, Iran - underground sites, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Obama, P5+1, Sanctions
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Iran Backs Taliban With Cash and Arms

June 12, 2015

Iran Backs Taliban With Cash and Arms, Wall Street Journal, Margherita Stancati, June 11, 2015

The White House-supported international nuclear talks with Iran that are scheduled to finish this month face world-wide criticism for potentially setting up a new regional dynamic in which Tehran, unfettered by punitive economic sanctions and flush with new resources, would be able to pursue an activist agenda through its proxies in and around the Middle East. Tehran’s growing ties to the Taliban is another sign of that, these critics say.

U.S. officials declined to comment specifically about closer Iran-Taliban ties, but have said that its diplomacy with Iran doesn’t alter its concerns about Iran’s destabilizing influence in the region. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said in a recent letter to lawmakers that Iran was the “foremost state sponsor of terrorism.”

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“Iran supplies us with whatever we need,” he said.

Afghan and Western officials say Tehran has quietly increased its supply of weapons, ammunition and funding to the Taliban, and is now recruiting and training their fighters, posing a new threat to Afghanistan’s fragile security.

Iran’s strategy in backing the Taliban is twofold, these officials say: countering U.S. influence in the region and providing a counterweight to Islamic State’s move into the Taliban’s territory in Afghanistan.

The Taliban’s aggressive military push and the new momentum toward peace negotiations between them and Kabul also raises the possibility that some of their members could eventually return to power.

“Iran is betting on the re-emergence of the Taliban,” said a Western diplomat. “They are uncertain about where Afghanistan is heading right now, so they are hedging their bets.”

Iranian officials didn’t respond to requests for comment, but Tehran has repeatedly denied providing financial or military aid to the Taliban in conversations with Afghan and Western officials. “Whenever we discussed it, they would deny it,” a former senior Afghan official said.

The developing Iran-Taliban alliance represents a new complication in Mr. Obama’s plans for both the Middle East and the future of Afghanistan, where the U.S. has been working to curb the Taliban’s role ahead of a planned withdrawal of all but 1,000 U.S. troops at the end of his presidency in 2016. At its peak in 2011 there were 100,000 U.S. troops.

The White House-supported international nuclear talks with Iran that are scheduled to finish this month face world-wide criticism for potentially setting up a new regional dynamic in which Tehran, unfettered by punitive economic sanctions and flush with new resources, would be able to pursue an activist agenda through its proxies in and around the Middle East. Tehran’s growing ties to the Taliban is another sign of that, these critics say.

Rep. Ed Royce (R., Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Iran’s support to the Taliban could increase if a nuclear deal is signed and Iran wins sanction relief.

“Across the region, Iran is stepping up its support for militants and rebel groups,” Mr. Royce said. “With billions in sanctions relief coming, that support goes into overdrive.”

Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said Iran’s increased support to the Taliban is a continuation of its aggressive behavior in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. “This is further evidence of the administration’s continued willful disregard for the facts on the ground in light of Iranian aggression in the region,” he said.

U.S. officials declined to comment specifically about closer Iran-Taliban ties, but have said that its diplomacy with Iran doesn’t alter its concerns about Iran’s destabilizing influence in the region. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said in a recent letter to lawmakers that Iran was the “foremost state sponsor of terrorism.”

The Taliban have long used Pakistani territory as their main recruiting base and headquarters. But Afghan and Western officials say Iran, through its elite Revolutionary Guard Corps, has emerged as an important ally for the Taliban.

What’s more, they say, Tehran is turning to Afghan immigrants within its borders—a tactic it has also used to find new recruits to fight in support of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.

Mr. Abdullah is one of those Iranian-backed Taliban fighters. After being detained for working as an illegal laborer in the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas, Mr. Abdullah said he was approached by an Iranian intelligence officer.

“He asked me how much money I made, and that he would double my salary if I went to work for them in Afghanistan,” he said.

Mr. Abdullah said smugglers hired by Iran ferry supplies across the lawless borderlands where Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan meet and deliver them to Taliban units in Afghan territory. He said his fighters receive weapons that include 82mm mortars, light machine guns, AK-47 rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and materials for making roadside bombs.

Military and intelligence officials see Iran’s support to the Taliban as an alliance of convenience. Historically, relations between Iran, a Shiite theocracy, and the hard-line Sunni Taliban have been fraught. Iran nearly went to war against the Taliban regime in 1998 after 10 of its diplomats were killed when their consulate in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif was overrun.

Iran didn’t oppose the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, and it has since maintained friendly relations with the Western-backed government in Kabul.

But Iran has long been uneasy with the U.S. military presence on its doorstep, and the Revolutionary Guard Corps have been delivering weapons to the Taliban since at least 2007, according to an October 2014 report by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Iran’s alliance with the Taliban took a new turn in June 2013 when Tehran formally invited a Taliban delegation to participate in a conference on Islam and to meet senior Iranian officials.

By the fall of that year, Afghan security officials said they had clear evidence that Iran was training Taliban fighters within its borders. Tehran now operates at least four Taliban training camps, according to Afghan officials and Mr. Abdullah, the Taliban commander. They are in the Iranian cities of Tehran, Mashhad and Zahedan and in the province of Kerman.

“At the beginning Iran was supporting Taliban financially,” said a senior Afghan official. “But now they are training and equipping them, too.”

The drawdown of U.S. and allied troops has made it easier for Taliban fighters and smugglers to cross the porous border undetected. “In the past, the U.S. had significant surveillance capabilities,” said Sayed Wahid Qattali, an influential politician from the western city Herat, where Iran has long had influence. “But now that the Americans have left, Iran is a lot freer.”

Iran formalized its alliance with the Taliban by allowing the group to open an office in Mashhad, maintaining a presence there since at least the beginning of 2014, a foreign official said. The office has gained so much clout that some foreign officials are now referring to it as the “Mashhad Shura,” a term used to describe the Taliban’s leadership councils.

One of the main points of contact between Tehran and the insurgency is head of the Taliban’s Qatar-based political office, Tayeb Agha, Afghan and foreign officials said. His most recent trip to Iran was in mid-May, the insurgent group said. The Taliban deny they receive support from Iran or any other foreign country, but say they want good relations with Afghanistan’s neighbors.

Iran’s backing of the Taliban has a strategic rationale. Tehran is already battling Islamic State, also known as Daesh, in Syria and Iraq, and it is wary of a new front line emerging close to its eastern border, Afghan officials say.

“Iran seeks to counter Daesh with the Taliban,” said an Afghan security official.

For the Taliban, Islamic State militants represent a threat of a different kind: they are competitors. Since an offshoot of Islamic State announced plans to expand in Afghanistan and Pakistan earlier this year, the new group has been actively recruiting fighters, many of whom are disaffected Taliban, say residents and Afghan officials.

This has pitted the two rival jihadist groups against each other, with clashes erupting between them in provinces including Helmand in the south, Nangarhar in the east and specifically involving Iran-backed Taliban in Farah, near Iran’s border, Afghan officials say.

Iranian funding gives more options to the militant group, support that is beginning to have an impact on the battlefield.

“If it wasn’t for Iran, I don’t think they would’ve been able to push an offensive like they are doing now,” said Antonio Giustozzi, a Taliban expert who has tracked Iran’s involvement in Afghanistan.

In recent months, security in Afghanistan’s west and north deteriorated sharply compared to last year, as Taliban fighters amassed in large numbers, testing the ability of Afghan troops to hold their ground.

It’s unclear, however, how far Iran will go to promote the Taliban.

“They wouldn’t want the Taliban to become too strong,” said a second foreign official. “They just want to make sure that they have some levers in their hands, because if the Taliban would win, God forbid, then they would lose all their leverage.”

Categories: Afghanistan, Foreign policy, Ideology, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Obama, P5+1, Sanctions, Talliban
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Saudi air chief killed in Yemeni rebel Scud attack on Khamis Mushayt air base

June 12, 2015

Saudi air chief killed in Yemeni rebel Scud attack on Khamis Mushayt air base, DEBKAfile, June 12, 2015

General_Mohammed_bin_Ahmed_Al-Shaalan_AF-commander_10.6.15Saudi Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Muhammad bin Ahmed Al-Shaalan slain by Yemeni Scud

The Saudi Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Muhammad bin Ahmed Al-Shaalan was killed in a Scud missile cross-border attack by Yemeni Houthi rebels on the big King Khalid Air Base at Khamis Mushayt in the southwestern Asir region of Saudi Arabia, DEBKAfile reports. The attack took place on June 6, but his death was concealed under a blanket of secrecy until Wednesday, June 10.

The largest Saudi air base, it is from there that the kingdom has for last two and a half months waged its air campaign to end the Yemeni insurgency. Saudi and coalition air strikes, directed against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, their allies from the Yemeni army and from local tribes, have killed an estimated 2,000 people, some of them civilians, including women and children.

DEBKAfile’s military sources in the Gulf remarked that even the tardy official disclosure of Gen. Al-Shaalan’s death Wednesday left more questions than answers. The terse three-line announcement said: “The Commander of Saudi Royal Air Forces Lieutenant General Mohammed bin Ahmed Al-Shaalan died Wednesday during a working trip outside the kingdom from a heart attack.”

No information was provided about the nature of his putative “working trip,” its destination and purpose – or even the date of his funeral.

Our military sources report that the Houthis’ Scud attack caught the Saudis unawares. The only reaction from the air base came from the American teams operating Patriot counter-missile batteries. They tried to shoot down the incoming missiles and managed to intercept only two or three out of a barrage of 15.

The US has deployed Patriots at Khamis Mushayt to shield the special operations units and drones fighting Al Qaeda in Arabia (AQIP). But since the start of the Yemen civil war, American drones have been feeding the Saudi Air Force with intelligence about Houthi targets and movements.

The Yemen assault on the Saudi air base represented a major escalation in the Yemeni war, with effect on the complex US relationship with Iran in the context of the Yemen conflict.

DEBKAfile’s military sources assert that the Houthi Scud crews undoubtedly received precise data from Iranian intelligence about the whereabouts of Gen. Al-Shalaan and his top staff on the day of their attack. With this information, they were able to time their attack for 3 am before dawn and target the base’s living quarters and aircraft hangars.

Tehran most likely put the Houthis up to the Scud attack, both to damage the base from which air strikes are launched against them and as payback for the intelligence US drones are providing for those strikes.

Riyadh concealed the circumstances of the air chief’s death to avoid affecting the morale of Saudi combatants taking part in the Yemen war. The Obama administration also had in interest in drawing a discreet veil over the incident so as not to jeopardize the nuclear negotiations with Iran as they enter the final lap before the June 30 deadline.

Categories: Foreign policy, Houthi, Iran, Iran in Yemen, Iran scam, Obama, P5+1, Saudi Arabia, Saudi military
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Is Obama Supporting a Shiite ISIS?

June 12, 2015

Is Obama Supporting a Shiite ISIS?, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, June 12, 2015

Asaib-ahl-alhaq_logo-450x300Asaib Ahl al-Haq logo.

Obama had campaigned vocally against the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment which designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, the hidden force behind Asaib Ahl al-Haq and much of the Shiite terrorist infrastructure, a terrorist organization. He had accused its sponsors of “foolish saber rattling.”

While we focused on ISIS, its Shiite counterparts were building their own Islamic State by burrowing from within to hollow out the Iraqi institutions that we had put into place. ISIS is a tool that Iran is using to force international approval of its takeover of Iraq and its own nuclear program.

Like ISIS, its Shiite counterparts envision an apocalyptic struggle in which the other branch of Islam will be destroyed, along with all non-Muslims, leading to regional and global supremacy. Iraq is only one of the battlefields on which this war is being fought and Obama’s inept mix of appeasement and regime change, abandoning allied governments while aiding enemy terrorists has helped make it possible.

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Staff Sgt. Ahmed Altaie was the last American soldier to come home from Iraq. His body was turned over by Asaib Ahl al-Haq or The League of the Righteous; a Shiite terrorist group funded and trained by Iran.

Altaie had been kidnapped, held for ransom and then killed.

It was not Asaib Ahl al-Haq’s only kidnapping and murder of an American soldier. A year after Altaie’s kidnapping, its terrorists disguised themselves as Americans and abducted five of our soldiers in Karbala. The soldiers were murdered by their Shiite captors after sustained pursuit by American forces made them realize that they wouldn’t be able to escape with their hostages.

Asaib Ahl al-Haq’s obsession with American hostages was a typically Iranian fixation. Iran’s leaders see the roots of their international influence in the Iran hostage crisis. Its terrorist groups in Lebanon had abducted and horrifically tortured Colonel William R. Higgins and William Francis Buckley.

Higgins had been skinned alive.

Most Americans have never heard of Asaib Ahl al-Haq, sometimes referred to as the Khazali Network after its leader, even though it has claimed credit for over 6,000 attacks on Americans. Its deadliest attacks came when the Democrats and their media allies were desperately scrambling to stop Bush from taking out Iran’s nuclear program. Asaib Ahl al-Haq’s ties to Iran were so blatant that the media could not allow it to receive the kind of coverage that Al Qaeda did for fear that it might hurt Iran.

Obama had campaigned vocally against the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment which designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, the hidden force behind Asaib Ahl al-Haq and much of the Shiite terrorist infrastructure, a terrorist organization. He had accused its sponsors of “foolish saber rattling”.

Nancy Pelosi joined the Democratic Party’s pro-Iranian turn, rejected a vote on the amendment and sneered that if the kidnapping and murder of American soldiers was “a problem to us and our troops in Iraq, they should deal with it in Iraq.” Earlier that year, she had visited Syria’s Assad to stand with him against President Bush even while Assad was aiding the terrorists massacring American soldiers.

Once Obama took power, coverage of the war was scaled down so that Americans wouldn’t realize that the rising power of ISIS and Asaib Ahl al-Haq were already making a mockery of his withdrawal plans.

But Asaib Ahl al-Haq was not merely an anti-American terrorist group; it was an arm of the Shiite theocracy. As a Shiite counterpart to what would become ISIS, it had most of the same Islamic goals.

While Obama was patting himself on the back for the end of the Iraq War and gay rights, Asaib Ahl al-Haq was throwing those men and women it suspected of being gay from the tops of buildings.

When buildings weren’t available, it beat them to death with concrete blocks or beheaded them.

Its other targets included shelters for battered women, which the Islamist group deemed brothels, men who had long hair or dressed in dark clothing. And even while its Brigades of Wrath were perpetrating these atrocities, Obama and the Shiite Iraqi government embraced the murderous terrorist group.

Qais al-Khazali, the leader of Asaib Ahl al-Haq, and his brother Laith al-Khazali along with a hundred other members of the terror group were freed during Obama’s first year in office. (But to provide equal aid and comfort to the other side, Obama also freed the future Caliph of ISIS in that same year.)

“We let a very dangerous man go, a man whose hands are stained with US and Iraqi blood. We are going to pay for this in the future,” an unnamed American officer was quoted as saying. “This was a deal signed and sealed in British and American blood.”

“We freed all of their leaders and operatives; they executed their hostages and sent them back in body bags.”

The releases were part of Obama’s grand strategy of reconciliation for Iraq. The miserable reality behind the upbeat language was that Obama was handing over Iraq to ISIS, Iran and its Shiite militias.

Last year, Maliki had made Asaib Ahl al-Haq and other Shiite terror groups into the Sons of Iraq that were to protect and defend Baghdad. Asaib Ahl al-Haq and its leader were now the Iraqi security forces. The Shiite death squads were in charge even while they continued carrying out ISIS-style massacres.

Obama belatedly decided to respond to ISIS, but his war strategy depends on Asaib Ahl al-Haq.

Officially his strategy is to provide training and air support for the Iraqi military. But the Iraqi military’s Shiite officers conduct panicked retreats in the face of ISIS attacks while abandoning cities and equipment. The goal of these retreats is to make Asaib Ahl al-Haq and other Shiite militias into the only alternative to ISIS for the United States. Even though he pays lip service to Sunni and Kurdish resistance to ISIS, Obama shows that he has accepted Iran’s terms by refusing to arm and support them.

While we focused on ISIS, its Shiite counterparts were building their own Islamic State by burrowing from within to hollow out the Iraqi institutions that we had put into place. ISIS is a tool that Iran is using to force international approval of its takeover of Iraq and its own nuclear program.

An Iraqi official last year was quoted as saying that Asaib Ahl al-Haq’s men give orders to the police and military. “Before they were just around, now they are high-ranking officers in the military.”

Some defense experts wonder if the Iraqi military even exists. The bulk of the forces in Tikrit were Shiite Jihadists and they are armed with American weapons that they receive from the Iraqi government. Asaib Ahl al-Haq boss Qais al-Khazali claims that soldiers and Shiite militia members both wear Iraqi military uniforms.

The capture of Tikrit became an opportunity for the Shiite terrorist groups and Qasem Soleimani, their Iranian terror boss, to boast about their victory and loot and terrorize the local Sunni residents.

Obama’s official plan to arm and train the Iraqi military and security forces is a dead end because like the mythical moderate Syrian rebels, they are fronts for moving money and weapons to Jihadists. We are arming ghost armies and funding fake political institutions and the money and weapons end up going to bands of Islamic terrorists, militias and guerrillas that are actually calling the shots.

By aiding Shiite militias in Iraq and Sunni militias in Syria, we’re backing both sides of an Islamic civil war.

Obama turned over Iraq to the Shiites and then backed the Muslim Brotherhood’s efforts to force the Shiites out of power in Syria. The Sunni-Shiite civil wars tearing the region apart were caused by those two decisions. His solution to the wars is to continue backing the same forces responsible for them.

Despite assorted denials, Obama’s real ISIS strategy is to have Iran do the fighting for him in Iraq.

But Obama is backing one ISIS against another ISIS. Why is a Shiite Islamic state that kidnaps and kills Americans, throws gays off buildings and massacres women better than a Sunni Islamic state that does the same things? Not only is the Obama strategy morally dubious, but it’s also proven to be ineffective.

The rise of ISIS has helped Iran tighten its hold on Shiite areas in Iraq and Syria. Iran does not need to beat ISIS. Its interests are best served by maintaining a stalemate in which ISIS consolidates Sunni areas while Iran consolidates Shiite areas. The more Obama aids Iran and its terrorist forces as a counterweight to ISIS, the more Iran sees keeping ISIS around as being vital to its larger strategy.

By aiding Iran, Obama is really aiding ISIS.

Despite depending on our air support, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and its leaders are threatening to attack American planes and soldiers making it clear that they view the fight against ISIS and for Assad as part of a larger struggle for achieving Iran’s apocalyptic Shiite ambitions for the region and the world.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently gave a speech in which he warned that, “We must prepare the country’s conditions, the region’s conditions, and, Allah willing, the world’s conditions for the reappearance [of Imam Mahdi] will spread justice.”

Like ISIS, its Shiite counterparts envision an apocalyptic struggle in which the other branch of Islam will be destroyed, along with all non-Muslims, leading to regional and global supremacy. Iraq is only one of the battlefields on which this war is being fought and Obama’s inept mix of appeasement and regime change, abandoning allied governments while aiding enemy terrorists has helped make it possible.

Categories: Appeasement, Arab nations, Asaib Ahl al-Haq, Caliphate, Foreign policy, Ideology, Iran, Iran - Iraq war, Iran - Syria war, Iranian proxies, Iraq war, Iraqi military, Islamic State, Kurds, Obama, Shiite, Sunni, Syria war
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Time wars

June 12, 2015

Time wars, Israel Hayom, Judith Bergman, June 12, 2015

Perhaps one of the greatest, yet least spoken of, misconceptions of the West concerning the ‎Middle East is its failure to understand the radically different concept of time on which it ‎operates. While Israel predominantly ticks on a Western — if Mediterranean — linear clock, ‎which puts a premium on speed and efficiency, this is overwhelmingly not the case in Arab ‎culture. For Muslims in particular, time is the domain of Allah and from this belief follows a ‎fatalism and an immense patience, which could almost be mistaken for resignation, that in ‎time Allah will see to all things.

There could be no greater contrast to the West, which is impatient to the point of ‎hyperventilation, wishing to solve problems that are not always solvable as fast as possible ‎– and preferably yesterday

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In his speech at the 15th annual Herzliya Conference on Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin ‎Netanyahu reaffirmed his commitment to a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the ‎Jewish state. Much more important than this reaffirmation, however, was the prime minister’s ‎subsequent realistic estimation of the actual possibility of establishing such a demilitarized ‎state.

Netanyahu described how he had attempted in vain to talk to Palestinian ‎Authority President Mahmoud Abbas over the course of six and a half years. When he finally met him, in Sharm el-Sheikh, they spoke ‎for six hours and the only thing that Abbas had to say during this session was a demand that ‎Israel extend the freeze on settlement construction.‎

‎”So I again call on Abbas to return to the negotiating table without preconditions,” said the ‎prime minister, “but I also know he has very little reason to talk. Why should he talk? He can ‎get by without talking. He can get by with an international community that blames Israel for failing to hold talks. In other words, the Palestinians run from the table. … But the Palestinians have a ‎nifty trick up their sleeve: They refuse to negotiate and then get international pressure, ‎sanctions, boycotts on Israel for there not being negotiations. It’s a perfect catch-22. And there ‎are those who attempt to impose terms on Israel in the U.N. Security Council, because there are ‎no talks, and some of them pretend that the dangers we face are not real dangers at all.”

In fact, the ability of the international community — particularly that of its European members — to ‎willfully close its eyes to the dangers and to the complicated geopolitical circumstances that ‎Israel continues to finds itself in, particularly now, is boundless. The catalogue of malicious ‎actions on the part of the international community, most particularly its European members, to ‎force Israel into acquiescing to concessions is expanding. At the same time, its inability to understand the geopolitical realities of the Middle East grows.‎

Perhaps one of the greatest, yet least spoken of, misconceptions of the West concerning the ‎Middle East is its failure to understand the radically different concept of time on which it ‎operates. While Israel predominantly ticks on a Western — if Mediterranean — linear clock, ‎which puts a premium on speed and efficiency, this is overwhelmingly not the case in Arab ‎culture. For Muslims in particular, time is the domain of Allah and from this belief follows a ‎fatalism and an immense patience, which could almost be mistaken for resignation, that in ‎time Allah will see to all things.

There could be no greater contrast to the West, which is impatient to the point of ‎hyperventilation, wishing to solve problems that are not always solvable as fast as possible ‎– and preferably yesterday. ‎

It is this impatience, bordering on panic, that characterizes the current efforts of the U.S. and ‎the EU to reach a deal with Iran, rushed even more, of course, by U.S. President Barack Obama’s ego-driven ‎desire to have a deal with Iran as part of his legacy.‎

The Western impulse to solve problems that may turn out to be unsolvable, especially ‎according to a Western time schedule, and the impatience that accompanies repeated failures ‎to solve said problems, is nowhere more prevalent than concerning the question of Israel and ‎the Palestinians. In fact, the very actions of the international community create a false sense of ‎urgency that would not necessarily exist among the parties if the West did not insist on ‎constantly meddling in the process.

Yet, the conflicts of the Middle East — and the Israeli-Arab conflict is no different in this respect ‎‎– will not be solved with Western quick fixes, express shuttle diplomacy and emergency ‎meetings in the Security Council, only because the West wishes it to be so. While Israel’s clock ‎may tick on a Western time continuum, its security does not, because its security is tightly ‎connected to its Arab and Persian neighbors, who operate on a ‎different time continuum. During a lecture about the Islamic State group, Dr. Eitan Azani, ‎deputy executive director of the Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the IDC Herzliya, mentioned ‎that this organization — which contrary to popular belief is highly organized, with former Iraqi ‎colonels and intelligence officers at the top — operates under a 100-year plan.

One example of a centuries old conflict in the Middle East, which continues unresolved without ‎enjoying a fraction of the sense of urgency that the West bestows on the Israeli-Palestinian ‎conflict, is the persecution of Christians in the Muslim world, including the PA-controlled ‎territories, where their numbers have dwindled dramatically since the Oslo Accords. Most ‎urgent in this respect is the ethnic cleansing of Christians going on in Iraq, which until now has ‎barely caused Western powers to bat an eye.

Similarly, the Yazidis, an ancient people who live in northern Iraq, have suffered persecution ‎throughout their history, but the current ethnic cleansing of the group by Islamic State has not created any sense of ‎urgency in the West, to put it mildly.

Another example is the persecution of the Kurds, an ancient nation comprising roughly 30 million people, and the blatant denial of national self-‎determination for them. Western ‎powers brutally let them down in their quest for national self-determination after World War I ‎and subsequently conveniently ignored them, as if they had disappeared from history ‎altogether. Instead, Arab, Turkish and Persian rulers have persecuted them, most infamously ‎perhaps Saddam Hussein, who used chemical weapons against them. In the Kurds’ ‎current battle against Islamic State, the West has not exactly been rushing to aid them. ‎

Finally, the internal Muslim conflict between Shiites and Sunnis is also one that has existed for ‎centuries and will probably continue for centuries to come. The West has never felt any urge to ‎resolve this bitter conflict, not when the Sunni Saddam was murdering Shias in the south of Iraq ‎and not now, when Sunni Islamic State murders Shias — and also any Sunnis who do not adhere to its ‎particular teachings of Islam.‎

Only one conflict out of the many currently burning in the Middle East has been specifically selected for ‎intense scrutiny and resolution by the West — the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Further, as the ‎prime minister said, it is Israel, not the Palestinians, that is blamed for not resolving this ‎conflict, despite the fact that the Palestinians have run away from every negotiation table that ‎they have ever seen. This should have caused great concern and outrage among ‎decent people a long time ago and a public debate about the rationale for such skewed and ‎slanted Western policies, but the world remains silent and unquestioning on this and instead ‎rages with fury at Israel.

Israel does not have the luxury of dealing with the rose-tinted, imaginary Middle East of the ‎West, where everybody would get along just fine, swaying to the tune of John Lennon’s ‎‎”Imagine,” if only Israel would give in to every single demand. Israel must stick to the harsh ‎realities on the ground and deal with the region, as tough, difficult and dangerous as it actually ‎is. This is the important message that the prime minister communicated in his speech, and it ‎would be most helpful if the West would listen — for once.

Categories: Abbas, Arab culture, Caliphate, Culture, Druze, Europe, Foreign policy, Human rights, Ideology, International Community, Iran scam, Islamism, Israel, Kurds, Muslims, Netanyahu, Obama, P5+1, Palestinian Authority, Palestinians, Peace process, Shiite, Sunni, Terrorism, Yazidis
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Islamic State at Israel’s Gate

June 12, 2015

Islamic State at Israel’s Gate, Front Page Magazine, , June 12, 2015

(According to Israel National News, 

Late on Thursday night “color red” rocket sirens were sounded in the southern coastal city of Ashkelon, as well as throughout the Ashkelon Coast regional council.

At least one rocket was identified as having been fired from Gaza, but IDF officials said it is believed the rocket exploded inside Gaza. No rockets were found in Israeli territory.

— DM)

ISIS-in-Gaza-404x350

All this is happening while the Obama administration, by the president’s own admission, has no clear strategy to defeat ISIS. At the same time, President Obama’s “strategy” to deal with Iran is to make concession after concession in order to secure any nuclear deal he can, including the possibility of providing Iran with relief from sanctions that were imposed for non-nuclear related reasons such as Iran’s support for terrorist activities

In short, Israel is facing Iran-backed Hamas from the south, Iran-backed Hezbollah from the north, and an expanding Islamic State presence north and south of Israel and within Israel itself. And that is before Iran gets its hands on a nuclear bomb and the Islamic State has enough radioactive material to build its own weapons of mass destruction.

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Jihadists affiliated with the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) are carrying on the rocket war against Israeli civilians from where Hamas left off. Following several rocket attacks in the last several weeks for which the Islamic State has taken credit, rockets launched from Gaza Thursday night exploded in the Ashkelon area.

Israel is still holding Hamas responsible for the attacks as the governing authority in Gaza.

“The IDF understands that Hamas wants quiet and is making an effort to prevent the shooting, but the State of Israel still sees Hamas as responsible for what happens in Gaza,” said Sami Turgeman, head of IDF’s Southern Command.

The Israeli military responded with measured attacks on Hamas facilities, while at the same time trying to avoid setting off a wider war at this time.  But Israel’s hand is being forced by the Islamic State, which is evidently working assiduously to supplant Hamas as the authoritative Islamic power in Gaza. The Gaza branch calls itself the Sheikh Omar Hadid Brigade. It is cooperating with another ISIS-affiliated group operating in the Sinai Peninsula, which calls itself Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis.

According to a June 8th report by Debkafile, “Islamic State operatives in the Gaza Strip have been helping themselves to Hamas rockets in recent weeks after furtively penetrating the factory teams operating the group’s production and assembly lines… The jihadis then secretly passed the stolen rockets to their squads for launching against Israel.”

On June 7th Debkafile noted in more general terms Hamas’s loss of control in Gaza in the face of Islamic State infiltration: “The terror infrastructure Hamas built over many years in Sinai has been taken over by ISIS, and its control of the Gaza Strip is slipping, as yet more radical and violent organizations eat away at its authority and seize control of the rocket offensive against Israel.”

Thus, even as Hamas remains committed to the destruction of Israel and is trying to re-build its arms stockpiles with Iran’s help, it is engaged simultaneously in its own battles with the Islamic State. Hamas has arrested some ISIS supporters and bulldozed a Sunni mosque believed to have been used by ISIS affiliated jihadists, while Hamas’s own facilities have come under attack by ISIS affiliated jihadists. Hamas also claimed in a message to Israeli authorities, routed through an Egyptian intermediary, that jihadists affiliated with the Islamic State were deliberately trying to spark a renewed war between Israel and Hamas.

The Islamic State is also trying to position itself to challenge Israel from the north. Israeli TV Channel 2 reported last week that the Islamic State is moving forces in the direction of the Golan Heights and the Israeli border.

Moreover, ISIS is developing an increasing presence within Israel itself. Recruits, influenced by ISIS’s slick social media promotions, are attracted to ISIS’s self-declared purer Islamic ideology. Hamas is apparently too “moderate” for these jihadists’ tastes.

“Dozens of Israeli Arabs and Palestinians have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join insurgent groups.” Israel’s Shin Bet domestic intelligence agency said in a statement released last January 4th. Israel had announced that it managed to crack one Islamic State cell on its soil and arrested its alleged members. An Israeli security official described the cell as “just the tip of the iceberg.”

Last July, the Islamic State previewed its intentions in a statement that it issued regarding jihad against Israel:

As for the massacres taking place in Gaza against the Muslim men, women and children, then the Islamic State will do everything within its means to continue striking down every apostate who stands as an obstacle on its paths towards Palestine. It is only [a] matter of time and patience before it (Islamic State) reaches Palestine to fight the barbaric Jews and kill those of them hiding behind the gharqad trees – the trees of the Jews.

Arutz Sheva reported that a spokesperson for the Islamic State, Nidal Nuseiri, urged patience as the Islamic State wanted first to consolidate its control over Arab Muslim lands, but “reaffirmed that conquering ‘Bayt el-Maqdis’ (Jerusalem) and destroying the State of Israel is central to the group’s jihad.” Thanks to President Obama’s dithering, the Islamic State is well on its way to achieving such consolidation in Iraq and Syria, while spreading to Libya.

At least three questions arise from the emergence of ISIS as a direct threat to Israel. Will Israeli military and security forces, either on their own or in concert with Jordan and Egypt, take on ISIS directly, including going after ISIS’s command and control centers with far more firepower than the Obama administration has used thus far?

To what extent will Israel be willing to outsource military operations against ISIS affiliates in Gaza to Hamas, much as it has outsourced some security operations to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank? Major-General Turgeman tried to cast Hamas as the lesser of two evils, since, he claimed, “Israel and Hamas have shared interests, including in the current situation, which is quiet and calm and growth and prosperity.” Hamas “does not want global jihad,” he added. This is a truly incredible assertion coming from an Israeli military leader about a group willing to put its own citizens and their homes in harm’s way in order to launch their own thousands of rockets against Israel. What happened to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s concise description of Hamas and the Islamic State as “branches of the same poisonous tree?” This just further demonstrates how completely insane the Middle East has become.

Finally, how successful will Iran be in exploiting the chaotic situation in Gaza, positioning itself as it has in Iraq as an enemy of ISIS, while further bolstering Hamas to Israel’s detriment?

All this is happening while the Obama administration, by the president’s own admission, has no clear strategy to defeat ISIS. At the same time, President Obama’s “strategy” to deal with Iran is to make concession after concession in order to secure any nuclear deal he can, including the possibility of providing Iran with relief from sanctions that were imposed for non-nuclear related reasons such as Iran’s support for terrorist activities.

In short, Israel is facing Iran-backed Hamas from the south, Iran-backed Hezbollah from the north, and an expanding Islamic State presence north and south of Israel and within Israel itself. And that is before Iran gets its hands on a nuclear bomb and the Islamic State has enough radioactive material to build its own weapons of mass destruction.

Categories: Egypt, Foreign policy, Gaza, Golan, Hamas, Iran scam, Islamic State, Israel, Jordan, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, P5+1, Rocket attack, Sanctions, West Bank
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Today in appeasement

June 11, 2015

Today in appeasement, Power Line, Scott Johnson, June 11, 2015

So on one side the US is strengthening Lebanese institutions that insulate Hezbollah from the consequences of its Syria warfighting. On the other side – this is the WSJ scoop – the US is kneecapping organizations inside Lebanon that are trying to wrest control of those very institutions away from Hezbollah. The combination can’t help but feed regional fears that Washington is realigning with Tehran, and that the US’s traditional Arab allies have to go it alone.

********************

Omri Ceren writes to draw attention to Jay Solomon’s Wall Street Journal article “U.S. Strategy in Lebanon Stirs Fears.” Omri writes:

Hayya Bina is a Beirut-based civil society NGO that – among other things – works to craft and promote an alternative Shiite identity in in opposition to Hezbollah. The WSJ reported yesterday that the State Department has just cut some of its funding. Not all of its funding, which would make sense if the organization was inefficient or corrupt.

The administration only cut the funding for programs – and this is a direct quote from a State Department letter viewed by the WSJ – “intended [to] foster an independent moderate Shiite voice.” Regional actors and folks in town are drawing the straightforward conclusion:

[T]he U.S. move feeds into an increasingly alarmed narrative held by many Arab leaders who say that U.S. and Iranian interests appear increasingly aligned—at their expense. Both Washington and Tehran are fighting Islamic State forces in Iraq and Syria, with U.S. conducting airstrikes against the militants, but notably not against Mr. Assad’s Iran-backed regime… Some pro-democracy activists in Washington also voiced concern that cutting Hayya Bina’s funding will send a message that the U.S. is tacitly accepting Hezbollah in an effort to appease Iran. “At best, the decision shows poor political judgment,” said Firas Maksad, director of Global Policy Advisors, a Washington-based consulting firm focused on the Middle East. “Coming on the heels of an expected deal with Iran, it is bound to generate much speculation about possible ulterior motives.”… the Obama administration has also cooperated with Lebanese institutions—including the armed forces and an intelligence agency—that are considered close to Hezbollah and combating Islamic State and Nusra Front, an al Qaeda-affiliated militia in Syria.

That last part of the excerpt – about the Obama administration’s cooperation with Lebanese institutions controlled by Hezbollah – has separately been getting a lot of play lately. Last week the Pentagon quietly posted a news release announcing “the State Department has made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to Lebanon for AGM-114 Hellfire II missiles” (I haven’t seen this one reported out, incidentally [1]). Yesterday State Department Press Office Director Jeff Rathke confirmed that the US will be delivering TOW missiles to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and is contemplating the delivery of six A29 aircraft [2].

That’s just since June began. The problem is that the LAF’s operations are objectively oriented toward shoring up Hezbollah’s position in Lebanon, more or less serving as a rear guard while Hezbollah fights in Syria. Hezbollah and the LAF have been fighting alongside one another on the Lebanese-Syrian border for months [3]. Inside Lebanon top politicians have long accused Hezbollah of using Lebanese security institutions to prevent blowback from Syria [4].

Tony Badran from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies already published a kind of canonical piece on how the LAF has become a domestic tool for Hezbollah last year in English-language Lebanese media [5]. The punchline on the new A29 delivery is that the administration says it’s aimed in part at helping the LAF “enforce United Nation’s security council resolutions 1559 and 1701″ [6]. Those resolutions call on the LAF to act against Hezbollah. Except the LAF doesn’t so much disrupt Hezbollah these days as de facto back its play in Syria.

So on one side the US is strengthening Lebanese institutions that insulate Hezbollah from the consequences of its Syria warfighting. On the other side – this is the WSJ scoop – the US is kneecapping organizations inside Lebanon that are trying to wrest control of those very institutions away from Hezbollah. The combination can’t help but feed regional fears that Washington is realigning with Tehran, and that the US’s traditional Arab allies have to go it alone. Remember that in a little over two weeks the Arab countries will be making those calculations with an Iran deal in the background that puts the Iranians on a 10 year glide path to a nuclear weapon.

________________

[1] http://www.dsca.mil/major-arms-sales/lebanon-agm-114-hellfire-ii-missiles
[2] http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2015/06/243337.htm#LEBANON
[3] http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2015/Feb-03/286269-hezbollah-army-pound-militant-hideouts-along-syria-border.ashx
[4] http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2015/Jan-26/285359-hezbollah-exploiting-armys-anti-jihad-campaign-rifi.ashx
[5] https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentary/540966-the-sum-of-its-parts
[6] http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/us-approves-possible-462m-a-29-super-tucano-sale-to-413350/

Categories: Appeasement, Diplomacy, Foreign policy, Hezbollah, Ideology, Iran, Iran - Syria war, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Lebanon, Obama, P5+1, Shiite
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