Marco Rubio Delivers Blistering Speech on Obama’s Assault on Israel, Washington Free Beacon via You Tube, March 19, 2015
(An extensive catalogue of Obama’s relations with Israel. — DM)
Archive for the ‘U.S. Congress’ category
A Statement on the Crisis in the U.S.—Israel Relationship
March 19, 2015A Statement on the Crisis in the U.S.—Israel Relationship, Commentary Magazine, , March 19, 2015
(A lengthy but excellent summary, putting the relationship between the U.S. and Israel in perspective. — DM)
After six weeks of madness, Benjamin Netanyahu stood before Congress and delivered a speech about the nuclear threat posed by Iran. It was a terrific speech. It was not a remarkable speech, because nothing the Israeli prime minister said came as news to anyone who has been paying attention to the issue for the past decade.
What made his speech and its occasion of particular note were the atmospherics. It has been years since an address by a politician in the United States had been so hotly anticipated, and it wasn’t even to be delivered by an American. The anticipation was due entirely to Barack Obama’s incendiary response to the speaking invitation extended to Netanyahu in January by the Republican House leader, John Boehner.
The president’s displeasure and rage continued to grow, to the point that a few days before the speech, no less a personage than National Security Adviser Susan Rice said it would be “destructive of the fabric of the relationship” between the United States and Israel. On the day of the speech, the Democratic Middle East operative Martin Indyk declared on CNN that it was “the saddest and most tragic day” for the relationship in all his 35 years as a water-carrier.
In this case, we fear, the wish is father to the threat. Susan Rice and Martin Indyk see the relationship between Israel and the United States on a downward spiral because they and their boss want it so. Obama does not like the special status Israel seems to enjoy in the United States—not only because its particularistic and nationalist claim offends him ideologically, but because Israel’s popularity with the American people limits his freedom of action.
The relationship between the United States and Israel is in jeopardy because, from the moment his administration began, Barack Obama has consciously, deliberately, and with malice aforethought sought to jeopardize it. He did so in part because he is committed to the idea that Israel must retreat to its 1967 borders, dismantle its settlements, and will a Palestinian state into existence. He views Israel’s inability or unwillingness to do these things as a moral stain.
But the depth of Obama’s anger toward Israel and Netanyahu suggests that there is far more to it than that. Israel stands in the way of what the president hopes might be his crowning foreign-policy achievement: a new order in the Middle East represented by a new entente with Iran. Netanyahu’s testimony on behalf of his country and his people is this: A nuclear Iran will possess the means to visit a second Holocaust on the Jews in a single day. His testimony on behalf of everyone else is this: A nuclear Iran will set off an arms race in the Middle East that will threaten world order, the world’s financial stability, and the lives of untold millions. Simply put, Obama finds the witness Israel is bearing to the threat posed by Iran unbearable.
Elliott Abrams has called the speech kerfuffle a “manufactured crisis.” He is right, and the assembly line has been rolling without letup for six years.
Barack Obama came into office determined to put daylight between the United States and Israel. A few months after his inauguration, he met with Jewish leaders to discuss growing concerns about the bilateral relationship. One leader, Malcolm Hoenlein, told the president: “If you want Israel to take risks, then its leaders must know that the United States is right next to them.” Obama responded thus: “Look at the past eight years. During those eight years, there was no space between us and Israel, and what did we get from that? When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states.”
Obama sought to make “daylight” almost immediately by picking fights with the new government of Benjamin Netanyahu, who came into office only weeks after Obama’s inauguration. The administration made no secret of its hopes that Netanyahu’s government would fall and be replaced by the supposedly more pliant opposition leader Tzipi Livni.
While the White House and the State Department have consistently portrayed Netanyahu as a man bent on obstructing Obama’s policies, the record shows otherwise. From the start, Netanyahu has sought to accommodate the Obama administration’s wishes as much as possible without jeopardizing Israel’s security.
In May 2009, Obama met with Netanyahu and told him bluntly that “settlements [on the West Bank] have to be stopped in order for us to move forward.” Israel complied; Netanyahu announced a 10-month settlement freeze, which was supposed to trigger a new round of U.S.-led peace talks. But for nine months Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refused all invitations to negotiate. In the 10th month, Abbas sat through exactly two talks before abandoning negotiations once again. Yet Obama offered this assessment in a January 2010 interview with Time: “Although the Israelis, I think, after a lot of time showed a willingness to make some modifications in their policies, they still found it very hard to move with any bold gestures.”
Like all its predecessors, the Obama administration is a stern critic of Israel’s West Bank settlements and sees them as an obstacle to peace. But the administration’s particular obsession was not Jews sitting on remote hilltops or in areas many if not most Israelis saw as expendable—but rather the Jewish presence throughout unified Jerusalem. Though no American government had ever recognized Israeli sovereignty over the capital, the Obama administration was the first to consider normal growth in Jerusalem’s 40-year-old Jewish neighborhoods (in parts of the city that had been illegally occupied by Jordan, from 1949 to 1967) as a deliberate and outrageous provocation.
This came to a head in the spring of 2010 when a routine announcement of a housing project in one of those Jerusalem neighborhoods (which had specifically been exempted from the freeze) coincided with a visit to Israel by Vice President Joe Biden. Netanyahu found himself on the receiving end of a 43-minute telephone tirade from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She accused Netanyahu of sending a “deeply negative signal” that had “harmed the bilateral relationship.” Such condemnations were repeatedly echoed in the press from multiple administration figures.
The administration clearly hoped its expressions of rage could be leveraged to force Israel to agree to end such construction—and encourage the Palestinians to realize that the United States would back them in negotiations. But rather than isolate Netanyahu, the U.S. attack on Jewish Jerusalem strengthened him, because defending the unity of the city remains one of the few issues on which there is consensus in Israeli politics.
Even as relations continued to deteriorate—Israel’s then-ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, told a group of Israeli diplomats in 2010 that U.S.–Israel relations were at their lowest point since 1975—Netanyahu moderated construction in settlements. By the first half of 2014, Israel was building at its slowest rate since the 2010 freeze. (Indeed, according to Israeli historian and archivist Yaacov Lozowick, no new settlements have been built since 2003.)
In May 2011, President Obama gave a major address responding to the Arab Spring protests, in which he chose to devote the last third to a plan for a new round of Israeli–Palestinian talks—a non sequitur if ever there has been one. The plan was to set the 1967 lines as the starting point for future negotiations. The speech was timed to be delivered the day before Netanyahu was to arrive in the United States for talks. Obama was attempting to force a fait accompli.
Netanyahu earned applause at home and in the U.S. for pushing back against Obama’s idea, which he rightly saw as an attempt to undermine Israel’s negotiating position. Days later, Netanyahu spoke to a joint session of Congress where both Republicans and Democrats cheered him as if he were the second coming of Winston Churchill, a spectacle that was rightly seen as a rebuke to Obama’s slap at the Israelis. (That episode is crucial to understanding the White House’s bitterness about Netanyahu’s recent speech to Congress.) And like the previous arguments with Israel, this one would yield no benefits to the United States, since not even this tilting of the diplomatic playing field toward the Palestinians would be enough to nudge them to make peace.
The general antipathy toward the Israeli prime minister led Washington Postcolumnist Jackson Diehl to ask, in November 2011, “Why do Sarkozy and Obama hate Netanyahu?” Diehl was writing on the revelation that Obama and then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy had made comments, picked up on a live microphone, about their dislike of the Israeli leader. Diehl pointed out that Obama’s problem with Netanyahu was obviously personal: “Netanyahu has been an occasionally difficult but ultimately cooperative partner. He can be accused of moving too slowly and offering too little, but not of failing to heed American initiatives.”
After this incident, the administration put its campaign against Israel on hold for the duration of the 2012 presidential election campaign. It ceased sparring with Netanyahu and even moved toward Israel on the subject of Iran.
Obama had always stated his opposition to an Iranian bomb, but he had also consistently demonstrated his desire for a rapprochement with Tehran. He was both slow and reluctant to embrace sanctions against the regime. Throughout this period, the administration seemed more anxious about preventing an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities than it was about the nuclear threat itself. But in 2012, the president told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that he would never be willing to merely “contain” a nuclear Iran. And during his foreign-policy debate with Mitt Romney, he pledged that any possible deal with Iran would require it to give up its nuclear program.
Once reelected, Obama reverted. He unleashed John Kerry, his new secretary of state, to pursue yet another futile quest for peace with the Palestinians. Despite
successful American pressure on Israel to agree to a framework that accepted most of the Palestinians’ demands throughout 2013, Abbas wouldn’t take yes for an answer. He eventually blew up the talks. The Obama administration responded by placing the blame for Kerry’s failure on Israel, arguing speciously that the problem was construction in Jerusalem and in the settlement blocs that would be retained by Israel in any peace deal.
This administration’s willingness to blame the Jewish state under virtually any circumstances was on display again, in the summer of 2014, after rocket barrages on Israeli cities prompted Israel to launch a counterattack on Hamas bases in Gaza. Though the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would later cite Israeli efforts to avoid civilian casualties in the fighting as a model for American troops, the White House and the State Department criticized Israel for the deaths of Palestinians—who were being used as human shields by Hamas. But far worse, and far more suggestive of Obama’s true feelings, was the White House’s decision to try and use arms supplies as a pressure point against Israel.
Throughout the Obama presidency, the president’s defenders (and Netanyahu, in his 2015 address to Congress) have spoken of the strengthening of the so-called strategic relationship with Israel as proof of Obama’s sincere support for the alliance. It is true that Obama continued funding for the Iron Dome missile-defense system initiated under the Bush administration and did not obstruct the fostering of close ties between the two countries’ defense and intelligence establishments. But the Gaza war revealed the president’s discomfort with that closeness. When he realized that the Pentagon, without his express permission, was resupplying Israel with ammunition needed for fighting Hamas, he called a halt to it—supposedly to send a signal he did not think Israel was being surgical enough with its surgical strikes. He denied Israel bullets in the middle of a shooting war.
Meanwhile, the administration’s secret negotiating track with Iran was making progress. And this brings us to the nub of the issue.
The true beating heart of the crisis between Israel and Obama is Iran. The Islamic Republic does not merely harbor genocidal fantasies about annihilating Israel; it boasts of them. The country was founded in 1979 on the theocratic vision of Ruhollah Khomeini, who made the destruction of Israel a defining national objective. More than three decades later, Iran’s leaders remain obsessed with the idea. It is, to their thinking, an unshakable Islamic obligation. As recently as last November, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei publicly outlined a nine-point plan for eradicating the Jewish state.
More important than Tehran’s declarations are its actions. In 2002, an Iranian dissident revealed two secret Iranian nuclear sites, confirming—for those with eyes to see—the mullahs’ pursuit of a nuclear weapon. In 2010, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) declared that Iran had worked on, or is working on, the construction of a nuclear warhead and has experimented with detonation methods. IAEA inspectors have also found evidence that the Iranians have clandestinely enriched uranium to levels that exceed those needed for civilian energy and approach those required for a nuclear bomb.
Iran’s religious hatred of the Jewish state combined with its apparent pursuit of a nuclear weapon make it Israel’s chief security concern. The overused term “existential threat” is the only one that applies. As ISIS’s recent establishment of an Islamic caliphate shows, the nightmares of committed Muslim radicals can come true.
Obama came to office declaring he would not permit Iran to build a nuclear weapon and that “all options are on the table” for stopping it. Repeating this assurance, he succeeded in getting Israel to refrain from striking Iran on its own. Obama’s record, however, has discredited the suggestion that he would take military action if necessary. He has demonstrated an unyielding faith in diplomacy and seems to regard the use of force as almost necessarily reckless. What’s more, he hoped—and hopes—to use diplomacy to make the Shia theocracy “a responsible member of the international community,” in Susan Rice’s words. This fanciful goal seems to have become Obama’s priority. As his foreign-policy spokesman, Ben Rhodes, said: “This is probably the biggest thing President Obama will do in his second term on foreign policy. This is health care for us, just to put it in context.”
During his first term, Obama reached out to Tehran repeatedly. He went through several third parties to offer Iran access to civilian-grade nuclear energy. The mullahs rejected every overture. Despite Iran’s obstinacy, Obama began his second term covertly imploring the Iranians to sit down for direct talks with the United States. In 2013, Iran elected President Hassan Rouhani, a regime hardliner who had enjoyed a public-relations makeover as a “moderate.” The administration soon announced direct talks between Washington and Tehran, talks that had been planned behind Israel’s back. Netanyahu has been left to look on while the Obama administration chases a dangerous nuclear deal with Iran.1
As Washington crafted its deal, Obama administration officials took the opportunity to taunt Netanyahu for having complied with the president’s request not to strike Iran. “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,” an administration official told the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg. “The good thing about Netanyahu is that he’s scared to launch wars. It’s too late for him to do anything. Two, three years ago, this was a possibility. But ultimately he couldn’t bring himself to pull the trigger. It was a combination of our pressure and his own unwillingness to do anything dramatic. Now it’s too late.”
Israel’s prospects for a strike on Iran’s nuclear program have grown dim indeed. First, it’s a technically formidable undertaking. During these past few years, Iran’s nuclear sites have become more diffuse and entrenched. It may well be that the United States alone has the sufficient resources and weaponry to disable Iran’s air defenses and do meaningful damage to its various fortified facilities.
If Israel launches a strike that falls short of disabling the Iranian nuclear program, Israelis would face the same Iranian threat along with grave new problems. In addition to launching direct retaliatory strikes on Israel, Iran might respond by blocking the straits of Hormuz and driving up oil prices. Without the help of the United States, Israel would bear the global outrage (and perhaps punishment) for the resulting destabilization. And although Arab leaders would privately celebrate any blow dealt their Iranian enemy, they too would publicly admonish the Jewish state. This would inevitably further inflame the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel violence that now consumes the Muslim world.
And if the United States has explicitly recognized Iran’s right to enrich uranium, Israel would ostensibly be attacking a “legitimate” nuclear-power state against America’s wishes. With the American–Israeli alliance already at such a precarious point, this final act of Israeli disobedience could tear open an almost unthinkable breach in the bilateral relationship.
The fraying of the relationship has only served Obama’s larger purpose vis-à-vis Iran. As his effort to get Democratic members of the House and Senate to boycott Netanyahu’s speech demonstrates, Obama has spent six years implicitly setting up a loyalty test: Democrats will be showing their disloyalty to him if they show support for Israel as it does whatever it can to prevent Iran from getting the bomb.
The breach with the Obama administration illustrates a basic problem within the pro-Israel coalition inside the United States. During the 2012 campaign, Jewish Democrats were able to say that he had strengthened security cooperation between the two countries. Their argument was shaken during the Gaza war in 2014, when Obama cancelled the ammunition resupply.
Even so, the administration succeeded in the first months of 2015 in distracting many Jewish supporters of Israel from the looming bad deal with Iran by focusing their attention on the supposed breach of protocol represented by Netanyahu’s acceptance of Boehner’s invitation. Since most liberal Jews view Boehner and the GOP Congressional majorities with almost as much disdain as they do Israel’s enemies, and since many are not especially supportive of Netanyahu, they were disinclined to back him against the president.
Netanyahu was accused by the administration of injecting partisanship into the U.S.–Israel relationship, but the true culprit here was Obama. He was playing off the fact that his party’s members are far less supportive of Israel than Republicans are.
According to Gallup, support for Israel among Democrats is currently at almost exactly the same level it was in 1988. Now, as was true a quarter century ago, 47 percent of Democrats sympathize with Israel. That was before Israel signed the Oslo Accords, was subjected to an ongoing terror campaign, withdrew from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank unilaterally, publicly declared support for the establishment of a Palestinian state, and made three separate final-status offers that would have given the Palestinians a state with its capital in Jerusalem. And before Iran began developing the bomb.
Republicans noticed. In 1988, their sympathy for Israel vis-à-vis the Palestinians was at about the same level as the Democrats’; today it’s at 83 percent. Independents noticed as well. In 1988, 42 percent of independents sympathized with Israel; today that number has jumped 17 points to 59.
Israel’s good-faith negotiations and sacrifices for peace in the face of unrelenting terror and incitement won over Republicans and independents. Democrats remain unmoved. That consistency, and the partisan gap it is creating in support for Israel, is far from reassuring.
During the war with Hamas last summer, the Israel Defense Forces uncovered some 30-plus tunnels running from Gaza into population centers in Israel to be used for mass terror attacks against Israeli civilians. The war itself was touched off by steady rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel. Israel’s goal was to stop the rocket fire and neutralize the tunnels, not to overthrow Hamas or retake the Gaza Strip. When those objectives were reached, Israel withdrew.
Yet a CNN poll found that only 45 percent of Democrats considered Israel’s counteroffensive justified, compared with 56 percent of independents and 73 percent of Republicans. According to Gallup, only 31 percent of Democrats considered Israel’s
actions justified. Astoundingly, a Pew poll recorded that Democrats were evenly divided on whether Israel or Hamas was to blame for the war.
Pro-Israel Democrats don’t simply have an ‘Obama problem.’ The president did not create Israel’s status as a wedge issue for his party. He has only exploited it.
Certainly, the supportive voting record of Democratic members of Congress acts as an important check on the rougher treatment Israel would receive from an unfiltered expression of the party’s activist base. But it also masks the anti-Zionist populism so prevalent on college campuses and among leftist political pressure groups, and the anti-Israel sentiments expressed by many black and Latino activists as well.
That filter can’t catch everything, even in this age of scripted politics. During the 2012 Democratic National Convention, it was revealed that references to God and to Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel had been removed from the Democratic Party’s platform. Party officials moved to add the language back in, which required a voice vote from the Democratic Party delegates in the hall. The motion to restore the references was soundly defeated.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who was emceeing the proceedings, was visibly shocked. He asked for a re-vote. The motion lost again, with the crowd growing more agitated. Villaraigosa looked off stage for direction. He turned back to the audience, held one more vote, and, amid a hail of boos, declared the motion passed—despite its obvious and raucous defeat for the third time in a row.
The incident was important not only because it showed that the party’s delegates were opposed to traditional pro-Israel language in the party’s platform, but also because that language had been removed in the first place either at the behest or approval of the Obama campaign. Obama’s two presidential campaigns have been notable for their ability to tap into the zeitgeist of the party’s core supporters.
“Obviously, this is much bigger than two men,” CNN’s Dana Bash said on March 1, two days before Netanyahu’s address to Congress. Indeed it is. And it puts American Jews in a bind. American Jews still care deeply about Israel—and still vote overwhelmingly Democratic. Recent polls show a subtle rightward shift, but it is far too early to tell if that shift will stay in place in 2016 and beyond. (Jimmy Carter hemorrhaged Jewish votes in 1980; in 1984, Walter Mondale won most of them back.) Nonetheless, the Democrats are expected to nominate Hillary Clinton, who served as Obama’s secretary of state and has had her own share of dustups with Netanyahu. And veterans of the Obama administration will no doubt staff future Democratic White Houses. Is this, then, the shape of things to come? If the answer is to be no, Jewish Democrats are going to have to do more than find presidential nominees who paper over this internal divide with platitudes.
They will have to address the growing conflict between American Zionism and American liberalism. They will need not happy talk but confrontation of hard truths. That will require recognizing that the momentum is with the Occupy Wall Street protesters’ adopting the Palestinian cause as their own, with the American professoriate shaping higher-education curricula along with the minds and worldviews of their students, and with the progressive activists who fill the arena at presidential nominating conventions and seek to remake the Democratic Party platform in their image.
It means American Jewish organizations are going to have to recognize that it will become more and more difficult to square the circle. AIPAC tried just that in 2014, when it acquiesced to Democratic pressure and did not send out its 10,000-strong team of citizen activists to lobby members of Congress to support new sanctions.
AIPAC was caught between a rock and a hard place, but its leaders surely know they made a terrible error in 2014—and have changed their tune this year. Seen from one perspective, the failure to push sanctions decreased the administration’s leverage at the negotiating table; from the other, it gave Obama the freedom to acquiesce to Iran’s own demands.
On Capitol Hill, opposition to a nuclear Iran has always been as bipartisan as support for Israel. Obama is making every effort to turn it into a partisan issue so that he can peel off enough Democrats to sustain a veto of legislation that would block a bad deal. Netanyahu’s triumph before Congress made his job harder. Israel’s prime minister did what he set out to do—to lay before Congress and the American people the nature of the threat and the danger of such a deal.
Americans who care about Israel, and American Jews who care not only about the Jewish state but also the condition of the Jewish soul in the United States, must now follow his example. We cannot relent in our efforts to fight against those who seek to drive a wedge between Israel and America—on campuses, in the media, within elite institutions, and within both the Democratic and Republican parties. The impending end of Obama’s political career should make it easier for Israel’s government to make its case against appeasement in both 2015 and 2016 as well as shore up wavering American Jewish support. The manufactured crisis Barack Obama began in 2009 is not yet a full-bore crisis either within the Democratic Party or within the American body politic. But it will become one—if this existential threat, this spiritual existential threat to American Jewry, is not dismantled.
Footnotes
1 The salient facts are these: First, the Obama administration agreed to Tehran’s demand that the United States ease sanctions on Iran in advance of any confirmed nuclear agreement. Second, the administration recognized Iran’s right to enrich uranium to 5 percent despite the fact that all Iranian enrichment is prohibited by the United Nations Security Council. Third, Iran has ignored negotiation deadlines to win reported concessions that would render the deal pointless. These include the right to 5,000–6,000 working centrifuges, enough to fuel a nuclear bomb within a year. The administration has also reportedly included a “sunset clause,” which could free the Iranians from the strictures of a deal within 10 years.
Hero of the Middle East: The Israeli Messenger
March 18, 2015Hero of the Middle East: The Israeli Messenger, The Gatestone Institute, Bassam Tawil, March 18, 2015
In its evident, inexplicable eagerness to sign just about any deal with Iran to allow it nuclear weapons capability, the U.S. State Department has removed Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah — two of the world most undisguised promoters of terror — from its Foreign Terrorist Organizations List.
Iran’s President, Hassan Rouhani, has even openly admitted that Iran’s diplomacy with the U.S. is an active “jihad.” How much plainer does a message have to get?
The Islamists have nothing but contempt for Europe’s weakness.
The West needs to paralyze Iran, rather than appease it.
A series of significant defeats to Islamist organizations will counter the effects of their efforts to entice young people to join them, especially ISIS.
In these terrible times, critical for the future of our region, Netanyahu spoke to the representatives of the American people, despite the objections of many Israelis and Americans. He was willing to accept personal, political and diplomatic setbacks in order to look after his people’s security.
We are all also hoping that that the government of Israel will focus even more on bringing the Arabs of Israel into the Israeli fold. Otherwise a “fifth column” could form and harden that will drive them into the open and waiting arms of Hamas and other terrorist groups.
Arab-Israeli politicians might also focus more on helping such an effort, rather than, as many Arab politicians do, lash out and blame others for what is wrong — a lazy, destructive substitute for actually helping improve the lives of their people.
Ever since Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, came back from his recent visit to the United States, it has repeatedly been shown that he was right to stand before Congress and issue his warnings. Tehran’s Ayatollahs have not only held a naval exercise in the Strait of Hormuz, where they targeted a simulated a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, they also displayed new missiles that could paralyze all the shipping in the Gulf.
Iran has already surrounded the oilfields of the Middle East, and is openly increasing its efforts to bring down the “Big Satan,” the United States. Iran’s President, Hassan Rouhani, has even openly admitted that Iran’s diplomacy with the U.S. is an active “jihad.” How much plainer does a message have to get?
Iran has not only taken over Yemen, Lebanon and Syria It is also in the process of taking over — presumably with the help of its negotiations with the U.S. — Bahrain, Iraq, Libya and parts of South America, especially Venezuela, with its vast reserves of uranium, and Bolivia, now with a suspected nuclear installation.
In its evident, inexplicable eagerness to sign just about any deal with Iran to allow it to achieve nuclear capability, the U.S. State Department has removed Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah — two of the world’s most undisguised promoters of terror — from its Foreign Terrorist Organizations List, presumably at Iran’s request.
After Republican Senators sent a letter to Iran warning that any agreement with the U.S. would have to be endorsed by Congress, the Iranians used it to claim that the United States is so weak it is about to fall apart. The king of Saudi Arabia said that if the U.S. did not halt Iran’s nuclear program, Saudi Arabia would begin enriching its own uranium, to acquire a nuclear potential equal to that of Iran.
Ashraf Ramelah, president of the Christian human rights organization Voice of the Copts, asked House Speaker John Boehner to invite Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to address Congress, to warn America of the mistake it clearly intends to make. The members of the Arab League met in Riyadh to warn America of the approaching disaster.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry recently hinted that the agreement with Iran was not particularly urgent, and claimed that should the talks fail, the United States had alternatives.
Apparently with the sole objective of embarrassing Netanyahu, no one in the U.S. administration was willing to admit that he was right, or that unfortunately there were many American individuals and organizations actively intervening in the Israeli elections, with the goal of toppling Netanyahu. The U.S. Administration clearly wanted to replace him with Yitzhak Herzog, who is weak — another link in the chain of American foreign policy failures, from Allende and the Shah of Iran to Mubarak, all victims of the political and diplomatic elite’s ignorance and lack of political common sense.
The lesson President Obama has not yet learned from his experience with Arabs is that anyone who deliberately ignores or applauds when his own fanatic Muslim nationals (or guests) kill “infidels” will eventually be repaid with the killing of his own non-extremist Muslims. That is exactly what is going to happen in Iran, Turkey, Qatar, Lebanon and other countries that support terrorism.
The Western world should be wary, and not be tempted into breathing a sigh of relief because the Muslim Brotherhood condemned the burning of the Jordanian pilot. The Muslim Brotherhood, which consistently preaches the murder of innocents of every stripe, is currently trying to cover its tracks regarding murder carried out in the name of Islam through the taqiyya, which permits Muslims to lie to “protect” Islam — in this case against the global wave of outrage against Islamist terrorism. Perhaps they condemn the burning alive of the pilot because, according to Islam, only Allah can burn someone to death. But behind their pious declarations they are overjoyed by his death, and continue inciting their followers to murder more of those they have designated as “infidels,” while every day designating still more.
That Hamas and ISIS identify with one another, collaborate and have almost identical goals was made clear recently by the arrests Hamas operatives in the Palestinian Authority on the grounds that they vandalized the memorial set up in Ramallah for the murdered Jordanian pilot.
In their misguided, fumbling experiments, EU officials, along with the Arab League foreign ministers, are forming a united front to fight Islamist terrorism, while including the very countries known consistently to support it. These include Turkey, which mainly supports ISIS, and Qatar, which supports the Islamist terrorist organizations in the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip.
Despite the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood and the other Islamist terrorist organizations thrive in Arab states — although in some they have been outlawed — the West, especially the Obama Administration, doggedly refuses to outlaw them and insists they are peace-loving religious organizations. For some intriguing reason, the leaders of the Western world find it impossible to see the relationship between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamist terrorist organizations it fosters.
Obama’s behavior underlies the conspiracy theory, common in the Middle East, that he is a Muslim Brotherhood mole.
The U.S. Administration refuses to recognize the dangerous game Turkey is playing by ignoring the West’s sanctions on Iran. Despite the fact that Turkey is a member of NATO, it has, in fact, upgraded and improved its trade agreements with Iran.
The European Union, in its cowardice and folly, has removed Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch, from its list of designated terrorist organizations. Europe refuses to change its stance, even though barely a week ago, Egypt designated the entire Hamas movement a terrorist organization. Hamas supports ISIS in the Sinai Peninsula and within Egypt itself, as they attack government, security and civilian targets.
The Islamists have nothing but contempt for Europe’s weakness, and in the meantime, ISIS’s wave of success in Iraq and Syria, and its brand as “powerful,” encourage young, impressionable Muslims to join its ranks.
In the meantime, in the wake of rising Islamist sentiment in the Muslim communities of Europe and the U.S., imams and Islamist activists have been falling over themselves to reassure the public. They have opened mosques to casual visitors, in an effort to allay their fears and downplay the threat, as if a Westerner on a guided tour could possibly understand the degree of propaganda and incitement churned out behind closed doors, in classrooms and libraries.
* * *
The wages America pays Iran, in return for questionable aid it may or may not receive in the fight against ISIS, only serve to strengthen the Ayatollahs and their collaborators — Russia, Syria and Hezbollah — and ease the sanctions against Iran to make it stronger, enabling further expansion. And that is before Iran achieves nuclear weapons capability. What about after?
The saga will likely end with an agreement ending the sanctions on Iran, permitting it to build its nuclear bomb “for peaceful purposes,” while in the meantime Iran will have taken over Yemen, completed its new line of “defensive” missiles, of the sort that will be able to reach Europe and be loaded onto submarines.
The soon-to-be-signed agreement between Iran and the United States not only abandons the Sunni Arab states and Israel to their fates; it also paves the way for an inevitable nuclear arms race involving Sunni states, carried out in the vain hope that they will be able to contain the Shi’ites before they launch a nuclear Armageddon on the Middle East.
There is also the rumored approaching death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Thus, any agreement signed with the Iranians won’t be worth the paper it is printed on, because no one knows who will replace him and if his replacement will agree to honor any commitments signed by the previous regime.
Instead of strengthening moderate Sunni states such as Egypt and the Gulf States, both of which are exploring an innovative, moderate, contemporary Islam, America has chosen to support the Muslim Brotherhood, which has fooled it into thinking it is not doing its utmost to weaken those moderate states.
The U.S. is driving a wedge into the unity of the Sunni Arab world and weakening its efforts to counter Iran.
To misrepresent the agreement with Iran, the Obama Administration enlisted European countries to create a smokescreen and media white noise, labeling Israel’s failure to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians as the only important issue problem the Middle East.
They are using Europe to turn Israel into a leper, as if it is Israel’s bound duty to accept American dictates because of its dependence on the American veto in the UN. Obama’s National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, instead of focusing on the catastrophically serious Iranian threat, recently made the hostile statement that Israel must now resolve the Palestinian issue.
The efforts Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has made to convince Congress not to support the agreement with Iran were brutally attacked by the White House, which is apparently only open to hearing opinions that agree with it.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks before the U.S. Congress, March 4, 2015. (Image source: C-SPAN video screenshot)
Despite reservations regarding Netanyahu’s hard line in Israel’s negotiations with Palestinians, many of us in the Middle East are of the opinion that he is another real hero of the Middle East.
Many people here are also hoping that as the Arab Israeli vote was the third largest bloc in the yesterday’s election, perhaps now the government of Israel will focus more on bringing the Arabs of Israel even closer and more comfortably into the Israeli fold. Otherwise, there is the serious possibility that a “fifth column” could form and harden, one that will drive the Arab Israelis into the open and waiting arms of Hamas and other terrorist groups.
We also hope that the Arab Israeli politicians will focus more on such an effort, rather than, as many Arab politicians do, lashing out and blaming others for what is wrong — a lazy, destructive substitute for actually helping improve the lives of their people.
In these terrible times, critical for the future of our region, Netanyahu spoke to the representatives of the American people, despite the objections of many Israelis and Americans. He was willing to accept personal, political and diplomatic setbacks in order look after his people’s security.
Throughout history, prophets have often been without honor in their own countries, and have been rejected by the very people who should pay attention to them. There is, it seems, in every culture, a deep and real wish to kill the messenger.
The West would do well to understand that anyone really interested in fighting terrorism needs to outlaw the Muslim Brotherhood movement — all its branches, wherever they are. Even more, it needs to paralyze Iran, rather than appease it.
The West’s dark, contradictory dealings with Turkey, Qatar, Iran and other shadowy regimes serve the growth of Islamist terrorist organizations. They destroy the chance for any success against radical Islam.
The fight against Islamist organizations needs to be creative, deliberate and continuous, to keep them from gaining even one victory either on the ground or in their propaganda campaigns. The Muslim public must not view them as attractive, or see joining them a sign of success. A series of significant defeats to Islamist organizations will counter the effects of their efforts to entice young people to join them, especially ISIS.
It is sad that in the face of the coming catastrophe, Western leaders — either blind, naïve or malevolent — are going to make a deal and appease Iran, just as a deal was made to appease Hitler in 1938.
Having the U.N. Security Council bless a deal wouldn’t make it binding under our Constitution.
March 15, 2015Having the U.N. Security Council bless a deal wouldn’t make it binding under our Constitution, National Review online, Andrew C. McCarthy, March 14, 2015
So, as we warned earlier this week, the international-law game it is.
It is no secret that Barack Obama does not have much use for the United States Constitution. It is a governing plan for a free, self-determining people. Hence, it is littered with roadblocks against schemes to rule the people against their will. When it comes to our imperious president’s scheme to enable our enemy, Iran, to become a nuclear-weapons power — a scheme that falls somewhere between delusional and despicable, depending on your sense of Obama’s good faith — the salient barrier is that only Congress can make real law.
Most lawmakers think it would be a catastrophe to forge a clear path to the world’s most destructive weapons for the world’s worst regime — a regime that brays “Death to America” as its motto; that has killed thousands of Americans since 1979; that remains the world’s leading state sponsor of jihadist terrorism; that pledges to wipe our ally Israel off the map; and that just three weeks ago, in the midst of negotiations with Obama, conducted a drill in which its armed forces fired ballistic missiles at a replica U.S. aircraft carrier.
This week, 47 perspicuous Republican senators suspected that the subject of congressional power just might have gotten short shrift in Team Obama’s negotiations with the mullahs. So they penned a letter on the subject to the regime in Tehran. The effort was led by Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), who, after Harvard Law School, passed up community organizing for the life of a Bronze Star–awarded combat commander. As one might imagine, Cotton and Obama don’t see this Iran thing quite the same way.
There followed, as night does day, risible howls from top Democrats and their media that these 47 patriots were “traitors” for undermining the president’s empowerment of our enemies. Evidently, writing the letter was not as noble as, say, Ted Kennedy’s canoodling with the Soviets, Nancy Pelosi’s dalliance with Assad, the Democratic party’s Bush-deranged jihad against the war in Iraq, or Senator Barack Obama’s own back-channel outreach to Iran during the 2008 campaign. Gone, like a deleted e-mail, were the good old days when dissent was patriotic.
Yet, as John Yoo observes, the Cotton letter was more akin to mailing Ayatollah Khamenei a copy of the Constitution. The senators explained that our Constitution requires congressional assent for international agreements to be legally binding. Thus, any “executive agreement” on nukes that they manage to strike with the appeaser-in-chief is unenforceable and likely to be revoked when he leaves office in 22 months.
For Obama and other global-governance grandees, this is quaint thinking, elevating outmoded notions like national interest over “sustainable” international “stability” — like the way Hitler stabilized the Sudetenland. These “international community” devotees see the Tea Party as the rogue and the mullahs as rational actors.
So, you see, lasting peace — like they have, for example, in Ukraine — is achieved when the world’s sole superpower exhibits endless restraint and forfeits some sovereignty to the United Nations Security Council, where the enlightened altruists from Moscow, Beijing, and Brussels will figure out what’s best for Senator Cotton’s constituents in Arkansas. This will set a luminous example of refinement that Iran will find irresistible when it grows up ten years from now — the time when Obama, who came to office promising the mullahs would not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons, would have Iran stamped with the international community seal of approval as a nuclear-weapons state.
Down here on Planet Earth, though, most Americans think this is a bad idea. That, along with an injection of grit from the Arkansas freshman, emboldened the normally supine Senate GOP caucus to read Tehran in on the constitutional fact that the president is powerless to bind the United States unless the people’s representatives cement the arrangement.
Obama, naturally, reacted with his trusty weapon against opposition, demagoguery: hilariously suggesting that while the Alinskyite-in-chief had our country’s best interests at heart, the American war hero and his 46 allies were in league with Iran’s “hardliners.” (Yes, having found Muslim Brotherhood secularists, al-Qaeda moderates, and Hezbollah moderates, rest assured that Obama is courting only the evolved ayatollahs.) When that went about as you’d expect, the administration shifted to a strategy with which it is equally comfortable, lying.
Obama’s minions claimed that, of course, the president understands that any agreement he makes with Iran would merely be his “political commitment,” not “legally binding” on the nation. It’s just that Obama figures it would be nice to have the Security Council “endorse” the deal in a resolution because, well, that would “encourage its full implementation.” Uh-huh.
Inconveniently, the administration’s negotiating counterpart is the chattiest of academics, Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. Afflicted by the Western-educated Islamist’s incorrigible need to prove he’s the smartest kid in the class — especially a class full of American politicians — Zarif let the cat out of the bag. The senators, he smarmed, “may not fully understand . . . international law.”
According to Zarif, the deal under negotiation “will not be a bilateral agreement between Iran and the U.S., but rather one that will be concluded with the participation of five other countries, including all permanent members of the Security Council, and will also be endorsed by a Security Council resolution.” He hoped it would “enrich the knowledge” of the 47 senators to learn that “according to international law, Congress may not modify the terms of the agreement.” To do so would be “a material breach of U.S. obligations,” rendering America a global outlaw.
This, mind you, from the lead representative of a terrorist regime that is currently, and brazenly, in violation of Security Council resolutions that prohibit its enrichment of uranium.
Clearly, Obama and the mullahs figure they can run the following stunt: We do not need another treaty approved by Congress because the United States has already ratified the U.N. charter and thus agreed to honor Security Council resolutions. We do not need new statutes because the Congress, in enacting Iran-sanctions legislation, explicitly gave the president the power to waive those sanctions. All we need is to have the Security Council issue a resolution that codifies Congress’s existing sanctions laws with Obama’s waiver. Other countries involved in the negotiations — including Germany, Russia, and China, which have increasingly lucrative trade with Iran — will then very publicly rely on the completed deal. The U.N. and its army of transnational-progressive bureaucrats and lawyers will deduce from this reliance a level of global consensus that incorporates the agreement into the hocus-pocus corpus of customary law. Maybe they’ll even get Justice Ginsburg to cite it glowingly in a Supreme Court ruling. Voila, we have a binding agreement — without any congressional input — that the United States is powerless to alter under international law.
Well, it makes for good theater . . . because that is what international law is. It is a game more of lawyers than of thrones. In essence, it is politics masquerading as a system governed by rules rather than power, as if hanging a sign that says “law” on that system makes it so.
At most, international law creates understandings between and among states. Those understandings, however, are only relevant as diplomatic debating points. When, in defiance of international law, Obama decides to overthrow the Qaddafi regime, Clinton decides to bomb Kosovo, or the ayatollahs decide to enrich uranium, the debating points end up not counting for much.
Even when international understandings are validly created by treaty (which requires approval by two-thirds of the Senate), they are not “self-executing,” as the legal lexicon puts it — meaning they are not judicially enforceable and carry no domestic weight. Whether bilateral or multilateral, treaties do not supersede existing federal law unless implemented by new congressional statutes. And they are powerless to amend the Constitution.
The Supreme Court reaffirmed these principles in its 2008 Medellin decision (a case I described here, leading to a ruling Ed Whelan outlined here). The justices held that the president cannot usurp the constitutional authority of other government components under the guise of his power to conduct foreign affairs. Moreover, even a properly ratified treaty can be converted into domestic law only by congressional lawmaking, not by unilateral presidential action.
Obama, therefore, has no power to impose an international agreement by fiat — he has to come to Congress. He can make whatever deal he wants to make with Iran, but the Constitution still gives Congress exclusive authority over foreign commerce. Lawmakers can enact sanctions legislation that does not permit a presidential waiver. Obama would not sign it, but the next president will — especially if the Republicans raise it into a major 2016 campaign issue.
Will the Security Council howl? Sure . . . but so what? It has been said that Senator Cotton should have CC’d the Obama administration on his letter since it, too, seems unfamiliar with the Constitution’s division of authority. A less useless exercise might have been to CC the five other countries involved in the talks (the remaining Security Council members, plus Germany). Even better, as I argued earlier this week, would be a sense-of-the-Senate resolution: Any nation that relies on an executive agreement that is not approved by the United States Congress under the procedures outlined in the Constitution does so at its peril because this agreement is likely to lapse as early as January 20, 2017. International law is a game that two can play, and there is no point in allowing Germany, Russia, and China to pretend that they relied in good faith on Obama’s word being America’s word.
It is otherworldly to find an American administration conspiring against the Constitution and the Congress in cahoots with a terror-sponsoring enemy regime, with which we do not even have formal diplomatic relations, in order to pave the enemy’s way to nuclear weapons, of all things. Nevertheless, Republicans and all Americans who want to preserve our constitutional order, must stop telling themselves that we have hit a bottom beneath which Obama will not go. This week, 47 senators seemed ready, finally, to fight back. It’s a start.
Column One: Israel’s next 22 months
March 15, 2015Column One: Israel’s next 22 months, Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick, March 12, 2015
(The article is about more than the elections. The disconnect between Israel and the Obama administration seems likely to continue to worsen regardless of who wins, unless Israel falls completely into line with Obama’s views. — DM)
Given the stakes, the choice of Israeli voters next Tuesday is an easy one.
An Israeli flag is seen in the background as a man casts his ballot for the parliamentary election at a polling in the West Bank settlement of Ofra. (photo credit:REUTERS)
The next 22 months until President Barack Obama leaves office promise to be the most challenging period in the history of US-Israel relations.
Now unfettered by electoral concerns, over the past week Obama exposed his ill-intentions toward Israel in two different ways.
First, the Justice Department leaked its intention to indict Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez on corruption charges. Menendez is the ranking Democratic member, and the former chairman, of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is also the most outspoken Democratic critic of Obama’s policy of appeasing the Iranian regime.
As former US federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy wrote this week at PJMedia, “It is perfectly reasonable to believe that Menendez may be guilty of corruption offenses and that his political opposition on Iran is factoring into the administration’s decision to charge him. Put it another way, if Menendez were running interference for Obama on the Iran deal, rather than trying to scupper it, I believe he would not be charged.”
The Menendez prosecution tells us that Obama wishes to leave office after having vastly diminished support for Israel among Democrats. And he will not hesitate to use strong-arm tactics against his fellow Democrats to achieve his goal.
We already experienced Obama’s efforts in this sphere in the lead-up to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before the joint houses of Congress on March 3 with his campaign to pressure Democratic lawmakers to boycott Netanyahu’s address.
Now, with his move against Menendez, Obama made clear that support for Israel – even in the form of opposition to the nuclear armament of Iran – will be personally and politically costly for Democrats.
The long-term implications of Obama’s moves to transform US support for Israel into a partisan issue cannot by wished away. It is possible that his successor as the head of the Democratic Party will hold a more sympathetic view of Israel. But it is also possible that the architecture of Democratic fund-raising and grassroots support that Obama has been building for the past six years will survive his presidency and that as a consequence, Democrats will have incentives to oppose Israel.
The reason Obama is so keen to transform Israel into a partisan issue was made clear by the second move he made last week.
Last Thursday, US National Security Adviser Susan Rice announced that the NSC’s Middle East Coordinator Phil Gordon was stepping down and being replaced by serial Israel-basher Robert Malley.
Malley, who served as an NSC junior staffer during the Clinton administration, rose to prominence in late 2000 when, following the failed Camp David peace summit in July 2000 and the outbreak of the Palestinian terror war, Malley co-authored an op-ed in The New York Times blaming Israel and then-prime minister Ehud Barak for the failure of the negotiations.
What was most remarkable at the time about Malley’s positions was that they completely contradicted Bill Clinton’s expressed views. Clinton placed the blame for the failure of the talks squarely on then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s shoulders.
Not only did Arafat reject Barak’s unprecedented offer of Palestinian statehood and sovereignty over all of Gaza, most of Judea and Samaria and parts of Jerusalem including the Temple Mount, he refused to make a counter-offer. And then two months later, he opened the Palestinian terror war.
As Jonathan Tobin explained in Commentary this week, through his writings and public statements, Malley has legitimized Palestinian rejection of Israel’s right to exist. Malley thinks it is perfectly reasonable that the Palestinians refuse to concede their demand for free immigration of millions of foreign Arabs to the Jewish state in the framework of their concocted “right of return,” even though the clear goal of that demand is to destroy Israel. As Tobin noted, Malley believes that Palestinian terrorism against Israel is “understandable if not necessarily commendable.”
During Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, then-senator Obama listed Malley as a member of his foreign policy team. When pro-Israel groups criticized his appointment, Obama fired Malley.
But after his 2012 reelection, no longer fearing the ramifications of embracing an openly anti-Israel adviser, one who had documented contacts with Hamas terrorists and has expressed support for recognizing the terror group, Obama appointed Malley to serve as his senior adviser for Iraq-Iran-Syria and the Gulf states. Still facing the 2014 congressional elections, Obama pledged that Malley would have no involvement in issues related to Israel and the Palestinians. But then last week, he appointed him to direct the NSC’s policy in relation to the entire Middle East, including Israel.
The deeper significance of Malley’s appointment is that it demonstrates that Obama’s goal in his remaining time in office is to realign US Middle East policy away from Israel. With his Middle East policy led by a man who thinks the Palestinian goal of destroying Israel is legitimate, Obama can be expected to expand his practice of placing all the blame for the absence of peace between Israel and the Palestinians solely on Israel’s shoulders.
Malley’s appointment indicates that there is nothing Israel can do to stem the tsunami of American pressure it is about to suffer. Electing a left-wing government to replace Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will make no difference.
Just as Malley was willing to blame Barak – a leader who went to Camp David as the head of a minority coalition, whose positions on territorial withdrawals were rejected by a wide majority of Israelis – for the absence of peace, so we can assume that he, and his boss, will blame Israel for the absence of peace over the next 22 months, regardless of who stands at the head of the next government.
In this vein we can expect the administration to expand the anti-Israel positions it has already taken.
The US position paper regarding Israeli-Palestinian negotiation that was leaked this past week to Yediot Aharonot made clear the direction Obama wishes to go. That document called for Israel to withdraw to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines, with minor revisions.
In the coming 22 months we can expect the US to use more and more coercive measures to force Israel to capitulate to its position.
The day the administration-sponsored talks began in July 2013, the EU announced it was barring its member nations from having ties with Israeli entities that operate beyond the 1949 armistice lines unless those operations involve assisting the Palestinians in their anti-Israel activities. The notion that the EU initiated an economic war against Israel the day the talks began without coordinating the move with the Obama administration is, of course, absurd.
We can expect the US to make expanded use of European economic warfare against Israel in the coming years, and to continue to give a backwind to the anti-Semitic BDS movement by escalating its libelous rhetoric conflating Israel with the apartheid regime in South Africa.
US-Israel intelligence and defense ties will also be on the chopping block.
While Obama and his advisers consistently boast that defense and intelligence ties between Israel and the US have grown during his presidency, over the past several years, those ties have suffered blow after blow. During the war with Hamas last summer, acting on direct orders from the White House, the Pentagon instituted a partial – unofficial – embargo on weapons to Israel.
As for intelligence ties, over the past month, the administration announced repeatedly that it is ending its intelligence sharing with Israel on Iran.
We also learned that the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is being fingered as the source of the leak regarding the Stuxnet computer virus that Israel and the US reportedly developed jointly to cripple Iran’s nuclear centrifuges.
In other words, since taking office, Obama has used the US’s intelligence ties with Israel to harm Israel’s national security.*
He has also used diplomacy to harm Israel. Last summer, Obama sought a diplomatic settlement of Hamas’s war with Israel that would have granted Hamas all of its war goals, including its demand for open borders and access to the international financial system.
Now of course, he is running roughshod over his bipartisan opposition, and the opposition of Israel and the Sunni Arab states, in the hopes of concluding a nuclear deal with Iran that will pave the way for the ayatollahs to develop nuclear weapons and expand their hegemonic control over the Middle East.
Amid of this, and facing 22 months of ever more hostility as Obama pursues his goal of ending the US-Israel alliance, Israelis are called on to elect a new government.
This week the consortium of former security brass that has banded together to elect a leftist government led by Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni accused Netanyahu of destroying Israel’s relations with the US. The implication was that a government led by Herzog and Livni will restore Israel’s ties to America.
Yet as Obama has made clear both throughout his tenure in office, and, over the past week through Malley’s appointment and Menendez’s indictment, Obama holds sole responsibility for the deterioration of our ties with our primary ally. And as his actions have also made clear, Herzog and Livni at the helm will receive no respite in US pressure. Their willingness to make concessions to the Palestinians that Netanyahu refuses to make will merely cause Obama to move the goalposts further down the field. Given his goal of abandoning the US alliance with Israel, no concession that Israel will deliver will suffice.
And so we need to ask ourselves, which leader will do a better job of limiting the danger and waiting Obama out while maintaining sufficient overall US support for Israel to rebuild the alliance after Obama has left the White House.
The answer, it seems, is self-evident.
The Left’s campaign to blame Netanyahu for Obama’s hostility will make it all but impossible for a Herzog-Livni government to withstand US pressure that they say will disappear the moment Netanyahu leaves office.
In contrast, as the US position paper leaked to Yediot indicated, Netanyahu has demonstrated great skill in parrying US pressure. He agreed to hold negotiations based on a US position that he rejected and went along with the talks for nine months until the Palestinians ended them. In so doing, he achieved a nine-month respite in open US pressure while exposing Palestinian radicalism and opposition to peaceful coexistence.
On the Iranian front, Netanyahu’s courageous speech before Congress last week energized Obama’s opponents to take action and forced Obama onto the defensive for the first time while expanding popular support for Israel.
It is clear that things will only get more difficult in the months ahead. But given the stakes, the choice of Israeli voters next Tuesday is an easy one.
_______________
* Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that Hillary Clinton was reportedly involved in leaking sensitive information related to joint Israel-US operations to the media.
Obama’s Iran scheme is laid bare
March 13, 2015Obama’s Iran scheme is laid bare, Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin, March 13, 2015
We surmised yesterday that the Obama administration had the idea to go to the United Nations to pass by resolution what Congress would never agree to: a lifting of sanctions on Iran in exchange for a nearly worthless deal in which Iran would keep thousands of centrifuges and get a 10-year glide path to nuclear breakout. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), seeing what was afoot, demanded an explanation from the White House, calling such a scheme an “affront to the American people.”
On Thursday evening, after being pressed by irate Republicans, the National Security Council issued a defensive statement insisting that it would do no such thing. The story was handed to BuzzFeed:
The U.S. has “no intention” of using the United Nations to lock into place any potential deal with Iran over its nuclear program, a senior U.S. official said on Thursday.
The United States will not be “converting U.S. political commitments under a deal with Iran into legally binding obligations through a UN Security Council resolution,” Bernadette Meehan, spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council, said in a statement emailed to BuzzFeed News.
“Past UNSC resolutions on Iran have called for a negotiated settlement of the Iran nuclear issue, and accordingly we would fully expect the UNSC to ‘endorse’ any deal with Iran and encourage its full implementation so as to resolve international concerns about Iran’s nuclear program,” Meehan continued. “But any such resolution would not change the nature of our commitments under such a deal, which would be wholly contained in the text of that deal.”
What is going on here? For starters, the existing U.N. resolutions obtained by President George W. Bush are much, much stricter than anything President Obama has indicated would be forthcoming. Those resolutions don’t permit Iran to keep thousands of centrifuges. They don’t give Iran a 10-year sunset. They require complete dismantling of Iran’s illicit program, full inspections and an accounting of past illicit behavior. In other words, any new deal negotiated by the administration would be weaker than — and in fact, in violation of — existing U.N. resolutions. That is why Obama would need to go back to the U.N., to water down, to cave into Iran’s demands.
This is not an original thought. For quite some time, former U.N. spokesman Richard Grenell has been warning that this is exactly what is coming down the pike. Last year Grenell wrote: “President Obama’s Geneva proposal to the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council allowing Iran to enrich some uranium violates previous UN resolutions demanding the Islamic Republic stop ‘all’ uranium enrichment activity. To avoid a violation of current UN resolutions, the permanent members must ask the entire Security Council to vote to weaken and supersede their previous demands.” He continued, “The UN’s four rounds of hard-fought sanctions on Iran and several other resolutions demanding compliance call for a full suspension of all enrichment activities, including research and development, then full verification of that suspension before negotiations on a permanent diplomatic solution begin. The sequencing was strategic. It was designed to build international confidence in a secretive country’s deceitful past.” But Obama deliberately departed from these restrictions, so he has always planned to go back. Otherwise, his deal would be in violation of existing international law.
That brings us to U.S. law. The U.N. resolutions don’t automatically become law, the administration was forced to concede. But under currentU.S. sanctions law, the president can waive them. And that is just what Obama intends to do. He will get the U.N. to water down international sanctions while he suspends U.S. sanctions. Why is this so dangerous? Mark Dubowitz, whose research and expertise helped lawmakers to construct the sanctions legislation, e-mails me:
President Obama risks undermining the entire sanctions edifice on which continued economic leverage depends. A future US president will need this leverage to enforce an Iran deal so that he can respond to Iranian noncompliance without resorting to either military strikes or surrender. But it increasingly appears that UN, EU and perhaps some US sanctions will be suspended and then reimposed or snap backed if Iran cheats. The snapback is a delusion. Reimposing sanctions is harder than it sounds. Amongst the United States, EU and UNSC, there are bound to be significant disputes on the evidence, differing assessments of the seriousness of infractions, fierce debates about the appropriate level of response and concerns about Iranian retaliation.
It’s also important to remember that when sanctions were first implemented, it took years before a critical mass of international companies terminated their business ties with Tehran. Once strictures are loosened, with so many international companies positioning to get back into Iran, it will be very difficult to persuade these companies to leave again. The Iranian regime will also adopt countermeasures to minimize its economic exposure to Western pressure when it anticipates that it will violate any nuclear agreement.
Obama’s legacy becomes demolition of the sanctions regime and an opening for Iran to either make a dash for breakout or to wait 10 years and get its stamped permission slip. The word for this is “containment.” The next president can reverse the waiver, but the Iranian economy will be on the road to recovery and the next president’s options will be severely limited. Iran might even have a bomb by then. As one conservative wag cracked, “If you like your sovereignty you can keep your sovereignty.” Yes, Obama tells us many soothing things but does whatever he wants.
What can Congress do? Well, it can express bipartisan outrage and pass a resolution deploring the president’s end run. But it must do more. Ideally, one would summon a bipartisan veto-proof majority to fix U.S. sanctions in law with no presidential waiver unless a deal meeting the existing U.N. resolutions was agreed upon. (I suppose Congress could use the power of the purse to defund our U.N. contributions, but let’s not get carried away.) But we also have to consider that this might simply be unattainable or susceptible to the argument that Congress can’t constitutionally eliminate all executive discretion. The next best option would be to increase the threshold for waiving existing and new sanctions — in other words, to narrow severely the president’s ability to waive U.S. sanctions, and require officials in the intelligence community and/or the military to add their certification (and thereby put their own credibility on the line as well). For example, U.S. sanctions would not be waived unless and until Iran gave a complete accounting of past nuclear activities and dismantled the Arak facility, things that the Iranians have refused to do and are objective criteria the president and the intelligence community could not honestly certify have occurred.
We have seen this again and again from this president — the complete contempt for coequal branches of government and determination to act in ways contrary to our constitutional structure and overwhelming public opinion (84 percent of Americans don’t favor a 10-year glide path to Iran getting a bomb). In the case of immigration, it took the form of an executive order overriding existing immigration laws under the theory that the president was using “discretion” to delay deportation of certain illegal immigrants. That is now in the courts. But his dual strategy of sabotaging strict U.N. resolutions and waiving U.S. sanctions is far more dangerous and nefarious. It gives primacy to an international body over Congress and the laws of the United States. It assumes sole authority in foreign affairs, something not envisioned in the Constitution, which divides powers between the two branches. Lawmakers have every right to feel as though they were misled and are being entirely marginalized once again.
A senior Republican on Capitol Hill tells me, “Everyone knows, including Democrats, that Obama and [Secretary of State John] Kerry are dangerously close to cutting a bad deal and lifting sanctions and shutting out Congress. If you don’t believe that just ask Democrats privately. They know it.” He remarks, “Instead of talking about that, we have a parade of faux outrage about Republicans and protocol, first the Bibi [Netanyahu] speech and now the letter. Historians will wonder why we did nothing to curb Iranian expansionism or shut down the nuclear program.”
The American people should demand that Congress affix existing sanctions in non-waivable legislation and tighten them as envisioned under the Menendez-Kirk legislation unless the new deal does what the president and the existing U.N. resolutions originally pledged to do — deprive Iran of an enrichment capacity sufficient to make a bomb.
Moreover, voters must demand that 2016 candidates disclose whether they would continue Obama’s explicit appeasement of Iran. Perhaps if Congress acted and 2016 candidates pledge to refuse to carry out this charade, the president would stiffen his spine and use all that as leverage to extract more concessions from Iran. Former Texas governor Rick Perry issued a forceful statement on Thursday. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has also said “Republicans need to ensure that any deal President Obama reaches with Iran receives congressional review. Unless the White House is prepared to submit the Iran deal it negotiates for congressional approval, the next president should not be bound [by] it. I will continue to express that concern publicly to the President and directly to the American people.” Non-candidate Mitt Romney, who garnered respect for having been right on so many Obama foreign policy debacles, reiterates the Israeli prime minister’s message: “Walk away from a Swiss-cheese agreement; institute even more punitive and crippling sanctions than have been imposed; and remove those sanctions only when Iran agrees to dismantle its nuclear enrichment capability and to submit to unrestricted inspections. Finally, if contrary to reason and expectation those sanctions don’t bring Iran to its senses, prepare for a kinetic alternative.” But where are other candidates? Jeb Bush sounded sympathetic about the circumstances giving rise to Sen. Tom Cotton’s letter but refused to say he would not abide by a rotten deal not approved by Congress. His caution conveys weakness. All the top 2016 contenders need to stand up on this one.
If Congress and the 2016 contenders act forcefully, the White House may have to rethink its gambit. If not, the Iranians will know they won’t have a free ride (relief from sanctions) for very long.
There is one more problem for Obama. Our Sunni allies are not dim. They have every reason to be alarmed. They are already taking steps to “to match the nuclear capabilities Iran is allowed to maintain as part of any final agreement reached with world powers. This could include the ability to enrich uranium and to harvest the weapons-grade plutonium discharged in a nuclear reactor’s spent fuel.” An Obama deal of the type described would set off a Middle East arms race. Perhaps Congress should invite the king of Jordan or of Saudi Arabia to speak.
No wonder the White House was infuriated with Cotton: By suggesting there is a flaw in Obama’s scheme to leave out Congress, he made it less likely that the Iranians will be rewarded for their conduct and more likely that the next president would be able to extract concessions from Iran. He shined a light on what the administration was up to and let Democratic colleagues know they were being entirely left out of the loop by the president of their own party. He alerted the public to Obama’s belief that the U.N., not Congress, will be driving the Iran appeasement train. If the result of Cotton’s letter is to cement sanctions in law so that the president cannot waive them in his quest to appease Iran, the senator will be heralded as a heroic defender of the West’s security. If the result is to set the stage for a massive repudiation of Democratic leadership in both the Senate (should Democrats choose to drag their feet on cementing sanctions) and the White House, we can draw some comfort in the prospect of a large GOP majority in both houses and a Republican in the White House. Maybe they will have the gumption to prevent Iran from going nuclear. In any case, the message to Iran should be clear: The president’s shenanigans will not guarantee your quest for nuclear power; the only real insurance that your regime will survive is a binding treaty — and that is not happening unless you comply with existing U.N. resolutions.
Cartoon of the day
March 12, 2015
Iranian President: Diplomacy With U.S. is an Active ‘Jihad’
March 12, 2015Iranian President: Diplomacy With U.S. is an Active ‘Jihad’, Washington Free Beacon,
Hassan Rouhani / AP
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani described his country’s diplomacy with the United States as an active “jihad” that is just as significant to Tehran’s advancement as the slew of new weapons and missiles showcased by the Islamic Republic’s military.
Rouhani praised the country’s military leaders for standing “against the enemy on the battlefield” and said as president, he would carry out this “jihad” on the diplomatic front.
Rouhani’s comments echo those of foreign minister and lead nuclear negotiator Javad Zarif, who said Tuesday that Iran has emerged as “the winner” in talks with Western powers. Like Zarif, Rouhani boasted that Iran’s years-long diplomacy with Western nations over its nuclear program established the Islamic Republic as a global power.
Iran has made headway in convincing the U.S. to allow it to maintain much of its core infrastructure through diplomatic talks that Rouhani said are viewed as a “jihad.”
“Our negotiations with the world powers are a source of national pride,” Rouhani said earlier this week. “Yesterday [during the Iran-Iraq War], your brave generals stood against the enemy on the battlefield and defended their country. Today, your diplomatic generals are defending [our nation] in the field of diplomacy–this, too, is jihad.”
“Our power is growing each day, but we don’t intend to be aggressive toward anyone. However, we will certainly defend our country, nation, independence, and honor wholeheartedly.”
Iran stands “10 times more powerful” than it was during the time of the Iran-Iraq War, Rouhani said, which “reflects a serious deterrence to the enemies’ threats.”
Iranian leaders view the ongoing talks with the United States and other nations as a source of global legitimacy.
Rouhani’s remarks have “significant domestic implications,” according to an analysis published by the American Enterprise Institute.
“Iran’s negotiations team to the status of Iran-Iraq War commanders, who are traditionally revered by the regime as upholders of Islamic Revolutionary values, could potentially lead to rhetorical backlash from regime hardliners opposed to the nuclear negotiations,” AEI wrote.
Matan Shamir, director of research at United Against Nuclear Iran, said Rouhani’s latest comments show he is not a moderate leader.
“While Rouhani talks about a ‘win-win’ nuclear deal to global audiences, his comments make clear that he continues to view the U.S. an antagonistic global oppressor that must be triumphed over, in this case by a diplomatic ‘jihad,’” Shamir said. “This is clearly not the language of a moderate or of a regime with which rapprochement is at all realistic.”
Zarif said Tuesday that a final nuclear deal with the United States is meaningless at this point.
“We are the winner whether the [nuclear] negotiations yield results or not,” Zarif was quoted as saying by the Tasnim News Agency. “The capital we have obtained over the years is dignity and self-esteem, a capital that could not be retaken.”
As Rouhani and Zarif grandstand on the nuclear front, Iranian military leaders have begun to unveil a host of new missiles and sea-based weapons.
General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, a leader in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, said Iran’s defensive capabilities “are non-negotiable in the nuclear talks,” AEI reported.
The comments came the same day Iran paraded its new cruise missiles.
Hajizadeh also dismissed economic sanctions on Iran, saying that “his is a message which should be understood by the bullying powers which raise excessive demands.”
On Wednesday, the State Department said any final deal with Iran was “nonbinding,” meaning that neither party would be legally obliged to uphold the agreement.
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