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Here’s the most critical part of Iran’s nuclear program that nobody is talking about

July 7, 2015

Here’s the most critical part of Iran’s nuclear program that nobody is talking about, Business Insider, Michael Eisenstadt, The Washington Institute For Near East Policy, July 7, 2015

(Please see also, Iran’s Rafsanjani Reiterates ‘Israel Will Be Wiped Off The Map.’ — DM)

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Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images. Missiles are displayed during ‘Sacred Defense Week,’ to commemorate the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Photo taken on Sept. 28, 2014 at a park in northern Tehran.

Early in the P5+1 negotiations, US officials stated that “every issue,” including the missile program, would be on the table. In February 2014, however, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman stated, “If we are successful in assuring ourselves and the world community that Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon,” then that “makes delivery systems … almost irrelevant.”

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According to the latest reports stemming from the P5+1 talks, Iran is now insisting that UN sanctions on its ballistic missile program be lifted as part of a long-term nuclear accord.

In addition to further complicating already fraught negotiations, this development highlights the importance Tehran attaches to its missile arsenal, as well as the need to answer unresolved questions about possible links between its missile and nuclear programs.

Iran is believed to have the largest strategic missile force in the Middle East, producing short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, a long-range cruise missile, and long-range rockets. Although all of its missiles are conventionally armed at present, its medium-range ballistic missiles could deliver a nuclear weapon if Iran were to build such a device.

Early in the P5+1 negotiations, US officials stated that “every issue,” including the missile program, would be on the table. In February 2014, however, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman stated, “If we are successful in assuring ourselves and the world community that Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon,” then that “makes delivery systems … almost irrelevant.”

Yet many observers remain concerned that personnel and facilities tied to Iran’s missile program were, and may still be, engaged in work related to possible military dimensions (PMD) of the nuclear program. These concerns underscore the need to effectively address the missile issue as part of the UN Security Council resolution that will backstop the long-term nuclear accord now being negotiated, if it will not be dealt with in the accord itself.

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Estimated Range of Iranian Long-Range Missile Forces

Deterrence, warfighting, and propaganda

The Iran-Iraq War convinced Tehran that a strong missile force is critical to the country’s security, and it has given the highest priority to procuring and developing various types of missiles and rockets. Missiles played an important role throughout that war and a decisive role in its denouement.

During the February-April 1988 “War of the Cities,” Iraq was able to hit Tehran with extended-range missiles for the first time. Iranian morale was devastated: more than a quarter of Tehran’s population fled the city, contributing to the leadership’s decision to end the war.

Since then, missiles have been central to Iran’s “way of war,” which emphasizes the need to avoid or deter conventional conflict while advancing its anti-status quo agenda via proxy operations and propaganda activities.

Iran’s deterrence triad rests on its ability to (1) threaten navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, (2) undertake terrorist attacks on multiple continents, and (3) conduct long-range strikes, primarily by missiles (or with rockets owned by proxies such as Hezbollah).

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REUTERS/Fars News/Hamed Jafarnejad. Iranian military personnel participate in the Velayat-90 war game in unknown location near the Strait of Hormuz in southern Iran December 30, 2011.

Yet the first two options carry limitations.

Closing the strait would be a last resort because nearly all of Iran’s oil exports go through it and Tehran’s ability to wage terror has atrophied in recent years (as demonstrated by a series of bungled attacks on Israeli targets in February 2012). Therefore, Iran’s missile force is the backbone of its strategic deterrent.

Missiles enable Iran to mass fires against civilian population centers and undermine enemy morale. If their accuracy increases in the future, they could further stress enemy defenses (as every incoming missile would have to be intercepted) and enable Iran to target military facilities and critical infrastructure.

Although terrorist attacks afford a degree of standoff and deniability, missiles permit a quicker, more flexible response in a rapidly moving crisis — for example, after an initial series of preplanned terrorist attacks, Tehran or its proxies might need weeks to organize follow-on operations. Missile salvos can also generate greater cumulative effects in a shorter period than terrorist attacks.

Indeed, missiles are ideally suited to Iran’s “resistance doctrine,” which states that achieving victory entails demoralizing one’s enemies by bleeding their civilian population and denying them success on the battlefield. In this context, rockets are as important as missiles, since they yield the same psychological effect on the targeted population.

The manner in which Hezbollah and Hamas used rockets in their recent wars with Israel provides a useful template for understanding the role of conventionally armed missiles in Iran’s warfighting doctrine.

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Israel Defense Forces via Wikimedia Commons. An apartment building in the town of Kiryat Malachi, damaged as a result of rockets fired from Hamas.

Missiles are also Iran’s most potent psychological weapon. They are a central fixture of just about every regime military parade, frequently dressed with banners calling for “death to America” and declaring that “Israel should be wiped off the map.”

They are used as symbols of Iran’s growing military power and reach. And as the delivery system of choice for nuclear weapons states, they are a key element of Iran’s nascent doctrine of nuclear ambiguity and its attempts at “nuclear intimidation without the bomb.”

Finally, while most nuclear weapons states created their missile forces years after joining the “nuclear club” (due to the significant R&D challenges involved), Iran will already have a sophisticated missile force and infrastructure in place if or when it opts to go that route.

This ensures that a nuclear breakout would produce a dramatic and rapid transformation in Iran’s military stature and capabilities.

Iran’s missle force

Iran has a large, capable missile force, with a likely inventory of more than 800 short- and medium-range ballistic missiles.

These include single-stage liquid-fuel missiles such as the Shahab-1 (300 km range), Shahab-2 (500 km), Qiam (500-750 km), Shahab-3 (1,000-1,300 km), and Qadr (1,500-2,000 km).

Nearly all of them can reach US military targets in the Persian Gulf, and the latter two can reach Israel. These missiles, which include several subvariants, are believed to be conventionally armed with unitary high-explosive or submunition (cluster) warheads.

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Khalij Fars missile on a transporter.

Additionally, Iran has tested a two-stage solid-fuel missile, the Sejjil-2, whose range of over 2,000 km would allow it to target southeastern Europe — though it is apparently still not operational. In a June 28, 2011, press statement, Tehran claimed that it was capping the range of its missiles at 2,000 km (sufficient to reach Israel but not Western Europe), implicitly eschewing the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles in a presumed bid to deflect US and European concerns.

Yet its Safir launch vehicle, which has put four satellites into orbit since 2009, could provide the experience and knowhow needed to build an ICBM. (According to a May 2010 report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Safir struggled to put a very small satellite into low-earth orbit and has probably reached the outer limits of its performance envelope, so it could not serve as an ICBM itself.) In 2010, Iran displayed a mockup of a larger two-stage satellite launch vehicle, the Simorgh, which it has not yet flown.

Tehran has also claimed an antiship ballistic missile capability that it probably intends for potential use against U.S. aircraft carriers: the Khalij-e Fars and its derivatives, the Hormuz-1/2, each with a claimed range of 300 km. Yet it is not clear that these systems are sufficiently accurate or effective to pose a credible threat to U.S. surface elements in the Gulf.

In addition, Iran recently unveiled the Soumar land-attack cruise missile, which is reportedly a reverse-engineered version of the Russian Raduga Kh-55. It has a claimed range of 2,500-3,000 km, though it may not be operational yet.

The Kh-55 was the Soviet air force’s primary nuclear delivery system.

Iran also fields a very large number of rockets, including the Noor 122 mm (with a range of 20 km), the Fajr-3 and -5 (45 and 75 km), and the Zelzal-1, -2, and -3 (with claimed ranges of 125 to 400 km). During the Iran-Iraq War, rockets played a major role in bombarding Iraqi cities along the border, and they are central to the “way of war” of Iranian proxies and allies such as Hezbollah and Hamas.

Tehran has built this massive inventory so that it can saturate and thereby overwhelm enemy missile defenses in any conflict. It would likely use such tactics whether its missile force remains conventional or becomes nuclear-armed, since conventional missiles could serve as decoys that enable nuclear missiles to penetrate defenses. Numbers would also enable Iran to achieve cumulative strategic effects on enemy morale and staying power by conventional means.

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AP Photo/Iranian Defense Ministry. To outwork missile defense systems, Iran would use a high volume of missiles.

Finally, many of Iran’s missiles are mounted on mobile launchers, and a growing number are based in silo fields located mainly in the northwest and toward the frontier with Iraq.

This mix of launch options is likely intended to impede preemptive enemy targeting of its missile force. The resources invested in this effort are unprecedented for a conventionally armed force, which indicates that at least some of these missiles would likely be nuclear armed if Iran eventually goes that route.

Nuclear connections

In the annex of a November 8, 2011, report regarding the nuclear program’s possible military dimensions, the International Atomic Energy Agency said it possessed credible information and documents connecting Iran’s missile and nuclear programs. These indicated that, prior to the end of 2003, Iran had:

conducted engineering studies on integrating a spherical payload (possibly a nuclear implosion device) into a Shahab-3 reentry vehicle (RV);
tested a multipoint initiation system to set off a hemisphere-shaped high-explosive charge whose dimensions were consistent with the Shahab-3’s payload chamber; and
worked on a prototype firing system that would enable detonation upon impact or in an airburst 600 meters above a target (a suitable height for a nuclear device).

Moreover, in 2004, Iran began deploying triconic (or “stepped”) RVs — a design almost exclusively associated with nuclear missiles — on its Shahab variants.

Some experts (including Uzi Rubin and Michael Elleman) believe that Iran may have deployed the triconic RV to enhance the stability and thus the accuracy of its conventional warheads, and perhaps to achieve higher terminal velocities that could reduce reaction time for missile defenses.

But if Iran were able to build a miniaturized nuclear device, its experience in designing, testing, and operating missiles with triconic RVs could expedite deployment of this weapon. Indeed, David Albright claimed in his 2010 book Peddling Peril that members of the A. Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network possessed plans for smaller, more advanced nuclear weapon designs that might have found their way to Iran, though most experts doubt the regime’s ability to build such a compact device at this time.

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Desmond Boylan/Reuter

Could Iran have smuggled in a nuclear bomb?

These reports underscore why Washington and its partners must insist that Tehran respond to the IAEA’s questions about past engineering studies, design work, tests, and other elements of the PMD file prior to the lifting of sanctions.

They also highlight the need for a UN Security Council resolution (as called for in the Lausanne parameters) that would impose limitations on Iran’s missile R&D work and threaten real consequences for those who assist Iran’s missile program.

Failure to do so would signal tacit acceptance of activities that could enable Iran to deploy its first nuclear weapon atop a medium-range missile — an achievement that took most nuclear weapons states, including the United States and Soviet Union, about a decade to accomplish.

This development would in turn magnify the destabilizing impact of an Iranian breakout, while incentivizing other regional states to either take preventive action or move toward nuclear capabilities of their own before Iran crosses that threshold.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Israel, Kerry, Khamenei, Middle East, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Sanctions, Wendy Sherman
Tags: Foreign Policy, IAEA, Iran nuke inspections, Iran Scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islamic supremacy, Islamism, Israel, Khamenei, Middle East, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Sanctions, Wendy Sherman

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Contentions — Cementing the Bad Deal

July 6, 2015

Contentions — Cementing the Bad Deal, Commentary Magazine, Noah Rothman, July 6, 2015

The following is a dispatch from The Israel Project’s Omri Ceren regarding the state of nuclear negotiations with Iran:

Happy Monday from Vienna. The EU’s foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini arrived yesterday and told reporters: “As you know I have decided to reconvene the ministers. They will be arriving tonight and tomorrow. It is the third time in exactly one week. That’s the end, the last part of this long marathon.” Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif already held an impromptu meeting this morning. The overarching consensus – which is almost certainly correct – is that whatever gets announced will be announced no later than tomorrow afternoon. It might very well happen tonight.

As to what that announcement might be, there are a few options. In order of increasing probability:

0% chance: Kerry might make good on the comments that he made yesterday to reporters, and walks away from a bad deal.

Very low probability: the parties might come to a full-blown agreement ready to be implemented immediately. This scenario was never likely by June 30, and became functionally impossible after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei set out a range of new red lines a few weeks ago. Also, the Iranians gave a background briefing earlier today in Vienna where they provided their interpretation of an emerging final deal. Among other things they have some interesting views on what military-related restrictions will be lifted, which are in tension with how the Americans have been describing the deal. Those differences will have to be overcome, and they won’t be in the next few days.

Low-probability: the gaps might still be too significant to even colorfully announce a deal, and the parties would extend the interim agreement all the way through the summer. The option would be more attractive to the Obama administration than taking another 2 or 3 weeks. If the administration sends Congress a deal after July 9 then the Corker clock – how long a deal sits in front of Congress – goes from 30 days to 60 days. But if they get all the way through the summer, it goes back down to 30 days. The administration has obvious reasons to prefer that.

Most likely: there will be a non-agreement agreement. The parties will announce they’ve resolved all outstanding issues but they still have to fill in some details. Then the P5+1 and Iran would move in parallel to implement various commitments, and the Iranians would in particular have to work with the IAEA on its unresolved concerns regarding Iran’s weapons program (PMDs). In the winter the IAEA would provide a face-saving way for the parties to declare Iran is cooperating – IAEA head Amano said earlier this week that the agency could wrap up by the end of the year if Iran cooperates – and then a deal would officially begin. The option is attractive to the administration because it puts off granting Iran all of its anticipated sanctions relief until the IAEA makes some noises about the Iranians cooperating. The alternative would be poison on the Hill. This way the administration can tell Congress that of course PMDs will be resolved before any sanctions relief is granted; and after Congress votes, if the Iranians jam up the IAEA but demand relief anyway, lawmakers will have no leverage to stop the administration from caving.

The focus will then shift to Congress, where the debate on approving or disapproving of the deal will take place over the next month. Some of the questions will get technical and tangled – the breakout time debate is going to be mind-numbing – but lawmakers will also use a very simple metric: Is the deal the same one the President promised he’d bring home twenty months ago? Back then the administration was very clear about what constituted a good deal and emphatic that U.S. negotiators had sufficient leverage to secure those terms. The U.S. subsequently collapsed on almost all of those conditions, and lawmakers will want to know how the deal can still count as a good one.

In line with those questions, here is a roundup from the Foreign Policy Initiative on where the administration started and how dramatically it has moved backwards. From the overview of the analysis:

Over the past three years, the Obama administration has delineated the criteria that any final nuclear agreement between the P5+1 and Iran must meet. In speeches, congressional testimony, press conferences, and media interviews, administration officials have also articulated their expectations from Tehran with repeated declarations: “No deal is better than a bad deal.” This FPI Analysis… compiles many of the administration’s own statements on nuclear negotiations with Iran over the past three years, and compares them with current U.S. positions. It also examines U.S. statements on a range of other issues related to U.S. policy toward Tehran, and assesses whether subsequent events have validated them.

The web version has embedded links for each of the statements, so if you need them just click through on the url at the top. You might just want to do that anyway, because the web version is more readable.

Categories: Diplomacy, Foreign policy, IAEA, Ideology, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Kerry, Khamenei, Middle East, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Sanctions, U.S. Congress
Tags: Foreign Policy, IAEA, Iran nuke inspections, Iran Scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Khamenei, Middle East, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Sanctions, U.S. Congress

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The Iranian negotiations that never end

June 29, 2015

The Iranian negotiations that never end, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, June 28, 2015

(Please see also, On eve of Iran deal, US retreats on inspections of nuclear past, speeds up sanctions relief — DM)

The negotiations will drag on endlessly until a nuclear bomb test is televised complete with chants of “Death to America”. And the appeasers who got us into this will assure us that they don’t really mean it.

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It is quite possible that no matter how many concessions Obama makes, there will never be a final agreement with Iran. The deadlines have already been extended so many times that the only reliable thing about the negotiations is that somewhere near the edge, the negotiators will declare that they are close and extend the formerly final deadline some more. And then some more again.

There is currently disagreement over the last agreement that was agreed to in order to extend the deadline. If you find that confusing, so does everyone else.

According to the British Foreign Minister, “There are a number of different areas where we still have major differences of interpretation in detailing what was agreed in Lausanne.”

We are no longer negotiating the issue; instead we’re negotiating the negotiations. The last attempt at getting the PLO to negotiate with Israel collapsed at the negotiating the negotiations stage when the Israeli pre-negotiation appeasement was deemed insufficiently appeasing by the PLO and John Kerry.

Obama will have to offer the Iranians even more concessions, on and under the table, to get them to negotiate the negotiations. Iran’s past nuclear work won’t be looked at and now even nuclear inspections may be off the table. At this rate, we’ll soon be negotiating how many bombs Iran gets, how many bombs it gets to use and then how many countries it gets to nuke.

We’ve already gone from an agreement to shut down Iran’s nuclear program to an agreement to temporarily slow it down to a probable short term agreement with sanctions relief and no inspections. Obama has officially disavowed a military solution so the only thing for Iran to negotiate is how to extract the most sanctions relief without actually conceding anything that matters.

And each time it looks like there’s progress, the Supreme Leader winks and pulls the rug out from under Kerry. Everyone from the Viet Cong to the Sandinistas to Assad has learned how easy that is, so that the more we concede, the more Iran demands. The negotiations approach a finish line and then stall.

Or as an anonymous official put it, “It feels like we haven’t advanced on the technical issues and even gone back on some.”

But that’s typical for the Middle East where no agreement is final and negotiations are just a means of taking the temperature of the other side while keeping them off guard. Agreements are not solemn arrangements, they are a theatrical display. What we take absolutely seriously, they view as a farce.

The Iranian negotiations with an agreeable lackey who pulls back at the last minute and a dictator behind the scenes who denounces the whole thing are a repetition of the disastrous Israel-PLO peace process which have been going on and off for decades with no actual peace or even much of a process.

The only purpose of such negotiations is to extract concessions without actually giving anything in return. Countless preliminary agreements can be negotiated, but no final agreement comes into being. The entire process runs on misleading claims of success by Western negotiators. The terrorist leaders tell their own people that they are committed to destroying the infidels, but this is dismissed as “appeasing the hardliners” by our own negotiators who are desperately invested in their credibility.

The more Iran acts out, the more the negotiators are forced to misrepresent the scale of the disaster to keep the negotiations going. The Iranians lie to the negotiators. The negotiators lie to us. Then the Iranians recant the possible concessions that they dangled as bait in front of the negotiators and the negotiators tear out their hair and promise us that the whole thing will be settled with an extension.

Of course the only way that anything will actually be settled is with Iran getting nuclear weapons.

The negotiations are just tools for getting cash and wearing out the nerves and sanity of the West. After enough years of aimless negotiations, an actual Iranian nuke will seem like a relief. The warnings of Netanyahu and the Republicans will be ignored as the appeasers who promised that sanctions and then sanctions relief would stop Iran’s nuclear program, who assured us that Iran did not want weapons, will cross their hearts and swear that Iran won’t actually use the nukes they swore it would never get.

Obama’s rhetoric is already tipping in that direction. Iran is a rational actor, he insists. And of course it is. But what’s rational by the standards of a theocracy that believes it’s ushering in an age of supreme Shiite rule on earth may differ from the standards of reason for a progressive who believes he’s ushering in an age of supreme liberal rule on earth. And neither Obama nor the Supreme Leader are any good at tests of reason such as eschewing magical thinking and understanding that words mean something.

Iran’s apocalyptic theology and power games require nukes. Obama has chosen to ignore its missile program while pretending to believe that a country swimming in oil needs a civilian nuclear program.

And once he ignored those, it was easy not to sweat the small stuff.

Like the PLO, Iran has responded to the negotiations by escalating its violence, seizing parts of Yemen, attacking ships in international waters and becoming more blatant in its defiance of America. But that’s how dictators even outside the Middle East respond to appeasement. No regime that is built on force can possibly view a show of weakness as anything except an admission of enemy impotence.

Peace negotiations with terrorists are terrorism by another means. The negotiations are a confession of weakness that destabilizes the region. And even when they do succeed in their goal of splitting supposed moderates from hardliners, the hardliners tend to win out making everything even worse than it was before. But the moderates are usually just hardliners in suits with a college degree.

When Obama announced that there was no military solution to Iran’s nuclear program, he had stated out loud that he would not stop the program and that the negotiations were a face-saving measure. The admission came after Obama refused to stop Iranian attacks on Persian Gulf shipping.

Obama expects that Iran will oblige him with a meaningless agreement that he can show off to the cameras, but Iran’s leaders understand the theater of diplomacy better than he does. Their goal is to humiliate the United States so as to show their own dissidents and the region that America can’t protect them. And that is the real purpose of the prolonged and pointless negotiations.

It is quite possible that there will never be an agreement. That Iran will force Obama to make countless concessions, not only on the sanctions or on its nuclear program, but on its presence in Yemen and Iraq, as he already appears to have done, using the promise of a final agreement that will never come.

Obama’s desire for a deal has allowed Iran to roll him not only on sanctions and nukes, but on regional dominance. After all the prestige he has invested in the negotiations, he can’t allow them to collapse.

The negotiations will drag on endlessly until a nuclear bomb test is televised complete with chants of “Death to America”. And the appeasers who got us into this will assure us that they don’t really mean it.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Kerry, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Sanctions
Tags: Foreign Policy, IAEA, Iran nuke inspections, Iran Scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's America, Sanctions

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On eve of Iran deal, US retreats on inspections of nuclear past, speeds up sanctions relief

June 29, 2015

On eve of Iran deal, US retreats on inspections of nuclear past, speeds up sanctions relief, DEBKAfile, June 29, 2015

Obama Kerry

Obama and Kerry upbeat over concessions to Iran

Nothing is therefore left of the original US pledges to link sanctions relief to Iran’s compliance with its commitments or President Obama’s solemn vow to “snap back” sanctions any time for any Iranian violations. The IAEA is virtually left without teeth.

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Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Sunday, June 28: “We are seeing a clear retreat from the red lines that the world powers set recently and publicly.” Addressing the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem and later the Knesset, he added: “There is no reason to rush to sign this bad agreement which is getting worse every day.”

Netanyahu was referring to three major concessions approved by President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry in the final stage of negotiations for a comprehensive nuclear accord with Iran.

They are outlined here by DEBKAfile:

1. After barring International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections of suspect sites for years, Tehran will now be allowed to submit a paper with answers to queries about its past clandestine activities at those military sites, such as suspected tests of nuclear bomb detonators and explosives. That document would effectively draw a line on Iran’s suspect past

DEBKAfile: Iran has submitted countless documents to the IAEA, none of which gave specific replies to specific questions. The UN Security Council accordingly passed a number of resolutions requiring Tehran to come clean on the military aspects of its nuclear program. Tehran ignored them. Now Obama and Kerry are letting Tehran off the hook on its past secrets.

2. Obama and Kerry have withdrawn the “any time, anywhere” stipulation for snap inspections of suspect nuclear facilities, as mandated by the Additional Protocol signed by Iran. They now agree that international monitors must first submit a request to an “Iranian Committee” (not even a joint US-Iranian committee) for advance permission to inspect nuclear facilities.

This would leave Tehran free to approve, deny, or delay permission for inspections.

3. Washington has backed down on its insistence on predicating sanctions relief on Iran’s compliance with its obligations under the final accord. After Tehran countered with a demand for the sanctions to be lifted immediately upon the signing of the accord, the Obama administration agreed to remove them in three stages:

a) Straight after the deal is signed.

b) After ratification of the accord by the US Congress and Iranian Majlis.

This process is expected to take place by the end of 2015, and so Iran will win two multibillion windfalls this year without being required to meet any obligations beyond its signature

Obama counts on the support of 34 US senators. In any case, Congress is not empowered to reject or delay the deal

c) All remaining sanctions will be lifted when implementation of the accord begins.

Nothing is therefore left of the original US pledges to link sanctions relief to Iran’s compliance with its commitments or President Obama’s solemn vow to “snap back” sanctions any time for any Iranian violations. The IAEA is virtually left without teeth.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Israel, Kerry, Khamenei, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Sanctions, U.S. Congress
Tags: Foreign Policy, IAEA, Iran nuke inspections, Iran Scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Israel, Khamenei, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama's America, Sanctions, U.S. Congress

Comments: 2 Comments

Obama on Iran and Syria: See no evil

June 28, 2015

Obama on Iran and Syria: See no evil, Israel Hayom, Elliott Abrams, June 28, 2015

(Obama sees evil only where he wants to see it, starting with his position that Islam is the religion of peace. — DM)

See no evil — once again. Iran’s role is systematically ignored or underplayed, because (as ‎Hof puts it), “The administration has other fish to fry with Tehran.” Namely, the nuclear ‎deal.

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The slaughter in Syria and the awful human rights violations in Iran cannot be denied by ‎the Obama administration, but they sure can be downplayed and ignored.‎

On the Iran point, consider the release yesterday, four months late, of the State ‎Department’s annual human rights reports. The reports were presented by Secretary of ‎State John Kerry and Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Tom Malinowski. The Iran report is ‎tough. Here’s an excerpt:

The most significant human rights problems were severe restrictions on civil liberties, ‎including the freedoms of assembly, speech, religion, and press; limitations on the citizens’ ‎ability to change the government peacefully through free and fair elections; and disregard ‎for the physical integrity of persons, whom authorities arbitrarily and unlawfully detained, ‎tortured, or killed.‎

“Other reported human rights problems included: disappearances; cruel, inhuman, or ‎degrading treatment or punishment, including judicially sanctioned amputation and ‎flogging; politically motivated violence and repression; harsh and life-threatening ‎conditions in detention and prison facilities, with instances of deaths in custody; arbitrary ‎arrest and lengthy pretrial detention, sometimes incommunicado; continued impunity of ‎the security forces; denial of fair public trial, sometimes resulting in executions without due ‎process; the lack of an independent judiciary; political prisoners and detainees; ineffective ‎implementation of civil judicial procedures and remedies; arbitrary interference with ‎privacy, family, home, and correspondence; severe restrictions on freedoms of speech ‎‎(including via the internet) and press; harassment and arrest of journalists; censorship and ‎media content restrictions; severe restrictions on academic freedom; severe restrictions on ‎the freedoms of assembly and association; some restrictions on freedom of movement; ‎official corruption and lack of government transparency; constraints on investigations by ‎international and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) into alleged violations of human ‎rights; legal and societal discrimination and violence against women, ethnic and religious ‎minorities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons based on perceived ‎sexual orientation and gender identity; incitement to anti-Semitism; trafficking in persons; ‎and severe restrictions on the exercise of labor rights.‎”

Iran is of course an important country, so how much of this did Kerry and Malinowski ‎mention in their own opening remarks? Not a word. Not one. Kerry mentioned about 10 ‎countries and “the LGBTI community,” but not Iran. Malinowski mentioned about 20 ‎countries, but not Iran (until pressed by reporters). Do we think this is accidental, that ‎neither man mentioned Iran? How likely is that?‎

Yesterday also brought another superb analysis of events in Syria, and U.S. policy there, ‎from Fred Hof of the Atlantic Council — once the administration’s lead man and “special adviser” on Syria. It is titled “Syria: Civilians Pay the Price,” Hof quotes from the June ‎‎23 report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab ‎Republic. And here are the excerpts he quotes:

“The government continues to direct attacks towards locations where civilians are likely ‎to congregate, among them, bus stations, marketplaces, and bakeries.”‎

‎”In particular, the continuing use of barrel bombs in aerial campaigns against whole areas, ‎rather than specific targets, is in violation of international humanitarian law and, as ‎previously documented, amounts to the war crime of targeting civilians.”‎

“The larger strategy [of the regime] appears to be one of making life unbearable for civilians ‎who remain inside armed-group controlled areas.”

“The previously documented pattern of attacks indicating that government forces have ‎deliberately targeted hospitals, medical units, and ambulances remains an entrenched ‎feature of the conflict.”‎

“Government sieges are imposed in a coordinated manner. … In particular, government ‎forces have refused to allow aid deliveries of essential medicines and surgical supplies. … Government authorities act in direct breach of binding international humanitarian law ‎obligations to ensure that wounded and sick persons are collected and cared for, and to ‎ensure the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief.”

“Everyday decisions — whether to go visit a neighbor, to send your child to school, to step out ‎to buy bread — have become, potentially, decisions about life and death. Large numbers of ‎children have been killed in bombardments of their homes, schools, and playgrounds.”‎

What’s the link to Iran? Hof explains:‎

“The administration also knows that Iran is the principal foreign facilitator of regime war ‎crimes and crimes against humanity. It is the Iranian factor that accounts, in large ‎measure, for the administration’s decision to leave Syrian civilians entirely at the mercy of ‎Tehran’s Syrian client. The administration has other fish to fry with Tehran. So Syrian ‎civilians get to pay the price.‎

“One searches White House and State Department press conferences in vain for any ‎systematic examination of this issue. Even though Russian leverage is as limited as its good ‎intentions, one wonders how prominently civilian protection is featured in Secretary of State ‎John Kerry’s periodic encounters with his Russian counterpart. Even though nuclear talks ‎are important, one wonders if Tehran’s facilitation of Assad regime criminality arises at all ‎in official U.S.-Iranian exchanges. Has there been a systematic diplomatic campaign aimed ‎at persuading Tehran and Moscow to oblige their client to respect pertinent United Nations ‎Security Council resolutions? Is Iran being asked to force its client to stop barrel bombing ‎and lift starvation sieges?‎”

See no evil — once again. Iran’s role is systematically ignored or underplayed, because (as ‎Hof puts it), “The administration has other fish to fry with Tehran.” Namely, the nuclear ‎deal.

This is disgraceful, as Hof states with restraint but with force:‎<

“The indelible stain that can mark the Obama legacy forever on this issue is nothing ‎compared to the terror and suffering that can be mitigated if the president elects to try. ‎Whether the motivation to act springs from legacy concerns, degrading and destroying ‎ISIL, or profound revulsion over what is happening to children and their parents, is ‎unimportant. The Iranians can negotiate while facilitating mass murder. No doubt, they can ‎do so if the greatest power on earth pushes back a bit. President Obama should act now to ‎protect Syrian civilians.‎”

Or as he puts it more angrily, what do those who complain about this policy want? “They ‎want … to persuade the president of the United States to give a damn about suffering, ‎terrified human beings.”

Let’s stop protecting, ignoring, and downplaying the murderous role Iran is playing in Syria ‎and the terrible human rights violations taking place in Iran itself.‎

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Freedom, Human rights, Ideology, Iran - Syria war, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islamic slaughter, Kerry, Khamenei, Middle East, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Sanctions
Tags: Foreign Policy, Freedom, human rights, Ideology, Iran - Syria war, Iran Scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islamic slaughter, Khamenei, Middle East, Obama, Obama's America, Sanctions

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Iran’s supreme leader is laughing, for good reason

June 25, 2015

Iran’s supreme leader is laughing, for good reason, Israel Hayom, Boaz Bismuth, June 25, 2015

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Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei | Photo credit: AP

In Tehran on Tuesday, Khamenei spoke about his country’s “red lines.” Red lines? Can someone maybe explain what those are to the Obama administration?

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

Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei feels confident enough, only a few days before June 30 (the deadline for a final-status nuclear deal with world powers), to thumb his nose at the international community, including the American government, and declare Iran’s three noes: no to freezing its nuclear program, no to international oversight at its nuclear facilities, no to a phased lifting of sanctions (as proposed by the French). In other words, Khamenei is telling the world: Dear superpowers — bite me.

Meanwhile, almost simultaneously, we have received an Associated Press report from Vienna that the U.S. and its partners conducting the negotiations with Iran are prepared — for the sake of reaching a deal — to even provide the Iranians with advanced nuclear reactors and equipment. This isn’t a joke.

It’s possible, perhaps, to imagine Khamenei rejecting this generous offer outright because the Americans aren’t also including ballistic missiles in the package. If you’re going to be generous, then you might as well go all the way.

Truth be told, this entire business to this point seems quite like a joke. The problem is that it’s coming at our expense. And it’s also not that funny.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius met on Wednesday with his Saudi counterpart and promised him a “tough deal.” The Saudis are no less worried than we are about a bad deal. But who is promising us a “tough deal?” The French, who ultimately always fall in line with the Americans, whose help they need for more burning issues closer to home (Ukraine)? Who? The Russians? The Chinese? The Americans? The Germans? The British? The truth is, it would be best to trust the Iranians to torpedo the deal on their own, but Khamenei’s and even Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s promulgations from two weeks ago aren’t enough to scare anyone off.

In November 2013, as a reminder, we were just several days before the interim agreement. I remember how the Iranian and Western delegations leaked information about the many difficulties in the negotiations, but that in the end, in the middle of the night, the deal was born (how shocking). Eventually, we saw virtually the same scenario unfold in Lausanne this past March — the numerous problems were made public, the deadline was extended by a few days, and finally on April 2 we received the framework deal.

We can assume that in the coming days we will get to see “the best show in town,” at the end of which, in contrast to the previous rounds, we can expect a final status deal with an Iran that is not only slated to become a nuclear power but a stabilizing force in our crumbling Middle East.

In Tehran on Tuesday, Khamenei spoke about his country’s “red lines.” Red lines? Can someone maybe explain what those are to the Obama administration?

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Israel, Kerry, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Sanctions
Tags: Foreign Policy, IAEA, Iran nuke inspections, Iran Scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Israel, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's America, Sanctions

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Can these forces stop a rotten Iran deal?

June 25, 2015

Can these forces stop a rotten Iran deal? The Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin, June 25, 2015

(Ms. Rubin is one of the Washington Post’s token conservatives, and anything she says is routinely disparaged by many WaPo readers. Others? Not so much. — DM)

Between the press leaks revealing serial concessions, the public incoherence of Secretary of State John Kerry and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s public declarations, the forces opposing an imminent Iran deal have plenty of material to work with. And if there is any doubt as to Israel’s position, opposition leader Isaac Herzog — whom President Obama dearly hoped would replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, made clear what Israel-watchers already knew:

“There is no difference between me and [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu in reading the threat of Iran,” Herzog said in an interview with The Telegraph. “There is no daylight between us on this issue at all. I do not oppose the diplomatic process.

However, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

We want to know ‘what is the deal?’ What’s the best deal possible that can be reached and would it change the region in a better direction? And here we are worried.”

In the article, Telegraph chief foreign correspondent David Blair appeared to express frustration that Herzog did not come across as opposing Netanyahu on Iran.

“If the US administration hoped that Mr. Herzog might dilute Israel’s visceral suspicion of an imminent nuclear deal with Iran, however, then he seems likely to disappoint,” Blair wrote.

There is no divide in the country at large, with 80 percent of Israelis declaring they have no confidence in President Obama’s handling of Iran.

Most GOP presidential hopefuls have decried the president’s giveaways. On Wednesday, former Texas governor Rick Perry, for example, put out a statement, which read in part: “In reckless pursuit of any agreement, President Obama has conceded point after point after point. Iran has used deadlines and extensions as a tactic for eliciting still more concessions from the U.S. We are well past the time where further concessions are tolerable if we still intend to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapons capability rather than manage its breakout time. This agreement is shaping up to spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East and increase the odds of a devastating and catastrophic military conflict in the future. President Obama should abandon these dangerous negotiations and resume international sanctions until Iran understands and accepts that they cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

Meanwhile, the most influential Democrat on Iran, Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.), has been taking to the Senate floor on a regular basis to denounce the reported concessions. On Wednesday, former Bill Clinton secretary of defense William Cohen denounced the deal as likely to start a nuclear arms race: “Once you say they are allowed to enrich, the game is pretty much up in terms of how do you sustain an inspection regime in a country that has carried on secret programs for 17 years and is still determined to maintain as much of that secrecy as possible.” He echoed multiple critics who saw it was all downhill once Obama did an about-face on the Syrian red line: “It was mishandled and everybody in the region saw how it was handled. And I think it shook their confidence in the administration. … The Saudis, the UAE and the Israelis were all concerned about that. They are looking at what we say, what we do, and what we fail to do, and they make their judgments. In the Middle East now, they are making different calculations.” (While Sen. Lindsey Graham strongly supported military action, none of the other three senators running for president did.)

More bipartisan opposition comes from ex-lawmakers. The American Security Initiative, headed by former senators Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), announced a $1.4 million ad buy to inform the public about the contents of the imminent deal. Its targets include Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Michael Bennet of Colorado and Chuck Schumer of New York and independent Angus King of Maine. While Schumer likes to fancy himself as a great friend of Israel, when the chips are down, he has often given the administration cover, as he did in supporting the nomination of former senator Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) for defense secretary.

In addition, an all-star group of Iran and military experts including former Obama advisers Dennis Ross, Robert Einhorn and Gary Samore warn against a deal that does not include anytime/anywhere inspections, revelation of possible military dimensions of Iran’s program before sanctions relief begins, “strict limits on advanced centrifuge R&D, testing, and deployment in the first ten years, and [measures to] preclude the rapid technical upgrade and expansion of Iran’s enrichment capacity after the initial ten-year period,” gradual lifting of sanctions and no relief from non-nuclear sanctions and a timely mechanism to reimpose sanctions if Iran cheats. In other words, they’ll support a deal utterly unlike the one we are likely to get.

Other voices now are speaking out on the administration’s willingness to lift sanctions while Iran continues its support for terrorism. Manhattan’s long-time Democratic district attorney Robert Morgenthau (who tracked Iranian finances and relations with dictators in our hemisphere) writes that “the fundamental question to be asked is whether the deal the U.S. is negotiating with Iran will curtail its role as a state sponsor of terrorism. The answer appears to be a resounding no. . . . These sanctions, particularly over the past decade, have given the U.S. powerful leverage. It appears that this leverage is being frittered away as U.S. negotiators bend over backward to strike a deal. But meaningful deals are negotiated from strength; not from desperation. Any deal that fails to address or curtail Iran’s role as a state sponsor of terrorism—and that actually undercuts our ability to confront that threat—is a deal that we must not make.”

There is little doubt that the most prominent pro-Israel organization, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) will go all-out to defeat the deal if it contains the sorts of concessions reported in the media. As we have noted, it already has begun warning lawmakers and the public of the dangers in a deal that does not stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

The White House, aided by every left-wing group it can round up (including persistent Israel antagonist J Street) will try to make this a choice between war and its crummy deal. It will strong-arm every Democrat who will listen. It will gloss over concessions, trying to pass off critics as unfamiliar with the fine print of the deal. Working against the president, however — in addition to the ludicrous concessions — are two factors. He, according to every recent public poll out there, is distrusted on foreign policy. And he is increasingly ineffective in bullying his own party, as we saw on the Corker-Menendez bill giving Congress an up-or-down vote. (If not for GOP leadership in both houses, he’d never have gotten trade-promotion authority.) Still, opponents of the deal do not underestimate the task of getting enough votes in the Congress to override the president’s veto of a resolution of disapproval.

The most interesting figure in all this may be Hillary Clinton. Unlike trade authority, it is inconceivable that she could refuse to take a clear position on an Iran nuclear deal. If she breaks with the president (highly unlikely), the left will attack her mercilessly. If she stands by him she risks — as he does — a bipartisan repudiation and an irate electorate. It is fitting that the biggest loser in this may be Clinton, who initiated engagement with Iran and continually opposed congressional efforts to tighten sanctions. Obama’s name may be on the deal, as the president said, but if there is a deal, it will be a direct result of four years of her Iran policy that set the pattern for her successor.

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Funding terrorism, IAEA, Ideology, Iran centrifuges, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Israel, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Sanctions, U.S. Congress
Tags: Foreign Policy, Funding terrorism, IAEA, Ideology, Iran centrifuges, Iran nuke inspections, Iran Scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Isaac Herzog, Israel, Middle East, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama's America, Sanctions, U.S. Congress

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The Iran scam worsens — Part III, Human rights and support for terrorism

June 22, 2015

The Iran scam worsens — Part III, Human rights and support for terrorism, Dan Miller’s Blog, June 22, 2015

(The views expressed in this post 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.

Iranian support for terrorism

According to the U.S. State Department, The Islamic Republic of Iran continued its sponsorship of terrorism during 2014. The linked article observes,

Iran has increased its efforts to finance and carry out terrorist activities across the world and remains a top nuclear proliferation threat, according to a new State Department assessment. [Emphasis added.]

Iran is funding and arming leading terrorist groups in the Middle East and elsewhere, according to the State Department’s 2014 Country Reports on Terrorism, which thoroughly documents how Tehran continues to act as a leading sponsor terror groups that pose a direct threat to the United States.

The report comes as Western powers work to finalize a nuclear deal with Iran ahead of a self-imposed June 30 deadline, though it is unclear whether the new findings will come up in negotiations.

It seems clear that the new findings will not be considered.

Among many other terrorist organizations, Iran supports the Taliban.

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. [Emphasis added.]

According to James Clapper, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, the intelligence community considers Iran to be the “foremost state sponsor of terrorism.”

The assessment came after criticism from the Senate that the information was omitted in a global threat assessment submitted to Congress [in February of this year.] Initially, Iran and Hezbollah were not included as terror threats in the intelligence community’s report to the Senate in February. [Emphasis added.]

Might the Obama administration have been trying to ignore Iran’s continuing support for terrorist activities because of its fixation on getting a “deal” with Iran in the ongoing P5+1 “negotiations?” Probably, but that was then. Now, it is apparently not a problem to report on Iran’s terrorist activities because they are deemed unworthy of consideration by the P5+1 negotiators. It’s terrible, but so what?

Iran is the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism. Its tentacles have a hold on Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and the Gaza Strip. Its terrorist operations know no border and its proxies partake in mass killings and war crimes. But as it has been demonstrated time and time again, the West appears unperturbed by all that. It views Iran as a potentially constructive state actor, which, as long as it gets its way, could serve to stabilize the region. [Emphasis added.]

Iran could, of course, “stabilize” the region with its own military and its terror proxies in much the same way that Hitler tried to “stabilize” Europe — by gaining military control and forcing his ideology on subjugated residents. At first, there was some resistance but that was shown to be useless as Britain under Chamberlain gave Hitler Czechoslovakia. Eventually, Britain and later her ally, the United States, became sufficiently upset to intervene militarily.

As noted in an article at Asia Times on Line, the “free world” is unwilling to confront Iranian hegemony:

For differing reasons, the powers of the world have elected to legitimize Iran’s dominant position, hoping to delay but not deter its eventual acquisition of nuclear weapons. Except for Israel and the Sunni Arab states, the world has no desire to confront Iran. Short of an American military strike, which is unthinkable for this administration, there may be little that Washington can do to influence the course of events. Its influence has fallen catastrophically in consequence of a chain of policy.

. . . .

President Obama is not British prime minister Neville Chamberlain selling out to Hitler at Munich in 1938: rather, he is Lord Halifax, that is, Halifax if he had been prime minister in 1938. Unlike the unfortunate Chamberlain, who hoped to buy time for Britain to build warplanes, Halifax liked Hitler, as Obama and his camarilla admire Iran. [Emphasis added.]

The bountiful windfall soon to be given to Iran if the P5+1 “deal” is approved, via a “signing bonus” and other Sanctions relief, will help Iran’s terror sponsorship.

[S]hould the “treaty” with Iran be consummated, this sponsor of global terrorism will receive at least $100 billion in sanctions relief. Not only will this money be used for Assad, but it will bankroll Hezbollah and Hamas with a new generation of rockets and weapons.

For Tehran, money buys weapons, and weapons buy power and influence. President Obama is counting on an accommodative Iran that receives foreign assistance. But is there any reason to embrace this hypothesis? And even if someone does, at what point can the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), or any other relevant body, determine the turnabout in Iran’s nuclear program? How do we know when a genuine peace has arrived? [Emphasis added.]

Iranian leaders have made it clear that dreams of a Persian kingdom dance like sugar plums in their imagination. For that to happen, the money pump cannot run dry. There is a need to support their Houthi surrogates in Yemen; resupply Hamas rockets that were destroyed in the last war with Israel; continue to add to the Hezbollah war machine that is poised to attack Israel; and keep Assad afloat, the mechanism by which control of Lebanon is retained. [Emphasis added.]

Iran’s abysmal human rights record is getting worse

According to Iranian Human Rights,

[T]he Iranian regime has executed a prisoner every two hours this month.

“So far in 2015, more than 560 have been executed, and we are just in the first half of the year… What we are witnessing today is not so much different from what ISIS is doing. The difference is that the Iranian authorities do it in a more controlled manner, and represent a country which is a full member of the international community with good diplomatic relations with the West.” — Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, spokesman for Iran Human Rights. [Emphasis added.]

Now the West, with the possibility of a nuclear deal, stands to increase Iran’s diplomatic standing.

According to officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran,

Iran has “the best human rights record” in the Muslim world;^[11] that it is not obliged to follow “the West’s interpretation” of human rights;^[12] and that the Islamic Republic is a victim of “biased propaganda of enemies” which is “part of a greater plan against the world of Islam“.^[13] According to Iranian officials, those who human rights activists say are peaceful political activists being denied due process rights are actually guilty of offenses against the national security of the country,^[14] and those protesters claiming Ahmadinejad stole the 2009 election are actually part of a foreign-backed plot to topple Iran’s leaders.^[15] [Emphasis added.]

Conclusions

Iran’s abysmal and already worsening records of human rights violations and support for terrorism will likely get even worse as it gets (or gets to keep) the bomb, along with a reward of massive further sanctions relief. None of that is deemed worthy of consideration by the P5+1 “negotiators,” lest Iran decline to sign a deal or lest its feelings be hurt — as they would be were IAEA inspections of “undisclosed” sites be demanded or if any Iranian demands were not met.

Iran and North Korea share not only nuclear weaponization technology; they also share a common contempt for human rights. Yet the North Korea – Iran nuclear nexus (denied by Iran) appears to be of no concern to the P5+1 “negotiators.”

Obama long ago “opened his heart” to the Muslim world.

“To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward based on mutual interest and mutual respect,” Obama declared in his first inaugural address. The underlying assumption was that America’s previous relations with Muslims were characterized by dissention and contempt. More significant, though, was the president’s use of the term “Muslim world,” a rough translation of the Arabic ummah. A concept developed by classical Islam, ummah refers to a community of believers that transcends borders, cultures, and nationalities. Obama not only believed that such a community existed but that he could address and accommodate it.

The novelty of this approach was surpassed only by Obama’s claim that he, personally, represented the bridge between this Muslim world and the West.

ALL of My policies are the best ever

ALL of My policies are the best ever

Obama does deserve some credit: His foreign policies are the most foreign in U.S. history to the security of the United States and of what’s left of the free world. Much the same is true of His domestic policies.

Categories: Appeasement, Caliphate, Chamberlain, Diplomacy, Dishonor, Executions, Foreign policy, Funding terrorism, Germany, Hamas, Hezbollah, Human rights, IAEA, Ideology, Iran military, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islam, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Israel, Michael Oren, Middle East, Munich, Muslims, North Korea, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Regime change, Sanctions, State Department, Support for terrorism, Terrorism
Tags: Appeasement, Caliphate, Chamberlain, Executions, Foreign Policy, Funding terrorism, Germany, Hamas, Hezbollah, human rights, IAEA, Ideology, Iran military, Iran nuke inspections, Iran Scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islam, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Israel, Michael Oren, Middle East, Munich, Muslims, North Korea, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, Obama, Obama's America, Regime change, Sanctions, State Department, Support for terrorism, Terrorism

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Islamic Hate for the Christian Cross

June 22, 2015

Islamic Hate for the Christian Cross, Front Page Magazine, Raymond Ibrahim, June 22, 2015 (Originally published by PJ Media.)

(Apparently Obama, who appears to favor Islam over all other religions, hopes that when The Islamic Republic of Iran gets or gets to keep the bomb and enjoys lots of sanctions relief its behavior toward non-Muslims will improve. — DM

Islamic hostility to the cross is an unwavering fact of life—one that crosses continents and centuries; one that is very much indicative of Islam’s innate hostility to Christianity.

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Last May in Italy, a Muslim boy of African origin beat a 12-year-old girl during school because she was wearing a crucifix around her neck. The African schoolboy, who had only started to attend the school approximately three weeks earlier, began to bully the Christian girl—“insulting her and picking on her in other ways all because she was wearing the crucifix”—before he finally “punched the girl violently in the back.”

What is it about the Christian cross that makes some Muslims react this way?

The fact is, Islamic hostility to the cross is an unwavering fact of life—one that crosses continents and centuries; one that is very much indicative of Islam’s innate hostility to Christianity.

Doctrine and History

Because the Christian cross is the quintessential symbol of Christianity—for all denominations, including most forms of otherwise iconoclastic Protestantism—it has been a despised symbol in Islam.

According to the Conditions of Omar—a Medieval text which lays out the many humiliating stipulations conquered Christians must embrace to preserve their lives and which Islamic history attributes to the second “righteous caliph,” Omar al-Khattab—Christians are “Not to display a cross [on churches]… and “Not to produce a cross or [Christian] book in the markets of the Muslims.”

The reason for this animosity is that the cross symbolizes the fundamental disagreement between Christians and Muslims. According to Dr. Sidney Griffith, author of The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque, “The cross and the icons publicly declared those very points of Christian faith which the Koran, in the Muslim view, explicitly denied: that Christ was the Son of God and that he died on the cross.” Thus “the Christian practice of venerating the cross and the icons of Christ and the saints often aroused the disdain of Muslims,” so that there was an ongoing “campaign to erase the public symbols of Christianity, especially the previously ubiquitous sign of the cross.”

Islam’s hostility to the cross, like all of Islam’s hostilities, begins with the Muslim prophet Muhammad. He reportedly “had such a repugnance to the form of the cross that he broke everything brought into his house with its figure upon it.” He once ordered someone wearing a cross to “take off that piece of idolatry” and claimed that at the end times Jesus himself would make it a point to “break the cross”—an assertion the Islamic State regularly makes.

Islamic history following Muhammad is riddled with anecdotes of Muslims cursing and breaking crosses. Prior to the Battle of Yarmuk in 636, which pitted the earliest invading Muslim armies against the Byzantine Empire, Khalid bin al-Walid, the savage “Sword of Allah,” told the Christians that if they wanted peace they must “break the cross” and embrace Islam, or pay jizya and live in subjugation—just as his Islamic State successors are doing today in direct emulation. The Byzantines opted for war.

In Egypt, Saladin (d. 1193)—regularly touted in the West for his “magnanimity”—ordered “the removal of every cross from atop the dome of every church in the provinces of Egypt,” in the words of The History of the Patriarchate of the Egyptian Church.

Europe: Growing Violence against the Cross

Centuries later, not much has changed concerning Islam’s position towards the cross, though much has changed in Western perceptions. In other words, an African boy punching a Christian girl in Italy for her crucifix is part of a long continuum of Islamic hostility for the cross. Perhaps he learned this hatred in mosque—the same European mosques where Islamic State representatives call Muslims to jihad?

After all, earlier this year in Italy, another crucifix was destroyed in close proximity to a populated mosque. The municipality’s Councilor, Giuseppe Berlin, did not mince words concerning the identity of the culprit(s):

Before we put a show of unity with Muslims, let’s have them begin by respecting our civilization and our culture. We shouldn’t minimize the importance of certain signals; we must wake up now or our children will suffer the consequences of this dangerous and uncontrolled Islamic invasion.

Nor is Italy the only European nation experiencing this phenomenon. In neighboring France, a “young Muslim” committed major acts of vandalism at two churches. Along with twisting a massive bronze cross, he overturned and broke two altars, the candelabras and lecterns, destroyed statues, tore down a tabernacle, smashed in a sacristy door and even broke some stained-glass windows. (Click for images.)

And in Germany, a Turkish man who checked himself into a hospital for treatment went into a sudden frenzy because there were “too many crosses on the wall.” He called the nurse a “bitch” and “fascist” and became physically aggressive.

Of course, other times Europeans willingly capitulate to Islamic hostility for the cross. Real Madrid, a professional football (soccer) team in Spain reportedly stripped the traditional Christian cross from its club crest as part of a deal with the National Bank of Abu Dhabi—“so as not to offend Muslim sensibilities in the United Arab Emirates.” And in the United Kingdom, offensive crucifixes are being removed from prisons in order not to offend Muslim inmates (who are further provided with food baths for Islamic rituals).

Muslim World: Christians Killed for the Cross

If this is how some Muslims react to the Christian cross in Europe—where Muslims are aware of their outnumbered, minority status—how do other Muslims react to the cross in the Islamic world, where vastly outnumbered and ostracized Christian “infidels” are easy prey?

The answer is murderous—literally, Christians are being murdered by Muslims provoked at the sight of the cross:

Last year in Egypt, a young Coptic Christian woman named Mary was mauled to death—simply because her cross identified her as a Christian to Muslim Brotherhood rioters. According to an eyewitness who discussed the episode, Mary Sameh George was parking her car by the church to deliver medicine to an elderly woman:

Once they [Brotherhood rioters] saw that she was a Christian [because of the cross hanging on her rearview mirror], they jumped on top of the car, to the point that the vehicle was no longer visible. The roof of the car collapsed in. When they realized that she was starting to die, they pulled her out of the car and started pounding on her and pulling her hair—to the point that portions of her hair and scalp came off. They kept beating her, kicking her, stabbing her with any object or weapon they could find…. Throughout [her ordeal] she tried to protect her face, giving her back to the attackers, till one of them came and stabbed her right in the back, near the heart, finishing her off. Then another came and grabbed her by the hair, shaking her head, and with the other hand slit her throat. Another pulled her pants off, to the point that she was totally naked.

In response, the Coptic Christian Church issued the following statement: “Oh how lucky you are, Mary, you who are beloved of Christ. They tore your body because of the Cross. Yet they offered you the greatest service and gave you a name of honor as one who attained the crown of martyrdom.” The statement also quoted Christ’s warning to believers: “Yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service” (John 16:2).

In October 2011, seventeen-year-old Ayman Nabil Labib, a Coptic student, was strangled and beaten to death by his Muslim teacher and some fellow students—simply for refusing to obey the teacher’s orders to remove his cross. Student eyewitnesses present during the assault said that while Ayman was in the classroom he was told to cover up his tattooed wrist cross, which many Copts wear. Not only did he refuse, but he defiantly produced the pectoral cross he wore under his shirt, which prompted the enraged Muslim teacher and students to beat the Christian youth to death.

Before that, an off-duty Muslim police officer on a train from Asyut to Cairo shouted “Allahu Akbar!” and opened fire on six Christians, killing a seventy-one-year-old man and critically wounding the rest. Before opening fire he had checked for passengers with the traditional Coptic cross tattooed on their wrists. (Days ago, another Coptic woman was “shot dead by an Egyptian police officer. Although officially an “accident,” the Muslim officer is notorious for hating Christians.)

In Pakistan, when a Muslim man saw Julie Aftab, a Christian woman, wearing a cross around her neck,

The man became abusive, shouting at her that she was living in the gutter and would go to hell for shunning Islam. He left and returned half an hour later, clutching a bottle of battery acid which he savagely chucked over her head. As she ran screaming for the door a second man grabbed her by the hair and forced more of the liquid down her throat, searing her esophagus. Teeth fell from her mouth as she desperately called for help, stumbling down the street. A woman heard her cries and took her to her home, pouring water over her head and taking her to hospital. At first the doctors refused to treat her, because she was a Christian. ‘They all turned against me . . . even the people who took me to the hospital. They told the doctor they were going to set the hospital on fire if they treated me’. . . . 67 percent of her esophagus was burned and she was missing an eye and both eyelids. What remained of her teeth could be seen through a gaping hole where her cheek had been. The doctors predicted she would die any day. Despite the odds she pulled through.

All this because she was wearing a cross.

Even in Muslim nations deemed “moderate,” violence provoked by the cross is not uncommon. In 2012, a 12-year-old boy in Turkey who converted to Christianity and decided to profess his new faith by wearing a silver cross necklace in class was spit on and beat regularly by Muslim classmates and teachers.

In the Maldives, October 2010, authorities had to rescue Geethamma George, a Christian teacher from India, after Muslim “parents threatened to tie and drag her off of the island” for “preaching Christianity.” Her crime was simply to draw a compass in class as part of a geography lesson. The compass was mistaken for the Christian cross.

Christians ‘Killed’ Again for the Cross

If some Muslims kill the wearers of the cross, so do they disturb the slumber of those already dead for having the cross on their tombstones. A few of the many examples follow:

Libya, March 2012: A video of a Muslim mob attacking a commonwealth cemetery near Benghazi appeared on the internet. As the Muslims kicked down and destroyed headstones with crosses on them, the man videotaping them urged them to “Break the cross of the dogs!” while he and others cried “Allahu Akbar!” Towards the end of the video, the mob congregated around the huge Cross of Sacrifice, the cemetery’s cenotaph monument, and started to hammer at it, to more cries of “Allahu Akbar.”Other Christian cemeteries in post-“Arab Spring” Libya have suffered similarly.
France, April 2015: Christian crosses and gravestones in a cemetery weredamaged and desecrated by a Muslim. After being apprehended, he was described as follows: “The man repeats Muslim prayers over and over, he drools and cannot be communicated with: his condition has been declared incompatible with preliminary detention.” He was hospitalized as “mentally unbalanced.” (See his handiwork.)
Malaysia, February 2014: AChristian cemetery was attacked and desecrated in the middle of the night by unknown persons in the Muslim majority nation. Several crosses were destroyed, including by the use of “a heavy tool to do the damage.”
Germany, June 2014: After Muslims were granted their own section at a cemetery in Seligenstadt, and after being allowed to conduct distinctly Islamic ceremonies, these same Muslims begandemanding that Christian symbols and crosses in the cemetery be removed or covered up during Islamic funerals.

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One can go on and on with more recent examples of Islam’s hostility to the cross. Last April in “moderate” Malaysia, a Muslim mob rioted against a small Protestant church due to the visible cross atop the building of worship. It was quickly removed.

And in Pakistan, a nation where the mere accusation of offending Islam get Christians burned alive—a Muslim shopkeeper is allowed to sell shoes which depict the Christian cross on their sole: “In Pakistani culture, showing the sole of one’s shoe or foot is offensive because placing anything on the ground is considered to be an insult to the object. Therefore, something on the sole of a shoe is going to be constantly insulted as the person walks.”

From an African School Boy in Italy to ‘ISIS’

In light of the above, it should come as no surprise that the Islamic State—“ISIS”—also exhibits violence to the Christian cross. In its communiques to the West, hostile reference to the cross is often made: “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women, by the permission of Allah…. [We will cast] fear into the hearts of the cross worshippers….”

After carving the heads of Coptic Christians off in Libya, the lead executioner waved his dagger at the camera and said, “Oh people, recently you have seen us on the hills of as-Sham and Dabiq’s plain [Syrian regions], chopping off the heads that have been carrying the cross for a long time. And today, we are on the south of Rome, on the land of Islam, Libya, sending another message.” He concluded by declaring: “We will fight you [Christians/Westerners] until Christ descends, breaks the cross and kills the pig” (all eschatological actions ascribed to the Muslim “Christ,” Isa).

Moreover, the Islamic State has committed countless atrocities against and because of the cross: it made and disseminated a video showing its members smashing crosses in and atop churches in territories under its sway; it beheaded and stabbed a man with his own crucifix after it exposed him as a Christian; and it published pictures of its members destroying Christian crosses and tombstones in cemeteries under its jurisdiction — and quoted Islamic scriptures justifying its actions.

Careful readers will note the similar parallels here: destroying crosses in churches and cemeteries and even killing Christian “infidels” for wearing them, as documented above, is not limited to “ISIS” but is happening all around the Muslim world, and even in Europe.

In short, Islam’s age-old hatred for the Christian cross—and what it represents—is not a product of the Islamic State, but of Islam.

Categories: Christianity, Christians, Foreign policy, Human rights, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Islamophobia, Middle East, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Peace process, Sanctions, Terrorism
Tags: Christianity, Christians, Foreign Policy, human rights, Iran, Iran Scam, Iranian proxies, Islam, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Islamic supremacy, Islamic terrorism, Islamism, Islamophobia, Middle East, Obama, Obama's America, Peace Process, Sanctions, Terrorism

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Terror will not be defeated with reports

June 22, 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, Free world, Funding terrorism, Human rights, Ideology, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Israel, Kerry, Middle East, Obama, Obama administration, Obama's America, P5+1, Rogue nations, Sanctions, Saudi Arabia, Support for terrorism, Terrorism
Tags: Foreign Policy, Free world, Funding terrorism, human rights, Ideology, Iran Scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Islamic State, Israel, Middle East, Obama, Obama Administration, Obama's America, Rogue nations, Saudi Arabia, Support for terrorism, Terrorism

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