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Obama offers further concessions to keep Iran nuclear deal alive

June 17, 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories: Diplomacy, Dishonor, Foreign policy, IAEA, Ideology, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian military sites, Iranian missiles, Kerry, Obama, Obama administration, P5+1, Peace in our time, Red Lines, Sanctions
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State Dept Struggles to Explain Massive Nuke Concessions To Iran

June 13, 2015

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

 

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

June 12, 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories: Afghanistan, Foreign policy, Ideology, Iran, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Obama, P5+1, Sanctions, Talliban
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Islamic State at Israel’s Gate

June 12, 2015

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

(According to Israel National News, 

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

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

— DM)

ISIS-in-Gaza-404x350

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

June 11, 2015

Undoing sanctions, Power Line, Scott Johnson, June 10, 2015

(Please see also, US finds peeling back the Iran sanctions onion no easy task, here. — DM)

The AP has just broken the story by Bradley Klapper and Matt Lee regarding the prospective unraveling of the sanctions regime in its entirety. Their story is “US finds peeling back the Iran sanctions onion no easy task.” It’s an important story and Omri Ceren has written to comment on it as follows:

There’s a lot going on in this piece, it’s 1,100 words, and it gets highly technical very early. But it’s also functionally an exposé of how the Obama administration is going to shred the entire sanctions regime despite having promised lawmakers the exact opposite, and so the story will rightly be driving the discussion for the next couple of days at least.

Background — Throughout the P5+1 negotiations, but especially since Lausanne, the Obama administration has declared to lawmakers and reporters that the final deal will only lift nuclear-related sanctions on Iran. The talking point was a huge part of their immediate post-Lausanne media strategy. The April 2 factsheet they circulated stated “U.S. sanctions on Iran for terrorism, human rights abuses, and ballistic missiles will remain in place under the deal.” Since then the assurance has become even more central to their media strategy. It’s the overarching argument they use to respond to Congressional and Arab worries that the nuclear deal will empower Iran to become a regional hegemon capable of threatening American national interests and global security. The precise wording differs from presser to presser and interview to interview, but it’s usually something like ‘our problems with Iran go way beyond the nuclear issue, and in the aftermath of a deal we will continue to pressure them on human rights, terrorism, their conventional military activities, and so on.’

AP scoop #1 – admin is going to roll back non-nuclear sanctions — The lede is blunt: “the Obama administration may have to backtrack on its promise that it will suspend only nuclear-related economic sanctions.” The story reveals that sanctions that were imposed on Iran to block illicit finance and ballistic missile development will also be rolled back. 23 out of 24 currently sanctioned Iranian banks will be delisted, including the staggeringly crucial Central Bank of Iran. There’s no way to credibly spin delisting the CBI as nuclear-related relief. The CBI is government owned and – as the AP article notes – was designated as a primary money laundering concern because the Iranians use it for financing terrorism, ballistic missile research, and campaigns aimed at bolstering the Assad regime in Syria. Secondary sanctions that prevent other countries from flooding Iran with cash will also be removed.

The result, per the article, will make “it easier for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and its police, intelligence services and paramilitary groups to do business.” It’s a 180 degree reversal of years of administration assurances that the Iranians would only get nuclear-related relief, and that sanctions relating to Iran’s non-nuclear military and terror-related activities would remain. In a broader context, it means the final deal will give Iran hundreds of billions of dollars to do what they want, while dropping restrictions might have prevented them from using the money to fund their ballistic missile program, global terror activities, or regional proxy wars.

AP scoop #2 — the administration pushback — Here’s where things get very strange very quickly. Everybody agrees the administration committed to rolling back only nuclear-related sanctions. Everybody now agrees the administration will also be lifting sanctions on things like ballistic missile development. But Obama officials told the AP that they’re not backtracking because… if you think about it, almost all sanctions are sort of nuclear related in a way. The key graf from the AP story reads: “Officials say the administration can meet its obligations because of how it interprets nuclear sanctions. For example, they say measures designed to stop Iran from acquiring ballistic missiles are nuclear-related because they were imposed to push Iran into the negotiations. Also, they say sanctions that may appear non-nuclear are often undergirded by previous actions conceived as efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear program.”

This is gaslighting. It’s just not true. It’s just not how things happened. Of course Congress has imposed sanctions on Iran over its nuclear work, but lawmakers also imposed sanctions over the funding of conventional IRGC activities, human rights abuses, global terrorism, ballistic missile development, and a range of other activities. The Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010 was about nuclear issues, but also separately about terrorism, ballistic missile development, and non-nuclear WMDs (the very first provision is the sunset provision and involves Presidential certification; the first requirement has zero to do with nuclear work and is entirely about international terrorism; the second requirement separates out nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons from ballistic missile technology and requires certification on all of them). In 2011 Treasury identified the entire country of Iran as a jurisdiction of primary money laundering concern, which is an illicit finance issue. That finding was then cited at the top of the 2011 Kirk-Menendez amendment to the 2012 defense authorization bill, which was about terrorism….

To believe that ballistic missile sanctions are nuclear sanctions you’d have to believe that Congress never tried to impose sanctions because of all of the other things that Iran can put on top of their ballistic missiles. That’s just not how the laws read. The claim isn’t even defensible in the context of the current round of Iran negotiations. If anything it’s less defensible. The interim JPOA and the final JCPOA have never treated ballistic missiles as a nuclear issue and they’ve always distinguished between ballistic missile sanctions and nuclear-related sanctions. There’s no debate about this:

– The JPOA by design froze all Iranian nuclear-related activity, but there were zero restrictions on ballistic missiles.
– The JPOA prohibited the United States from imposing new nuclear-related sanctions, but in April 2014 the Treasury Department issued new designations related to Iranian ballistic missile procurement activities.
– Again, the April 2 Lausanne factsheet describing the JCPOA stated flat out “U.S. sanctions on Iran for terrorism, human rights abuses, and ballistic missiles will remain in place under the deal.”

Categories: Iran scam, Obama, P5+1, Sanctions, U.S. Congress
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UN: US, other nations strangely silent on Iranian sanctions violations

June 10, 2015

UN: US, other nations strangely silent on Iranian sanctions violations, Hot Air, Ed Morrissey, June 10, 2015

(Please see also, US finds peeling back the Iran sanctions onion no easy task.– DM)

It’s not that they’re likely to cheat. Even the Obama administration admits that much, but their answer has been that the deal will have strict requirements for verification. That’s the problem. If the Obama administration won’t call out cheating that actually takes place now, why would anyone trust that they’ll call out violations that take place after a deal is cut — when those violations will make Obama and other world leaders look like saps?

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How tough will the Obama administration be on Iran when it comes to holding them to the terms of a deal on nuclear development? If the track record on reporting sanctions violations gives any indication, we’re all in big trouble. Sanctions violations have become so brazen that even the United Nations wonders why other countries are not reporting Iran. They even have pictures showing the head of the Quds force flouting a travel ban to meet up with Tehran’s proxies, Bloomberg reports:

“The current situation with reporting could reflect a general reduction of procurement activities by the Iranian side or a political decision by some member states to refrain from reporting to avoid a possible negative impact on ongoing negotiations” between Iran and six world powers, said a panel of experts for the UN committee on Iran sanctions in its latest report, dated June 1 and made public Tuesday.

While the panel found that Iran “implemented its commitments” under an interim framework easing economic sanctions in return for curbs on its nuclear activities, the report raised questions about whether countries, including the U.S. and its European allies, have looked the other way on some sanctions violations.

No country reported that General Qassem Suleimani, commander of the elite Quds force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, violated a UN-mandated travel ban despite “a number of media reports with photographs and videos” showing him in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, “reportedly organizing and training militia and regular forces in those countries.” The report included examples of such photos.

The Quds force operates the proxies by which Iran invests in terrorism in the region. Thats why the UN placed a travel ban on Suleimani as part of the overall sanctions on Iran, a sanction that applied directly to their support for international terrorism. Nor is that the only blatant violation cited by the UN; Iran has also established a “nuclear procurement network” linked to UN-blacklisted firms, a violation that the UK did report.

In short, the UN report establishes that Iran intends on continuing its nuclear-weapons program and expanding its proxy terror operations. Why are other nations remaining silent about this? It seems as though Barack Obama isn’t alone in desiring his Neville Chamberlain moment.  Small wonder that Israel has declined to quietly play the role of Czechoslovakia in this replay of Munich:

The report provides fresh ammunition for critics, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of both parties in the U.S. Congress who say that President Barack Obama and America’s allies are too eager for a deal with Iran. The Islamic Republic, they say, is likely to cheat on any nuclear accord reached in negotiations that face a self-imposed June 30 deadline.

It’s not that they’re likely to cheat. Even the Obama administration admits that much, but their answer has been that the deal will have strict requirements for verification. That’s the problem. If the Obama administration won’t call out cheating that actually takes place now, why would anyone trust that they’ll call out violations that take place after a deal is cut — when those violations will make Obama and other world leaders look like saps?

Even if the Iranians don’t build a nuclear weapon, the lifting of sanctions will keep Suleimani et al busy enough spending the windfall of cash Iran will receive on expanded terror operations. Joint Chiefs chair Gen. Martin Dempsey told Israelis on his recent visit to expect that outcome, but they’ll just have to prepare for it:

U.S. General Martin Dempsey, on a visit to Israel, said he shared a core Israeli fear that sanctions relief for Iran following a nuclear agreement would allow Tehran to give more money to its military and its guerrilla proxies.

“My assessment is that I share their concern. If the deal is reached and results in sanctions relief … it’s my expectation that it’s not all going to flow into their economy,” he said.

“I think that they will invest in their surrogates. I think they will invest in additional military capability,” Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a small group of reporters in Jerusalem.

But Dempsey said the long-term prospects were “far better” with an Iran that was not a nuclear weapons power.

Sure, but that assumes that sanctions relief precludes nuclearization. That would only happen if the West provides dire consequences for violations of the deal. Given the track record, it looks much more likely that Iran will get both the cash and the nuclear weapons, prospects that are far worse than what we had a year ago, both in the near- and long-term.

Categories: Diplomacy, Iran, Iran military, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Iranian proxies, Israel, Obama, P5+1, Peace in our time, Sanctions
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US finds peeling back the Iran sanctions onion no easy task

June 10, 2015

US finds peeling back the Iran sanctions onion no easy task, Israel Hayom, June 10, 2915

(For Obama, principles are as flexible as words.

Humpty words

— DM)

143393177342310791a_bU.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew | Photo credit: Reuters

Under the sanctions developed over decades, hundreds of companies and individuals have been penalized not only for their roles in the country’s nuclear program but also for ballistic missile research, terrorism, human rights violations and money laundering.

Officials say the administration can meet its obligations because of how it interprets nuclear sanctions.

For example, they say measures designed to stop Iran from acquiring ballistic missiles are nuclear-related because they were imposed to push Iran into the negotiations. Also, they say sanctions that may appear non-nuclear are often undergirded by previous actions conceived as efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

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The Obama administration may have to backtrack on its promise that it will suspend only nuclear-related economic sanctions on Iran as part of an emerging nuclear agreement, officials and others involved in the process told The Associated Press Tuesday.

The problem derives from what was once a strong point of the broad U.S. sanctions effort that many credit with bringing Iran to the negotiating table in the first place.

Administration officials vehemently reject that any backtracking is taking place, but they are lumping sanctions together, differently from the way members of Congress and critics of the negotiations separate them.

Under the sanctions developed over decades, hundreds of companies and individuals have been penalized not only for their roles in the country’s nuclear program but also for ballistic missile research, terrorism, human rights violations and money laundering.

Now the administration is wending its way through that briar patch of interwoven economic sanctions.

The penalties are significant. Sanctioned foreign governments, companies or individuals are generally barred from doing business with U.S. citizens and businesses, or with foreign entities operating in the American financial system. The restrictions are usually accompanied by asset and property freezes as well as visa bans.

Negotiators hope to conclude a final nuclear deal by June 30. According to a framework reached in April, the U.S. will be required to lift sanctions that are related to Iran’s nuclear program but could leave others in place. President Barack Obama can suspend almost all U.S. measures against Iran, though only Congress can revoke them permanently.

“Iran knows that our array of sanctions focused on its efforts to support terrorism and destabilize the region will continue after any nuclear agreement,” Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told a gathering of American Jews in a weekend speech. U.S. officials will “aggressively target the finances of Iranian-backed terrorist groups and the Iranian entities that support them,” he said, including the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Iran’s Quds Force.

The Treasury Department’s sanctions point man, Adam Szubin, has been tasked with sorting out the mess, according to U.S. officials, though no clear plan has yet been finalized.

Officials say the administration can meet its obligations because of how it interprets nuclear sanctions.

For example, they say measures designed to stop Iran from acquiring ballistic missiles are nuclear-related because they were imposed to push Iran into the negotiations. Also, they say sanctions that may appear non-nuclear are often undergirded by previous actions conceived as efforts to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

The officials who provided information for this story spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the private discussions.

After years of negotiations, U.S. officials believe a deal is within reach that for a decade would keep Iran at least a year from being able to build a nuclear weapon.

In return, the U.S. would grant billions of dollars in relief from sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy. But the whole package risks unraveling if the U.S. cannot provide the relief without scrapping sanctions unrelated to Iran’s nuclear program.

Administration officials say they are examining a range of options that include suspending both nuclear and some non-nuclear sanctions, a step that would face substantial opposition in Congress and elsewhere. Under one scenario, the U.S. could end non-nuclear restrictions on some entities, then slap them back on for another reason. But Iran could then plausibly accuse the U.S. of cheating on its commitments.

U.S. President Barack Obama has spoken about Iran potentially recouping up to $150 billion in assets trapped overseas. The process for how that would take place is still being worked through, said officials.

The Iranian Central Bank may prove the most glaring example of the administration’s dilemma, and officials acknowledge there is no way to give Iran the sanctions relief justified by its compliance without significantly easing restrictions on the institution.

The bank underpins Iran’s entire economy, and for years the U.S. avoided hitting it with sanctions, fearing such action would spread financial instability and raise oil prices. By late 2011, with Iran’s nuclear program advancing rapidly, Obama and Congress did order penalties, declaring the bank a “primary money laundering concern” and linking its activity to ballistic missile research, terror financing and support for Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The effects were far-reaching: Petroleum exports fell by 60%, Iran suffered runaway inflation, cash reserves dried up and industrial output in several sectors plummeted. And Iran agreed to talk about its nuclear program with the United States and five other world powers.

Now that the nuclear agreement is so close, Iran wants these sanctions lifted. The administration officials say all sanctions on the bank are nuclear-related.

Lew told the Jewish conference in New York that a nuclear accord would include the suspension of all “secondary” oil, trade and banking restrictions — those that apply to U.S. and non-U.S. banks, as well as foreign governments.

Many of these measures overlap with American sanctions tied to Iran’s nuclear program, and that has officials considering new sanctions to keep certain Iranian institutions under pressure.

Eliminating the secondary sanctions across the board could have wide-ranging implications, making it easier for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and its police, intelligence services and paramilitary groups to do business.

That possibility has Iran’s rivals in the region, including Israel and the Sunni monarchies of the Middle East, gravely worried.

“I share their concern,” Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, said Tuesday in Jerusalem.

“If the deal is reached and results in sanctions relief, which results in more economic power and more purchasing power for the Iranian regime, it’s my expectation that it’s not all going to flow into the economy to improve the lot of the average Iranian citizen,” he said.

“I think they will invest in their surrogates. I think they will invest in additional military capability.”

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is under U.S. sanctions because of its proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. But because the U.S. views the corps as so pernicious, the administration is considering new measures to help block it from meddling in the internal conflicts of Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.

Of the 24 Iranian banks currently under U.S. sanctions, only one — Bank Saderat, cited for terrorism links — is subject to clear non-nuclear sanctions. The rest are designated because of nuclear and ballistic missile-related financing, while several are believed to be controlled by the Revolutionary Guard.

Will they be cleared for business with the world? U.S. officials still cannot say one way or another. Congress, too, has not received a list of banks and institutions that would be released from sanctions under the deal.

If the United States cannot deliver on its promises, it could take the blame for a collapse of the years-long negotiations toward a nuclear deal, putting the world — in the words of Obama and other U.S. officials — on a path toward military confrontation. At the same time, an Iran unburdened by sanctions could redouble efforts toward nuclear weapons capacity, while international unity and the global sanctions architecture on Tehran fray.

Categories: Diplomacy, Economy, Foreign policy, Human rights, Iran military, Iran scam, Iranian proxies, Israel, Middle East, Nukes, Obama, P5+1, Sanctions, Saudi Arabia, Sunni, Support for terrorism, U.S. Congress
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Rouhani: Saving environment starts with sanctions removal

June 9, 2015

Rouhani: Saving environment starts with sanctions removal, Al-Monitor, Arash Karami, June 8, 2015

(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.

enemy

— H/t Freedom is just another word. — DM)

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.”

 

Categories: Climate change, Diplomacy, Domestic policy, Economy, Foreign policy, Ideology, Iran, Iranian nukes, Khamenei, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Rouhani, Sanctions
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Leaked Information: Khamenei’s Lies Exposed

June 9, 2015

Leaked Information: Khamenei’s Lies Exposed, Front Page Magazine, , June 9, 2015

(?????????????????? — DM)

1.29.13-Ayatollah-Ali-Khamenei-431x350

[W]hat the ayatollah is announcing to the media — that basically the Islamic Republic does not desire to seal a final nuclear deal with the six world powers — is not the truth.  The leaked information (in Persian language) indicates that the Supreme Leader has already instructed the nuclear negotiating team and his advisors to ignore his public statements and seal the final nuclear deal.

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Iran’s paramount religious leader can be described as one of the longest-ruling dictators in the Middle East who still enjoys the throne. An ideologue and a Shiite Islamist, he is also a shrewd Machiavellian politician.

Although he attempts to project himself to the Muslim world as a united religious leader who pursues truth, faith, and honesty, his double-faced character can easily be detected in the discrepancies among his statements and policies.

When Khamenei came to power, he lacked the charisma of his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. To rule, he continued the major policies of his predecessor, relying on hard power and hardliners to suppress domestic opposition, making different statements to the public than in private, and funding Shiite or non-Shiite extremists groups in the region such as Hezbollah and the Houthis.

In addition, he created the Office of the Supreme Leader, comprised of close advisors and excluding the presidential and other major offices in order to further consolidate his power and prevent the leaking of information. The Islamic Republic’s major domestic and foreign policy decisions are made in the small gilded circle of his office and he is the final decision-maker of the country.

To rule, the ayatollah began wielding power without being held accountable. In order to do so, his government pre-select a handful of candidates to become president. Presidents do not have any actual power, but would be held accountable, blamed for any gaffes such as economic mismanagements and failure in nuclear talks, among other things. This system has so far worked for the ayatollah.

His predecessor and founder of the Islamic Republic came to power by promising people that oil revenues will be distributed among the population and that people do not have to pay for major bills such as electricity or water (in a speech that he gave in Behesht e Zahra). The videos and audios of that speech were removed from public access. Now, one can even be punished or executed by the Islamic Republic if the government finds that particular speech in one’s possession.  Ayatollah Khamenei also continued this dual policy of deceiving the public.

Most recently, with regards to the marathon nuclear negotiations, Mr. Khamenei’s double standards have become more obvious due to leaked information.

In less than a month, the six world powers (known as the P5+1; the United States, China, Germany, United Kingdom, France, and Russia) and the Islamic Republic will be reaching the deadline for their marathon nuclear talks, marking one the lengthiest international negotiations of our generation.

The position and opinion of the Islamic Republic’s paramount leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on the nuclear negotiations and the terms of the final nuclear deal can be characterized as the most crucial factor in determining whether a final deal will be reached by the end of June or not.

Khamenei recently stated, “We will never yield to pressure… We will not accept unreasonable demands… Iran will not give access to its (nuclear) scientists,” he added, “They say we should let them interview our nuclear scientists. This means interrogation… I will not let foreigners talk to our scientists and to interrogate our dear children… who brought us this extensive (nuclear) knowledge… We will not allow the privacy of our nuclear scientists or any other important issue to be violated.”

Nevertheless, what the ayatollah is announcing to the media — that basically the Islamic Republic does not desire to seal a final nuclear deal with the six world powers — is not the truth.  The leaked information (in Persian language) indicates that the Supreme Leader has already instructed the nuclear negotiating team and his advisors to ignore his public statements and seal the final nuclear deal.

The Supreme Leader’s double-standards and the difference in what he states publicly and what he instructs behind the scenes, indicate that he indeed needs the final nuclear deal and he will be more likely willing to allow inspections in order to obtain the deal. Ayatollah Khamenei is cognizant of the fact that the final nuclear deal is geopolitically, economically, and ideologically a win for him. Iran’s nuclear infrastructure will not be dismantled, Iran’s break-time to become a nuclear state will shrink from one year to zero in the next few years, Iran’s economy will be strengthened, and the US will likely ignore Iran’s increasing influence and their proxy wars in the region because of the nuclear deal.

Khamenei is being disingenuous with the public and other nations for several reasons. First of all, The fact that Iran’s negotiating team are continuing with the talks, sitting at the same table with Obama administration’s diplomats, and the fact that there is contradiction between what the Supreme Leader and his advisors stated publicly and behind the scenes indicates that Khamenei is giving a green light to the nuclear team to get a nuclear agreement from the White House, the major player in the talks.  Secondly, by showing that Iran is not in need of such a deal, Khamenei is giving leverage to the Iranian negotiating team to obtain more concessions from the West.

Khamenei attempts to publicly show that he is a strong religious and nationalistic leader who is totally against foreign inspection and monitoring of his country. Finally, he desires to project the picture that he is not desperate for the final nuclear deal in order to get as many concessions as he can from the Obama’s administration. And so far, his tactics and dual policies have worked for him in further strengthening his throne and power.

Categories: Diplomacy, Foreign policy, Iran - underground sites, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian missiles, Iranian proxies, Khamenei, Obama, P5+1, Sanctions
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Super Power Poker – Live From Iran

June 9, 2015

Super Power Poker – Live From Iran, Clarion Project via You Tube, June 9, 2015

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.

 

Categories: Diplomacy, Foreign policy, Humor, Iran, Iran nuke inspections, Iran scam, Iranian nukes, Israel, Kerry, Khamenei, Mad Mullahs, Netanyahu, Obama, Obama's America, P5+1, Sanctions
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