In an interview with The Atlantic, U.S. President Barack Obamas admitted that some of the money freed up the deal’s proposed sanction relief may up going towards terrorism, although he argued that Iranian government would have to make good on their commitments to improve the country’s economy.
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Despite the fact that Iran’s global terror activities were “undiminished” between 2013 and 2014, the U.S. State Department is still entirely committed to pursuing a nuclear deal with Iran.
“We think it’s essential that we pursue those negotiations,” said Tina Kaidanow, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal. “None of that implies that we would be, again, in any way taking our eye off the ball with respect to what Iran is doing as a supporter of terrorism.”
Iran’s support for terror was documented in the State Dept.’s annual report on global terrorism, which was released Friday. The report says “Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism worldwide remained undiminished,” which makes the State Dept. “very, very concerned,” according to Kaidanow.
While the June 30 deadline for the deal is now fewer than 10 days away, the release of the report shows, “Iran continued to sponsor terrorist groups around the world,” according to Kaidanow.
The report specifically mentions Iran’s continued support for the Shiite terror organization Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as those fighting with embattled Syrian President Bashaar al-Assad.
In an interview with The Atlantic, U.S. President Barack Obamas admitted that some of the money freed up the deal’s proposed sanction relief may up going towards terrorism, although he argued that Iranian government would have to make good on their commitments to improve the country’s economy.
“I don’t think …anybody in this administration said that no money will go to the military as a consequence of sanctions relief,” Obama said. “The question is, if Iran has $150 billion parked outside the country, does the IRGC automatically get $150 billion? Does that $150 billion then translate by orders of magnitude into their capacity to project power throughout the region? And that is what we contest …”
The report also showed that between 2013 and 2014, there was a significant rise in global terror attacks, causing an increase in over 80 percent of violent deaths from the previous year (which itself had seen a 43 percent increase from the year before). In addition, the report showed:
There was an average of 1,122 attacks per month
Kidnappings increased by one-third, with more than with 9,400 people taken hostage
The number of global attacks rose by 35 percent
32,727 people were killed worldwide (versus 17,800 in 2013)
34,700 people were injured in attacks in close to 95 countries
In Iraq alone, 10,000 people died in 3,360 attacks representing close to a third of all people killed in terror attacks worldwide.
I wondered how I missed the story about Iran’s plot to bomb the Israeli legation [in Washington, D.C.]. In his interview with us on Friday, Oren implied that information regarding the plot had previously been classified. Going through the Israeli government’s prepublication review of his manuscript, he received permission to reveal what remains about it in the book.
That’s quite a crew that President Obama has us crawling into bed with, on a tissue of rationalizations and deceptions and betrayals. Oren’s book sets off a potent alarm. We’re going to hate ourselves on the morning after.
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The Islamic Republic of Iran avows its desire to eliminate Israel. It is an avowedly anti-Semitic terror state. To state the obvious, it wars on Israel because Israel is the Jewish state.
Iran’s war against Israel is of course not simply verbal. It has armed Hezbollah with more than 100,000 missiles to use against Israel on demand. It seeks nuclear weapons that will make the elimination of Israel an afternoon’s work. Yet the United States is about to enter into an agreement with Iran that blesses its nuclear program and facilitates its acquisition of nuclear weapons.
President Obama by turns excuses, discounts and rationalizes the avowed anti-Semitic statements and goals of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Obama asserts, for example: “The fact that you are anti-Semitic, or racist, doesn’t preclude you from being interested in survival. The fact that the supreme leader is anti-Semitic doesn’t mean that this overrides all of his other considerations.”
And: “They have their worldview and they see their interests. They’re not North Korea.” According to Obama, Iran “use[s] anti-Semitic rhetoric as an organizing tool.” The anti-Semitic pronouncements are not to be taken too seriously; they are simply intended for domestic consumption.
Obama’s comments are so stupid and glib it’s hard to believe that he takes them seriously himself. Michael Oren addresses the substance of Obama’s comments in the Los Angeles Times column “Why Obama is wrong about Iran being ‘rational’ on nukes” (bad headline, excellent column).
Oren concludes his column with this understated observation: “Obama would never say that anti-black racists are rational. And he would certainly not trust them with the means — however monitored — to reach their racist goals. That was the message Israeli officials and I conveyed in our discreet talks with the administration. The response was not, to our mind, reasonable.”
Oren also treats the issue of Iran and Obama in his book Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide, to be published on Tuesday. Oren’s treatment of the issue is one of the book’s great virtues.
Oren reveals in the book that Iran plotted to bomb the Israeli legation in Washington, D.C., in 2011. He writes: “The terrorists also targeted Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington, planning to murder him with a bomb while he dined at his favorite restaurant, Cafe Milano.” Oren quotes himself asking Prime Minister Netanyahu on October 11, 2011: “Who will protect the embassy?”
We knew about the plot against the Saudi ambassador; the plot was all over the news when charges against two Iranians were unsealed. The Washington Post quoted then Attorney General Holder saying that “the United States is committed to holding Iran accountable for its actions,” but noted that other Obama administration officials indicated that it was not yet clear who in the Iranian government was behind the alleged plot. It’s all a big mystery.
I follow the news. I wondered how I missed the story about Iran’s plot to bomb the Israeli legation. In his interview with us on Friday, Oren implied that information regarding the plot had previously been classified. Going through the Israeli government’s prepublication review of his manuscript, he received permission to reveal what remains about it in the book.
Oren notes that the 2011 plot was the handiwork of “Iran’s elite al-Quds force, in charge of overseas operations directly authorized by the regime’s Supreme Leader.” He continues:
By selling drugs internationally and laundering the profits through used-car dealerships, Iran had financed terrorist attacks in twenty-five cities throughout the world. Now that list included America’s capital. Such brazen aggression should have precipitated an instant U.S. military response. Instead, President Obama called the Saudi king–not Netanyahu–telling him, “This plot represents a flagrant violation of international norms, ethics, and law.” Such abstractions, I assumed, did not appease the desert monarch. And they certainly failed to mollify me. If the administration balked at retaliating for an attempted massacre only blocks from the White House, I asked myself, would it strike nuclear facilities six thousand miles away?
Well, if we were ever in doubt, now we know the answer to that last question. I’ll return to it tomorrow. Before leaving off here, however, I want to pick up Oren’s thread on the reality of Iran’s war against Israel. A few pages after his discussion of the 2011 plot focused on Washington, Oren writes:
[V]icious Iranian words soon translated into murderous actions. Starting in February 2012, when an al-Quds force operative blew off his own legs while trying to bomb an Israeli diplomatic target, Iran masterminded a series of terrorist attacks worldwide. Mossad and foreign intelligence networks subsequently managed to thwart similar strikes against Israelis in Kenya, South Africa, Cyprus, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. But not all of Iran’s aggressions could be stopped. A car bomb wounded the wife of Israel’s military attache in New Delhi. Then, on July 18–exactly eighteen years after explosives killed eighty-five people at a Jewish center in Buenos Aires–Hezbollah terrorists struck a bus carrying Israeli tourists in Burgas airport in Bulgaria. A bomb planted in the luggage compartment blew burning bodies out of the bus, killing seven and wounding thirty-three.
That’s quite a crew that President Obama has us crawling into bed with, on a tissue of rationalizations and deceptions and betrayals. Oren’s book sets off a potent alarm. We’re going to hate ourselves on the morning after.
Mainstreaming extremism is . . . Obama’s policy. It’s the logic behind nearly every Western diplomatic move in the Middle East from the Israel-PLO peace process to the Brotherhood’s Arab Spring. And these disasters only created more Islamic terrorism.
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After some of its quarter of a million Muslims headed to join ISIS, Quebec decided the answer was a $2 million anti-radicalization center headed by a specialist in cultural sensitivity. But if you’re about to be beheaded by a masked ISIS Jihadist, a specialist in cultural sensitivity isn’t going to help you much.
Western governments nevertheless keep rolling out their culturally sensitive approaches to fighting ISIS.
The key element in Obama’s strategy for fighting ISIS isn’t the F-15E Strike Eagle, it’s a Twitter account run by a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer which claims to “Counter Violent Extremism” by presenting moderate Islamists like Al Qaeda as positive role models for the Islamic State’s social media supporters.
So far 75% of planes flown on combat missions against ISIS return without engaging the enemy, but the culturally sensitive State Department Twitter account has racked up over 5,000 tweets and zero kills.
Cultural sensitivity hasn’t exactly set Iraq on fire in fighting ISIS and deradicalization programs here start from the false premise that there is a wide gap between a moderate and extremist Islam. Smiling news anchors daily recite new stories about a teenager from Kentucky, Boston or Manchester getting “radicalized” and joining ISIS to the bafflement of his parents, mosque and community.
And who is to blame for all this mysterious radicalization? It’s not the parents. It certainly can’t be the moderate local mosque with its stock of Jihadist CDs and DVDs being dispensed from under the table.
The attorney for the family of Usaama Rahim, the Muslim terrorist who plotted to behead Pamela Geller, claims that his radicalization came as a “complete shock” to them.
It must have come as a truly great shock to his brother Imam Ibrahim Rahim who claimed that his brother was shot in the back and that the Garland cartoon attack had been staged by the government.
It must have come as an even bigger shock to Imam Abdullah Faaruuq, the Imam linked to Usaama Rahim and his fellow terrorist conspirators, as well as the Tsarnaev brothers, who had urged Muslims to “grab onto the gun and the sword.”
The culturally insensitive truth about Islamic ‘radicalization’ is that it is incremental.
There is no peaceful Islam. Instead of two sharply divided groups, peaceful Islam and extremist Islam, there is a spectrum of acceptable terrorism.
Muslim institutions have different places on that spectrum depending on their allegiances and tactics, but the process of radicalization is rarely a sharp break from the past for any except converts to Islam.
The latest tragic victim of radicalization is Munther Omar Saleh; a Muslim man living in New York City who allegedly plotted to use a Tsarnaev-style pressure cooker bomb in a major landmark such as the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. Saleh claimed to be following orders from ISIS.
Media coverage of the Saleh arrest drags out the old clichés about how unexpected this sudden radicalization was, but what appears to be his father’s social media account shows support for Hamas.
Likewise one of Usaama Rahim’s fellow mosque attendees said that Rahim and another conspirator had initially followed the “teachings of the Muslim Brotherhood” but that he had been forced to cut ties with them when they moved past the Brotherhood and became “extreme”.
Despite the media’s insistence on describing the Muslim Brotherhood as a moderate organization, it has multiple terrorist arms, including Hamas, and its views on non-Muslims run the gamut from the violent to the genocidal.
A year after Obama’s Cairo speech and his outreach to the Muslim Brotherhood, its Supreme Guide announced that the United States will soon be destroyed, urged violent terrorist attacks against the United States and “raising a jihadi generation that pursues death just as the enemies pursue life.”
Despite this, Obama continued backing the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power across the region.
There are distinctions between the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda, but the latter is a splinter group of the former. Al Qaeda’s current leader came out of the Muslim Brotherhood. A move from one to the other is a minor transition between two groups that have far more in common than their differences.
And since the Brotherhood controls much of the Islamic infrastructure in the United States, the idea that Munther Omar Saleh or Usaama Rahim became radicalized because they went from a Jihadist group that takes the long view in the struggle against the infidel, putting political structures into place to make a violent struggle tactically feasible, to a Jihadist group that focuses more on short term violence, is silly.
It’s the Pakistani kid down the block deciding that instead of joining the Muslim Students Association and then CAIR to build Islamist political structures in America, he should just cut to the chase and kill a few cops to begin taking over America now.
Radicalization is the moderate Imam who stops putting on an act for PBS and the local politicians and moves to Yemen where he openly recruits terrorists to attack America instead of doing it covertly at his mosque in Virginia.
Radicalization is the teenage Muslim girl who forgets about marrying her Egyptian third cousin and bringing him and his fifty relatives to America and goes to join ISIS as a Caliphate brood mare instead.
It’s not pacifism giving way to violence. Instead it’s an impatient shift from tactical actions meant to eventually make Islam supreme in America over many generations to immediate bloody gratification. ISIS is promising the apocalypse now. No more waiting. No more lying. You can have it tomorrow.
Radicalization does not go from zero to sixty. It speeds up from sixty to seventy-five.
It builds on elements that are already there in the mosque and the household. The term “extremism” implicitly admits that what we are talking about is not a complete transformation, but the logical extension of existing Islamic beliefs.
Omar Saleh seemed cheerful enough about Hamas dropping Kassam rockets on Israeli towns and cities. Would he have supported his son setting off a bomb in the Statue of Liberty? Who knows, but his son was already starting from a family position that Muslim terrorism against non-Muslims was acceptable.
Everything else is the fine print.
When Usaama Rahim followed the way of the Muslim Brotherhood, he was with a moderate group whose spiritual guide, the genocidal Qaradawi was the godfather of cartoon outrage and had endorsed the murderous Iranian fatwa against Salman Rushdie.
The slope that leads from Qaradawi’s cartoon rage to trying to behead Pamela Geller isn’t a slippery one; it’s a vertical waterfall. And this is what radicalization really looks like. It doesn’t mean moderates turning extreme. It means extremists becoming more extreme. And there’s always room for extremists to become more extreme which turns old extremists into moderates while mainstreaming their beliefs.
In the UK, Baroness Warsi, Cameron’s biggest mistake, blamed Muslim radicalization on the government’s refusal to engage with… radicals. Or as she put it, “It is incredibly odd and incredibly worrying that over time more and more individuals, more and more organisations are considered by the government to be beyond the pale and therefore not to be engaged with.”
The reason why the government is refusing to “engage” with these organizations is that they support terrorism in one form or another. Warsi is proposing that the UK fight radicalization by mainstreaming it.
Mainstreaming extremism is also Obama’s policy. It’s the logic behind nearly every Western diplomatic move in the Middle East from the Israel-PLO peace process to the Brotherhood’s Arab Spring. And these disasters only created more Islamic terrorism.
The Muslim teenagers headed to join ISIS did not come out of a vacuum. They came from mosques and families that normalized some degree of Islamic Supremacism and viewed some Muslim terrorists as heroes and role models. It’s time for Western governments to admit that the ISIS Jihadist is more the product of his parents and his teachers than of social media Jihadis on YouTube and Twitter.
Radicalization doesn’t begin with a sheikh on social media. It begins at home. It begins in the mosque. It just ends with ISIS.
(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.
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.]
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.]
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.
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.]
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.
(Human rights, Iranian missiles, Iranian threats, Iranian proxies, theocratic dictatorship? Those are not relevant to the deal. But whatever may help the environment and therefore stop climate change is my top priority — Obama.
Rouhani’s comments linking the country’s various environmental problems and employment woes to the nuclear negotiations and sanctions relief have upset conservatives, who believe the administration is too eager to resolve the dispute and too optimistic about what the deal means for the country.
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Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has been criticized for suggesting that once a comprehensive nuclear deal is made it will open the door to improving the country’s environmental problems. “The oppressive sanctions must be removed so that investment can come and the problems of the environment, employment, industry and drinkable water are resolved,” Rouhani said at a ceremony on June 7 commemorating Environment Week in Iran.
Rouhani described the sanctions as “a small fever … that at the beginning no attention was paid to this fever, but when the sick person fell ill and was not able to move anymore, we sought a remedy for the illness. Some did not know the reason of the sanctions but step by step, the problems became larger.”
Rouhani added that while “the oppressive sanctions must be removed,” this does not mean “that we must submit to the unreasonable wants of others.”
Iran and five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) are working through the final details of a comprehensive deal that would see Iran reduce its nuclear activity in return for sanctions relief, particularly banking sanctions that have hurt the country’s ability to sell its oil and conduct trade and have prevented Western investment in the country.
But Rouhani’s comments linking the country’s various environmental problems and employment woes to the nuclear negotiations and sanctions relief have upset conservatives, who believe the administration is too eager to resolve the dispute and too optimistic about what the deal means for the country.
In an article titled, “The water, wind, soil and forests have also been tied to sanctions,” the conservative Javan newspaper criticized Rouhani’s latest comments. The article said, “Despite experts warning of not connecting domestic issues of the country to the nuclear issue and negotiations, at this ceremony Rouhani once again suggested that with the removal of sanctions not only will investment become fluid in Iran but the issues of the environment, youth employment, water and banking will be [resolved].”
The article continued that Rouhani’s comments “resulted in many experts becoming surprised and a few hours afterward many hostile Western networks and media … took this point and broadcast this to show [that] sanctions have brought Iran to its knees.”
In an article sarcastically titled, “Solving all the problems is tied to the negotiations, even drinking water,” the Kayhan newspaper also criticized Rouhani. Kayhan repeated Javan’s warning that analysts have warned of not tying the nuclear negotiations to domestic issues and cast doubt that so many problems could be resolved with the removal of sanctions. Kayhan wrote, “Stranger than anything else, Rouhani said the removal of sanctions would increase the water levels.”
Kayhan said, “The issue of sanctions is one the most important obstacles for the negotiators because the Americans do not want to remove sanctions, which is a tool to apply pressure on Iran.”
According to his previous statements, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has final say on the nuclear program, has warned Iranian officials about being optimistic regarding the sanctions and has emphasized focusing on domestic capabilities instead.
On April 29, he said, “The key to solving economic issues is not in Lausanne, Geneva or New York,” three locations where the Iran and P5+1 nuclear talks have taken place under the Rouhani administration. “Without a doubt, sanctions and pressure cannot stop organized and planned efforts to increase domestic production.”
Israel has been fighting the Iran nuclear deal due to the great danger it poses, but senior Western officials have revealed it is also doing so because once a deal is reached, the European Union (EU) and UN are planning a diplomatic offensive targeting the Jewish state.
The political assault is meant to force Israel into returning to yet more peace talks with the Palestinian Authority (PA) and making dangerous concessions in the process – and reportedly the EU already has a list of sanctions ready to force Israel to bend.
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.”
“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.
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.
The source added that US President Barack Obama’s threat made in an Israeli interview this month, according to which he may cut US support for Israel at the UN, specifically was referring to “the sanctions file” against Israel which is currently biding its time at the EU headquarters.
The US is reportedly weighing its responses, as the current Israeli government does not appear to be likely to launch a new series of peace talks after the massive failure of the last round, and the PA’s unilateral moves in the international arena in breach of the 1993 Oslo Accords that founded it.
“The make-up of the government is such that no faction or minister will stand up to the lack of an initiative from Prime Minister (Binyamin) Netanyahu,” a diplomat from New York told Ma’ariv. “The coming months will be difficult for Israel. This time Israel will pay a heavy price for continued stagnation. This time, it is also uncertain if Uncle Sam will succeed in saving Israel, and maybe he won’t want to do so.”
(This appeared in an e-mail this morning from Foreign Policy Strategy Report:
Wait, where is everybody? Several hundred U.S. soldiers and Marines at al Asad air base in Iraq are standing by, ready to train some Iraq soldiers. But those Iraqi troops have stopped showing up, leaving the Americans all alone at the sprawling base. FP’s John Hudson, Lara Jakes and Paul McLearyreport that across Iraq, there seem to be more U.S. trainers than recruits, with only 2,600 Iraqi soldiers currently receiving training from about 3,000 U.S. military personnel.
While the training has dried up, at the G-7 summit in Germany, President Barack Obama maintained that the United States and its allies must speed up the training of the Iraqi security forces….even, presumably, if they aren’t showing up.
— DM)
President Obama did some talking about the Islamic State (IS) after the G-7. Of note is that he admitted to not having an actual strategy in combatting IS and the threat it poses to the free world. In typical fashion he fails to hold himself accountable for his actions and points the finger at everybody but himself. He’s known about the threat of IS for since 2010 when Baghdadi’s guys initiated the “Breaking the Walls Campaign” in Iraq (which the Long War Journal did a great job of covering btw). This quote from our illustrious President was quite telling:
“I don’t want to put the cart before the horse. We don’t have a strategy yet,”
And here’s President Obama’s press conference after the G-7 (we recommend fast-forwarding to the 18:00 mark to get to the good stuff):
The President comes off as well-versed in “saying the right things” when it comes to things like Greece, healthcare or raising minimum wage. However, he starts stumbling the minute someone asks about IS. At around the 19:00 mark of the aforementioned video he said that we’re making “progress” in pushing IS back, but then goes on to say that as we “secure” an area they move into other areas the Iraq Security Forces/Popular Mobilization Committee (ISF/PMC) left. This is the President’s definition of “winning” the fight against IS. We’re sorry if this offends his supporters (not really), but what’s happening on the ground in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen isn’t the US “winning” this fight against IS, Iran or al-Qaida (AQ).
His “solution” to the problem being an acceleration of training up the ISF is smoke and mirrors, really. You can train the ISF up all you want and it won’t make any difference because at its core both the IA and Iraqi Police (IP) have been purged of their most capable commanders and replaced by incompetent officers. The fact that the IA is now 80% Shia further alienates itself from the Sunni Arab and Kurd communities. Even Secretary of Defense Ash Carter stated all the training in the world can’t help the IA due to the cowardice that’s endemic throughout the force. As much as the Iranian regime denied this and pushed back against Carter’s assessment, IRGC-Qods Force commander GEN Suleimani shares many his beliefs in the poor state of the IA – and that’s a big reason why Suleimani has been influencing the establishment of the Iraqi National Guard by working to ensure that the ranks are filled with Shia militia personnel. Oh, and btw, a lot of those “fresh troops” the President was referring to are already being put through the meat grinder in places like Bayji and Ramadi – and the results aren’t pretty.
SECDEF Ash Carter is the only guy in the Obama administration who seems to “get it” – too bad the powers that be forced him to walk back his accurate assessment on the cowardice seen throughout the IA
Source: Wall Street Journal
Again, none of this is surprising to our readers who’ve been with us since the beginning of our site. President Obama had a quasi-strategy of sorts that we covered in last summer’s “Obama’s ISIS Strategy: Failed Before it Started” that was followed up by “Another Reason Obama’s ISIS Strategy Has Already Failed.” To the uninitiated, the Obama strategy called for trainers and the arming of so-called “moderates” in Syria while supporting an Iraqi Army (IA) that has taken on sectarian characteristics. He’s banking on doing the bare minimum to basically run out the clock so that he can say he “didn’t deploy combat troops to Iraq.” In other words, he has a plan alrighHe’s been very untruthful because he’s dramatically increased the US military footprint in Iraq since last summer. Their situation is also much more dangerous now than it ever was during the OIF-era thanks to the restrictive ROE he slapped our brethren with prior to authorizing their deployment. Additionally, his term “no boots on the ground” is misleading because those “advisors/trainers” we’ve deployed are all ground troops – many of which are located in bases currently under siege such as al-Asad Airbase or Habbaniyah. If these aren’t American “combat troops,” then what are they, aid workers? Bystanders? The Obama administration may give the “trainer” label on our guys being deployed to Iraq, but the inconvenient truth of the matter is that they all have either “US ARMY” or “US MARINES” tags on their uniforms.
It was painful to watch President Obama – the alleged “leader” of the free world – have a hard time answering some pretty easy questions asked about US policy to combat IS. President Obama and his national security team had more than a few years to develop a strategy – but didn’t. Why is that? Its because President Obama doesn’t want his domestic agenda to get sidetracked by things like the foreign-policy arena. He just points the finger at everybody else saying “its their fault” while not formulating any real solution. He’s on his 7th year in office and still blames his predecessor for everything. Coming from military backgrounds ourselves, we were taught that a leader doesn’t make excuses. He makes things happen. A leader doesn’t keep rolling with a plan if it clearly isn’t working. A leader will adjust accordingly and inspire his subordinates to press on. That’s what a leader does. We’re not seeing that from this President. As we’ve stated earlier in this article, he’s just trying to “run out the clock” of his second term so that this will become the “next guy’s problem.” Unfortunately for him, it doesn’t work that way. His inaction and arrogance has directly led to the rise of IS, and his current policies have allowed the terror organization to expand into other locales such as Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the North Caucasus region. History won’t look so kindly on him as the current American media. The public will see this manifest itself in the next administration, when our country gets attacked on our home soil – again. Of course there’s the hope that the American people will finally realize this is what a “hope and change” foreign policy is all about before its too late. But we doubt it.
Oh yeah, President Obama knew PM Abadi was next to him and acted as if he wasn’t there – kinda like his approach to foreign policy
Source: CBS News
If you want additional details on the lead up to the rise of IS, then check out the history lesson we put together for President Obama’s counterpart Rand Paul, who is just as naive on foreign policy as he is:
The stakes are the highest they’ve ever been. Nuclear Iran. The US, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel play for the security of the world. This is the ultimate hold’em game. Who holds the aces, who will go all in, who is bluffing and who has a tell that will leave them with nothing but a mushroom cloud. No nukes for Iran.
What little we know about the resulting classified 18-page report is that it used euphemisms to call for aiding Islamist takeovers in parts of the Middle East. Four countries were targeted. Of those four, we only know for certain that Egypt and Yemen were on the list. But we do know for certain the outcome.
Obama’s insistence that human rights be made a core national security interest paved the way for political and military interventions on behalf of Islamists. Obama had never been interested in human rights; his record of pandering to the world’s worst genocide plotters and perpetrators from Iran to Turkey to Sudan made that clear. When he said “human rights”, Obama really meant “Islamist power.”
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Behind the rise of ISIS, the Libyan Civil War, the unrest in Egypt, Yemen and across the region may be a single classified document.
That document is Presidential Study Directive 11.
You can download Presidential Study Directive 10 on “Preventing Mass Atrocities” from the White House website, but as of yet no one has been able to properly pry number 11 out of Obama Inc.
Presidential Study Directive 10, in which Obama asked for non-military options for stopping genocide, proved to be a miserable failure. The Atrocities Prevention Board’s only use was as a fig leaf for a policy that had caused the atrocities. And the cause of those atrocities is buried inside Directive 11.
With Obama’s typical use of technicalities to avoid transparency, Directive 11 was used to guide policy in the Middle East without being officially submitted. It is possible that it will never be submitted. And yet the Directive 11 group was described as “just finishing its work” when the Arab Spring began.
That is certainly one way of looking at it.
Directive 11 brought together activists and operatives at multiple agencies to come up with a “tailored” approach for regime change in each country. The goal was to “manage” the political transitions. It tossed aside American national security interests by insisting that Islamist regimes would be equally committed to fighting terrorism and cooperating with Israel. Its greatest gymnastic feat may have been arguing that the best way to achieve political stability in the region was through regime change.
What little we know about the resulting classified 18-page report is that it used euphemisms to call for aiding Islamist takeovers in parts of the Middle East. Four countries were targeted. Of those four, we only know for certain that Egypt and Yemen were on the list. But we do know for certain the outcome.
Egypt fell to the Muslim Brotherhood, which collaborated with Al Qaeda, Hamas and Iran, before being undone by a counterrevolution. Yemen is currently controlled by Iran’s Houthi terrorists and Al Qaeda.
According to a New York Times story, Obama’s Directive 11 agenda appeared to resemble Che or Castro as he “pressed his advisers to study popular uprisings in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia to determine which ones worked and which did not.”
The story also noted that he “is drawn to Indonesia, where he spent several years as a child, which ousted its longtime leader, Suharto, in 1998.”
The coup against Mubarak with its coordination of liberals, Islamists and the military did strongly resemble what happened in Indonesia. The most ominous similarity may be that the Muslim mobs in Indonesia targeted the Chinese, many of whom are Christians, while the Muslim mobs in Egypt targeted Coptic Christians.
Both were talented groups that were disproportionately successful because they lacked the traditional Islamic hostility to education, integrity and achievement. Islamist demagogues had succeeded in associating them with the regime and promoted attacks on them as part of the anti-regime protests.
Chinese stores were looted and thousands of Chinese women were raped by rampaging Muslims. Just as in Egypt, the protesters and their media allies spread the claim that these atrocities committed by Muslim protesters were the work of the regime’s secret police. That remains the official story today.
Suharto’s fall paved the way for the rise of the Prosperous Justice Party, which was founded a few months after his resignation and has become one of the largest parties in the Indonesian parliament. PJP was set up by the Muslim Brotherhood’s local arm in Indonesia.
His successor, Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie, was more explicitly Islamist than Suharto and his Association of Muslim Intellectuals (ICMI) conducted a campaign against Christians, Hindus and Buddhists. It helped purge non-Muslims from government while Islamizing the government and Indonesia’s key institutions.
Habibie had been the Chairman of ICMI and ICMI’s Islamists played a key role in moving Suharto out and moving him in. It was obvious why Obama would have considered the Islamization of Indonesia and the purge of Christians under the guise of democratic political change to be a fine example for Egypt.
While we don’t know the full contents of Directive 11 and unless a new administration decides to open the vaults of the old regime, we may never know. But we do know a good deal about the results.
In its own way, PSD-10 tells us something about PSD-11.
Obama’s insistence that human rights be made a core national security interest paved the way for political and military interventions on behalf of Islamists. Obama had never been interested in human rights; his record of pandering to the world’s worst genocide plotters and perpetrators from Iran to Turkey to Sudan made that clear. When he said “human rights”, Obama really meant “Islamist power”.
That was why Obama refused to intervene when the Muslim Brotherhood conducted real genocide in Sudan, but did interfere in Libya on behalf of the Brotherhood using a phony claim of genocide.
Positioning Samantha Power in the Office of Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights at the National Security Council was part of the process that made over the NSC from national security to servicing a progressive wish list of Islamist terrorist groups that were to be transformed into national governments.
Power, along with Gayle Smith and Dennis Ross, led the Directive 11 project.
Secret proceedings were used to spawn regime change infrastructure. Some of these tools had official names, such as “The Office of The Special Coordinator For Middle East Transitions” which currently reports directly to former ambassador Anne Patterson who told Coptic Christians not to protest against Morsi. After being driven out of the country by angry mobs over her support for the Muslim Brotherhood tyranny, she was promoted to Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.
“The Office” is still focused on “outreach to emergent political, economic and social forces in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya” even though counterrevolutions have pushed out Islamists in Egypt and Tunisia, while Libya is in the middle of a bloody civil war in which an alliance of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda controls the nation’s capital.
The men and women responsible for Directive 11 were making it clear that they had learned nothing.
Directive 11 ended up giving us the Islamic State through its Arab Spring. PSD-11’s twisted claim that regional stability could only be achieved through Islamist regime change tore apart the region and turned it into a playground for terrorists. ISIS is simply the biggest and toughest of the terror groups that were able to thrive in the environment of violent civil wars created by Obama’s Directive 11.
During the Arab Spring protests, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit had told Hillary Clinton that his government could not hand over power to the Muslim Brotherhood. “My daughter gets to go out at night. And, God damn it, I’m not going to turn this country over to people who will turn back the clock on her rights.”
But that was exactly what Hillary Clinton and Obama were after. And they got it. Countless women were raped in Egypt. Beyond Egypt, Hillary and Obama’s policy saw Yazidi women actually sold into slavery.
Directive 11 codified the left’s dirty alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood into our foreign policy. Its support for Islamist takeovers paved the way for riots and civil wars culminating in the violence that birthed ISIS and covered the region in blood.
(Please see also, Forfeiting America’s Military Leverage. Are “we” still willing to sacrifice our lives and those of others, including “collateral damage,” to defeat even our relatively weak enemies?– DM)
The Iranian volunteer Basij militia (Photo: © Reuters)
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